Demons

by John Shirley

  “You like the rose coffee?” Yanan asked. “You got such a look on your face, maybe you don’t like it.”

  “I do though,” Ira said. “It interests me. It’s like . . . the taste of the coffee is interrupted by something anomalous—like planting a coffee bush in a rose garden—normal expectations are stretched, opened up. A certain delightful tension in the two flavors. And the smells are oddly harmonious.”

  Paymenz looked at him dourly. “All this from a sip of coffee? What, you’re Proust now?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  Yanan laughed. “Look at Paymenz! He’s in a bad mood! Why do you identify with your bad mood, Paymenz, eh?”

  “You know my inner state so well? Just because I’m not kicking up my heels?”

  Yanan only smiled. Paymenz shrugged and glanced at Ira, both of them thinking along the same lines: Yanan might well be able to see into Paymenz’s inner state, even if the professor put up a good front.

  Paymenz was in one of his dark moods; typically, he’d swing abruptly from ebullient to dark. It was an inborn tendency: He knew it, and everyone else knew it.

  After a moment, Yanan said, “It’s possible, Professor, you are not truly identified with your depressed mind. But I think you are. Like Ira, you worry about Melissa and the boy. Nyerza is with them—they will be all right. But perhaps it’s more selfish than that, hm?”

  Paymenz nodded, smiling sourly. “Yes indeed. It’s also a feeling that the important part of my life is over. I did too much damage to my soul before the invasion. And now . . . I have lost hope for myself. I’m too tired to find what I once had. I don’t even know what to do professionally anymore. I’m angry that all that was revealed to the world those nine years ago is . . . lost. So even that effort seems wasted. I know—it’s self-pity. Or sounds like it.”

  “My friend, you are traveling through a desert called the terrible truth of old age. It is long before the oasis. But the oasis will come. And . . . in the meantime—eh?”

  Paymenz nodded. “I know. In the meantime.”

  Ira sipped his coffee and glanced at his watch. He had an art lesson to give in forty-five minutes. He reached for his baklava, but then withdrew his hand; he didn’t want to get honey on his fingers. He had his portfolio with him, leaning against the wall, and there was artwork he was supposed to show Yanan. “You really think—” He broke off as the Turkish music came to a sudden stop. Suddenly the little café was jarringly quiet.

  They were the only ones in the place besides the proprietor—a bald, swarthy, stocky man with a white handlebar mustache, who was flagrantly breaking state law by smoking a cigarette as he moved about the little kitchen. The cessation of music made Ira lower his voice. “Do you really think that people can have forgotten, Professor?”

  Paymenz snorted contemptuously. “Humanity wants to sleep. They want to believe it was a terrorist attack and a few lunatics in costumes, some explosives. Computer-animation on television. Hallucinogens in the air and water. They want to believe that the terrorist cell the government identified is real, that one of those men killed the President. They want to believe that what they themselves saw wasn’t real. Or anyway they want to tell their children that. It is a conspiracy to pretend. There are no photographs, no film of the demons anymore . . . nothing to contradict the easy explanation.”

  “I’ve heard a hundred theories about what happened to all the visual records,” Ira said, “but nothing convincing. I mean, some of it was confiscated—but they say even that went blank. And the government’s reconfigured the refineries, destroyed the Zone rooms—but they pretend that nothing supernatural happened. A collective, willful amnesia. Even the videotapes have gone amnesiac.”

  “Maybe,” Yanan said, “God Himself wiped it clean. Perhaps, maybe, eh? So that we may have faith and believe in the invisible world without evidence.”

  “My opinion . . .” Paymenz looked at Yanan, asking if he should give it. Yanan was teacher to both of them.

  Yanan nodded.

  Paymenz went on. “My opinion is that Yanan is partly right—God permitted the erasure. But it was That Certain One who did it. Or spirits at his command. They know that non-belief is their ally. If people have evidence of the dark side of the supernatural world, then they know that there must also be another side. Demons imply angels! And God does not want human beings to expect angels to come to their aid. God wants humanity to help humanity.”

  Yanan nodded. “God works through men. The good works of God are the good works of men; the good works of men are the good works of God.”

  “But I don’t understand how people can disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes,” Ira persisted. “Well, of course—not everyone does. I’ve got a friend who’s an old hand at taking psychedelic drugs. He says he knows when he’s hallucinating. And he knows he wasn’t hallucinating then. He says he knows what he saw, and I sure as hell know what I saw. But there was a TV special about the invasion, and everyone they spoke to said it was a hallucination augmented by hysteria, mass hypnosis, elaborate costumes, or something . . . people psychologically adapting to mass murder. The show claimed people couldn’t deal with the thought of so much mindless carnage, so they had to imagine demons instead of people.” He snorted. “But given history— Who was it said ‘History is a list of crimes’? Humanity slides into its worst behavior at the slightest excuse—” He broke off. Yanan was staring at him. “I’ve been pontificating again.”

