Demons

by John Shirley

  “Um—where?”

  “To drink cognac, of course. You wanted to do something for me. You can have a drink with me. That’d help.”

  She didn’t wait for his answer. She swept past him toward the door, swinging her purse. He followed, feeling dreamlike.

  Don’t kid yourself, Stephen, he told himself. You’re not that lucky.

  A hundred uncertain steps later he was standing with her as she unlocked the door to a little dorm-type room. There was just space inside for a queen-sized bed, a dresser, an open closet—with a garment bag hanging inside and a suitcase—a desk with a closed laptop, a gooseneck lamp that provided the only light. Beside the laptop was a bottle of authentic cognac and two snifters. He didn’t think about there being two snifters till a long time later.

  Just now his mind was full of the sight of her taking off her jacket, tossing it over the desk chair. “Close the door. We haven’t got enough of the good stuff for Dickinham and those other clucks,” she said.

  He closed the door. Not wanting to seem to assume too much by sitting on the bed, he stood awkwardly in the middle of the little room. He crossed his arms—then, feeling that he looked vaguely hostile, he put his hands in his pockets.

  She uncorked the cognac, poured them each half a snifter, and looked at him in feigned dismay. “For heaven’s sake, sit down! You’re making this little room seem even smaller, standing there like that.”

  Heart pounding, he sat on the edge of her bed and accepted the snifter. She sat down next to him, setting the cognac bottle within reach, and leaned against the wall. She raised the glass to him, said “Chin-chin,” and drank deeply. “Hoo, boy. Stephen, I’m telling you, this is the good stuff. Dale’s private stock. Organic French grapes.”

  Organic? he thought. Winderson prefers organic?

  It was, anyway, a delicious cognac, but it had a kick; already his head was swimming. “Whoa. Strong stuff.”

  “What’s the point of weak stuff?”

  Looking for conversation, remembering the ask-women-about-themselves rule, he noticed an old, leather-bound book sticking out of a side pocket of her open suitcase. “You take books with you when you travel? I do, too. Is it fiction or . . . ?”

  “That book? No. Not fiction. What do you read when you travel?”

  He had the distinct impression she was changing the subject. “Me? I like old novels. Stuff that seems kind of gritty. Like old twentieth-century detective novels. Dashiell Hammett. And C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower stories. Historical fiction.”

  “Sounds like escape into the real world—or the world people think of as real. Escape from what?”

  “Oh, when I was a kid . . . well, it’s tied in with the psychonomics stuff.” This might be a good time to find out more about the psychonomics division. She might be more forthcoming, now, after a few drinks.

  But he really didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to savor being here in this little room, drinking with a girl who made him weak in the knees when he looked at her.

  She kicked off her shoes. Small white feet, petite white toes. Red-painted toenails. “You like the nail polish? Almost fire-engine red. I was inspired by a Monroe movie.”

  “Yeah. Vivid.”

  She took another drink. “Almost the color that’s coming into your cheeks.”

  She seemed to get more brash with each sip.

  He laughed lightly; he hoped it was convincingly. “Am I blushing? Or is it the drink? Or do we care?” He was trying for lighthearted banter. He tried to remember the Noël Coward he’d read in college.

  She took another sip, and then pulled the two pillows out from under the white bedspread, plumped them behind her against the wall. She leaned back with a sigh—and stretched out her legs across his lap. His erection was instantaneous.

  “We’re forgetting toasts,” Stephen said, trying to find some conversation that wasn’t just a reaction to hers. “What should we toast? West Wind?”

  “Not today. How about—to life. Make that long life.”

  “Sure. To life! Long life!”

  They drank. They refilled their snifters and drank some more. He felt warm and very much in the moment. There was nothing beyond this little room, nothing beyond himself and Jonquil.

  He realized he’d let his left hand fall onto her knee. Her skin was smooth, warm. But he was sure his palm was sweaty. He wondered if she could feel his relentless, almost painful erection through the fabric of his pants.

  Another toast, he thought. Be suave. “In fact,” he said, “the devil with long life—let’s make it a toast to eternal life. Why not?”

  She looked at him oddly. Her smile was crooked as she said, “Yes, why not.” And she drank deeply from her snifter.

  She bent her right leg—his hand was on her left—and the motion pushed her skirt up, showing a great deal more thigh and a triangle of white panty.

  A little surprised, he took his hand from her leg. She said, “Why don’t you put your glass in your left hand?”

  He laughed a bit drunkenly. “Why—does the cognac taste better that way?”

  She cocked her head and closed one eye. “Umm, I think it will, yeah.”

  The room was beginning to whirl, just a little.

  He took the snifter in his left hand and drank. “Weird. It does seem better.”

  “You just pay closer attention to the taste that way.” She refilled his glass; he drank half of it almost immediately when she added: “But I wanted you to put your drink in your left hand so you could put your right hand on my leg. You can reach farther up my leg with your right hand, see . . . Do close your mouth—you’re gaping at me like a fish.”

