Demon's Door (25 page)

‘Is she dead?' asked Nadia, standing twenty feet away and hugging herself as if she felt cold.

‘She may have a chance,' said Nurse Okeke. ‘Can you run to Dr Ehrlichman's office and tell him what's happened? Mr Rook has called for the paramedics so they should be here soon. And can you switch on the lights, please?'

Nadia ran over to the gymnasium doors. She flicked all of the light switches but nothing happened. ‘They don't work! Maybe it's the storm!'

‘OK, then, just go find Dr Ehrlichman. And make sure the paramedics know that we're here in the gym!'

Nurse Okeke rolled Patsy-Jean on to her back, knelt close beside her and started to give her CPR. Every now and then she pinched Patsy-Jean's nostrils and breathed into her mouth, filling up Patsy-Jean's lungs with air, but Patsy-Jean didn't respond.

‘She's gone, hasn't she?' asked Jim.

Nurse Okeke kept on compressing Patsy-Jean's chest. ‘Nobody has gone until their spirit has gone. And this young woman's spirit is still with her.'

Jim looked at her. Then he looked at Patsy-Jean and realized that Patsy-Jean was smiling at him.

‘Patsy-Jean?' he asked her, hunkering down next to her. ‘Can you see me, Patsy-Jean?'

Patsy-Jean nodded. ‘I can see you. I can see both of you. I can hear you, too.'

Nurse Okeke stopped giving her CPR and sat back on her heels. ‘I'm wasting my time doing this, aren't I, Patsy-Jean? You're just about to leave us.'

Jim said, ‘
You
can hear her, too?'

‘Yes, Mr Rook, I can hear her,' said Nurse Okeke. ‘I have always had that gift, the same as you. Ever since I was eight years old, and I almost died from meningitis, I have been able to see spirits and souls and the ghosts of those who are gone.'

‘But how did you know that I could do it, too? How the hell did you find that out?'

‘Because two years ago my grandfather came to see me here at the college and I was talking to him in the corridor and you passed us by and complimented my grandfather on his necktie. But nobody else could see him, let alone his necktie, because he died in 1973, and he was buried in that necktie in the Victoria Court Cemetery in Lagos. Only you could see him, apart from me.'

Jim turned back to Patsy-Jean. Her eyes were still open and she was still smiling.

‘What are you smiling for, Patsy-Jean?' he demanded. ‘You've made me really angry now, hanging yourself like that. I
told
you that I would take care of you, didn't I? You shouldn't have done it. That's your whole life, wasted. And how do you think your mom and dad and your sisters are going to feel?'

Patsy-Jean gave him a resigned shrug. ‘You didn't see what I saw, Mr Rook. I saw myself when I was forty. I saw myself ending up so fat that I had to stay in bed twenty-four-seven, with a bag for going to the toilet. I was covered all over in bedsores and half of my hair had fallen out. I stank all greasy because nobody could get in between all of those folds of fat to keep me clean. I saw myself like a whale, Mr Rook, stranded on a beach.'

She took two wheezy breaths, and then she said, ‘I didn't want to be like that, Mr Rook. I'd rather be dead. I
am
dead.'

Jim took hold of her podgy little hand. It felt damp and cold, and he knew for sure that there was no hope of saving her.

‘You should have told me,' he said. ‘When you saw yourself all fat like that, that was only one future, out of
thousands
of possible futures. Maybe there is a really fat you, somewhere in the universe. But I believe that there's a medium-sized you, too, and maybe even a very
thin
you, and you can choose whichever of those yous you want to turn into. Well, you could have done, before you hanged yourself.'

‘Kim said that was my fate and I couldn't escape it.'

‘Kim wanted you to think that. But Kim was telling you only half the truth. Like I say, there could well be a fat and miserable forty-year-old Patsy-Jean somewhere in the future, but all the chances are there's a happy, regular-sized Patsy-Jean, too.'

Patsy-Jean frowned. ‘Kim was lying to me? Why would he do that?'

‘Because he wanted you to take your own life,' said Nurse Okeke, very gently. ‘When people take their own lives, their spirits are like abandoned children, because the gods they believe in will not accept them. Our gods granted us life, and only our gods have the right to take it away from us. If we take it ourselves, our gods will turn their backs on us.'

