by Rick Wood
Before, they knew that it was there and what it was doing. Now they had no idea.
For all they knew, it had broken free and was walking along the hallway at that very moment, edging closer, ready to open that bedroom door and slice their throats in their sleep.
Henry kept his eyes focussed on that door.
Staring.
Not looking away, not allowing himself a moment of freedom.
It did not open, nor did it move, nor did it creak.
He knew he would not get any sleep. Not while he was staring at the door. But he was too afraid to look away.
He unzipped the sleeping bag. Stood. Looked at Thea. She lay with her back to him, but there were no deep breaths that might signal sleep, and he was sure she was just as awake.
He said nothing to her. To share their fear with each other would make the threat too real. Keeping it unspoken, much like the silence that haunted them, meant they could leave it to fester beneath the surface, unacknowledged.
He edged toward the window. Looked outside. The night was silent and still. The branches of the tree did not wave in the wind, and the blades of grass did not brush in the breeze. It was an empty night, void of the living or the dead.
Or so he thought. He saw a brief flicker of something; a movement in the distance.
That movement could have been anything. A shadow, a cat, a person stumbling home drunk.
But chances were, if there was something there, it wasn’t just anything. It would be something.
He urged himself to stop fearing the worse.
But the movement came closer. The silhouette of a person became vaguely visible from the distance.
The person was walking. It was a steady walk where each step was like the last; almost robotic, but more demented.
It was a man. Pale faced. Dead-eyed.
He stopped outside the house.
“Thea,” Henry prompted.
She stirred.
“Thea, come here.”
She pushed the covers off. He kept his eyes on this man.
Another person appeared. A woman. Skinny, her posture slumped, her face empty.
A child emerged to the right. Smeared red cheeks. Bruised eyes.
Each of these people paused, metres from the house. Watching. Not moving closer, but not walking away. Hovering, absentmindedly.
Thea arrived at Henry’s side.
“What’s happening?”
She rubbed her eyes, but her grogginess quickly left. She looked from one figure to the other, then peered into the distance to see if she could see any more.
“Shit,” she unknowingly muttered.
“Do you think they will try to come in?” Henry asked.
“No,” Thea said. “At least, I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“They are not here to attack.”
“Then what are they here for?”
Thea looked over her shoulder at the door. Listened to the silence. Waited for some movement that would indicate that it was stirring.
Nothing.
“Thea?” Henry prompted, his voice fraught with fear.
“They are here for him,” Thea said.
“They’ve come to collect him?”
“No. No one needs to collect The Devil.”
“Then what?”
“They are followers. Disciples. Come for guidance. To worship. To protect.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they know.”
“Know what?”
“That it’s almost time. That he is almost ready to escape.”
21
Om gave Oscar a pear.
Oscar stared at it and waited for the rest of his meal.
Om did not notice. He bit into his pear, its juices running down his cheek, and appeared to take neither pleasure nor displeasure from it.
“This it?” Oscar said.
Om took out another pear and passed it to him.
This man was both remarkable and infuriating. Oscar had grown up expecting milk and cereal for breakfast, sandwiches, fruit and cake for lunch, and a substantial meal for tea, rarely having the same thing two days in a row. This man took what he needed from the environment and did not complain. He never showed hunger, nor boredom. He always seemed content without showing much of anything.
Oscar bit into the pear. It was a good pear, but it was unlikely to keep him satisfied until tea — and who knew what they’d have for tea. More pears, probably.
Oscar snorted at his inward joke and took a larger bite. Om did not react.
He finished his pear and, before beginning the other one, aimed an inquisitive look at Om.
“Do you know what’s been bugging me?”
“I know nothing.”
Oscar ignored the response, despite it not really making sense.
“You call it Mara. We call it The Devil. In Islam it’s Iblis, in Hindu it’s, what, Kali?”
Om continued eating, awaiting the question.
“Well, how do we know we are all talking about the same thing? How do we know this thing I’ve faced, that’s inside April, is the thing I call The Devil, you call Mara, and whoever calls whatever?”
He took another bite and finished the pear.
“And,” he continued, “on that point, if we are not all talking about the same thing, then who is right? Is it Mara, is it The Devil — what is it?”
“You think a lot.”
Oscar was perturbed. “I thought you’d encourage me to think. Isn’t that the point of you answering all my questions with a question?”
“We all have our interpretations. It matters not what we call them or how they are represented. What matters is that we all know it as one’s perception of evil, and that we can recognise its temptations.”
“So, I mean, how is Mara presented to you? I mean, what does he look like?”
“He is depicted as a warlord, mounted on an elephant, with a legion of troops.”
“See, I’ve always seen him as this bloke with devil horns. In fact, that is what he looks like — I saw it when I confronted him.”
“That’s how he presented himself when you confronted him.”
