“So you came back home. And it started happening again.”
“It’s still happening. Every night I—”
I started to say, Every night I chain myself to the bed. I could tell her everything: the bike chains, the combination locks (because keys could be lost thrashing around, or could be found by whatever was running my body at night), the whole Lawrence-Talbot-at-Full-Moon melodrama. But not yet. Not here in the coffee shop. She waited for a long time, then said, “Del, tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m a little slow,” I said, “but even I figured it out eventually. The Hellion, the demon that possessed me when I was five?”
She nodded. She knew I was stalling, and wasn’t about to interrupt.
“He hasn’t been seen since. Okay, a couple reports in the news when kids acted strange, but those were just guesses, they weren’t confirmed possessions. And then, even those rumors died out. There’s been nothing reported about the Hellion since the eighties.”
I leaned forward. “Doctor, the Hellion didn’t come back when I was fourteen. It didn’t come back after the car accident.” I made a noise that was something between a sigh and a laugh.
“It never left.”
Dr. Aaron didn’t move. I looked around at the quiet people quietly sipping their lattés and fruit smoothies.
Finally she said, “You know this.”
“I can feel it in my head, Doctor. It’s pissed off. Somehow when I was a little kid I . . . I trapped it. I think my mother helped me lock it down the first time. And you helped me the second time—we just thought that the exercises were helping me keep the noises out, when they were really helping me keep them in.”
“Oh, Del. I’m so sorry. If you feel I’ve—”
I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t mean it that way.” I stood up, and pulled my jacket off the back of the chair. “You helped me a lot, got me through a really tough time. You were great.”
“Del, you don’t have to do this alone. I can help.”
“You got your scrip pad with you?”
“Del, I’m talking about therapy. We can start meeting again, work on this together.”
“I don’t want to work on this, Doctor. I don’t want to lock it down anymore.” I yanked my arms through the jacket. Fuck the prescription. “I’m done with exercises. I need an exorcism.”
Lew and Mom were in the kitchen, Lew talking on his cell phone and pouring a cup of coffee.
“I’ll be ready in a second,” I said, and moved past them quickly. They’d be able to read how upset I was from my face. “I just need to pack up.”
“No way, no way it should be that slow,” Lew said to the phone.
“Did you ping it? Run a trace route.” There were crumbs in his beard.
“Hey Mom, your ‘Self Clean’ light is blinking.”
“I put your laundry on the bed,” Mom called after me.
“Thanks.”
“If it’s self cleaning, why’s it just blink at you? Shouldn’t it just clean itself?”
My duffel bag was still zipped. My clothes were on the bed, folded and stacked with retail-quality precision. She’d made the bed, too. Why hadn’t I done that? I closed the door behind me, and kneeled down.
I reached under the bed frame and up, feeling for the hole in the batting that covered the bottom of the box spring. I couldn’t find it at first, and my heart raced. Jesus, if Mom—
My hand closed on the stubbled pistol grip. I pulled out the gun and the oilcloth, and quickly rewrapped it, resisting the urge to look at it.
I kept my back to the door as I unzipped the duffel bag. The loops of sheathed chain were coiled like snakes. I pushed them to the side and tucked the gun into the top of a pair of jeans. The pill bottle was still in its spot at the bottom of the bag.
Three pills. Three fucking pills.
I packed the newly cleaned clothes around and on top of all the incriminating evidence: the bottle, the locks and chains and manacles, the gun. I felt like a terrorist. A Mama’s Boy terrorist, though; my mother had buttoned the collared shirts, double rolled the socks, and even folded my underwear.
I looked around at the room, checked under the bed again, and slung the bag onto my shoulder. It was suspiciously heavy. My mother was in the hallway, coming toward me.
“Do you have everything?”
I glanced back at the room. “I think so.”
“You can always pick it up when you get back. You’re coming back before you leave, right?”
“Oh yeah. I’ll see you in a couple days.” I tried to make it sound casual. We went into the kitchen. Lew was just putting away his phone. I carefully set down the bag—I didn’t want to drop it, in case it clanked—and put an arm around Mom. She was still taller than me—
no shrinking yet. “She folded my underwear,” I said to Lew. “My mom folded my underwear.”
“Big deal. She irons mine.” He looked at me. Last night I’d told him about why I wanted to go into the city, but there was something else in his expression. “You ready now?” he said. Ah. Mom must have told him I’d been with Dr. Aaron.
“I’m waiting on you,” I said.
Mom pulled me into her, hugged me. “Drive safe. I’ll see you in a couple days.”
D E M O N O L O G Y
THE CAPTAIN
SRINAGAR, JAMMU AND KASHMIR, INDIA, 2004
The first vehicle in a four-vehicle U.S. Marine convoy had almost reached the west end of the bridge when the IEDs detonated. The four vehicles—
three Humvees trailed by an M113 armored personnel carrier—were crossing the Fateh Kadal, one of nine two-lane bridges that crossed the Jhelum River in downtown Srinagar. It was 2:15 p.m., fifty degrees but sunny, the pavement still wet from the spring squall that had moved through a half hour before.
Private First Class Peter Gruen was driving the third vehicle in the convoy. He was squinting into the sun through the Humvee’s narrow windshield when the vehicle in front of him suddenly catapulted into the air on a fountain of flame and broken cement. The shockwave was like a punch to the face. Gruen stomped on the brakes and twisted the wheel. His Humvee hit the cement wall and stopped dead, throwing him into the steering column. The hummer he’d been following came down on its side to Gruen’s left, wheels burning. The circular hatch at the top of the vehicle bounced free, slammed into Gruen’s door, and rolled to the other side of the roadway. Chunks of cement thundered down onto the hood and roof.
A ragged hole almost as big as his Humvee had been opened in the roadway between Gruen and the two lead vehicles. Twisted steel rods jutted up from the edge of the hole. Below was the black water of the Jhelum. Sergeant Stevens, in the seat beside him, shouted into the radio, “Out!
Out! Covering fire!”
Gruen felt like his lungs had flattened against the steering wheel. He wheezed, trying to suck air. Covering fire. His sidearm was on his hip, but his M-16 was stowed next to his seat, wedged between ammo boxes on the high hump that covered the drive shaft. The two marines in the back, Koslow and Mack, were carrying their assault rifles across their laps. Mack moved first. He kicked open his door and pulled himself out. A sound like a shriek and a whistle. Gruen turned his face away, and the rocket-propelled grenade hit with a tremendous bang that rocked the Humvee up on its driver-side wheels. Gruen smashed into the door. The vehicle teetered for a moment, then fell back onto its wheels with a jolt. Koslow yelled something Gruen couldn’t make out. He could hear nothing but an intense ringing. Blood covered the backseat, the front of Koslow’s uniform. In the front seat, the sergeant slumped against the dash, almost on the floor, dead or unconscious. Where was Mack?