  “I am?” He laughed nervously, smiled shyly, and returned his right hand to her leg, let it slowly slide up her thigh. The skin of her thigh seemed fractionally more moist. His palm cupped her flesh, and the tips of his fingers seemed to drink in the sheer, vibrant life of her.

  “That light on the desk,” she said, “is bothering my eyes. Could you just turn it so that it’s facing the wall? It’s adjustable.”

  He got up, and instantly found he was more drunk than he’d thought. The room rocked around him. He focused on the lamp and walked across to it as steadily as he could. “This boat seems to be hitting some rough water,” he muttered. She laughed at that. He turned the shade so the light faced the wall, making the room candlelight dim.

  He found his way back to the bed and saw she’d put her glass on the floor and unbuttoned her blouse. “This damn brassiere is killing me. I can’t breathe in it. Would you mind?”

  He put his glass beside hers, then fumbled with the bra hook, in front between the cups, and at last managed to undo it without pinching her. “Good man,” she said huskily, tilting her face up to his. He bent to kiss her.

  It was a long kiss, and her lips seemed to melt into his. Then she put her hands on the back of his head, and drew his face down to her full breasts and moaned. “I’m sad tonight,” she whispered, pressing his face into her cleavage. He smelled her skin—her perfume, her musk. “Make me feel better. . . . Make me feel better, Stephen.”

  Somehow she squirmed out of her skirt and underwear without taking his face from the lusciously soft world of her skin as he tongued the tautness, the electricity of her nipples. Somehow she fairly clawed his clothes away, and he almost dove into the center of her, and only the sweet distancing of the liquor prevented him from ejaculating too soon. He forgot himself in her, and that was the key that opened chambers within secret chambers, within others. They made love for at least an hour, and he slid into the dark waters of sleep without a ripple.

  Stephen heard a woman’s voice. It wasn’t Jonquil’s.

  “They’re ready for you now, Mr. Issk-rat.”

  Stephen sat abruptly up in bed—and regretted it. A hangover backhanded him in return for the suddenness of the motion. “Ow . . . shit.” His mouth was paper dry; the skin of his face in his hands seemed disgustingly oily. He wasn’t an experien
ced drinker.

  He looked around the room. Jonquil was gone.

  The closet was open; her bag was gone. Her clothes were no longer hanging there. The laptop was gone. There was a note written on the desktop in lipstick.

  Early meeting. See you soon. J.

  He looked at his watch. Seven A.M. Take some aspirin before facing sunlight.

  He pulled on his pants, his head throbbing. He was desperate for a drink of water. Was she used to drinking that much? She must be.

  Dressing sloppily in dirty clothes, he wondered what last night had meant. He’d made love to Jonquil, and it’d been something powerful, at least to him. Had it mattered as much to her? Was she as used to that kind of intimacy as she was to drinking?

  “They’re ready for you now, Mr. Issk-rat.”

  Had someone spoken to him? He was sure he’d heard someone . . . he thought it might have been Latilla’s voice. Maybe something left over from a dream. He wished Latilla would stay way, far, completely clear of his dreams.

  But maybe someone had been there; maybe they’d said something at the door. Did they know he’d spent the night with Jonquil?

  He went to the door, opened it, peered up and down the hall. “Hello?” He heard male laughter from the little coffee nook at the end of the stretch of dorm rooms. Crocker. If he went for coffee, he’d run into Crocker. He definitely didn’t want to talk to Crocker now, one of those guys whose every word mocked you, but they never quite crossed the line enough that you could call him on it.

  He walked ploddingly to the cafeteria, in search of water. Maybe someone would have some aspirin.

  Jonquil. She’d filled his senses last night. All five of them. He was beginning to feel the emotional ache through the hangover ache. Waking up alone like that had been jarring. The note seemed impersonal.

  How did she feel about him? They’d known each other so briefly, but making love to her had sure as hell broken the ice.

  There was too much light in the cafeteria. He’d cheerfully pay a hundred dollars for any pair of sunglasses.

  Almost fourteen hours later, in the first march of the night, Stephen put on his overcoat and hat and went down the hall, looking for the nearest exit. He’d spent the day, and part of the night, outlining marketing ideas for D17. He couldn’t get over the notion that it was just busywork, that it wasn’t even part of what Winderson wanted from him. That made it unsatisfying work.

  Moreover, Jonquil hadn’t called him, hadn’t shown up. She never had explained why she’d come to Bald Peak in the first place. Had she come there to see him?

  He found the exit, went through into breezy nighttime gloom.

  He took a deep breath, found himself wondering if you could taste darkness when you breathed in the night air—an odd thought that made no real sense.

  He crossed the field between the old observatory and the place where he’d stood looking out over the valley when he’d arrived here. The grass wiped the wetness from a recent rainfall onto his trousers, till they began to cling and scrape his calves.