  “Yes, but also—your faith is weak.” Yanan leaned toward him. “Still, eh? Yes? It’s good to ask—how can people fall so easily the victim of this nonbelief, denying what they saw with their own eyes? Exactly, yes. There is a reason people are so willing to forget—so I believe. There is another influence at work, my friend.”

  Ira looked at him, shivering a little at the thought. “You mean that the same force that erased the pictures erases people’s minds? Or just blurs their memories?”

  “Ah. Minds are connected to souls—and souls resist this erasing. But the influence is there. It tries. And many weak souls give in. It is as Paymenz says: People want to sleep, eh? But not everyone.” He leaned back in his chair and slapped the table. “But you, Ira! What help are you? These others at the group sitting today, they are like our children. You and Paymenz and I—we are to take care of them. They think it is a Sufi meditation. It is that, eh? But we, you and I, we know the greater meaning—we know what honey is made, when it works.” He picked up a bit of baklava, rolled it between thumb and forefinger, put it to his lips, and tasted it. “Honey! Another kind of honey. The food that feeds the Gold in the Urn. But what do you do? Let yourself go to sleep in your dreams of worry. All dreams of worry! When I need you to be the—the sustainer for the energy, for the transformation, the making of the honey I am cultivating there. Paymenz, he did his part. But you! You are the self-pity man! Hm? Yes?”

  Ira cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  “Good. Try again some more next time. Now, you said you have pictures for me?”

  Ira hesitated. He wanted to ask about Melissa, but most likely if Yanan knew anything else to reassure him, he’d have told him. He nodded and opened the portfolio. “You asked me to do that . . . the certain meditation you taught me. To draw afterward what came to me. Nothing much. Just this.”

  He handed Yanan a large pen-and-ink drawing, colored in lightly with felt-tip pens. It looked at first like an abstract image: a shiny roundness pressed off center into an iridescent web of lines with just the faintest suggestion of a face, bent and ghostly, in the round shape. Paymenz looked at it and shook his head. Yanan stared.

  “It’s not much of anything—” Ira began.

  Yanan raised a hand for silence and sat back, closed his eyes. He seemed to settle into himself. His lips moved. There was a faint murmur now and then—words in Greek, Ira thought—though Yanan wasn’t Greek.

  Ira exchanged glances with Paymenz. Yanan was in contact with others in the Conscious Circle.

  A m
oment more, and he opened his eyes, shuddering. “It is the Black Pearl,” he muttered wearily. “The Undercurrent has all of us in its grip—and there is one who can turn the current another way and give us a chance to swim free.”

  “Who?” Ira asked, thinking it would be Melissa.

  “His name is Stephen . . . something like Iskiera, I think. Or something close to this. If we can create a strong enough circle, the Urn will find a way to touch him. But it is probably already too late for Stephen. And therefore too late for all of us.”

  THE JOURNAL OF STEPHEN ISQUERAT

  Am writing this on my laptop, while I wait for my breakfast. I’m in a chain restaurant, didn’t even notice the name, halfway to Bald Peak, my first new West Wind assignment. Got the keys to my company rental from Jonquil Winderson just this morning. Our hands brushed as she gave it to me. I kid myself her hand sort of lingered. But no way. She had peach-colored nails today and a peach-colored dress. Very tight, that dress. She should have pity on guys like me who don’t get laid.

  People in the booth behind me are talking about the Demon Hallucinations as if it’d all been real, and I wish they’d keep their crank ideas to themselves. I’ve got a raise, on my way to a promotion, I should feel good, but I’ve got some kind of butterflies.

  Is it second thoughts, or is it just nervousness I’m feeling? Just a kind of stage fright because I’m about to do some serious work in front of the bosses, and they’re like critics ready to judge how well I dance to their tune? But there it is again, that feeling of doubt or cynicism or something. I’m confused, I guess.

  Ever since I watched Dad die, knowing if he’d had better insurance, more money, he’d probably have beaten the cancer, I’ve just wanted to make money and be one of the people who’re taken care of when he gets sick. One of the people who gets listened to. They don’t listen to schoolteachers like Dad. No one does anymore. They stick the kid in front of an Internet tutor half the day and they play games that’re supposed to be educational. There’s no room in that world for guys like my dad.

  I don’t know why I’m obsessing about it. It’s not like my options are “Be Like My Dad” or “Be Mister MBA.” I could do lots of other things. The world is crazy—people hallucinated demons and pretended to be demons. In a world like that, if a man stays rational, stays alert, he can clean up. When everybody else is flipped out, he’s watching for the opportunity.

  So now I see my opportunity. I kiss up to Winderson by playing his psychonomics game for a while. If I have the ability to leave my body and do some business spying for him, what the hell. I get that over with, then I get some field experience, I’m groomed to be a VP and then—who knows?—director of marketing. So I’ve got to put all these weird doubts behind me.

  I remember having that dream about the old lady and then seeing her. I see Mr. Deane on that bed, that senile anger trapped in him, even though he seems frozen somehow, I start to get nervous. I think it’s my dad’s voice in my head, like the transactional therapy people would say. “Son, you’ve got to do something that’s useful for the world, for everyone—not just yourself. That’s what feels right in the soul.” And that dad in me is trying to get me to back off West Wind.

