by Drew Foote
Walter looked down, feeling numb. He and the Demon had each spent countless eons bearing witness to the struggles of humanity and divinity. Despite the fact that, at times, the agony of existence was unbearable, he had somehow come to enjoy the camaraderie of his teacher. He had felt his awareness blossom in a way that he had once only dreamed.
He still understood nothing, but he had finally come to appreciate the magnitude of his ignorance.
“So …” Walt began, feeling a tightness in his chest. “What happens now?” He was dreadfully afraid of the answer.
“That, I do not know. I do know, however, that there is but one more road for you to walk before you leave this place,” Paimon replied, sorrow evident in his ancient and gentle face.
“What did you see the night you died, Walter?”
Walt shook his head forcefully in denial. He had cordoned off that section of his mind, blockading what dwelt within. All Walter knew was that it was something cold and terrible, something far worse than any torment he had endured in his stay in Hell. He would keep that memory locked in chains until the end of time.
“I don’t want to know, Paimon.”
The Demon sighed. “I know there is something there, Walt, and it is something you must face. I can feel a storm building, and growing, threatening the fate of us all. What happened to you that evening lies within its heart.”
Paimon met Walter’s stare. Walt saw swirls of beautiful, prismatic color dancing in the depths of Paimon’s eyes. They were pleading: begging him to be strong.
“No,” Walt insisted stubbornly. He had borne the pain of everything thus far, his mind cracking beneath the tremendous pressure, but he would not do this. It was too much, even for his friend, even for the fate of humanity.
“And you can’t make me, Paimon,” Walt added, unsure if it was true. It pained him to deny his mentor, but there was something screaming locked away inside Walter’s soul that he dared not release.
“No, I cannot force you,” Paimon declared, the soft creases of his face deepening in the candlelight. He seemed to age even more before Walt’s eyes, a lonely old Demon who shuddered under the burden of the memories he carried.
“But this may be the most important thing that has ever been done, and you won’t be alone. I will come with you, should you have me.”
Walter considered his words. Every fiber of his being, every breath in his lungs, cried out against revisiting that terrible night in the park. Pain coursed through his body when he even reached for it in the recesses of his mind. The slightest caress of that memory was unbearable.
In his heart, however, he believed the Demon’s words. It was something that must be done, a tumor to excise … and he would not be alone. Paimon’s presence would give him strength. Truth be told, he had come to feel great affection for the soft-spoken old Demon.
Paimon had exposed him to terrible punishments and pain, but would he trade it away for a prison of ignorance?
Walt thought back to the day, infinitely long ago, it seemed, when Paimon had asked him that very question. He did not know the answer at the time, but he believed he did now. As always, the Apple was irresistible to the children of men. Walt nodded in acquiescence.
“Very well. We do this, together.”
A tender, proud smile graced Paimon’s features. He extended his ancient hands across the table. “You honor me, Walter. I will be there with you. Now, let me see your palms.”
Walter placed his hands on the table, palms facing upward. Paimon the Cruel took them into his own, tracing the lines on Walter’s palms with his thumbs. Walt felt impossible heat rise from the jagged map written upon his skin, beckoning to him.
It promised a journey more painful than any before.
“Read once more for me, Walter Nathaniel Grey. Here, in your hands, lies your story,” the Demon intoned, his voice commanding. The candles in the room flickered, and it felt as though Walter could feel the stones of the Tower itself tremble with anticipation. The universe held its breath.
Walter looked down into his own hands, and Hell washed away in a molten river.
~
Walter was thrust unwillingly, crying and screaming, into a terribly bright world. Covered in blood. A doctor snatched him into his arms and a nurse severed his umbilical cord, separating him from the one person to whom he had ever truly been bound. They wrapped him in swaddling cloth and placed him in his mother’s arms. She smiled at him, tears shining in her relieved eyes.
“Walter,” she whispered. Paimon stood in the back of the room, his weathered countenance proud.
Walter nestled warmly in his mother’s arms, his tiny body basking in the love that radiated from her like a sun. He felt at peace then, unaware of the tragedies that would unfold once the world seized him in its merciless grip. There was no father there, but he was safe, and loved, and all would be well. He drifted off into sleep.
Time flew.
Walter, now four years old, rode uneasily in Uncle Joe’s beaten sedan. He didn’t know where they were going, and Uncle Joe wasn’t talking. His uncle’s normally hard face was even fiercer today, a terrible rage and hurt beneath it, and they rode in silence. Paimon sat quietly in the back seat. Walter could not remember who he was, but he was glad he was there.
His uncle ushered him solemnly into a brightly-lit hospital room. It was hushed save the cold music of numerous medical machines. It seemed filled with terrible potential. Walter could feel the world rising around him like a devouring mouth, preparing to claim its first pound of flesh.
It was the first of many.
Walter’s mother lay maimed, bleeding internally, her life slipping from her tender grasp. She looked as fragile as a wilting flower, a thing of beauty whose time had passed. A car accident.
Were there truly any accidents in this world?
