Pandemonium (16 page)

Lew was only two doors down, but it might as well have been a mile. We could have called each other, I guess, but I didn’t want to bother him. They’d told me he could barely lift his arms, so how would he pick up the phone? He must have made at least one call, though. My mother called me at noon to tell me that she and Amra would be there by this evening—tomorrow morning at the latest. They were driving in, and they didn’t know if they could get there by the end of visiting hours. She asked only a few questions—just enough to confirm the basic story she’d gotten from Amra, who’d gotten it from Lew. Mom was restraining herself. For now.
I spent most of the day inert as a statue, falling in and out of sleep without moving my head. Nurses came in at two-hour intervals to take my temperature, but their questions didn’t require more than a grunt or a nod. I thought about Christopher Reeve. I tried to imagine lying there paralyzed, watching each day’s sunlight track across the wall. But Reeve hadn’t stayed in bed. Okay, he was rich—high-tech wheelchair, staff of nurses, as many physical therapists as he wanted—but he was determined.
People
magazine said he worked for a year just to learn to move his pinky. How motivated was
that?
Eventually he even retaught his body to breathe on its own. Inch by inch, he was clawing his way out of that chair.
And then? Superman gets killed by a fucking bedsore infection.
The sky outside the window darkened. Visiting hours came and went, without Mom and Amra. I closed my eyes in relief.

“You snuck up on me,” Lew said.
I sat in the dark in the chair beside his bed. I’d been watching him sleep for a long time, trying to decide if I should wake him. It was past midnight. The night staff seemed to be skeletal, and no one had noticed me shuffling down the hallway like an old man. It was only two doors, but it took me forever. I felt like my muscles had turned to jelly under the water, but I forced myself to keep lifting one foot, then the other.
Move the pinky, Mr. Reeve.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Didn’t know you were mobile.” His voice was slowed a notch from painkillers.
My face heated with embarrassment. “You got the worst of it.”
He tilted his head in a suggestion of a shrug. “I guess.”
He was propped up in bed, his arms unmoving at his sides. His right leg was in a cast from thigh to calf, to stabilize the knee. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, but I couldn’t read his expression past the bandages, the bruises that looked like deeper shadows.
“O’Connell says you don’t remember anything,” I said.
“One minute I was with her and Louise and the guards. The next, lying there next to the water, screaming my head off.”
“You don’t remember anything else—running after me, diving in?”
“Should I remember something?”
Run.
Faster.
“Nah. Get some sleep.” I pushed myself slowly out of the chair. “Mom’ll be here in the morning and your sleeping days will be over.”
“But now you’ve woken me up.”
“You want me to read you a comic book?” I said.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. Mom told me about when we were kids. She said you used to sit with me and read me—” I got a clear image of Lew, holding up a page from
The Flash.
It was Flash versus Dr. Light, and Flash was moving in a red-and-yellow blur that was
faster
than light.
“You okay?” Lew said.
“I just…” My voice caught. “I just need to get to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I used the door frame for support and shuffled into the hallway, managed to make it back to my room without getting busted by the nurses. I sat on the edge of the bed, unable to get that image out of my head: seven-year-old Lew in the chair, holding that
Flash
comic. How many nights had he sat there, waiting for his little brother to come back? Waiting for the wild boy who’d maimed his mother to go away.
And Mom, reading
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
over and over.
O’Connell asking,
What do you mean, you loved it?
I clicked on the bedside lamp. My vision was blurred, and it was hard to make out the instructions on the phone’s faceplate, but I finally got an outside line. The call was picked up after only two rings. Louise sounded exactly as she had the night I’d phoned from Lew’s house in Gurnee: tired and annoyed.
“This is Del,” I said, trying to control my voice. “Del Pierce.” Stupid: How many Dels could she know? How many had she just taken to the hospital? “I need to reach Mother Mariette. Can you tell her to call me at the hospital as soon you see her? Hello?”
The phone had gone silent. I thought she’d hung up, and then O’Connell came on the line. “What is it? What’s happened?”
I cleared my throat, ran the back of my hand over my eyes. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew before the commander showed up.”
“Knew what, Del?”
“I shouldn’t remember them reading to me. I shouldn’t remember being the Hellion.”
“No. Probably not.”
“When I took Lew, I could feel him, feel him fighting me. Fighting me just like—”
“Del, I’m coming over there. Don’t do anything. I’m giving the phone to Louise for a minute, so please stay on the phone…”
Oh God. The Hellion was still inside me, clawing at my skull. Kicking out the posts. And the walls were coming down.

DEMONOLOGY
THE LITTLE ANGEL

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, 1977
When the large black Mercedes pulled up to the curb, Dr. Wayne Randolph left the shelter of the awning and hurried into the rain like an eager doorman, umbrella at the ready. He didn’t care if he looked desperate. He liked to think he was smart enough not to pretend.