Patsy-Jean looked frightened now. There was another deafening burst of thunder, right over the gymnasium roof, and the floor was shaken by another earth tremor. ‘So where am I going?' she asked. ‘Who's going to take care of me now?'

Almost on cue, the gymnasium's double doors slammed wide open. A lightning flash lit up the arcade outside, and Jim saw the silhouette of a woman standing there, with the rain glittering behind her. It was the fox-woman, in her conical black hat, and her veil, and her shiny gray robes. She stayed where she was, unmoving, her arms by her sides.

‘
Kwisin
,' whispered Patsy-Jean. ‘Kwisin has come to take me away.'

‘No, Patsy-Jean,' Jim told her. ‘You don't have to go with her if you don't want to. I'm sure that we can find some other spirit to take you in.'

He gripped her shoulder tight but he could hold on only to her physical body, and her physical body was floppy and cold. Her spirit rose to her feet, as slippery and insubstantial as oil shimmering on the surface of a puddle, and glided away across the gymnasium toward the open doors. As Patsy-Jean approached, the fox-woman raised her arms as if to embrace her, and Jim was sure that the fox-woman began to grow taller, and to lean forward in the way that she had done when she had appeared in his bedroom, like a four-legged animal standing up on its hind legs.

‘
No!
' Jim shouted. ‘Patsy-Jean! Don't go with her! Don't!'

He stood up, but as he did so the fox-woman stretched upward until she almost reached the top of the arcade. Her arms grew longer and longer, and as Patsy-Jean came through the doorway she folded them around her and drew her in close. Patsy-Jean screamed, a terrible despairing scream, and then Jim heard a sound like a dog crunching a chicken's carcass between its jaws.

He lunged forward, although he had no idea how he was going to rescue a spirit that had no physical substance. But he had stumbled only two or three paces across the gymnasium floor before Nurse Okeke caught at his sleeve and stopped him. He twisted around and stared at her. Her eyes were wide and she looked terrified.

‘Don't try to save her! She is dead already! If you try to save her, the demon will kill you, too!'

Jim turned back to the doorway. The doors were already closing again, but he was just in time to see the fox-woman turn around and hurry away, and in spite of the thunder and the clattering rain, he was sure that he could hear claws rattling on the paving slabs.

Nurse Okeke said, ‘Mr Rook – Jim – really, there is nothing that you can do.'

Jim said, ‘I let her down. I knew she was feeling bad about herself.'

‘It is too late. She is gone. There is a demon in my religion called Mama Chola who takes spirits in the same way. As far as she is concerned, the spirit of every person who commits suicide belongs to her, and she will kill anybody who tries to take them away from her.'

‘It's Kim,' said Jim. ‘That Korean kid.
He's
responsible. Somehow he can make people see how they're going to turn out in the future, and he takes away their will to live. I saw myself when I was eighty-something, and I was almost tempted to end it all.'

Nurse Okeke nodded. ‘Mama Chola also has her helpers, who whisper in people's ears when they are asleep, and give them nightmares, so that they believe that they are going to be sick, or lame, or lose their sight. They become so depressed and exhausted that they stop eating, or drown themselves, and then Mama Chola takes their spirits.'

‘Well, this can't go on,' Jim told her. ‘I'm going to have to get rid of him somehow.' He checked his watch. ‘Where the hell are those paramedics?'

‘Why don't you go find out?' Nurse Okeke suggested. ‘I'll stay here with Patsy-Jean.'

‘I just hope that Kwisin doesn't show up again.'

Nurse Okeke shook her head. ‘I doubt if she will. She is probably satisfied by now. Besides, she is not looking for people like me, who know what kind of trickery demons can play. There is no better way to protect yourself against demons than to acknowledge that they are real.'

‘Thanks,' said Jim. ‘And thanks for trying to save Patsy-Jean. If we'd been a couple of minutes earlier . . .' He looked down at Patsy-Jean's body. Although she was dead, Patsy-Jean was frowning, as if she had forgotten something and was trying to remember what it was.

