The Demonologist Read online

  I didn’t expect to say all this, but I’m glad I have. Later, I’ll wish I could hop in a time machine and return to this moment to deliver a better-crafted insult. But for now, it feels pretty good.

  “It’s funny you say that about me,” he says.

  “Funny?”

  “Ironic. Perhaps that’s the better term.”

  “Ironic is never the better term.”

  “This was Diane’s idea, by the way. That we talk.”

  “You’re lying. She knows what I think of you.”

  “But do you know what she thinks of you?”

  The puppet strings are lifted. Will Junger smiles an unexpected smile of triumph.

  “ ‘You’re not here,’ ” he says. “That’s what she says. ‘David? How would I know how David feels? He’s not here.’ ”

  There’s no reply to this. Because it’s true. That’s been the death sentence of our marriage, and I have been powerless to correct the fault. It’s not workaholism, not the distractions of a lover or obsessive hobby, not the distance to which men tend to retreat as they drag their feet into middle age. Part of me—the part Diane needs—simply isn’t here anymore. Lately I can be in the same room, the same bed, and she reaches for me, but it is like trying to grasp the moon. What I’d like to know, what I’d pray to be told if I thought praying might work, is where the missing piece is. What did I leave behind? What did I never have to start with? What name is to be given the parasite that has fed on me without me noticing?

  The sun comes out and all at once the city is bathed in steam, the library steps glinting. Will Junger wrinkles his nose. He is a cat. I see that now, far too late. A black cat that’s crossed my path.

  “Gonna be a hot one,” he says and starts away into the new light.

  I HEAD PAST THE BRONZE OF RODIN’S The Thinker (“HE LOOKS LIKE he has a toothache,” Tess once rightly said of him) and into Philosophy Hall. My office is on the third floor, and I take the stairs clinging to the handrail, drained by the sudden heat.

  When I reach my floor and make the corner I’m hit by a sensation of vertigo so intense I scramble to the wall and cling to the brick. I’ve had, now and then, panic attacks of the sort that leave you momentarily breathless, what my mother would call “dizzy spells.” But this is something else altogether. A distinct sensation of falling. Not from a height but into a borderless space. An abyss that swallows me, the building, the world in a single, merciless gulp.

  Then it’s gone. Leaving me glad that nobody witnessed my spontaneous wall hugging.

  Nobody but the woman sitting on the chair outside my office door.

  Too old to be a student. Too well-dressed to be an academic. I put her in her mid-thirties at first, but as I approach, she seems older, her bones overly pronounced, the premature aging of the eating disordered. She looks to be starving, in fact. A brittleness her tailored suit and long, dyed black hair cannot hide.

  “Professor Ullman?”

  Her accent is European, but generically so. It could be an American-flavored French, German, or Czech. An accent that hides one’s origins rather than reveals them.

  “I’m not holding office hours today.”

  “Of course. I read the card on your door.”

  “Are you here about a student? Is your child in my class?”

  I am used to this scene: the helicopter parent, having taken out a third mortgage to put her kid into a fancy college, making a plea on behalf of her B-student Great Hope. Yet even as I ask this woman if this is the case, I know it isn’t. She’s here for me.

  “No, no,” she answers, pulling a stray strand of hair from her lips. “I am here to deliver an invitation.”

  “My mailbox is downstairs. You can leave anything addressed to me with the porter.”

  “A verbal invitation.”

  She stands. Taller than I expected. And though she is as worryingly thin as she appeared while seated, there is no apparent weakness in her frame. She holds the balls of her shoulders wide, her sharp chin pointed at the ceiling.

  “I have an appointment downtown,” I say, though I am already reaching for the handle to open the door. And she is already shuffling close to follow me in.

  “Only a moment, professor,” she says. “I promise not to make you late.”

  MY OFFICE IS NOT LARGE, AND THE STUFFED BOOKSHELVES AND stacked papers shrink the space even more. I’ve always felt this lends the room a coziness, a scholarly nest. This afternoon, however, even after I fall into the chair behind my desk and the Thin Woman sits on the antique bench where my students ask for extensions or beg for higher grades, it is suffocating. The air thin, as though we have been transported to a higher altitude.

  The woman smoothes her skirt. Her fingers too long. The only jewelry she wears is a gold band on her thumb. So loosely fitting it spins whenever she moves her hand.

  “An introduction would be customary at this point,” I say, surprised by the crisp aggression of my tone. It doesn’t come from a position of strength, I realize, but self-defense. A smaller animal puffing up to create the illusion of ferocity before a predator.

  “My real name is information I cannot provide, unfortunately,” she says. “Of course I could offer something false—an alias—but lies of any sort make me uncomfortable. Even the harmless lies of social convenience.”

  “This puts you at an advantage.”

  “An advantage? But this isn’t a contest, professor. We are on the same side.”

  “What side is that?”

  She laughs at this. The sickly rattle of a barely controlled cough. Both hands flying up to cover her mouth.

  “Your accent. I can’t quite place it,” I say when she has settled and the thumb ring has stopped spinning.

  “I have lived in many places.”

  “A traveler.”

