Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei

by L. J. Hayward

  At first it was just flickering touches—hints of pepper and mushroom on my tongue, a vague taste of lemon at the very back of my throat. I focused on those sensation while exploring the variations of colour in his eyes; dirt brown and flecks of black and paler tan. Then, all in a rush, the flavours burst into a full flood in my mouth.

  I pushed back, overwhelmed by the thick earthiness, the threads of tartness. But the sensation wrapped around my head and pulled me in. I fell forward and into those unseeing eyes, flailing helplessly, trying to fight clear of the sudden pressure drawing me in. Black pupils widened and expanded and I dropped right into them.

  Karl Roeben stood at a blackboard, his back to me, the chalk in his hand scratching over the board in hurried, frantic motions. Mathematic equations filled most of the space already, and to his left was a long line of blackboards already filled with senseless scribble. Well, senseless to me. To his right was another long line of boards stretching out into the distance, blank, waiting to be filled.

  The space around him and the boards was a featureless grey room. There were walls, a floor, a ceiling and yet the space felt limitless. When I didn’t look, I could see walls from the corners of my eyes. When I looked directly, all I could see was board after board after board.

  For myself, I was squashed into a ridiculously small seat with a flip down table over my lap, like something you’d find in a lecture hall if it was a uni that catered only to five year olds. I was jammed in pretty tight but was sure I could get out if I had to. Thing was, there was this really, really strong compulsion in me to not stand up.

  “Karl?” I called. “Karl Roeben. Can you hear me?”

  Karl bent down to scrawl the last of his equation into the very bottom of the board, his writing getting smaller and smaller until it was barely decipherable as numbers and letters, yet he ran out of room. He gave a wordless cry of frustration and stepped back. The board in front of him shifted to the left and a blank one replaced it. With a happy little sigh, he began all over, his writing big and clear.

  “Karl?” I yelled louder this time, with no apparent effect.

  Still compelled to remain where I was, I studied the boards filled with his work. While the nature of the maths remained completely unfathomable to me one thing jumped up and bitch slapped me.

  Every board was exactly the same. Karl began the same problem each time, in the same confident hand, but as he worked his way down the board, it became more cramped and scratchy, more upset. All of them ended the same way, with hurried, mashed up writing pushing up against the edge of the board, clearly unfinished.

  It was then I realised Karl was talking.

  He mumbled over and over as he scribbled, his free hand worrying at his hair and throat. I forced my way through the need to stay put and squeezed myself out of the chair. The air felt as thick as water, a pressure working against me but nothing I couldn’t get through. But as I got closer to Karl, it thickened and actively pushed at me, trying to keep me away. With each step I managed, though, Karl’s voice became clearer and with every syllable I caught, my determination to reach him increased.

  I can only imagine I looked like a miserable Marcel Marceau impersonator, but I persevered and eventually got to Karl’s side. Whatever had hindered my approach changed tactic then. I was there, it wasn’t going to get rid of me, so it gathered itself between us and wouldn’t let me touch him. For the moment, I was letting it have that victory, because I had what I wanted.

  “Two and two do not equal four. The maths is not enough. It never was. We were just too blind.” A nervous, scared giggle. “Blind. Blind. We were so blind but he opened our eyes. It was never about the math because two and two don’t equal four. Two D plus two D doesn’t equal four D. Nothing equals four D. Four is an impossible number for the blind but he opened our eyes, he let us perceive, showed us how to see, how to hear. Four divided by three equals one point three three three recurring, not one, but four into three is closer to one. Him. The observer. It’s all in our heads. In his head. From a three D spatial observational point in space, dimensionality is not a reality but a concept created by the observer, by us, by him. He opened our eyes but we’ll never see it because two plus two doesn’t equal four.”

  And I said looking at his blank, unresponsive face in the hospital had been scary. It was nothing compared to this mania. Over and over he recited it. His hand never stopped writing, flashing in quick, jerky motions across the blackboard. I’d like to say I followed it but even sane physicists never made much sense to me. One thing that did ring clear though was his fear of him. The observer.