  Except that doesn’t make sense, because he set me up with West Wind in the first place. But, somehow, I figure that he did that out of disappointment. That he was hoping I’d see what it was like and want to do something else.

  Just shows how he didn’t know me. He never understood the high I got doing online trading. But I’ve got to wonder, with all the money at West Wind’s disposal, if they can’t help George Deane, if they can’t heal him—how much does money really help? Maybe, when something wants to get you, it just gets you. No matter what.

  I’m still adjusting to the idea that my OBEs were real, that I can use them in a practical way.

  Something else occurred to me. If those experiences were real, then there is a soul that can leave the body. What if that means there’s life after death! Otherwise, why have a soul that can live without the body? So if there’s life after death, then maybe my dad isn’t really dead. His soul is out there somewhere. Maybe I can see him again. And my mom. Maybe, all kinds of things. It makes me feel like I could melt into this chair. Why’d I write that, about melting into the chair? It doesn’t make sense.

  Another thing. If there’s life after death, then maybe some other parts of religion are true.

  Okay, here she comes with my eggs and ham. Don’t know if I can eat much. Queasy.

  I’ve got to shake off this nervous bullshit and focus on the job.

  Turkmenistan: between Uzbekistan,

  Iran, and Afghanistan

  Melissa closed her eyes against the insistent cloud of dust, and she blew at the inside of her veil, trying to keep the fine brown desert powder from caking there.

  She sat in the front passenger seat of the Jeep parked on the dirt road, next to the old pickup truck. She checked on Marcus, hugged to her side, to make sure the blanket was still cocooned snugly around him. She wished that Nyerza would return from the little stucco building off to one side or that they might go in with him. She could just make out the truck, parked beside the Jeep, whenever the clouds parted enough to admit some moonlight. The two Turkmen escorts in the wind-scoured Ford pickup were trustworthy enough, but the dark and the dust and the wind all seemed part of some malignant entity bent on demoralizing her. She knew it wasn’t—she knew enough about discorporate malignant entities, and herself, to know what was a real diabolic influence and what arose from her own worried imagination.

  The dust subsided, and she felt Marcus stir under her arm. “Mom?” His voice came sleepily.

  “Shhh . . . go back to sleep.”

  “Can we get out of this Jeep, Mom?”

  “Not for a while. Soon.”

  The boy coughed under the blanket. Maybe they should go inside, regardless of the warnings their guides had given them. Nyerza was in the little building where the gravel road forked, just a hundred fifty feet away. But their guides had warned them about the Tekke tribesmen who sometimes took shelter in these old Soviet outposts. Some were known to take outsiders, and sell them to the outlawed Islamic militants, who then held them for ransom. In the post–Soviet era, the Turkmenistan government, though independent of Russia, was still semisocialist, based on the iron-handed Soviet model but more concerned with their oil and gas pipelines than policing the Tekke. And some had reverted to their nineteenth-century brigandage.

  The cold wind rolled across the plains like a breaker, gusting imperiously out of Russia, slapping them with dust from the Kara Kum desert. She glanced toward their guides’ truck. One corner of the truck’s dark side window pulsed red with a cigarette’s ember as one of the Turkmen sucked at the harsh Russian tobacco. What were these guides good for if they didn’t even know the way to the Fallen Shrine? She coughed, and had just decided to take Marcus inside, when firelight sketched the edge of the building’s opening door, and she saw Nyerza stooping to step through. He turned back and waved to someone inside. She glimpsed a stocky bearded man wearing a telpek, the shaggy brimless hat of the desert Turkmen. Nyerza made a farewell gesture she’d seen Muslims give—he could seem utterly Muslim when he chose—and strode out toward the Jeep, fighting the wind, picking his way over the rough ground, an absurdly elongated, wavering figure in the streamers of dust flickering in the dawn light.

  She found herself thinking of someone else entirely as she watched Nyerza approach: Ira, back home in a more familiar world, giving his art lessons, studying with Yanan, drawing, worrying. She felt a surge of warmth when she remembered the struggle in him—she’d felt it so palpably, when he’d agreed to let her come without him, to bring Marcus, to go with Nyerza. Knowing his jealousy of Nyerza but letting her go.

  She asked herself for the hundredth time why she’d come. She asked something within her, but her connection to the Urn had gone silent some time ago. They were preoccupied or chose to be unresponsive.
They gave no answer. Perhaps they’d withdrawn from her entirely.

  Perhaps she was unworthy.

  Drawing his robes closer around him, the tall African ducked down behind the windshield, settled back in his seat. He bent and spoke behind a cupped hand into her ear, to be heard over the wind. “They gave me a map. Perhaps it’s good. The wind will ease as the daylight comes. We’ll go to the foot of Mount Rize before we rest.”

  She would have liked to put up their tents somewhere sheltered. She was grittily tired; her eyes ached; she was hungry. But Nyerza had said they were to move as quickly as they could.

  He glanced at her, seemed to cast about for a subject to take her mind off her fatigue. He bent near again. “Do you know how many of them are in that building?”