I breathed in, breathed out. Cleansing breaths. “See, it’s not just the noises now. I developed this sleepwalking problem.”
She frowned, and I laughed. “Okay, that’s not the right word,” I said. “Sleep-raging, maybe. Wolfing out.”
Her head tilted a fraction. This was what she used to do when I was fourteen. A little tilt, the right bit of leverage, and she could open me like a bottle.
“It didn’t start until a couple months after the car accident,” I said. “The noises had grown worse, but I was hanging on. I was getting to work most days. Then on a Thursday night I woke up, and my downstairs neighbor was pounding on my door.” I smiled, remembering how it had taken me a few seconds to realize that the pounding wasn’t coming from inside my head. “Anyway, I was on the floor in the front hallway, tangled in the bedsheets. I didn’t know why I
was in the hall, but I was furious at my neighbor for waking me up. I yanked open the door, and he told me I’d been screaming my head off for fifteen minutes. So, a nightmare, right? What do I know.
“It happened again a few nights later. I woke up in the kitchen this time, the phone ringing. I’d gone through the refrigerator, pulling out everything and breaking bottles and ripping open packages. I thought, Jesus Christ. So I started putting chairs in front of my bedroom door, turning my bed around—little obstacles to trip me and maybe wake me up. It didn’t help. So I went to see that doctor in Colorado Springs I told you about. He started me on Ambien, but that didn’t do anything for me, so he switched me to Nembutal. The attacks kept happening, though, and that’s when I checked into the nuthouse. They kept watch on me, doped me to the gills, and I went a string of nights without any adventures. Of course, it was right about then that the insurance ran out.”
“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 lattes 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