FIFTEEN

A
s Jim opened the gymnasium doors, Dr Ehrlichman came bustling in, accompanied by his lanky vice-principal, John Pannequin, and one of the college security staff, a thickset Mexican with a huge gray moustache.

‘What's going on, Jim? Nadia Feinstein just told me that one of your students has
hanged
herself.'

Jim nodded toward Patsy-Jean's body. ‘True, I'm sorry to say. Patsy-Jean Waller. Nurse Okeke gave her CPR but we were too late.'

‘This is
awful
! This is such a tragedy! First Maria Lopez and now this poor girl. Do you have any idea why she did it?'

‘She told me that she was very depressed about her weight. Other than that, I don't really know.'

Dr Ehrlichman walked across to the body and took off his spectacles. ‘You poor young girl. What a terrible, terrible thing to do. I've called the paramedics, by the way, and the police. I don't know what kind of press we're going to get. Did you see the
Times
this morning? They called us the “College of Carnage.” Doesn't do much for our reputation in the community, does it?'

Jim said, ‘I have to get back to my class, tell them what's happened.'

‘Yes, OK. Very well. But when you've done that, I need you back here to talk to the police.'

Jim left the gymnasium and walked back along the empty corridors. Through the windows he could see lightning crackling almost continuously behind the trees, and before he reached Special Class Two there were three loud collisions of thunder, so close to the college that he heard some of the girls in Sheila Colefax's class screaming in fright.

When he reached the door of Special Class Two he was puzzled to see that the blue blind had been drawn down over the porthole window. He turned the handle to find that the door was locked.

He knocked, and shouted out, ‘Open the door!'

There was no answer, so he knocked again, louder. ‘Open this goddamned door, will you?'

Still no answer. He tried rapping on the window with his ring finger. ‘This is Mr Rook and if you don't open this door right now I am going to make your life hell! Do you hear me?'

He was still waiting there when another member of the college security staff came hurrying past him, followed by two paramedics.

‘Having some trouble, Mr Rook?' asked the security man.

‘Door's stuck,' Jim told him. ‘Show these guys to the gym first. Then come back. I think my students are just playing me up.'

‘OK, Mr Rook. No problem.'

Jim waited for a while longer, leaning on the door with both hands pressed against it. He couldn't imagine why his students would want to lock him out of his own classroom, especially since Maria's suicide had left them all feeling so distraught.

He knocked yet again. ‘Will somebody unlock this door, please? This is pointless and unfunny and I have some very serious and important news to tell you.'

Another few seconds went by, and then Jim heard a soft, complicated click. The door opened, although only by a half-inch. He wasn't entirely sure why, but he hesitated for a moment before he pushed it open any further. There was another peal of thunder, and the fluorescent lights in the corridor flickered off for a moment, and then flickered on again.

He opened the door and stepped into the classroom. At first he couldn't understand what he was looking at. Special Class Two were all standing up behind their desks, facing him, but all of them had their heads wrapped up in clear plastic cling film, so that Jim could barely make out their features. They were all breathing laboriously, and the film was sucked in and out of their mouths as they struggled for air.

‘What the hell are you guys
doing
?' he demanded. He was so shocked by their appearance that it took him a few more seconds to realize that not only did they have their heads wrapped up in layers of film, but all of them had their right elbows crooked up, and all of them were holding box-cutters against their throats.

All of them, that is, except for Kim Dong Wook, who was standing by the chalkboard. He had written on it, in large capital letters: ETERNAL PEACE AWAITS THE CHILDREN OF KWISIN.

Jim stalked up to Janice Sticky and tried to snatch her arm, but Janice immediately shied away from him. He tried again, but then he saw that there was blood welling up between her fingers, and that she had cut herself on the side of her throat. Her green eyes stared at him through the cling film like a drowning fish trapped beneath the surface of a frozen pond.

‘Janice,' said Jim, ‘you really don't want to do this. Listen up, all of you! None of you want to do this! Kim here has made you all believe that your lives are going to turn out to be crappy. He did it to me, too, and I felt like killing myself. But he's misleading you. All he ever shows you is the worst-case scenario.'