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“To you, his legion of troops are the demons you face, each of them representing a sin. To me, the troops are figurative — such as restlessness, doubt, wrath. We must fight off the demons inside of us.”
“Yeah, but I have actually faced these demons.”
“Who was the first?”
“What?”
“The first demon you faced. Who was it?”
Oscar cast his mind back to all those years ago, when he was confronted with little Kaylee Kemple, a child with nothing innocent about her. A demon possessed her, and he would never forget its name.
“It was Ardat Lili.”
“Ardat Lili is a succubus, yes?”
“She is.”
“She is a demon who comes to men at night and uses them to impregnate her with demon spawn.”
“That’s accurate.”
“So that evil is infidelity. It’s sexual temptation. Men fight that evil often, although rarely is it in a tangible form like you fought.”
“But I did fight it.”
“Even then, it was inside a girl. You did not see the demon yourself, correct?”
“I guess.”
“Then, for all you know, you were fighting the sin, not the demon.”
“In a little girl?”
“Who says the girl was the one sinning?”
Oscar ran his hands over his face. Another headache.
“Buddha sees these things as diversions from his goal of freedom,” Om said. “You must let go of all things you are attached to in order to resist their temptation.”
“So I shouldn’t be worried about my girlfriend? I should just let go of her?”
“What did you just call her?”
“What, my girlfriend?”
Om took a big breath and nodded, as if Oscar had just walked into a trap he wasn’t aware of.
“You refer to her as my girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Once you stop referring to things with me or my or mine, you will no longer be influenced. If Mara cannot influence you, that is how you beat it — but so long as you give into temptations you aren’t even aware you’re giving into, Mara will always be indestructible.”
“So I should let go of the one I love?”
“You have been picked deliberately, and not just because you are a Sensitive and April is a conduit. While you think your love gives you strength, Mara uses it to give himself power.”
“My love for April has always given me power.”
“And the anger that love provokes has always given you weakness.”
“So what do I do?”
Om paused.
“You let go of anything you do not wish to lose, meaning it cannot be taken from you and Mara cannot use it to win.”
“But–”
“You think I beat Mara? That is why you are here, yes? I did not beat him, I merely resisted him. He tried to tempt me, and he couldn’t because there is nothing to tempt me with. You will not stand a chance unless you have nothing he can use.”
“But what is the point of me saving April if I let go of her?”
“Because he keeps using this against you. So long as he is in April, he knows you will not fight him with everything you have, for risk of losing her. He is using her to provoke anger in you, to provoke jealousy, fury, envy — and that is why he wins. That is why he doesn’t just kill her. Once you lose her, then you will have a power over him he cannot touch. Until then… he controls you.”
“It seems wrong. It goes against the principles of every exorcism I’ve performed.”
Om sighed. Hesitated. Dropped his head.
This was the closest to being frustrated Oscar had seen him yet.
But it was quick and short-lived. In seconds, he had returned to his calm self.
“Come,” he demanded, and began striding across the temple. Oscar quickly pushed himself to his feet and followed.
22
Om stood at the edge of the temple boundaries, inches from a steep drop. As Oscar caught up, Om closed his eyes, took in the air that so gracefully filled his lungs, and let it go.
“Look around,” he said.
Oscar looked around. A shitty temple and some forest. And what?
“Everything is interconnected. Everything is because other things are. The plants take in the carbon dioxide and give out the oxygen. We take in the oxygen and give out the carbon dioxide. We cannot exist without the other. It is a perfect combination that has taken billions of years to be perfected, yet is not perfect at all.”
“Om, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Everything is — because other things are. What is happening now is because of what happened before and will provoke what happens next. There is no absolute; nothing exists independently. There is no self. Your personality changes for various people. Who you are is not who you are. You are nothing and everything.”
“You’re just babbling now.”
“You are no one, and everyone.”
“I am a Sensitive. I fight evil, that is my purpose, that is who I am.”
“Let go of that notion and be what you are without needing to be something.”
Oscar had absolutely no idea what that was meant to mean. It sounded like Om was just babbling cliché after cliché. His frustration bubbled, and a sudden image of April’s broken, contorted face re-emerged into Oscar’s thoughts, like a bolt of lightning shattering a precariously built house. He had thought he was learning something, but this was just nonsense. Just rambling. He needed to be home and be with her. He couldn’t keep doing this.
He was wasting his time.
“I can’t do this,” Oscar decided. “I have to go.”
Oscar turned to walk away.
“You still do not understand!” Om snapped.
Oscar waved him away with his hand. “I just don’t have the time when The Devil is–”
Om grabbed Oscar by his jacket, put his face just next to his, and spoke with the most passion Oscar had heard him use so far.