Walt pressed his tiny form against the edge of his mother’s bed, his small hands grasping desperately at hers. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew it was wrong. It was something that should not be. Tears welled in his eyes, the first pure tears he would shed. They would not be the last on his long journey, but they were perhaps the most painful.
His mother gripped his hands feebly. She turned to him, her eyes bruised and swollen. They were ringed with blood, and so very tired. She managed a weak smile.
“Walt,” she murmured, her voice unsteady and failing. “I love you son, always remember that. Be a good boy, and never give up.”
The staccato beeps of the machines shifted to unending monotone as her body finally gave way to the unavoidable fate of mortals. It seemed as though he could feel her soul vacate her shattered body, leaving behind nothing more than a hollow shell.
Where did she go?
Walt wailed in denial, and his uncle carried him from the room in his burly arms. An anger filled Uncle Joe’s eyes, and it would be with him until the end of his days. Pain was never truly forgotten.
Paimon placed a tender kiss on her cooling forehead, and left the room.
The world closed its jaws around Walter.
Time flew.
Walter grew into an awkward and unconfident teenager. He was so different from his uncle, a taciturn construction worker, they seemed molded from entirely different clay. There was no common ground between them save his mother, and they had both lost her. They had both lost something precious.
His uncle’s heart was hardened and closed, severed by pain from this strange youth that he now raised. Rather than bond over their shared loss, they grew separated by a chasm of character and alcohol. Quick to anger and quick to violence, Walter knew to stay away from his uncle on those frequent evenings in which Joe drowned his sorrow in cheap booze.
Walter retreated from his family life and the jeers at school into the wondrous world of books. There, rather than being a spindly and feeble loner, he was a courageous knight. He battled dragons, saved the world, and he always got the girl. Heroes earned happy endings.
Only in books.
Together, he and Paimon read of worlds far better than the constricting prison that trapped him. They were heroes of far-away lands, celebrated and victorious. Walter was never defeated.
Time flew.
Uncle Joe wasn’t at his high school graduation, and Walter wasn’t surprised. Joe had never seen much point in books or education. A man lived by what his hands could do. They could build, they could pay the bills, and they could beat. The only upside, as he saw it, was that Walter would finally go away and leave him to his drinking in peace.
Walter and he agreed on that much, at least. Paimon clapped proudly as Walter crossed the stage, taking the first of his many diplomas during his life-long stay in the sheltered world of academia.
A piece of paper.
So precious.
He threw himself into his college studies, and he knew in his heart that university was where he belonged. There, they valued intellect and reason. There, he could spread his branches and grow into the majestic oak he was destined to be, so stifled within its previous garden. Physical strength and the purity of one’s complexion were secondary to the worth of one’s mind.
That’s what Walter believed, at least.
Some professors did as well, perhaps, but the opposite sex seldom agreed. Walter eventually lost his virginity, if that lackluster performance truly qualified, to a bored and unimpressed girl who was looking to fill her own emotional voids. She ushered him from the room afterward with quiet derision. Something died once more within him, and it would be many years before he would submit himself again to such humiliation.
He told himself that was fine, though. Who had time for such frivolities when there was a world of knowledge that awaited him? The endless depths of learning intoxicated him, drawing him into their murky waters, and he threw himself willingly into them. At night, when his classmates were drinking and socializing, he swam in the rivers of the ancient masters. Plato and Aristotle, Petrarch and Erasmus.
Philosophy. The love of knowledge. The search for the eternal truth, the answer to unanswerable questions. Why had his mother died? Why was he alone? Why was the world so cruel and uncaring, and was there a point to it all?
Was the world even worth saving?
Where had that question come from?
Paimon searched for these answers alongside him, as he always had. There was no marketable future for Walter in the search for these answers, other than as a professor himself, but that was fine with him. Walter had no desire to ever leave academia … and he didn’t.
Time flew.
After a backbreaking ordeal of over a decade, Walter finally held his Doctorate of Philosophy.
Now he just needed to find someone who would pay him to ask the questions he so loved. In that, however, Walt was amazingly lucky; he landed a junior faculty position at that legendary institute of learning, Harvard. The pay was terrible, the hours were brutal, and the research was mind numbing, but he was finally on his way. He felt one of the truest senses of achievement that he would ever feel in his life.
This dream quickly faded into a harsh reality. The convoluted process of actually achieving tenure was nearly impossible unless one had the social grace to know who to befriend, and how, and that was a skill that Walter never developed.
Although he was a tireless employee, he found himself just as shunned as before. His colleagues constantly took advantage of him, and he never grew the backbone to protest. They smelled his weakness like sharks in the water.
The years passed Walter by.
While he slaved away at the academic principles associated with life, he forgot to live his own. He struggled with unsuccessful relationships from time to time, but he never found love. It was as elusive as the answers he sought, an ephemeral thing that existed only as a concept. It was a mirage that danced away as soon as he approached it, always on the horizon.
