to make room for odd bits: two huge open-faced stereo speakers like the kind I used to have in high school; an undersized, cheap-looking electronic organ that looked like a starter instrument for ten-year-olds; a framed picture of the pope.
The largest hole accommodated a cast-iron wood stove squatting on a platform of bricks. The books were kept back from the stove and the big pipe that ran up to the ceiling, but not far enough for my comfort. The room looked like it could go up in a flash. Arrayed around the stove were four worn, comfortable-looking armchairs upholstered in oranges and browns, on a carpet of 1974
gold shag. Lew sniffed and rubbed his nose. Dust mites that had been
evolving for decades in the room’s substratum clacked their mandibles in anticipation.
Something about the picture of the pope looked off, and I leaned closer. It was John Paul II, looking saintly. The picture had been ripped into ragged pieces and then carefully taped back together. O’Connell came through the hatchlike doorway in the side of the trailer. For some reason I expected her to offer tea, but her hands were empty except for a pack of cigarettes. The jacket was gone. She wore a knobby silver cross over a faded black concert T- shirt for Tonton Macoute, a band I’d never heard of. It was the first time I’d seen her without the voluminous cassock or some other bulk hiding her shape. I couldn’t decide her age: Thirtythree? Forty-two? She was a small thing, with thin arms and a narrow waist. She had breasts.
“Sit,” she said.
We both sat. I didn’t look at Lew—I was afraid he was rolling his eyes. O’Connell remained standing, her arm on the back of the armchair opposite us. Next to the chair was a floor lamp with a round glass table at its middle. The tabletop had just enough space for an ashtray heaped with ashes and broken-spined butts. Her chair, obviously.
“So what is it you want from me, then?” she asked. I looked at Lew, but he was studying his hands. O’Connell made a disgusted noise. “Come on now, you can say it. You think you’re the first person to come after me with that religious glow on his face?”
“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,