“Mara isn’t just The Devil. The Devil isn’t just something that commands demons. It is something inside of us. It is the psychophysical existence, and the reason humans have to die is so we can kill that part of us off.”
“I don’t have that, I am a Sen–”
“Whoever you are, whether or not Heaven conceived you, it is impossible for you to survive without a little of Hell inside of you too. The nature of man must involve Mara. It is the agent of chaos that opposes the order of our minds. It is the nonduality of good and evil.”
Om’s passion faded. Slowly, his hand loosened its grip on Oscar’s jacket, and he stood back. He used his arm to indicate all the trees and bushes and plants and bugs before them.
“Life is not the absence of Mara, but the constant conquering of him. We do it every day, and you have defeated The Devil for every minute you’ve been alive by not giving in to him, and April suffers because you accept that evil. All you’re doing now is fuelling it so you can’t defeat it again. You defeated Mara with smaller choices, only now your choices are bigger, and that makes it tougher — that is the only difference. Give me the picture.”
“What?”
“Your picture. I know you hold on to it. It’s in your pocket, give it to me.”
“No.”
“You want to beat Mara?”
“That’s why I’m here for Christ’s sake!”
“Then give it to me!”
Oscar took the picture of April out of his pocket and presented it.
“If you destroy this picture,” Oscar said, “I will–”
“I am not going to destroy it.” Om took the picture and pressed it against Oscar’s chest. “You are.”
“You are kidding me.”
Oscar snatched the picture out of Om’s reach and turned to walk away. Om went to grab Oscar’s jacket, but Oscar knocked his arm out of the way this time. He marched away, only to hear Om’s feet quickly following.
“This picture is not her, but it may as well be,” Om called after him. “It provokes in you everything Mara wishes to use.”
“This picture is the only thing keeping me going,” Oscar said, not breaking his stride. “It is all that makes me suffer through your bullshit. She gives me this strength, that is why I have it.”
“She does not give you strength, Oscar. She is the reason you can’t seem to understand anything I say.”
“Is she? Or is it because you’re talking a load of crap!”
Om smiled. This annoyed Oscar more. He stopped and turned back to Om, jabbing his finger at his face.
“I am sick of this shit, and I am sick of you.”
“All I did was ask you to tear up a picture, and this is how you react. Tell me, is that the good side of you? Or is this the side Mara will have provoked?”
“Oh, what, you’re saying Mara made me do it?”
“His troops.”
“Fuck his troops.”
“Precisely.”
“No, I…”
He looked down at the picture. April looked backed up at him, smiling that smile that let him know she loved him.
“You are attached to this picture because you are attached to its memory. I am not asking you to stop loving her, I am asking you to let go of the attachment that Mara continues to use.”
“It isn’t–”
“Tell me, Oscar. You confronted your devil in Hell, did you not?”
“Yes, I did,” he said proudly, as if to gloat that this is something Om had never done.
“And you were winning at one point, were you not?”
“It felt like it.”
“And at what point did you stop winning?”
“When April came back to save–”
He should have seen that one coming.
He dropped his head. Closed his eyes. It was true, should April not have tried to save him, he would have stood a much greater chance.
“You didn’t win for the same reason she came down to save you,” Om said, speaking slower now, seeing realisation dawning upon Oscar.
All of this evil would not have occurred had he and April never have fallen in love.
He went to save her, and the balance shifted, and demons threw themselves into the world.
She went to save him, and he could no longer defeat The Devil and send those demons back.
Om was right. The only way he could save her was by letting her go. She was the burden, the attachment that meant he could not win. All this anger he felt was because of the torment she was going through, and he had to stop that anger.
He was walking right into The Devil’s trap. He was behaving just as The Devil wished.
That was why he was losing.
The only way to save her was to remove the attachment.
He looked at her face in the picture one last time, then ripped it in half. Then in half again. Then again. Then one final time.
He let the pieces go and, despite the calm day, a gust of wind pushed through and took the pieces into the sky, out of Oscar’s reach.
23
Oscar slept well that night.
The makeshift bed was still uncomfortable, but that didn’t matter. He had shelter and he had his clothes to rest his head on — which was more than many people had. He felt fortunate in a way that he hadn’t before; he was less angry, less impatient, and more grateful.
His mind drifted into a dreamless sleep. The kind of sleep one only has when they are relaxed; when their mind is not fighting all the nasty images their subconscious tries to present.
But it didn’t last long.
He heard it. The whisper. A woman’s hushed voice.
His eyes opened.
And there she was. Beautiful, in her wondrous robes.
Oscar felt parched. So dehydrated. So desperate for water.
She took his head, rested its heavy weight upon her legs, and made it feel light. She brought the bottle to his lips and tilted it.
He wanted water so much. He needed it. His throat was dry. He hadn’t realised how thirsty he was, but now he did, he had to have some.