A Good and Happy Child (22 page)

J u s t i n E v a n s

respected . . . but at length, the imp only plagued him, and pinched him, and
talked to him of nothing but avenging himself on his enemies or bringing
about some malicious trick.
It was accurate, in all essentials, to my encounters with my Friend. The pinching, the promises of secret knowledge, and the wreck of Tom Harris’s car were nothing if not malicious tricks.
I never heard of or saw this gentleman again,
concluded Bodin,
so know not whether he rid himself of this misery.
This, my father concluded, with the somber assurance of bedside clinician, typified the lure of Satan: the simple proposition; the lure of fact mingled with fiction; and then the maze with no outlet. I held the book in my lap. I felt the whole house pulsing as the facts and fragments slowly coalesced in my mind.

The nuns who knew languages they could not know.
You said I
knew why your father went to Central America.
The nuns’ angry fits.
You made a face I’d never seen before.
The prayer about Saint Michael the archangel—who thrusts evil spirits down to hell—and the icon of his image, of which Tom Harris told me, in all earnestness:
Keep it with you.
The clock said 5:11 P.M. My mother would be home within an hour.
I want you perfect for a month,
she had said, and my appointment with Dr. Gilloon was only a week away. But surely this was too important to be ignored. I needed to tell Tom Harris I understood. I snapped the book closed. I rose from the bed, opened our front door, and walked out into the cold night by myself. A row of massive, whitewashed columns fronted the main campus, where most Early College classrooms and administrative offices were housed. Under the narrow porch of these columns ran a narrow walkway, paved unevenly with centuries-old brick. The students had gone for the day. I walked alone, an undersized figure in the twilight. I stopped at a warped stone stoop—flanked by iron cleats for demucking the boots of the college’s eighteenth-century founders—and entered Massie Hall, home of the English Department. Most lights had been a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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extinguished. A pug-nosed secretary sat alone behind a desk, tidying papers, preparing to leave.

“Excuse me.”

She jumped. “Yes?” she said curtly.

“Where is Tom Harris’s office, please?”

“He’s on the third floor. But office hours are over,” she warned.

“May I ask what your business is?”

I ignored her and climbed the stairs at my accustomed, sluggish pace. I passed a corkboard covered with exam schedules, framed posters of Ireland and Shakespeare, and finally reached a door with a black plastic plate reading TOM HARRIS in white letters. I knocked. Next door, the brass knocker my father had screwed to his office door—a lion’s head—remained. But the nameplate had been changed. I could not read it in the dark.

A voice boomed.
“Lasciare ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

I pushed open Tom Harris’s door and blinked in the yellow glow.

“Can I come in?”

He had propped his cast on the desk, where it gave the impression of being a small cannon ready to fire five toes into the ceiling. He read a stapled composition and held a red felt-tip pen poised over it. He took a beat to recognize me. “Have you come here to complain about a grade?” he drawled. “The seventh grade, perhaps?”

I placed
The Ancient Prayer
on the desk beside Tom Harris’s cast, and sat. He glanced at the book, touched it, recognized it. Very deliberately, he set down the composition.

“Reading this?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Why?”

“Uncle Freddie mentioned it.”

“Did you read all of it?”

“I read chapter nine,” I said.

“Refresh my memory,” said Tom Harris. Then he rubbed his forehead as if he’d suddenly acquired a headache. “No—don’t.”

“It’s the one about being possessed by demons.”

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J u s t i n E v a n s

“I know,” he said. “Your father got in trouble over that chapter.”

“So?” I said. “Are demons real?”

The question lay at the heart of my father’s alienation from the college; his public humiliation by peers, reviewers, and readers; maybe even unhappiness in his marriage. I expected an explanation worthy of the subject.

“Yes,” Tom Harris said flatly, then he scowled at me over his plaster foot. He seemed to be wishing vehemently that I would go away.

“Demons are real,” I repeated. “How do you know?”

