Demon

by Tosca Lee

  I WENT TO WORK and sat in meetings. But even as I did, my mind roamed the heavens, walked the shore by moonlight, passed among the reeds on the bank of Eden’s river.

  At home I made my way through manuscript chapters, jacket copy, and e-mail, my gaze wandering often to that pile of pages, scratched in frantic pen and harried pencil, growing on the corner of my desk, to the rumpled receipt I had saved from the Bosnian Café that first night. It seemed a year, an age ago.

  “I’m going to tell you my story, and you’re going to publish it.”

  Staring at the pile, I considered the narrative tension of his story, the larger-than-life qualities of his characters (and how could they be otherwise when they included both God and the devil?), the unlikely point of view—like the monster of John Gardner’s Grendel telling the tale of Beowulf ripping off his arm. A stepsister’s account of being born ugly. A tale turned on its head, a sympathetic character from an unsympathetic source.

  No. There was nothing sympathetic or likable about this teller. I thought again of Sarah Marshall, her hair matted on the pavement.

  If it was a hoax, it was the most elaborate one I had ever heard of. And if it was, I found that a part of me did not want my disbelief proven, for through it the wheels of my creative mechanism, which I’d feared indefinitely jammed, had begun a familiar, albeit creaky, new motion in me.

  I thought of Katrina’s proposal. L. Legion. How clever. I tried to locate it, but it was apparently buried beneath a ream of paper-clipped proposals and sample chapters.

  Later, well past 1:00 a.m., I returned to my account. I had combed it a dozen times in the last week but left each time feeling that something was missing. Even as he took me speeding through the heavens and introduced me to Eden, he was coy, refusing to put me at the edge of his understanding as I demanded my authors do in their narratives, holding back some vital piece of information.

  I checked my calendar.

  The blank grid stared back.

  13

  The parade was on TV. Apparently it was Thanksgiving. But all I knew or cared about was that it had been five days. Five days, and nothing. I sifted through the stack of pages comprising my record as an archaeologist brushes dirt through a sieve, searching for details, meaning, reason. I have lost it. At best, I was obsessed. The fact that I had not replayed to death my encounter with Aubrey at the museum was proof of that. I had thought I would be compelled to drink, break down, or at least stew for a few days, reliving the years of our marital routine, the arguments, the silent specters between us. But I did none of these, having already transferred my best energies to the account growing on the corner of my desk.

  My pulse throbbed in my temple. I was more conscious of it of late, imagining that I felt its thumping shiver through the mattress beneath me as I lay in bed at night. This experience had drained me, this thing that I had fallen victim or privy to.

  I checked my schedule by the hour—sometimes more often—lingering at the keyboard like a lover waiting by a silent phone.

  In these idling moments of distracted nonproductivity, I looked up articles on Horus, searched for pictures of the falcon-headed god to see if I saw anything of the demonic scowl in the ancient idol’s eyes. In dark, postmidnight hours, I browsed the Internet, following the links through a pantheon of Egyptian gods until, dozing in my chair before dawn, I dreamed convoluted dreams of bird-headed deities with clay bodies, of sarcophagi with wide-eyed funeral masks, of a woman the color of bone singing by the pale light of Lucian’s moon.

  I woke up in the afternoon, raked my hands through my hair, scrubbed at the stubble on my cheeks, and realized the holiday had passed. It was the weekend.

  That day, as I returned to the account of my meetings with Lucian, I was disturbed by the fragility of the paper it was written on, the fraying edges of the notebook pages, the bloated ink where I had set a glass of water on one of them. I recalled the shambles of the house in Belmont, the splintered table leg. Tissue paper, he had called it.

  I immediately decided that I should type the entire thing, commit it to a more lasting medium.

  When I finished, it was well past dark. I sat back, considered the last line of my account, which ended in the museum with Aubrey and me parting ways again. With Lucifer searching for the weakness in man.

  On impulse, I pulled up an online Bible and then faltered. There were at least two dozen translations to pick from. We had read the King James in confirmation, the “thees” and “thous” as mysterious to me as God himself. I randomly chose a more modern version.

  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

  It was so bare-boned. The image of God hovering over the water that had made Lucian shudder was recounted here with all the emotion of a recipe. I read through the days of creation, and though I found no inconsistencies between this account and the demon’s, I found no mention of the angelic host or Lucifer, of the fall that precipitated the earth’s emptiness. I read through the creation of animals and man. I found it retold in the next chapter, this time with more detail, even down to the exact rivers flowing into the garden. The specificity surprised me, as though one might actually locate the place on a map. I read the first two chapters again, this time with a writer’s appreciation for the omniscient point of view, the declarative sentences, the repetition.