  “Karl. I’m here to help you. Can you hear me?”

  “The maths doesn’t explain it. Could never explain it. Pointless. Useless. It’s all about him. He watches and he showed us. He’s here. The maths doesn’t work. It used to work but he’s here and now it doesn’t add up!” He clawed at his face even as he kept writing.

  The change gave me a moment’s pause. I looked around, saw no one else and faced Karl again. “Who’s here, Karl?”

  “Why doesn’t it add up? It used to work. Two plus two doesn’t even equal three.”

  Perhaps that one hint was all I was going to get. He’s here. Who? The obvious answer was the thing his wife believed had possessed him. Which then begged the question—was it gone? It seemed Karl didn’t think so.

  I left Karl to his endless frustrations and began walking. Once more with the whole TARDIS wackiness. A wall that looked no further than a couple dozen feet away never got any closer and yet Karl and his boards shrank into the distance. The pressure that had tried to keep me from his side vanished and let me wander, so long as I didn’t try to get close to Karl again. Then it increased and while I knew I could get through it, I obeyed its silent command for now.

  Eventually, I ended up back at the row of blank blackboards. There was a fresh piece of white chalk and, really, who could resist that? I picked it up and drew a big happy face.

  When I woke up, I was back in my chair and Karl was at his endless trial. Whatever had happened, I’d been out for a while, because my happy face was scratched over with mad slashes of chalk and it was several places down the row of filled boards.

  “He will not let you help him.”

  I twisted around in my chair.

  The new comer stood somewhere behind me. I say somewhere, because he seemed to lean against the back wall, but he was close enough for me to see the faint sheen on his dusky skin, the shadows clinging to his black wings.

  “Asmodeus?” I hazarded.

  The Demon Lord nodded once so regally I nearly felt like falling to my knees. Nearly. Instead, I snorted and hauled myself out of the chair once more so I could face him, man to demon.

  “So, you’re the one keeping him trapped here?” I crossed my arms and spread my feet, showing him I meant business.

  Asmodeus’ lips twitched as he looked me over. “No. Karl has done this to himself. It is his defence against me. Keeping me trapped in here with him. He thinks he is protecting Gerry.”

  “You’ve possessed him then.”

  The demon pushed away from the wall and flicked his wings out.

  Holy crap.

  Shadows arced around his shoulders and in the darkness they cast, his eyes glowed with sapphire brightness. Then he pulled his wings in and the shadows folded about him like a cloak. With languid steps, he circled me.

  “I was, yes.”

  “Was? But here you are. Trapped with him in this place.” I did my best to keep the uneasiness out of my voice. There was a strange feeling deep in my gut I didn’t want to explore too much. I didn’t want to know just how this being was affecting me. It might detract from my manly robustness.

  Asmodeus’ laugh was almost enough to turn my knees to water. “Part of me. A very, very small part of me. It happens every time one of my kind possesses one of your kind. Once we are… evicted, a small part of ourselves lingers. It will fade, eventually.”

  And who wa
s I to say otherwise?

  It was my turn to circle Asmodeus. My God. Those wings went all the way.

  “So, you possessed Karl Roeben, but it wasn’t until you left him that he went whacko. Usually it’s the other way around.”

  Asmodeus turned to watch me. “Only when that is the desire of the dominant demon.”

  “Your intention being?”

  The smile that curled his lips was the very personification of that’s-for-me-to-know-and-for-you-to-find-out...if-you-dare. I decided against pressing him on the matter.

  “And what’s left…” I waved at him carelessly. “Is like a bad smell. You’re the forgotten shoe left in the hotel room after the occupants have left, stinking up the place.”

  You know, I don’t believe the remains of the Lord of Lust appreciated my comparison. His eyes narrowed and those gigantic wings twitched restlessly.