  “A wanderer. Perhaps that is the way to put it.”

  “Wandering implies an absence of purpose.”

  “Does it? But that cannot be. For it has brought me here.”

  She slides herself forward so that she is perched on the bench’s edge, a movement of perhaps two or three inches. Yet it’s as though she has come to sit upon my desk, the space between us impolitely close. I can smell her now. A vaguely barnyard whiff of straw, of close-quartered livestock. There is a second when I feel like I may not be able to take another breath without some visible show of disgust. And then she begins. Her voice not wholly disguising the scent, but somehow quieting its intensity.

  “I represent a client who demands discretion above all. And in this particular case, as you will no doubt appreciate, this requirement limits me to only relating the most necessary information to you.”

  “A need-to-know basis.”

  “Yes,” she says, and cocks her head, as though she’s never heard the phrase before. “Only what you need to know.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Your expertise is required to assist my client in understanding an ongoing case of primary interest. Which is why I am here. To invite you, as a consultant, to provide your professional insight, observations, whatever you may feel to be of relevance in clarifying our understanding of the—” She stops here, seeming to choose from a list of possible words in her mind, and finally settling on the best of an inadequate selection. “The phenomenon.”

  “Phenomenon?”

  “If you will forgive my generality.”

  “It all sounds very mysterious.”

  “Necessarily so. As I mentioned.”

  She continues to look at me. As if I have come to her with questions. As if it is she who waits for me to move us forward. So I do.

  “You refer to a ‘case.’ What does it involve, precisely?”

  “Precisely? That is beyond what I am able to say.”

  “Because it’s a secret? Or because you don’t understand it yourself?”

  “The question is fair. But to answer it would be a betrayal of what I have been charged to disclose.”

  “You’re n
ot giving me much.”

  “At the risk of overstepping my instructed limits of conversation, let me say that there isn’t much for me to give. You are the expert, professor, not me. I have come to you seeking answers, your point of view. I have neither.”

  “Have you yourself seen this phenomenon?”

  She swallows. The skin of her neck stretched so tight I can see it move down her throat like a mouse under a bedsheet.

  “I have, yes,” she says.

  “And what is your opinion of it?”

  “Opinion?”

  “How would you describe it? Not professionally, not as an expert, but you personally. What do you think it is?”

  “Oh, that I couldn’t say,” she says, shaking her head, eyes down, as though I am flirting with her and the attention is cause for embarrassment.

  “Why not?”

  She raises her eyes to me. “Because there is no name for it I could give,” she says.

  I should ask her to go. Whatever curiosity I held about her when I first spotted her outside the office door is gone. This exchange can go nowhere now but into some revelation of deeper strangeness, and not of the amusing anecdote variety, not something about a crazy woman’s proposal I might later repeat at dinner parties. Because she’s not crazy. Because the usual veil of protection one feels while experiencing brief intersections with the harmlessly eccentric has been lifted, and I feel exposed.

  “Why do you need me?” I find myself saying instead. “There are a lot of English profs out there.”

  “But few demonologists.”

  “That’s not how I would describe myself.”

  “No?” She grins. A show of giddy humor that is meant to distract from how clearly serious she is. “You are a renowned expert on religious narrative, mythology, and the like, are you not? In particular, the recorded occurrences of biblical mention of the Adversary? Apocryphal documentation of demonic activity in the ancient world? Is my research in error?”

  “All that you say is true. But I don’t know anything about demons or inventions of that kind outside of those texts.”

  “Of course! We didn’t expect you to have firsthand experience.”

  “Who would?”

  “Who would indeed! No, professor, it is only your academic qualifications that we seek.”

  “I’m not sure you understand. I don’t believe.”

  She merely frowns at this in apparent lack of comprehension.

  “I’m not a cleric. Not a theologian either, for that matter. I don’t accept the existence of demons any more than that of Santa Claus,” I go on. “I don’t go to church. I don’t see the events in the Bible or any other holy document as having actually occurred, particularly not as they pertain to the supernatural. You want a demonologist, I suggest you contact the Vatican. Maybe there are some there who still take that stuff seriously.”

  “Yes.” She grins again. “I assure you there are.”

  “You work for the Church?”

  “I work for an agency that has been endowed with a substantial budget and wide-ranging responsibilities.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  She leans forward. Her blunt elbows audibly meeting her knees. “I know you have an appointment. You currently still have time to travel to Grand Central to make it. So may I now deliver you my client’s proposal?”

  “Wait. I didn’t tell you I was going to Grand Central.”

  “No. You did not.”

  She doesn’t move. Her stillness a point of emphasis.

  “May I?” she asks again, after what feels like a full minute.

  I lean back, gesturing for her to continue. There is no more pretending I have a choice in the matter. She has, in just the last moments, enlarged her presence in the room so that she now blocks the door as effectively as a nightclub bouncer.

  “We will fly you to Venice at your earliest convenience. Tomorrow, preferably. You will be accommodated at one of the old city’s finest hotels—my personal favorite, if I may add. Once there, you will attend at an address to be provided. No written document or report of any kind will be required. In fact, we ask that you not acknowledge your observations to anyone other than the individuals attending on-site. That is all. Of course, all expenses will be paid. Business class flight. Along with a consulting fee we hope you will feel is reasonable.”