Friendship was also difficult. It seemed as though he never knew the right words to say, the right gestures to make. Human interaction made him nervous and self-conscious, too keenly aware of his own shortcomings. Others pushed him away and, in turn, he pushed away others who might have finally come to understand him.
It was so much easier to be alone.
He was never a religious man, and he eventually gave up on the concept of God. There was absolutely no way that any being of intelligence could have set in motion the careening boulder of existence. There was too much wrong. There was too much ugliness. If a being had willfully woven this tapestry, Walter wanted nothing to do with Him.
Paimon understood.
Time flew.
The decades swam by as Walt toiled ceaselessly for that unobtainable goal: tenure. That would be his validation, his confirmation of worth. His mother told him to never give up, and he didn’t. He published mountains of papers and theses that none but Paimon had appreciated. He had willingly accepted every terrible assignment and indignity the university bestowed upon him.
He finally got his big break. Harvard gave him tenure-track, mainly because they had no defensible reason why they couldn’t. Walter realized the deck was still stacked against him, but he vowed to succeed.
Walt redoubled his efforts to churn out publications and take on a larger class-load. He worked himself to the bone to cement his tenure, his already frail health deteriorating as his weight and blood pressure skyrocketed. For seven years, he worked himself to the brink of collapse in the effort to finally summit the peak of academia. Like a frostbitten climber dragging himself up Mount Everest, he left parts of himself behind on the frozen path.
The day finally came for Harvard’s ad-hoc committee to meet and decide his fate. The wizened council of elders would decide his fate, the net worth of his life’s efforts. His stomach knotted as he awaited the verdict.
Their answer was no, of course.
He had no worth.
Walter was not permitted to attend the meeting, and he could not defend himself or present his case. They simply denied him, although they would graciously revisit the matter in another five years. He knew he could not take another five years; it would surely kill him. The soul-crushing humiliation was unbearable.
He entered a deep depression, a bottomless pit from which he knew he would never emerge. He had never found any answers, and it was all for nothing. He failed to enlighten his students for he never found any of his own. How could one who had not lived life speak of its mysteries?
His words rang hollow, and everyone had known. His mind merely spun about its axle, a path to nowhere that so many philosophers before had walked. There was not a brilliant or original thought in his failing body.
On the blackest of nights, after a bout of particularly painful soul-searching, he finally spoke aloud. “If there’s a God out there that can hear this … I hate you. I’d sell my worthless soul for one moment of damn success.”
Paimon heard him. So had Barnabas.
Time flew.
Barnabas. Unbearably handsome and sleek. Dashingly confident. A black-winged apparition of everything Walter wasn’t. A sinister savior who offered the world for the low-low price of a handshake and a useless soul. That sounded like a bargain to Walter.
What good was a soul?
At first, Walter could not believe his eyes. The grinning Demon was impossible, yet there he stood. He was undeniable proof of the unseen world of Gods and Devils, a world that Walter had always scoffed at. He had been wrong, though, like so many times before.
It was not surprising, though, when you considered Walter’s track record. There might as well be a God, if only to spite him. That was par for the course of his life.
Barnabas’ silky words spilled from his smiling mouth like a balm, spreading across the cracked surface of Walter’s shattered spirit. His words all made so much sense. They resounded within the empty hollows of Walt’s heart.
Paimon’s gaze was downcast as he saw his friend’s will crumble beneath Barnabas’ promises.
The only problem, however, was tha
t if Walter actually had a soul that meant there actually was a Hell. Could it be that much worse than his current existence, though? Walter didn’t think so.
In the end, it was not greed or ambition that drove Walter’s terrible decision. It was not hunger, nor desire for material success. Walter’s downfall was pride, and anger: anger at God, anger at life, and anger at the hand dealt to him.
Walter didn’t want anything to do with this God. Fuck his soul, and everything that came along with it. The glad-handing Demon was welcome to it.
Pride, always pride. The burning kerosene of vanity. Was there ever anything more dangerous?
Walter shook the Demon’s hand, and he was damned.
Time flew.
Barnabas was true to his word, and his promises came miraculously true, but Walter had no recollection of the bargain. The university called to let him know that they held an impromptu meeting to review his tenure application, and they had reversed their decision.
Walter was finally in.
In time, they lauded him as a visionary and a pioneer in the field of philosophy. Students flocked to register for his classes, though they were uncertain why. They listened to Walter’s clumsy lectures in rapt attention, although the hollowness of his words rang false. He was a rock star, just as the Demon had sworn.
Walter, now finally appreciated, felt like an enormous weight lifted from his shoulders. He had reached his goal, and everything had been worth it. He was fifty-seven years old, but he knew his treatises would live long after he passed into nothingness. Someday, in centuries perhaps, students might still talk about his contributions to the field of philosophy.
Paimon shared in his joy and success, but he feared what lay just ahead.
Time flew.
Walter walked on the moonlit shore of the peaceful pond at Lewiston Park, as he often did. Paimon walked at his side, and they ambled along in companionable silence. Walter felt a vague feeling of unease, as though he was ratcheting slowly up the peak of a rollercoaster.
