Demonologist (5 page)

In a room laden with darkness, a man prayed. In his heart, a great ache loomed. In his head, a profound beat was heard, that of the blood in his veins. He searched the gloom for a guiding light, found only desolation. Loneliness. Somewhere above, evil flourished. He set his will—his predestination—to oppose it. For now, it languished, a hitherto standoff between an ancient enemy, and its opposition.

Behind him, a quiet clearing of a throat. He turned. Bathed in the flickering gold of a candle’s flame, a
teenaged
boy. Used. Forlorn.
Searching
. The front of the boy’s pants were stained with urine; he seemed not to notice nor care. The boy walked over, placed a four-fingered hand out. “It is time,” he muttered, his breath reeking of
putrification
, of many things charred.

The man shuddered under the weight of the boy’s message, closed his eyes in search of salvation, for himself, for the boy. He’d found a God, one that weighed him down with foul intent: a savior who accepted a host of menstrual blood and bile, who drank from a chalice formed of excrement. Within proximity, a vibration commenced. A calling of souls. The man rose to his feet. With blind fury, he seized the boy by the collar and dragged him to a chair across the compact room.

“Who is your God?” the man rasped, eyes burning.

The boy cowered. Perspiring. Sour stench. Through clenched teeth, he replied, “Allieb.”

The man released his hold, eyes boring holes into the poor young soul. “Go and pray.” The boy fled the room, fear waiting at all ends.

The man wiped his brow with an unclean handkerchief, then exited the room. He roamed the dark, quiet hallways of
In Domo
, gingerly passing unoccupied rooms, peering in with ill regard as if they were open wounds. A tremendous weariness beset him. He prayed for strength, and moved on. The vibration in the walls grew stronger. In its wake, a chanting began. He carried himself up a flight of stairs, into an antechamber where nearly fifty people prayed in icy, bitter unison. In his heart, he kissed his God, and moved off to feign prayer to another.

~ * ~

Two hours later, the man was alone in his room. Expended. He carried his
burdenous
weight into the bathroom, stared at the mold in the sink. He lodged a finger down his throat and vomited blood.

On the floor by his bare feet lay a towel reeking of mildew. He grabbed it and wiped his mouth of the taint. He stood unmoving, catching his breath. His wits. He rubbed his weary eyes. Waited for the world to stop moving. Pink saliva pooled from his mouth to the broken tiled floor.

Back in his room, he re-evaluated his mission. Again second-guessed his strength to complete it. He doubted himself, and his ability to perform what seemed an impossible task.

Faith alone could not defeat true power, he knew. There needed to be a worthy antithesis of strength, a spirited adversary.

And he knew just where to find it.

Getting it would prove to be a daunting task.

A few minutes after leaving his house, Bev
Mathers
called information and got the number for an exterminator in Torrance.

“What’s the problem?” the woman, a receptionist, asked.

“Beetles. Big ones. In my closet,” he explained.

“Beetles? Not cockroaches?”

“No. Definitely beetles. Hard shells. Roundish. Lots of legs.”

“Probably water bugs. You got a leak?”

“No...Jesus, what the hell difference does it make? Just get someone over there to take care of the problem.” He gave the woman the address. He’d left the door unlocked (a would-be burglar wouldn’t be too smitten with the occupants, he figured), in hope of an exterminator’s quick arrival. He was not let down; she said someone would be there within the hour.

“
Bugs’ll
be dead and gone by the time you get home, Mr.
Mathers
. There’ll be a strong odor from the chemicals, so I suggest sleeping someplace else, just for one night.”

“Thank you.”

After hanging up, he dialed Kristin’s cell phone. While on tour, Bev would call his daughter regularly, sometimes twice a day. Just hearing her voice for a few seconds would give him the strength to carry on when the grind of touring seemed an impossible task. At times, when he called late at night and he lay in his dark hotel room with his ears still ringing, her voice sounded much like Julianne’s used to, soft, pleasant, loving, triggering welcoming memories of his youthful past.

“Hello...”

“Just wake up?”

“About a yawn ago.”

“You sound awful,” he said.

“Probably look awful too.”

“How was the rest of your night?” he asked, looking at his watch. Almost one.
Rock star kid
.

”Great. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I looked but couldn’t find you, it was so crowded. I ended up leaving with the Rock Hard publicist.”

“Yeah? You hit it off with her, huh?”

“Uh...yeah, I guess.”

“Where’d you go afterwards?”

“Her place.”

“Her place...”

“She had a small party there.”

“Uh...I don’t think I want to know.”

Silence. “Dad...”

“Kristin, you’re only twenty-one.”

“And of legal age to make
pornos
. But I don’t.”

Stomach turning, he decided to change the subject. “We on for lunch?”

“Sure. Can you give me half an hour?”

“Yeah, of course. Meet you at
Danfords
?”

“
Danfords
in thirty.”

“Great. See you then. Ciao babe.”

While speaking to Kristin, the drizzle had stopped. The gray clouds above were thinning. Soon, Bev figured, the sun would begin to spread its temperate rays upon Los Angeles and fill the beaches and parks with people. Bev drove west toward the beach, then north on the San Diego Freeway. Kristin lived in Manhattan Beach, just north of Torrance, where
Danfords
was located. It had become a ritualistic meeting spot for the two, where they could sit outside on the pier in wooden booths and enjoy seafood while gazing out at the Pacific’s soothing waves crashing upon the shore.

