“Others have come to us in worse shape. You’d be surprised.”
“Like O’Connell?”
“Siobhan was only eleven when she came to us. She’d been possessed many, many times. The damage . . .” He shook his head. “In some ways the Hellion and the Little Angel are the cruelest of the demons, because they go after the children. But I think we were able to help.”
“Why’d she become a priest then, and not a shrink?”
“I think she found our methods a bit slow, and . . . indirect. We’re scientists. The church promised, Whoosh!” He shook a hand at me.
“Get thee behind me! Boogedy-boogedy.” He laughed again. “It doesn’t work, but it’s quick. All we could offer was the promise of years of research.”
“Sure,” I said, thinking, Years? I didn’t have time for these people either. “Listen, thank you for showing me, well, all this. But I need to get back to bed.” I walked toward the door, making sure to angle around the wheelchair.
As I reached the door the old man called out, “Mr. Pierce.”
“Yes?”
“Siobhan told us you suspect that the barriers between you and your demon are crumbling. Your memories are bleeding over.”
I laughed, embarrassed. “I wasn’t in the best shape last night. I probably said a lot of things that didn’t make sense. I’m just a little stressed out.”
“For good reason.”
O’Connell must have told them everything—the jump into Lew, the memories I shouldn’t have, the wolf-out sessions. My growing fear that the Hellion was knocking down the walls that kept us apart. I ran a hand back through my hair. “Did Jung really paint that thing?”
He nodded.
“Okay.” I turned away from him, took a breath, held it. Some destabilizing emotion threatened to wash me away. Fear, or maybe relief. I exhaled. “Okay.”
“Ah,” the old man said. “You thought you were the only one who’d seen it.”
“Let your arms rest at your sides,” Dr. Waldheim said. “Let your shoulders relax. Good. Now relax the muscles of your jaw, your forehead . . . Good.”
The Other Dr. Waldheim said nothing, but nodded encouragingly. The wheelchair was parked next to him, and beside that was the tripod holding the tiny digital video camera. They’d asked me if I minded recording the session, and it was fine with me; I was interested to see what I looked like under hypnosis.
I had no trouble relaxing—I was dead tired. It had taken me forever to fall asleep last night. O’Connell had finally woken me at noon, fed me take-out deli sandwiches, and led me back to the library, where she left me in the care of the Waldheims. The drapes had been pushed back, and bright lozenges of sunlight warmed the floors. Meg Waldheim’s voice was low and rhythmic, almost a murmur.
“You’re not going to lose control, Del. You’re not going to hurt anyone. You can come back any time. Do you understand?”
I said, “Sure.” At least I think I did. I may have only nodded. Dr. Waldheim said, “All right, Del. Let us talk to the Hellion.”
The doctor, it turned out, was wrong about several things. The next time I opened my eyes—when did I close my eyes?—I was wedged into a corner of the room, the edge of a bookshelf sharp against the back of my head, and books heavy on my chest and shoulders, spilled around and under my arms . . . and the Waldheims were
staring down at me with frozen faces. For a long moment I couldn’t make sense of their expressions. Shock, that was clear enough. And sadness. But there was something else there—something deeper than sadness.
Grief.
12
O’Connell brought me meals as regular as a jailer, and took away trays almost always as full as they’d come in. It wasn’t that I was on a hunger strike, or that I was trying to prove some point. I just wasn’t interested in food. O’Connell would chat me up, trying to get me to tell her what I was thinking. Meg Waldheim stopped by a couple times too. I found that if I ignored them, they eventually went away. On the morning of the third day O’Connell came to my room, but there was no breakfast tray. She was dressed in full Kabuki priest mode, her pale face floating like a moon over the expanse of black cassock. She leaned against the writing desk, blocking my view of the Waldheims’ laptop. “Enough of this,” she said, and yanked the electric cord from the wall. When the video continued to play on-screen—the laptop had a battery—O’Connell slammed down the lid. “Time to get out of bed.”
“I was watching that,” I said sulkily.
“Really?” she said. This was sarcasm. I’d been watching the loop of four-minute video pretty much nonstop for the past few days. I knew this was pathological behavior, Howard Hughes–quality OCD. However, my interest in sanity had gone the way of my appetite.
“Get up, Mr. Pierce.” That killed me: Mr. Pierce. “It’s time to take a shower, change your clothes, and leave your little spider hole.”
“Could you turn the laptop back on, please?”
She made a noise that was something between a growl and a stifled scream and shoved the laptop off the desk. It hit the floor with a terrible crack.
“That was Fred’s,” I said. It was only an old Compaq, but still.
“Get your arse out of bed, Del. Now.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t have the energy to fight with her. Maybe later I could leave her a note: Dear Pastor, You’re fired. She yanked the covers off my bed. “You have forty-five minutes to get ready, Mr. Pierce.”
“What happens in forty-five minutes?”
“That’s when your mother is expecting your call.”
This got one eye open. “What? I can’t do that. Not right now. Listen, just tell her I’ll call in a couple days.”
“She said that unless she talks to you herself, today, she’ll assume you’ve been abducted and contact the police. Which is ludicrous, of course.” She pursed her lips. O’Connell may have thought she was a tough Irish girl, but she’d never gone toe-to-toe with the Cyclops. “She may be serious, however, and we can’t afford more legal trouble.”
“She’s serious all right,” I said. I put my arm over my eyes. “Listen, just bring me the phone. I don’t need to take a shower to—”
She gripped my shirt and hauled me to a sitting position. “Mr. Pierce . . .” She stepped back, pulling me off the bed. I would have crashed onto the floor but just barely got my legs under me. Which was how she tricked me into standing.
“. . . you’ve begun to turn.”
Her fists were still bunched in my shirt, ready to haul me into the shower like a drunk.
“All right,” I said. “Fine. You want to give me a little privacy?”
She cocked an eyebrow, clearly not trusting me.
“Suit yourself,” I said, and pulled up my T-shirt, which got her to release her grip. She watched me until the shirt was off and I reached for the waistband of my running shorts.
She turned and walked to the door. “I want to hear running water in thirty seconds,” she said, and closed the door behind her. I sighed, went to the bathroom. The tile was cold on my bare feet. I crossed the small space and twisted the lock on the door that led to her bedroom.