  “So, where are you now?”

  “I am somewhere safe. Somewhere I can continue to do my work.”

  “Work? Causing chaos, sending poor physicists insane?”

  He smiled, but it wasn’t a nice expression. “You have seen too many movies. I am not here to cause trouble.”

  I pointed to Karl at the boards. “But you are sending people insane.”

  Asmodeus composed himself. “That was not my choice.”

  Things moved into place in my head. “Chris Davis attacking Karl forced you out of him.”

  “Strong emotional surges can dislodge my kind. Usually it is a resurgence of faith that does it. The up swell of soul repels us, pushes us out.”

  “And you had to find someone else to act as your personal chauffeur.”

  He nodded.

  “So who’s the lucky bastard?”

  “Do you truly expect me to tell you that?”

  “Had to try. Now I’m just going to have to sniff you out.”

  “I look forward to our next meeting.”

  He snapped his wings out to full width and rushed me. Darkness enveloped me.

  When I woke up, once more, I was on a bed with a bright light shining in one eye.

  “Argh!”

  “Ah, Mr Hawkins. Awake at last.” The light disappeared and Dr Angelshire hauled himself into fuzzy focus. “I was starting to wonder if we had another patient on our hands.”

  I managed to sit up and look around. I was in a room much like Karl’s.

  “What happened?” Angelshire asked as he checked my pulse.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.

  “In that case, my guess is you fainted and took an unusually long time to wake up.”

  “There you go, then.”

  The doc stepped back and looked at me over his glasses. “In my experience, and I’ll divert long enough here to impress upon you that my experience is expansive, there’s usually a reason for fainting. Mrs Roeben said you were sitting by her husband’s bed, you went stiff and then you collapsed. Has this ever happened to you before?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  I rolled off the bed, wobbled and caught the wall before I could betray my lack of balance by falling flat on my face. Didn’t really fool Angelshire but he left me alone. He was probably of the learn-from-your-mistakes school of doctoring. I’m sure if I’d actually fallen over, he would have stirred himself to help me.

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured him. Which was true. My head was clearing and my legs stopped wobbling. If I sounded a bit shaky, that was probably because I could still feel the touch of feathers against my skin.

  “Did you accomplish anything with Karl Roeben?”

  Standing under my own steam, I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Angelshire crossed his arms. “Have you any new thoughts about the possession claim?”

  “Do you really want to hear my answer?” I asked.

  He gave me the same, tolerable smile he gave Mrs Roeben. “The Mentis Institute started life as a psychiatric hospital funded by the Catholic Church.”

  “Yeah, I know. I once visited someone at the old place. You’ve moved up in the world.”

  “It’s definitely a step in the right direction. But do you know why we moved away from the church?”

  I glanced at the stylish furniture, pristine walls and distinct lack of religious overtones. “You mean this isn’t church funded?”

  Unlike Mercy, Angelshire got the sarcasm. “Hard to believe, I know. We worked for many years to become independent of the church, and it was all because of their interference in our treatment of patients. I told you before about the requirements to declare possession. In all my years, I’ve never seen one person fulfil every one of them, and yet I was constantly battling the priests over patients with schizophrenia. When I wouldn’t give them any leeway, they turned to the patient’s family. I saw too many people take their sick children out of here all because a priest did an exorcism and said they were better.”

  “I can sympathise with your position,” I said, and I could. Not every sixteen year old should have to listen to a priest tell him he’s evil. Not possessed by something evil. Just evil.

  “But?”

  All the pussyfooting about I’d been doing with Ivan and Lila, the ongoing arguments with Erin, was starting to bug me, so I said, “But Karl Roeben was possessed. The demon’s gone now, mostly. I think you’re right in saying a trauma has caused his stupor, just not the trauma you would choose to believe.”

  Angelshire took a deep breath, pushed his coat back and put his hands on his hips. “Possessed by a demon. And this is your opinion as a psychic?”