He opened the passenger door, and the old woman looked up at him from under her hat. She favored him with a brief smile. “You must be Dr. Randolph,” she said in a soft Swiss-German accent. They’d met years before at the first ICOP, but of course she wouldn’t remember him; he’d been just a medical student then. Dr. Toni Wolff, however, was the same as he remembered her from twenty years before: ancient, tiny, and somehow invulnerable, like a well-preserved insect specimen. She wore a formal black evening gown, and held a very informal brown leather bag on her lap.
“Thank God you could come so quickly,” he said. She’d made it across town in only twenty-five minutes, a New York miracle. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”
“Thank you for calling Red Book,” she said. “Some of your colleagues stubbornly refuse our help.” Her voice, too, was as he remembered it: cigarettes and Switzerland.
The driver, a trim, fortyish man dressed in a tuxedo, hefted an old-fashioned wooden wheelchair from the car’s voluminous trunk and set it up beside the car. “Hi, I’m Frederick,” he said. He’d just gotten Dr. Wolff into the chair when headlights slewed into the entranceway. A small white MG skidded to a stop just inches from the Mercedes’ rear bumper.
A young woman in a sleek red dress hopped out from behind the wheel and ran around the back of the sports car, somehow managing to move gracefully in six-inch clogs. “Sorry I’m late!” she said. Her black hair seemed to shine in the rain. The dress was some kind of silky wrap, tied at the hip, that threatened at any moment to become not a dress at all.
“And this is Margarete,” Dr. Wolff said.
Frederick leaned close to Dr. Randolph’s ear. “We’re getting a bit wet,” he said.
Dr. Randolph came to himself and hopped forward to lead them through the sliding doors. “We’ve got her locked in one of the observation rooms. I told her we lost the keys, as you suggested on the phone, but she’s not very happy. She’s, uh, throwing a bit of a tantrum.”
“What does she look like?” Margarete asked.
“Just like in the papers—little girl, maybe ten years old, white nightgown. Beautiful long curls.” He turned right and led them into the oncology wing. “She looks like Shirley Temple.”
“Has she kissed or touched any of the patients?” she asked.
“One, we think,” Dr. Randolph said.
“You think?” Frederick said.
“We’re not sure if the girl did it, or if the excitement was too much for the woman. She was very old.” He suddenly realized what he’d said, but Dr. Wolff didn’t seem to take offense. “Anyway, we can’t get in there with her.”
“She’s still in the room with the patient?” Dr. Wolff said.
Dr. Randolph winced inwardly. “We had no choice. That was the room the girl was in when we found her.”
They heard pounding, then shouting. A high-pitched voice yelled, “Or
else,
mister!”
A small crowd of nurses, orderlies, and patients had gathered in the hallway outside the room, but they were standing well back from the door and the door’s little window. The door shook every time the girl inside kicked it. Frederick said, “Step aside, please! Thank you!”
“Dr. Randolph?” Margarete said. He turned and forced his eyes to stay on her face. The neck of her dress seemed to plunge almost to her navel. “We need to get these people out of harm’s way,” she said.
He nodded.
“So why don’t you do that?”
“Of course, of course.”
After Dr. Randolph had cleared the hallway—twenty feet of it, at least—he came back to find Dr. Wolff paging through a small notebook, and Margarete and Frederick conferring in low voices. Were they married? he wondered. Dating? Perhaps they were only colleagues.
“It’s the Long Island girl, all right,” Frederick was saying. “I’d recognize those cheekbones anywhere.” He leaned against the wall beside the door, arms crossed. “God only knows how she gets across the city barefoot and in a nightgown with nobody seeing her. Or into the damn hospital.”
“No one reads our alerts,” Margarete said.
“Dr. Randolph does,” Dr. Wolff said without looking up. He hadn’t realized she’d seen him return. “And for that we are thankful.”
Inside the room the girl kicked and yelled something Dr. Randolph couldn’t make out.
“We have to move before the demon damages the girl,” Dr. Wolff said. “So the question: temporary or permanent?”
“She’s done this for three years,” Margarete said. “She’s paid her dues.”
“I agree,” Frederick said.
“Temporary or permanent what?” Dr. Randolph asked. “Exorcism?”
“Let me out of here!” the girl yelled.
“To use a word freighted with misunderstanding,” Frederick said.
“But why
wouldn’t
you choose permanent?” Dr. Randolph sounded exasperated.
Dr. Wolff opened her purse. “How heavy would you say she is, Doctor? Forty pounds? Forty-five?”
“About that.”
“Oh, and I’m going to need scissors,” she said. “Margarete, could you fetch a pair? This place should be full of them.” Margarete spun away, the skirt of her dress parting to expose a length of tanned thigh. “And Doctor, I need you to unlock the door for me.”
Frederick straightened. “I should be the one to go, she’s not going to do anything to me.”
“I need to talk to her before she leaves,” Dr. Wolff said. “However, I won’t leave you out, Frederick. You can play bodyguard. In a few minutes I’ll need you and the doctor to hold her down for me.”
