Demonologist (16 page)

Impulsively, he turned to the book’s index. Ran a finger down the A’s to...

“Here it is,” he muttered surprisingly, as well as a bit shaken. “Allieb. Page 238.” He turned to the indicated page. On it was an undated pencil sketch of a man wearing all black clothing. He was completely bald, with a black goatee and thick black eyebrows that curled up at the outer edges like handlebars. His piercing eyes, sharp and narrow and almost reptilian in nature, stared up at Bev from the yellowed page. Beneath the picture ran a few lines of subtext:

Artist’s rendition sketch of Allieb, a Demonologist from Israel, and the self-proclaimed son of the demon Belial. Stories date back to the first millennium BCE. Purported to have slaughtered and cannibalized thirteen children in an effort to embody demon spirits from the underworld. Was later captured and buried alive by the people of Jerusalem in the very tomb he created for his
sacrifants
.

Bev shuddered, feeling suddenly cold. Alarmed. The story...it was the same one Father Danto told at the party.
Christ, what are the odds?
Bev closed the book, disconcerted with the coincidence.
Too coincidental, too crazy. First the priest, and now my daughter.

Judd
Schiffer’s
words came back to him like a sudden shot in the arm:
Last night, someone sacrificed a goat on the lawn outside the rectory. It had been decapitated, its carcass gutted and impaled on a large crucifix. Its entrails were laid out into a pentagram shape beneath the cross.

What the hell is going on?
Bev wondered, confused, feeling suddenly weak in the knees.
Nothing. Nothing. Don’t be alarmed. It’s your anxious mind building mountains out of molehills. It’s nothing more than some crazy nutty coincidence.

He gazed around the room some more. As his eyes adjusted to the mess, he began to notice even more textbooks and magazines and
tearsheets
on subjects concerning the occult, psychic phenomenon, and demonology. He picked up a folder from the floor and within discovered a stack of handwritten pages. He skimmed through them, noticing paragraphs pertaining to black masses, séances, and the occult.

“What is all this?” Bev asked himself aloud, reading a passage scrawled in Kristin’s handwriting:

Proper performance of demonic worship is most suitably effected during the black masses of numerous individuals, although demons can still be exhorted from afar with the assistance of other demons that have already been assembled beyond their
strickened
confines. ‘Evil’ is then perpetrated upon the worshipping masses in the form of copulation and other commissioned desecrations of an extensively lecherous nature. Necrophilia and
Zoophilia
are common practices amongst cultists, alongside additional extreme sexual acts that utilize statuettes of Christ and the Virgin Mary as phalluses. These phalluses are lubricated with the blood and feces of virgins and inserted into the mouths and anuses of those conjugating with the bodies of those sacrificed.

Bev flipped to another page dealing with ritualistic murders. He read it slowly, frowning and shaking his head with utter disbelief, thinking of Kristin and recalling his conversation with her at the Forum party:

“Any new projects?”

“Well...yeah...”

“Care to tell me about them?”

“Yes! But not now, dad This is your party! We’ll talk about it soon.”

Was this what she was referring to? If so, then she’d apparently been wrapped up in it for quite some time. He gathered an armful of folders from the floor and sat at the desk. Racing through them, he found pages and pages of minutely detailed pencil sketches, indiscernible symbols of an astrological nature interspersed with pentagrams and ram’s horns and other representations of a dark sort. Paper-clipped to many of the drawings were pages of handwritten text describing each piece in utter detail, including its history, meaning, and purpose. Bev flipped to the page attached to a sketch of a woman figure seemingly crucified on a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary. He read:

Rituals during the holy time of
Sabbat
use the Virgin Mary as a role model, whereas her form would be erected at an altar. In one known sacrificial ritual, a pregnant woman would be fettered to the statue, her legs wrenched open wide with ropes or chains tied to brass cherubim on the altar. Members of the congregation would engage in oral sex with the woman. Ivory phalluses would then be blasphemously inserted into her anus and mouth while the priest masturbated on her vagina. After his ejaculation, the ‘priest’ would batter the woman’s swollen belly with a crucifix until the dead fetus fell out, which was subsequently gathered in a chalice and fed upon by members of the congregation as an offering of the Host.

“My God Kristin,” Bev uttered in an anxious tone. “What are you into?” He dropped the folder on the desk and picked up another. His eyes searched the papers frantically. He read various essays on black masses and the actions of its willing participants. In a short time, he fell upon on some rather troublesome lines of text:

The goal of the Master Demonologist (in addition to summoning malevolent spirits, his arts also include magic, abstract sciences, alchemy, language mastery, communication with animals, as well as numerology, and
pneumatology
) is to
incantate
demon spirits from the netherworlds through the art of self-possession, or, as discovered in many cases, the purposeful possession of others. During ‘projected’ possession, the recipient of the demonic soul will not immediately become aware that he or she has become ‘possessed’, as time must pass for the demon to ‘find’ its way out from the bowels of the individual into the physical body, or ‘vehicle’, of the person under possession. Eventually, all physical and mental functions are retained through what is referred to as ‘demonic invasion’, that being the time from initial conception to full-bodied possession. An immense alteration of personality takes place during the time of invasion, to a point where others around the possessed individual and perhaps the individual themselves will feel that a terrible mental sickness has set in. More of the common traits of an individual under possession are the mimicking of other people, dead or alive, the speaking of tongues previously unknown to the person, and the ability to calculate complex mathematical formulas. In more advanced stages, the person under possession may bear telekinetic capacities, or the ability to move objects without the use of physical coercion. The demonologist’s goals appear to emulate the abilities of the demon itself.