  Still it seemed much the same as it had been thirty years ago in Sunday school: dry and rote, down to the repetition of the days coming and going in numbered sequence. I was disappointed, tired, and very hungry. My mouse hovered over the X that would close the online Bible, but then something happened: I heard the echo of past conversations with Lucian coming back to me now in fragments like the lyrics of a half-forgotten song.

  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

  . . . the way a sculptor’s fingers roam a block of marble . . .

  Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”

  All those strange green things had within them the power to create . . . manufacturing miniature versions of themselves.

  So God created man in his own image.

  . . . the awareness, all the emotion, the propensity to love . . .

  “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

  He gave the animals to the man and told him to rule over them.

  “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

  And he was lonely.

  The one thing the demon had not yet mentioned was the tree in the second chapter. I scrolled to Genesis 3.

  Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

  He prowled the garden, inspecting for himself the handiwork of El like the jealous critic . . . searching for the slightest weakness.

  It now came vividly alive. I scrolled ahead, excited, looking for more. But I found only Cain and Abel, followed by an entire genealogy of men who became fathers in their old age and supposedly lived for centuries. Lucian had said nothing of this part, having come only, as far as I could tell, to the end of Genesis 2. Looking at the screen, I thought with some alarm of the thick, dusty, leather-bound book on the shelf at home when I was growing up. Is that what he meant every time he said time was short—that it could take an entire lifetime to recount the whole thing?

  I rethought my obsession, not sure if I was up for all of that. I was exhausted, hungry, and preoccupied—and Lucian had barely covered the first two pages of that dusty book. Did he mean to recount his observation of or participation in every event in the Bible?

  And what did any of this have to do, as he contended, with me?

  Something scratched at the bac
k of my mind.

  And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

  Time, not yet created, had begun its phantom tick for us alone. Where I once saw the artful strew of El’s stars, I now saw the cogs and pendulum of a great clock, ticking the finite measure of time.

  And then I knew.

  The demon’s obsession with time wasn’t about getting through the entire Bible. It was about his own limited quantity of it. In our conversation upon leaving the church that day weeks ago, he said he had never been to hell.

  Yet.

  On a whim I searched the Internet for Lucian.

  Back came Lucian of Samosata, the rhetorician, author of Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead. How fitting. Lucian of Antioch, the saint. Why would a demon take the name of a saint? Lucian Freud, the painter. Various blogs, designers, an actor, even a boxer.

  Well, what’s in a name anyway?

  I typed: “Name meanings: Lucian.”

  I received: Lucian: Latin. “Light.”

  Light?

  I searched for Lucifer. I felt strange, deviant doing it.

  Lucifer: “bringer of light.”

  I toggled back to the file containing my notes and scrolled to Lucian’s retelling of Lucifer’s attempted ascent, of the darkness after its failure. And then before that, to the flashing stones of Eden that reflected the light of its governor. It had all been noticeably missing from the account in Genesis. I wondered if it was anywhere in the Bible.

  Returning to the online Bible, I searched for Lucifer. The only linked passage that came back was a reference from Isaiah:

  How you have fallen from heaven,

  O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!

  I searched next for Eden. An entire list of references scrolled before my eyes. I dropped down to the index results, to “Garden of Eden.” There I found more Genesis and more Isaiah but nothing that snagged my attention—until this:

  You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you:

  I scrolled down through the passage from Ezekiel.

  You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.

  You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.

  Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.

  So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.

  I grabbed my notes and reread them, my heart accelerating. It was the same story except that, as before, the demon’s account was more fantastic. More compelling.

  I had sworn I would not publish his story even if he were J. D. Salinger.

  Salinger never wrote a story like this.

  And again I had to wonder: Why me? I was no high-profile editor. Brooks and Hanover was a small publishing house. With titans like Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, and Random House roaming the earth—with Houghton Mifflin, even, right here in Boston—why choose me?

  It drifted back to me from the pile of pages: My story is very closely connected to yours.

  But how could that be?

  I searched for Satan, half expecting to see a warning on my screen.

  Satan: “Accuser.”

  For a long time, I read and reread that single word.

  I SLEPT, FINALLY, AROUND three in the morning but woke again just after five thirty.