  He thought about calling her, but something about her terse note suggested she preferred to get in touch with him. So why didn’t she? Had he been lousy in bed? Hadn’t seemed like it at the time. She’d seemed to be riding a roller coaster of multiple orgasms.

  But maybe it was a one-time thing for her. She’d been depressed about something. He’d been someone handy to help her forget about it, whatever it was. But that didn’t mean he was serious-relationship material.

  Face it, he told himself. You’re not particularly good-looking, and you’re low on the corporate totem pole. You don’t even have stock options. You were comfort food for a night.

  He kicked angrily at a tall weed. She was a capable woman executive, paid a helluva lot more than he was; she wasn’t going to be impressed with him anytime soon. And if he made a serious play for the boss’s niece and it went sour—so would his career.

  Maybe when he saw her, she’d act as if nothing had happened. How should he react to that?

  He approached the edge of the cliff. But this time he looked up at the stars and the moon. The wind had torn the cloud cover and was drawing the curtains for a celestial display. Raggedly framed by black clouds, the stars glittered blue-white. He tried to remember what constellations he was seeing, but they all seemed new to him. The moon was low, its cold light making the broken clouds starkly black in their hearts.

  At last, almost reluctantly, he looked down at Ash Valley.

  Lights shone in clusters and stippled the lines of streets, marking residential blocks. Some parts of town seemed darker than they should have at this hour, he’d have thought. But over there, to the north of the town, there was a bustle of spotlit activity. He could just hear the rumble of earthmovers, and he could see they were making a road. Working through the night to gouge a new, ramrod-straight artery extending from the town—and another, coming at a slant to meet the first one, so that they converged to make a point. Pointing right at him. And on the farther side of the town, directly opposite the first work site, more spotlights, catching blue smoke from diesel engines. Yet another road.

  Why were they working so hard in the middle of a winter night, some of the time in the rain, to make these roads?

  “They’re ready for you now, Mr. Issk-rat.”

  He turned, almost jumping, feeling as if he’d been caught at something he shouldn’t be doing.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Latilla said. The elderly woman, with her bell-like hair, her lizardlike hooded eyes, was gazing at him unblinkingly—or so it seemed to Stephen. She wore a woolen overcoat and rubber galoshes. She came nearer, stood so close he could smell coffee on her breath. Suddenly she smiled, tilting her head to one side inquisitively. “I guess I just get all jumping-bean-enthusiastic about Mr. Winderson’s projects. It’s so exciting, don’t you think?”

  “Um—jeez, Latilla—I didn’t even know you were out here, I mean, at the observatory. Mr. Winderson sent you all the way up here? Oh—then he must be here, too, huh?”

  “No, not in person. He may project in later. They’re ready for you in the observatory.”

  “Ready for me?”

  She nodded, adding only, “You betcha life they are!” And didn’t seem inclined to explain. But after a moment, as if a badly timed afterthought, she winked at him.

  My policy, he thought wryly, is to pretend I know what I’m doing. Best to stick with it.

  He nodded and smiled, made a lead-the-way gesture. She turned and they walked back to the main observatory building.

  They went through the propped-open exit door, into light and stale warmth, down a curving corridor to the telescope room. Here, Latilla took his hat and coat and gestured toward the telescope.

  The big room was even dimmer, duskier than during the day; the only illumination in the echoing, chilly observatory came from up under the telescope: a cone of light from somewhere on the telescope, shining yellow as a cat’s eye over what looked like an operating table, but without the IV stands and monitors he somehow expected to see. Someone stepped out of the shadows into the cone of light next to the operating table, on the metal landing—a man in a white lab coat, half-frame glasses, pale, high forehead.

  Stephen looked around hopefully for Glyneth, not sure why he was looking for her, why he wanted her to be here. But there wasn’t anyone in the room except Latilla and the vaguely familiar man who stood above him.

  Stephen found himself frozen in the middle of the room, gazing up at the man on the landing of the telescope gantry.

  “Stephen Isquerat, I think, isn’t it?” the man said, his voice hollow and metallic in the observatory space. He beamed a patently false smile of cheery welcome.

  “I think you’ve met Professor Deane,” said Latilla, pausing to gesture at the man. “Harrison Deane? We call himH. D.”

  “Oh, yes! We met, once before, in passing.”

  “I understand you met my father, George Deane,” H. D. called down
to him.

  Stephen nodded. “Sort of.” Stephen smiled, climbing the metal steps to the landing, and asked lightly, “So, H. D, okay if I ask, uh—what are we doing here, exactly?”

  “You weren’t briefed?” H. D. seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh, but Dale did say the timetable had been moved up. Something about the men in green. Yes—tonight is your first experiment for the George Deane Foundation. Your first direct experience . . . with psychonomics.”

  He stepped back so Stephen could see the operating table. That’s when Stephen realized, for the first time, that the cone of light wasn’t coming from anything attached to the telescope—it was coming out of the eyepiece of the telescope itself. The glow was somehow filtered down through the instrument, from the night sky, outside.