Bev ran a hand through his hair, then pulled another page of text, and read it, fully absorbed:

It can only be speculated as to what an individual may experience while under demonic possession. At first, they may feel suddenly ill, nauseous and dizzy. Tired, yet unable to sleep. When sleep does come, it is usually fitful and may be filled with surreal, enigmatic nightmares. Other physical symptoms may include those which suggest schizophrenia or epilepsy. These include hallucinations, delusions, convulsions and/or seizures, combativeness, automatism, and somnambulism. No less daunting are the physical symptoms that might lead the individual to believe he might be under extreme duress from panic, anxiety, or depression: fatigue, exhaustion, heart palpitations, chest pain, rapid pulse, dizziness, faintness, distorted vision, hyperventilation, aching muscles, cramps, stiffness, irritability, depression, insomnia, nightmares, loss of memory, lump in the throat, nausea, diarrhea, depersonalization, increased sensitivity to light and sound, stiff neck, burping fluids, numbness, tingling, tinnitus, jitteriness, tension, sweating, trembling, facial twitching, frequent urination, apprehension, unwanted thoughts, a fear of going crazy.

A fear of going crazy?

Bev placed the paper down, his mind caught in a whirlwind of confusion.
Am I...? Could I possibly be...?

“No!” he screamed, slamming his fists on the desk. He stood angrily, clearing the contents of the desk with a reckless swoop of his arm. “This is insane! I am not possessed by a fucking demon!”

Well, there’s some major league strangeness going on here, Bev. You start feeling all sorts of fucked up, then you go to a party where an archaeologist priest pins you in conversation about demonic sacrifices at the local church and his past history regarding an ancient demonologist called Allieb who sacrificed and ate children in an effort to summon demons from hell, and lo and behold, your now-missing daughter happens to leave her front door open and here you are snooping through her shit and what the fuck? she’s into the same demonology crap, and after an hour of poking around,
Allieb’s
in your face again and so is a more explicit explanation to all the terrible things
that’ve
been happening to you...

No
...

He stood from the desk, feeling lightheaded, listening closely but not hearing voices or feeling that scratch-scratch-scratch of fingers along the surface of his skull. He careened slightly to the left, gripping the closet door for support. The room was eerily silent, save for the ticking of a clock in the living room and his rapid breathing. He peered into the closet. Deep in the darkness, beyond the initial barrier of books and magazines, he saw something: a hulking figure against the rear wall. He hesitated, not wanting to explore any further for fear of what he might find next. But, he’d felt a nagging temptation to dig, to unearth additional secrets—just as he had while gripping the envelope with his name scrawled on the front—the envelope which had remained in his back pocket for twelve hours until Kristin coerced him to open it. With a frown, Bev hunkered down in the entrance to the closet and shoved aside a pile of books.

Against the back wall was a small metal trunk. Black, with two bronze clasps at either end and a flip lock in the center. He cleared the closet floor of the remaining articles—some books, a few pairs of shoes, empty shoeboxes, a dusty purse—then gripped the plastic handle at one end of the trunk and pulled.
What’s in here?
He dragged it out of the closet against the wall alongside the entrance to the room. First, he undid the side clasps, then quickly scoured through the desk drawers in search of a key to the flip lock. When one wasn’t found, he opted for a letter opener, which aided him in busting the lock after a dozen jabs.

He opened the trunk.

My God
...

He sat there, motionless, sagging with the sudden enormous weight of the contents inside the trunk. He swallowed a quickly-forming lump in his throat, the painful remembrance of Julianne surging back to him with the ferocity of a point-blank gunshot, as if she’d miraculously come back to him after all these years to reveal that she hadn’t died after all. But, to also say that she couldn’t stay with him because her body was still trapped under six feet of soil, unable to break the earth’s bonds.

He reached down and picked out a few articles of Julianne’s clothing, a maternity blouse she’d worn while pregnant, a pair of faded jeans, some t-shirts that when held to his face, seemed to retain—imagination or not—a bit of her ancient odor. There were a few other articles of clothing that Bev didn’t remember at all, black t-shirts and a hooded knit robe and sash. Digging further into the contents of the chest, he discovered a multitude of keepsakes, a silver pendant that Julianne had worn, a small jewelry box with a few of her rings, a necklace, two pairs of sandals, some love letters she’d written Bev while they were dating. Further down: a silver crucifix, a small worn Bible, a shoebox containing some odd artifacts: tarot cards, a silver pendulum, tea leaves wrapped in clear plastic, a Ouija board
planchette
.
Odd
.

Beneath the box were some photos of Julianne holding a baby Kristin, and one of the three of them sitting on the grass by the lake in
Alondra
Park...Bev didn’t remember the photo, or when it was taken, but could see something odd about Julianne’s face. She looked serious, even scared, her grin downcast, brow furrowed, sharp eyes pinning him from the past. He flipped through a number of photos of his long lost wife, wondering why Kristin had never shown him any of these items she’d saved: Julianne smiling at the kitchen table, another of her breastfeeding Kristin, of her posing playfully on their bed, of her...

Christ almighty...please, no
...

In his trembling hands he gripped a photo of Julianne wearing the black robe he’d just removed from the trunk. Hanging around her neck was a silver pentagram, fettered by a silver chain that had glinted in the camera’s flash. Her face was partially shrouded by the hood, one eye lost in shadow, the other ignited by the glow of the white candle she held.