  I couldn’t go on like this. Maybe that is his intent. I pictured myself five years into the future, a skeleton of a man, my eyes sunken into my skull, dark circles like black halos on pallid, sun-forsaken skin, ranting on street corners, and no doubt jobless.

  I got up for water, thinking I ought to return to bed, try to sleep some more. But instead I sat down at my computer, setting the glass atop a pile of proposals I had read the night before, the content of which I could no longer remember.

  I touched the pad on my laptop. A page of links on Satan and Satan-related topics sprang to pixilated life. I had asked about Satan on the verge of hysteria that day in the bookstore. Now here I was with a bookmark on him.

  Lucian claimed he didn’t know where I was meant to spend eternity. Staring at the screen, I wondered: Was I sealing my own fate with every hour, every minute I passed with him? I felt the cold fingers again, scraping the inside of my chest. Could one be damned by association?

  Stop it. You’ll make yourself crazy.

  I looked out my window onto the darkness of Norfolk Street. All around me I was surrounded by so-called normal people chasing lives filled with normal things—money, relationships, losing weight. People who went home to families or empty apartments and went to bed worrying about the same, normal things.

  I wondered if I would ever return to that life. Assuming Lucian never appeared again, could I ever purge myself of this more vivid reality and go back, reset . . . reboot?

  Just as I lifted my finger to the power button, a new meeting notice appeared in the corner of my screen.

  14

  That Tuesday, Helen, my editorial director, called me into her office.

  Helen Ness was a strange mixture of steely, old-school-style politics and a frozen-in-time femininity that, having manifested itself in young adulthood, had never quite progressed into the next thirty years. As I entered her office, she pulled off her glasses. They hung on a beaded chain and dropped down against her sweatered bust. I took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of her heavy oak desk. From here I could see that the lines at the corners of her mouth had directed bits of color from her lipstick away from her lips like tiny irrigation canals.

  “I’m worried about you, Clay. Even when you’re here, you don’t seem here. Your skin is pasty, you look thin and worn out. You look terrible.” She smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead. Shoulder-length, curled under at the ends. I doubted it had changed style since her days at Smith College. “I don’t know if it’s your divorce or your health or what. Sheila said you’ve been to the doctor a few times.”

  Well, see there’s this demon.

  “But I need you to let me know what’s going on.”

  He’s following me, and I’m pretty sure he had that runner on Arlington killed.

  “Let me help, Clay.”

  I’m compiling the story of our encounters, which, by the way, has a nice subplot about Satan.

  “I understand. I’ve—” I raked a hand through my hair. It needed a cut. “I’m just run down.”

  “I’ve had one viable project of yours make it through the committee in the last three months,” she said.

  That’s because the editorial committee can’t make up their minds. Despite my sick days and missed meetings, I knew for a fact I had three proposals stuck in committee limbo.

  “I need a big project to fill a hole—something we can get into production by spring, summer at the latest.” She dropped her hands to her desk. “Do you have anything you can get me? Help me out here, Clay. I know Katrina’s been sending things your way.”

  Don’t even suggest it, Clay. But I could think of nothing else. “Actually, Helen, I’ve been working on something,” I heard myself say. “A novel about a fallen angel—a memoir-style story told from the viewpoint of a demon.” Inwardly, I cursed myself.

  “Clay”— a slow, appreciative smile eased across her features—“I had no idea you had gone back to writing.”

  Since the failure of Coming Home, you mean.

  “Sounds intriguing. Religious fiction is getting hotter, and you do know we get first right of refusal.”

  I’m an idiot. “I know.”

  “Give it to Phil or Anu, and we’ll take it to committee.” She replaced the glasses, sliding them down her nose.

  “It’s not quite finished�
�”

  “Just get us something to look at.” She smiled, a second reminder that the meeting was over.

  I thanked her, eager to get out of her office, to figure out what I had just done. Eager to get on with the day and to my appointment that evening.

  I passed Sheila in the hallway, and the sight of her startled me. She looked drawn, thinner than I had ever seen her, and I realized it had been weeks since we’d had a real conversation. I had never seen her look quite like this—she was practically gaunt, and her lavender twin-set matched the smudges beneath her eyes.

  “Clay, how are you? I talked to Aubrey over the holiday. She said she saw you. And that you’re seeing someone.” She smiled slightly.

  That struck me as hilarious—in a manic, high-pitched laughing kind of way. “It’s, uh, a casual thing. And you? How are you?” I thought of Helen and her “you look terrible.” Apparently it was going around; I had never seen Sheila look so unattractive. I had never seen her look unattractive, period.