“Your father and I helped the Diocese of Virginia diagnose true cases of possession,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “We would visit people. See if the case met the three tests set by the medieval church.”

He paused, then seeing my expectant face, counted off: “Knowledge of things it is impossible for the subject to know. Doing things impossible for a human being to do. Revulsion at Christian tokens or rituals.”

“Why did they need you and Dad?”

“Even the church needs help from time to time.”

“Why?” I persisted.

“There are not as many medievalists in the state as you’d think,”

Tom Harris said testily. “Now, shouldn’t you be home? Wandering around, unsupervised, at night,” he said, rising to his feet and grasping the crutches propped behind his typewriter table. “I don’t remember that as part of your treatment.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the treatment.”

“Who said so?”

“You did!” I said.

“Well, maybe I was mistaken.” He circled the desk and towered over me now, glaring menacingly. “That’s enough of this. I don’t care what you’ve read. I’m taking you home now.”

“Why are you getting angry?” I cried.

“Because these are not things for children!” he erupted. “Your mother would murder me if she heard me discussing demonic possession with you. Even
she
doesn’t know what I just told you. Imagine the a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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doctors’ reaction if they got hold of that, George? Hm? They’d seal you up in a fruitcake tin with a label that says ‘Do Not Open Till Xmas.’

Let’s go.”

I rose, feeling a hot blush on my cheeks. Tom Harris ushered me out like I was a wayward three-year-old being escorted back to bed. I stood forlorn in the dark hall, waiting for him. His lanky form filled the doorframe in silhouette, slapping pockets for his keys.

“When were you going to tell me?” I asked weakly.

“Tell you what?” he replied.

“That my Friend is a demon?”

He stopped. I could not read his expression with the light behind him.

“You think I passed the three tests,” I continued. “That’s why you brought me to your house, right? To ask me questions and find out?”

Tom Harris sagged against the doorframe. “How did you figure that out?” he said, after a moment. “Not more ‘pure sense,’ I hope?”

“Just reading the book,” I answered. “I—I don’t really even know what a demon is,” I added.

He leaned back, summoning a quotation from the air. “
Then war
broke out in heaven,
” he recited softly. “
Michael and his angels fought the
dragon, who is called the devil and Satan, who leads the whole world astray.
And the dragon was hurled down to death, his angels with him.
The rebel angels,” he continued, “who fought alongside Satan at the beginning of time. That’s what demons are.”

“You think my Friend is one?”

“It’s possible.”

“So I’m not crazy,” I said. “I’m really seeing something. Not just visions . . . but
something.
”

“It’s possible,” he repeated.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “You’re the expert. If the church believes you, why shouldn’t the doctors?” I grew insistent.

“Tell them my father had real visions, and so do I.” Tom Harris shook his head. “Why not?” I cried.

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“The reason why not is in your hand”—he pointed at
The Ancient
Prayer,
symbol of my father’s social exile. “People don’t understand, George.”

I thought about this. “Maybe you’re afraid,” I challenged him.

“Maybe you think what happened to my dad will happen to you.” I felt a swell of righteous indignation. “Well, it’s not
you
who’s being put away with the other
retards.
”

“George . . .”

“You’ve got to tell them! You can’t let them put me in a home.
I’m
not crazy! You said so!
” My voice echoed down the granite stairwell and bounced around the empty corridors.

“For goodness’ sake, come inside,” he hissed. He pulled me back into the office, but not before poking his head around the corner to see if we’d been overheard. He shut the door behind me. Then he circled his desk to stare out the window into the ivy-lined courtyard. For the first time I took in Tom Harris’s office—small, ringed with seemingly inside-out cabinets, with the filing and the papers heaped on top of them. Pens and paper clips were sprinkled liberally over the whole mess; bookshelves rose to the ceiling. The sole decoration hung on a nail: a four-foot-tall charcoal rubbing of a medieval knight, hands together in prayer, sword at his side.

“I have another quotation for you, George:
Solicit not thy thoughts
with matters hid,”
he said. “Ever hear that one?” I shook my head.

“Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,”
he repeated.
“Leave them to
God above; him serve, and fear!”
He turned, dark eyes zeroing in on me.

“You agree with Milton, George? Or are you more of a Romantic?”

“I—I don’t know,” I stuttered.

“Your father was a Romantic—for a seventeenth-century man. He and I assisted in exorcisms. Those are the rituals in which priests cast out demons. Participating in a few of those can change someone, George.” He turned back to the window. “The reality or unreality of demons becomes irrelevant because you watch them work on their victims: ordinary people,
vivisected
by evil.” He paused; I saw him frown a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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in distaste, as if reliving a nasty memory. “You see this once or twice,”

he continued, “then five or six times . . . you want to do something about it. Write a book.” He turned to me and smiled. “But how does that help anyone? No, your father wished to take action. But how?”

Tom Harris raised his eyebrows. I shook my head. “Use his special gifts, of course. Use his visions to see into their world—the demons’

world.” Tom Harris watched me carefully. “He wished to make the proverbial trip to hell and back. He may have succeeded.”

My mouth hung open.
My father tried to see into the world of
demons.
I found a chair and sat, head swirling.

“Mystics help the faithful, George, by illuminating the mystery of Christ,” he said. “Why not shine that same bright light on evil? That was the reason your father went to Honduras. He had a vision of evil. He saw—
felt
—that there is more evil in the world than can be explained by human depravity. Mass murder. Modern tyrants who twist and torture whole peoples. Through his vision he understood that men are drawn to great evil by demons. He felt a responsibility,” Tom Harris said. “
If
your father could reveal how demons find us, choose us,
habitate
in us, he felt he could help stop them. He would go to Honduras, where such things were happening; find demonic influence, understand it, and
act.
Heroically. Romantically. Now, was this
wise?
” He cocked his head ruefully. “Given the outcome, most would argue unequivocally no. Because here we are. No Paul.
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid.
”

“But what did he find?” I probed.

“In Honduras, he told me in a letter, he found and interviewed a demoniac.” He leaned on his crutch, seeming tired suddenly; an old bent tree of winter. “Your father followed him . . . into deep places.”

Tom Harris’s voice trailed off.

“And what happened?”

“To your father?” he said. “He discovered strange secrets. Saw things no human being has ever seen.”

“How do you know?”

“His letters. The ones, incidentally, your Friend had you chasing.”

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“Where are they?” I asked.

“I burned them,” he answered offhand. “They were a little intense, even for me.”

“And what happened to the demon?” My pulse beat so loudly I was surprised Tom Harris couldn’t hear it.

He shook his head again. He picked up the composition lying on his desk—as if the student essay had suddenly become compelling reading. “Who knows,” he murmured.

“Tell me, Tom,” I said, licking my dry lips.

“Hm,” came his reply.

“Tom? Please tell me?”

He suddenly slapped the composition back onto the desk.

“Did you ever wonder,” he snapped, “why a demon would concern himself with a little boy?”

“No,” I said, quelling a sense of rising panic. “Not really.”

“Demons aren’t termites, George. You don’t chase them to their holes and try to stamp them out. The apostles didn’t. No one but Jesus has actually harrowed hell. But your father did, or tried to. No one can do such a thing,” he said sternly, “and expect to walk away, free of consequences!”

“Consequences?” I squeaked.

“Think about it,”
he said.

“You think the demon is coming after me now,” I concluded. Terror pulled me to my feet. “Out of revenge?”

“God knows,” he grunted.

“Can’t you
do
something?”

“What do you think I’ve been working on,” he muttered. Agitated now, he seemed to wish very badly to pace. Since he couldn’t, he tapped his rubber crutch-tip distractedly on the floor. “You need an experienced practitioner.”

“You said you were an expert.”

“No, I said I was a medievalist. A practitioner is a different animal. Our church has deacons, priests, bishops. No office of exorcist. As a result, the ones available tend to be a little . . . homegrown.” He a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d