Dr. Randolph felt his stomach clench. “I’m not sure I should—”
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Dr. Wolff said. “You’re not her type.”
Dr. Randolph pulled the keys from his pocket, then struggled to find the right one. He could feel the hospital staff watching him. When he placed the key in the lock, the girl inside suddenly quieted.
“Please, Dr. Wolff, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go in there,” Frederick said.
“Pffft!” she said. Then louder, “My little angel! We’ve found the keys. We’re going to have you out in a jiffy.” She pronounced it
zhiffy.
“It’s about time!” the little girl said.
Dr. Randolph pulled the door open, and Dr. Wolff immediately rolled forward, blocking the doorway. “My, aren’t you a pretty little girl!”
Dr. Randolph looked at her through the window. She was a pretty girl. Her face was pale and elfin. Her hair hung in long, golden brown ringlets.
The girl looked at Dr. Wolff suspiciously. “I know you,” she said. “You were at that other place.”
“That’s right, we met last year.”
“You’re old,” the little girl said. “Very old.”
“Yes I am.” She rolled forward a few inches. “But let’s talk about you, my little angel. Tell me about the first place you ever visited. Can you remember that?”
The girl tilted her head. “You’re sick, too, aren’t you? You’re
dying.
”
Margarete came up behind Dr. Randolph. “Oh no,” she said quietly.
“Don’t worry about me,” Dr. Wolff said. “Tell me a story about your adventures. Do you remember visiting Kansas City?” She rolled farther into the room. Margarete and Frederick exchanged a look.
“You’re really ’fraid,” the girl said. She stepped forward, her filmy white nightgown swishing around her mud-stained legs.
Dr. Wolff said, “I have something in my purse I’d like to show you. Do you like surprises?”
“You can’t fool me,” the little girl said. “You’re afraid it’s going to hurt when you die. You’re afraid it’s going to take a long, long time.”
Frederick spun around the frame of the door and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. The little girl screamed. Frederick hauled Dr. Wolff backward out the door, her legs kicking up. As soon as the chair had cleared the doorway Margarete lunged into the room and tackled the little girl to the floor.
You weren’t supposed to touch the Little Angel, Dr. Randolph thought. That was the first rule.
“Frederick!” Dr. Wolff said. “Get Margarete out of there!”
The demon threw off Margarete and sent her crashing against the far bed. Her strength, for a child, was enormous. Dr. Randolph ducked back out of sight.
“Meg!” Frederick said.
Dr. Wolff took the purse from her lap and tossed it at Dr. Randolph. “Doctor, get the syringe.”
Dr. Randolph stared at her.
“Twenty cc’s should do it,” Dr Wolff said. “Enough to slow her down without killing the girl.”
Dr. Randolph opened the purse and withdrew a syringe. “What’s in this?” He withdrew the plastic cap from the needle.
“She’s u-up,” Frederick said quietly.
“You,” Dr. Randolph heard the girl say. “You were mean to me last time.”
“Sorry about that,” Frederick said. He raised his arms and stood in front of Dr. Wolff. Dr. Randolph pressed his back against the wall, out of sight of the girl. He gripped the syringe tightly in his damp hands.
The girl walked forward. “You’re young,” she said. “Not sick at all.”
“That’s right. Fit as a fiddle.”
“But you’re mean.”
The girl walked out of the room. Dr. Randolph held the syringe at his side, unable to move. She was only two feet away from him, her back to him, and still he couldn’t move.
He must have made a noise. The little girl glanced at him over her shoulder. She frowned. The syringe slipped from his fingers and clattered away.
The girl turned her attention back to Frederick and Dr. Wolff. “I just want to
help
her,” the girl said. She reached out her hand. “But mean people are always stopping me.”
Suddenly the girl squealed in pain. She wheeled around, turned again, as if the needle were still stuck in her behind. “What did you do?” the girl said.
Margarete held the syringe between two fingers like a cigar. “Nighty night,” she said.
The demon stumbled, and Frederick caught her before her head struck the ground.
“Oh my goodness,” Dr. Randolph said. “She was going to kill us. Kill us all.”
Frederick made a face. “She wasn’t going to go after you.” He looked at Dr. Wolff. “But you, Doctor. I didn’t like the way she was talking. If she comes for you—”
“Summoned or not, the god will be there,” Dr. Wolff said. “Now, before she wakes up, Margarete?”
“Already on it,” Margarete said, and snipped the air with a pair of scissors. She kneeled beside the unconscious girl, lifted up one of the long, springy curls, and clipped it off near the base of the skull.
“Is that necessary?” Dr. Randolph asked.
Margarete smiled up at him. “The Little Angel has a thing about hair. Won’t go anywhere without it.”
“Ah,” Dr. Randolph said, though he wasn’t sure he understood. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“First we try to find her parents,” Dr. Wolff said. “And then the hard work begins.”