  Here it comes. He was all sugar and niceness when I wasn’t too outlandish in my claims. Now, I was probably skating very close to ending up in the room next to Karl’s.

  I shrugged. “It’s my opinion as someone who’s seen some pretty weird shit in his life.”

  The doc took his glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “I see,” he said, perhaps a little ironically. “You said before you didn’t know if you’d managed to accomplish anything with Karl. Well, whatever you may think, I think you made a difference.”

  His tone didn’t make it clear if it was a good or bad difference.

  “Karl’s awake?” I asked hopefully.

  “Nothing as miraculous as that, I’m afraid. But Mrs Roeben said that just before you collapsed, her husband smiled.”

  My heart gave a little jump. Had I done it? Had I reached him, even in a tiny little way? Perhaps my smiley face had done more than piss him off.

  “I did see some rather extraordinary things in my time with the parapsychology group,” Angelshire continued. “And because a voluntary reaction to whatever it was you did is a good sign, I’m not going to toss you out and declare you a fraud.”

  “Are you going to admit me instead?”

  He resisted the smile I knew was lurking in his stern expression. “I will, however, escort you out.”

  It was a good compromise, so we had a silent but not too uncomfortable elevator ride down to the foyer.

  As we crossed to the doors, Angelshire said, “You believe in demons.”

  “You could say that.”

  Hand on the door, he gave me long, hard look. “I have to ask, Mr Hawkins, in a world full of incurable cancer, terrorism, poverty, corruption, why do you believe in these things? Isn’t this world full of enough troubles already?”

  I pulled my sunglasses out and slipped them on as we stepped outside. Immediately I felt it. I’d thought the female was bad the night before, a couple of seconds of her completely unleashed presence that sent Mercy into a murderous rage. This was inestimably worse. Mercy wasn’t anywhere near, wasn’t even cognitive, and yet it reached out to me and dug inside without so much as a by your leave.

  The darkness stirred and I let it turn me until I saw him.

  I pointed and said to Angelshire, “That is why I believe.”

  Under the trees in the park across the road, Asmodeus stood still and silent, big black win
gs drawn tight around him. He nodded his head to us in that regal manner before breaking up into a flock of imps that scattered into the deep shadows.

  Chapter 28

  When Erin woke up sans sharp ache in her chest she asked the nurses if they’d given her more painkillers. They hadn’t. After a while of exploring her ribcage with growing panic, she checked her arm. Under the bandages, all signs of the surgery were gone. If she poked hard enough, she could feel the screws the surgeons had used to hold her bones together, but the skin was healed and there was no residual ache in her bones. Her face still bore the evidence of impact with the airbag and car door, but the most debilitating of her injuries were gone.

  Lila Reyes.

  Demonologist or…?

  Unable to sit still or think straight, she made her way over to the oncology ward to see William.

  He was sleeping. At least he was out of quarantine and in a regular room, but their near fatal mistake was close to the front of Erin’s mind. She stayed well back, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest. For a wonder, there were no drips crowding his bedside. There was some colour in his face and he looked like an ordinary man taking a quick nap.

  If only that were true. If only this wasn’t just a reprieve from the usual pain and frustration.

  Erin touched her healed ribs.

  Leaving a note for William, she returned to her room, demanded a discharge, threatened the doctor with a law suit if he didn’t agree and then called Ivan. Half an hour later, she was putting on her blouse while Ivan faced the closed door.

  “I don’t think you should be doing this,” he said.

  “I feel fine.” She did up the buttons and tried to hide the trembling in her hands. Her head whirled with all sorts of confused thoughts that would need exploring before she could rest.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked as she sat down to put on her shoes. “I ran into your doctor on the way in. He said to tell you he still protests you leaving and that if you end up back here, he has the biggest I-told-you-so on standby.”

  “I’m okay, Ivan. I just can’t sit in here all day. There’s work to do.”