  At this she stands. Takes the single step required to reach my desk, picks a pen out of a coffee mug, and scribbles a figure onto the memo pad next to the phone. It is a sum just over a third my annual salary.

  “You’ll pay me this to go to Venice and visit somebody’s house? Turn around and fly back? That’s it?”

  “In essence.”

  “It’s a hell of a story.”

  “You doubt my sincerity?”

  “I hope you’re not hurt.”

  “Not at all. I sometimes forget that, for some, verification is required.”

  She reaches into the inside pocket of her jacket. Lays a white business envelope on my desk. Unaddressed.

  “What’s this?”

  “Aircraft voucher. Prepaid hotel reservation. Certified check for a quarter of your payment, the remainder to be paid upon your return. And the address at which you are to be in attendance.”

  I let my hand hover over the envelope, as though touching it would concede a crucial point.

  “Naturally, you are welcome to bring your family with you,” she says. “You have a wife? A daughter?”

  “A daughter, yes. I’m less certain about the wife.”

  She looks up at the ceiling, closes her eyes. Then recites:

  Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source

  Of human offspring, sole propriety

  In Paradise of all things common else.

  “You’re a Milton scholar, too?” I ask when she’s opened her eyes again.

  “Not of your rank, professor. I am an admirer only.”

  “Not many casual admirers have him memorized.”

  “Learned knowledge. It is a gift of mine. Though I have never experienced what the poet describes. Human offspring. I am childless.”

  This last confession is surprising. After all the elusiveness, she offers this most personal fact freely, almost sadly.

  “Milton was right about the joy of offspring,” I say. “But trust me, he was way off about marriage as being common with paradise.”

  She nods, though seemingly not at my remark. Something else has been confirmed for her. Or perhaps she has merely delivered all that she was meant to, and is awaiting my reply. So I give it to her.

  “My answer is no. Whatever this is about, it’s intriguing, but quite beyond my scope. There’s no way I could accept.”

  “You misunderstand. I am not here to hear your answer, professor. I am here to deliver an invitation, that is all.”

  “Fine. But I’m afraid your client will be disappointed.”

  “That is rarely the case.”

  In a single motion, she turns. Steps out of the room. I expect a cordial acknowledgment of some kind, a Good day, professor or wave of her bony hand, but she only starts clipping down the hall toward the stairs.

  By the time I lift myself out of my chair and poke my head out the door to look after her, she’s already gone.

  2

  I GATHER SOME WORK THINGS INTO MY SATCHEL AND MAKE MY way back out into the heat to the subway. The air is more wretched down here, vacuum-sealed and sweetened by garbage. This, along with the human scents, each relating a small tragedy of enslavement or frustrated desire as they pass.

  On the ride downtown I try to summon the Thin Woman, to recall the physical details of her person, so vividly present only minutes earlier. But whether it is the unsettling events of the day or some corner of my short-term memory gone on the fritz, she returns to me only as an idea, not as a person. And the idea is more unnatural, more frightening, in recollection than she struck me at the time. To think of her now is like the difference between experiencing a night
mare and telling someone in the bright safety of the morning about its meandering, foolish plot.

  At Grand Central I rise up the escalator and tunnels that feed into the station’s main concourse. Rush hour. It feels more like panic than purposeful travel. And nobody is more lost-looking than the tourists, who have come to witness the thrill of bustling New York but now stand merely stricken, clinging to their spouses and children.

  O’Brien stands by the information kiosk beneath the gold clock at the center of the floor, our traditional meeting place. She looks pale. Possibly irritated, rightly, by my lateness.

  She’s looking the other way when I sidle up next to her. A tap on her shoulder and she jumps.

  “Didn’t know it was you,” she apologizes. “Though I should have, shouldn’t I? This is our place.”

  I like that more than I perhaps ought to—the notion of “our place”—but write it off as merely an accident of words.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You are forgiven.”

  “Remind me again,” I say. “Why is this our place? Is it a Hitchcock thing? North by Northwest?”

  “And you are my Cary Grant? A self-flattering notion. Not that the casting is so far off, so don’t pout. But the truth is I like meeting here precisely for all that makes it so uncivilized. The crush. The masks of greed and desperation. The pandemonium. Organized chaos.”

  “Pandemonium,” I repeat absently, though too quietly for O’Brien to hear amid the hubbub.

  “What’d you say?”

  “It’s the name Satan gives the fortress he builds for himself and his followers after being cast out of heaven.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s read Milton, David.”

  “Of course. You were way ahead of me.”

  O’Brien takes a step to look directly up at me. “What’s up? You look all wobbly.”

  I think of telling her about the Thin Woman, the strange proposal delivered to me at my office. But there is a sense that this would be sharing a secret I was meant to keep—more than a “sense,” a physical warning, my chest tightening and a distinct squeezing around my windpipe, as though invisible fingers have passed through my flesh to silence me. I find myself murmuring something about the heat, my need for a stiff drink.