While turning onto the freeway, Bev felt the ghostly fingers in his head again.
  

They’d returned with a vengeance, it’d seemed. Purposefully, too. The scratching sensation turned to digging, those fingers nestling themselves into the thin space between his skull and brain. His chest tightened. He labored to draw in a breath. His hands were tight on the steering wheel.
 

And then,
the
voice.

Bevant
...

The same voice he’d heard last night. Deep. Soft, yet intense. Driven.

With an accent.

I know that accent
, he thought.

At first the voice had alarmed him. Now, he felt anger. Unexplainably furious. Instantly he wanted to fight. He wanted to quarrel, his usual, light-tempered disposition veining into something rotten. He felt an overwhelming desire to scream, to punch, to hit, to attack. He slammed his fists against the steering wheel, once, twice, three times, until the pain became evident to his adrenalized system. Then, the anger segued into a loss-of-control feeling. Immediately he became overpowered by a premonition of free-falling, as though the road beneath the car had fallen away, leaving him to plunge infinitely into a bottomless pit. He pressed down on the gas. The car sped.

Digging, digging, digging.

Crumbling
.

An odd odor rose into his nostrils. Burning. Charcoal. In his sights he saw red embers glowing, flitting across his vision like flies on a television screen. His body began to tremble. He noticed his car closing in behind a black BMW. His mind told him to decelerate, but his body remained frozen in position, feet unable to shift from gas to brake. He could see the driver in the BMW glancing irritably in his rearview mirror, hands raised in inquisitive anger. Nausea twirled in his gut. His head spun. He spoke aloud,
please don’t faint, don’t faint
, his voice sounding distant, as if coming from the seat next to him.

In the next moment, the mind-fingers stopped their scratching. Soon thereafter, the burning odor vanished. At once he regained control of his body and was able to slow the car, the speedometer’s needle diving from eighty to forty in ten seconds. Ahead, the BMW sped off in the distance.

Now, of course, the drivers behind him grew pissed. Horns sounded and tires screeched as cars and SUVs sped by him. More hateful glances came his way. Carefully, he crossed the lanes and exited the freeway. He pulled into a gas station on the off ramp corner, one exit away from the restaurant; he could take Redondo Beach Boulevard from here, no problem.

The car idled. He squeezed his fists. Sweat.
Anxiety
. “What the fuck is happening to me?” he said aloud, wiping his brow. A chill ran through his body. He wondered,
Am I sick? Am I crazy? Jesus, am I having a heart attack?
He picked up his cell phone, called information and got the number for his internist.
Haven’t been to the doctor in a few years, anyway
.

“It’s a...a mild emergency,” he told the receptionist.

She put him on hold. He listened to canned Neil Diamond. She came back on: “The doctor can see you tomorrow at noon.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Yes, the doctor keeps Sunday hours, 12-5. He’s closed on Mondays.”

Bev thanked her. Crazily, in this short time, he felt better. No more scratching; no anxiety; no anger; no voice. No other odd sensations.
What was that crumbling? Felt like pieces of my brain were coming away.

What the fuck is happening to me?

The sweat on his face dried. He looked through the windshield. A station attendant eyed him curiously. Bev nodded, then put the car into drive and slowly made his way to meet Kristin, feeling as good as he did yesterday before all this insanity started.

The drive off the San Diego Freeway took him along Redondo Beach Boulevard and
Alondra
Park. Intersecting Lawndale, Torrance, and Gardena,
Alondra
Park offered 315 acres of native plant gardens, landscaped forest glens, a fishing lake, and a massive sprawl of woodlands made up of trees and meadows. After Julianne died, when Kristin was just shy of her first birthday, Bev would come here to lament, wheeling his baby around and watching the more than 350 species of birds that made
Alondra
Park their home. At times he used to imagine that out there amongst the millions of birds flew a solitary envoy with a message from Julianne—one that would transcendentally guide his directionless life toward an acceptable level of happiness. He walked the park nearly every day for a year, soul-searching, hoping to find some kind of psychic connection with a winged spiritual shepherd.
 

At a time when he was willing to write off his prayers as frivolous and impossible—when he wondered how in God’s name he could’ve
faithed
such a preposterous expectation—his message was delivered. He’d been walking stiffly along the lakeside, pushing the stroller, probing the calm waters and the families of fowl diving for fish while chanting
ohm-
nama
-
shivaya
, a tantric drone that, according to Buddhist teachings, brought good fortune to those who sought its ”inner serenity.” A single white swan swam gracefully to the shoreline, climbed out, and stared at Bev. In his mind he’d heard Julianne’s voice telling him that she rested comfortably in a beautiful place blessed with goodness, and that she would continually watch over him and Kristin until the very moments they came to be with her. The swan continued its hypnotic stare, head lobbing, wings fluttering. It then paced gingerly to Bev and rubbed its feathers against his weakening legs. Julianne’s voice returned to his mind and told him to take his talent to the skies. The swan, now out of trance and seemingly frightened of its sudden location, quickly waddled back into the safe haven of the lake. The voice left him. Darkness consumed him and he fainted to the ground. Some nearby
parkgoers
assisted him until he regained consciousness a few moments later.