“When I was a kid I was possessed,” I said slowly.
“So you said.” I’d told her as much in Chicago.
“I was five, and for a while we thought it had gone away. But recently I figured out that it never left. It’s still here.”
“All this time,” O’Connell said, nonplussed.
“And lately,” I said, plunging on, “it’s been trying to get out—it has gotten out, a few times. I don’t think I can hold it back anymore.”
She laughed. “If it wanted out, me boy, it would be out.”
“Listen,” Lew said testily. “All he wants is for you to get rid of this thing, okay?”
“Get rid of it? And put it where?” she said in the tone of a schoolmaster. She sat on the arm of the chair. “You can’t destroy a demon. You can’t kill it. You can’t even send it back to the fiery depths. All you can do is try to persuade it to go somewhere else. To someone else. Forget about everything you saw in those Exorcist movies—pentagrams and holy water and ‘the power of Christ compels you’ and all that shite. It doesn’t work. Even Jesus, when he cast out demons, just sent them into swine—and no, I can’t manage that trick. No one else has figured it out either.”
“There’s got to be something you can do,” I said. Trying to make it sound like a statement, not a plea. “You’ve exorcised other people. The Little Angel in New Jersey, the Pirate King in San Diego.” Witnesses had seen her cast out demons—Lew and I had read the stories, and they were from reliable sources—newspaper and magazine sites, not crackpot websites and free-for-all discussion boards. “I know you can help me,” I said. “You saw the demon in me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Back at the hotel. You looked at me, and you knew I’d been possessed.”
“Mother of God, you think I have magical powers. Has it crossed your mind that you’re not possessed at all, that you’ve simply got mental problems?”
“Are you kidding? All the fucking time.” I ran a hand through my hair. “All I want is what you did for them, for those other people. I want you to get this out of me. Whatever the cost.”
Her mouth turned down in what could have been restrained anger, or disgust. She tapped a cigarette from the pack. “All right then,” she said. She lit the cigarette, inhaled. She held it between her index and middle finger, the other fingers folded against her palm.
“The standard rate is five hundred dollars an hour. Two hours up front.”
Lew leaned forward on his elbows. “Uh, a thousand bucks would buy this house, your pickup, and all the pot you’re probably growing in that greenhouse.”
“It would be a donation to the Church,” she said evenly—or as
evenly as she could with all those Irish notes in her voice. I loved the way she said “church.” She said, “I’ve taken a vow of poverty.”
Lew opened his hands. “Obviously.”
“It’s a deal,” I said.
Lew looked sideways at me. “Del . . .”
“I said, it’s a deal.”
“You’d be wise to listen to your driver,” O’Connell said. “I’ve told you twice—I can’t help ye. It’d just be throwing your money away.”
“It’s all right, I’m broke anyway.”
O’Connell stared at me, then laughed quietly, smoke tumbling over her lips.
“Sounds fair to me,” Lew said to her. “You can’t help him, and he can’t pay.”
“As long as we understand each other,” she said. She put her smile away like a wallet. She slid into the chair, crossed her legs, and leaned back into the upholstery. She tapped her ashes into the ashtray beside her.
“A demonology lesson, then. Start the clock.”
There are three ways to get a demon out, she said. Four, actually, but only three were viable.
All of them depended on persuading the demon to leave. There was no forcing the thing out, no compelling. The demon had to leave of its own free will.
But it was persuasion at the emotional level. Demons weren’t rational. You couldn’t reason with them, argue with them. They weren’t people, they were archetypes—two-dimensional characters acting out a familiar, ever-repeating script. Their goals were always the same, their methods predictable. The hosts changed, the specifics changed, but the story was always the same.
First, you could try to give the demon what it wanted—accede to its demands. If you brought the current story to a satisfactory conclusion, then perhaps it would move on to the next victim, to play out the next episode.
Or you could convince the demon that it wouldn’t get the story it wanted. Frustrate it; deprive it of its fun. You could try sensory deprivation and drive it out with boredom. Or you could simply put it in an environment it didn’t like, a setting or situation that ruined the story: take the Little Angel out of the hospital, take the Pirate King off the ship. Or you could make the victim into an unattractive host. It depended on the demon. The key was to learn the story, then subvert it. The third way was to use a goat: some other host to take on the demon. Someone who more perfectly matched the demon’s needs, both physically and emotionally; someone the demon found irresistible. It wasn’t necessary to kidnap anyone, or trick them into shaking hands with the devil. There were plenty of volunteers, people who’d love to be a God toy. Probably half of the people at DemoniCon were praying that some demon would choose them, make them special. There were even professionals who’d dress up to lure a demon, though their success rate wasn’t high; the demons seemed to recognize hacks. No, a good goat was an earnest volunteer. All you had to do then was introduce the goat to the demon and let nature take its course.
“Think of possession as a hostage situation,” she said. “The bad man is inside the house, holding the girl with a gun to her head. You can’t rush the house. All you can do is give in to his demands, or try to convince him that the demands will never be met. Or, you can broker an exchange of hostages.”
“You said there were four ways,” Lew said. “What if exchanging hostages doesn’t work?”
O’Connell waved a hand. “Kill the hostage,” she said. I got up from my seat, paced the floor. The carpet under my stocking feet felt greasy. Lew steepled his hands, thinking. O’Connell lit another cigarette.
“We need something else,” I said finally. “None of those will work for me.”
“Except the last one,” the priest said.
“Hey,” Lew warned her. Then: “Besides, they’re all the same idea.
If all demons do is jump to the next host, then all we’re ever doing is exchanging hostages.”
O’Connell gave him a nod, the cigarette between her knuckles.
“The driver’s got it.”
“So we have to find the right goat,” Lew said. “It’s like rigging a honey pot on a mail server.” O’Connell gave him a look, and he started to explain. “I work on computer networks. Sometimes to protect everybody else from spam, you put a new mail account on the server, and have it respond to all kinds of shit—mailing lists, Nigerian banking scandals, penis enlargement ads. The spam pours in. We collect all the addresses, blocking those from hitting the good mail accounts.” He sat up in his chair, warming to his idea. “Except that spam is infinite, and demons aren’t. If the demon’s in the honey pot, it’s not in you. And hey, there are people who’ll volunteer to take the hit for us. All we need is the right goat.”
“We can’t do that,” I said.
“All we’re talking about is doing it sooner, not later,” he said. “One way or another, the demon’s going to find its way to another host. Maybe years from now, maybe tomorrow, but shouldn’t you get to choose? You’ve done your time, man. Let somebody else have it for a while.”