The Demonologist (33 page)

As I get closer, Belial’s wailing suddenly lifts up several octaves before splitting in two, throwing part of its noise to a register lower than thunder, a nauseating sub-bass. So loud it feels like it will bring the stars on the ceiling down on us all. It spurs the reflex to look up.

And when I return my eyes to the crowd, O’Brien is gone.

At least, she isn’t where she was a moment ago. Yet almost instantly I spot her again, maybe thirty feet to the left of where she’d been.
How could she have covered that ground in a second or two at most?
There is no time for the weighing of what is possible. I’m already following her again, now pushing people aside with murmured
Pardon me
s as she somehow carves through the same bodies without touching them.

When I catch up to her it hits me too late to pull my hand back from the woman’s shoulder.

The animal smell of the barnyard. The mold of wet straw.

She turns. That is, her head swivels evenly upon its neck, though every other part of her seems frozen, a wax statue come to partial life. It’s as though her face naturally looks backward, and she has merely parted her hair to show her bulging eyes to me, the pushed-out bones of cheek and chin, the black-rooted teeth.

“Shall we go, Professor?” the Thin Woman says.

I start to back away from her before realizing she holds my wrist. A grip as cold as the ring of a handcuff. With every pull against it there is a flare of pain at my elbow and shoulder that makes it clear the bones there are separating, the ligaments stretched to strands of gum.

“
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow
,” the Thin Woman recites, her voice calm as she slides me back toward the gold clock where Belial stands. “
Through Eden took their solitary way
.”

I’m moving without stepping, as though dancing with my feet clamped atop my partner’s. Over her shoulder, through a widening gap in the crowd, my father waits for me. His anguished screams now shaping into something else. A thousand children laughing at the spectacle of a chosen victim’s pain.

I try to think of a prayer. A holy name. A line of scripture. But no words feel they could be uttered and believed at the same time. None but her name.

Tess.

It’s only a thought at first. Then I say it. A whisper even I can barely hear. Yet it gives the Thin Woman pause, slows her floating progress. Lets me grip my arm with my free hand and jerk it back while kicking against the front of her legs with my feet.

Something pops at the base of my neck.
That’s the collarbone
someone says, before I realize it’s me. Followed by the pain, doubling and hot.

But I’m free.

Finding my footing on the stone floor again and backing away, the Thin Woman appearing puzzled for a moment before her lifeless half smile returns. She looks up at the clock that stands over Belial’s head. The minute hand nudging to fifty.

Two minutes until the moon. Until she’s his.

Come,
my father offers again.
It’s
time,
David.

I turn my back to them both to catch sight of the other O’Brien as she disappears through the archway toward Gate Four. It turns my walk to a jog. And with it, Belial’s screech returns. Louder even than before.

If I make it to the gate I will be out of view. Nothing matters but getting close to her. Because with every new foot I put between my father and myself—and every foot I come closer to the gate—the demon’s howl diminishes. Losing its hold as though yielding it to another.

Quiet.

Instant and total. I make it off the main terminal floor and onto the platform with the others finishing their calls or tossing soda cans in the bins before boarding and finding a good seat. And I can hear
the living world again, too. Their shoes upon the stone floor, their
I’ll be home soons
.

She’s not here. The woman I thought was O’Brien—but who wasn’t, who
couldn’t
have been—is gone. A look-alike I’d imagined. A summoned memory of how she’d appeared the times we’d been here together on our dates-that-weren’t-dates.

As useful as the illusion was, it’s no help now. There’s no going back. If I have a chance of escape, it’s not out there in the station, but on the train. But I don’t have a ticket—have no way to
buy
a ticket—which means they will eject me at the first stop, or call security. Yet I’ll be out of here. Away, for a few moments, from the police. From the thing that I can feel still waiting for me beneath the clock.

A hand on my shoulder. Firm and sure.

“Love the outfit, Professor.”

I spin around to find her standing inches from me. Looking rested and well. More than that. Amused.

“Elaine. Jesus
Christ
.”

“What? He’s here,
too
?”

I want to put my arms around her but all at once a cold wave washes over me and it nearly pulls me under.

“Please. Tell me you’re not—”

“Don’t worry,” she says, pinching the skin of her face. “There’s nobody in here but me.”

“But you
can’t
be here.”

“I have a decisive rebuttal to that.” She leans in close enough for me to smell the perfume at her neck. “I quite obviously
am
here.”

“Are you—?”

“They don’t give you wings or a halo or anything like that. But yes, as far as I can tell. I’d say yes.”

A hundred questions compete for attention in my head, and O’Brien reads all of them and casts them away with a shake of her head.

“Get off at the Manitou station,” she says, handing me the ticket she bought. “There’ll be a white Lincoln in the lot with keys just under the left front tire.”

“The document. I need time to put it somewhere safe. Or destroy it.”

“That choice is yours.”

“They’ll still get me.”

“
North by Northwest
.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re Cary Grant, remember? A good man caught up in a bad business. Mistaken identity. The Pursuer is known to police, the things he’s done. You? You’re a professor who’s never gotten as much as a speeding ticket. You defended yourself the only way you knew how.”

“That’ll work?”

“Reasonable doubt. Works for the guilty often enough. You’ve got to figure the odds are even better for the innocent.”

She puts her hands on either side of my face.

“You’ve done so well,” she says. “Not just since Venice. Your whole life. I knew that, I think, but now I can
see
it. You’ve fought since you were a child.”

“Fought for what?”

“To do the hard things most of us pretend are easy. To be good. You never let go. You were tested and you
passed
, David.”

There isn’t time for an embrace, I can see that in the flinch of her smile. But she holds me anyway. A coiled strength that passes through me, lightening the weight of the briefcase in my hands.

“You have to get on this train,” she says, abruptly releasing me. “
This
train. Right now.”

“I—”

“Yeah, yeah. I
know
.”

I do as she says. Step through the nearest doors and hear them slide closed behind me. The train already pulling away.

The rear car I’m on is full, and I make my way up the aisle bending to steal glances out the window at the platform, but O’Brien is no longer there. By the archway a cop watches the train slip away into the tunnel and he sniffs after it, as though trying to detect a telltale trace in the platform’s stale air.

Nothing to do now but find a seat. I pass through to the next car and find it only a quarter full. Stop to look over the rows, the backs
of heads, trying to judge which position is least likely to attract a talkative passenger to join me farther down the line.

Choke on the air in my throat.

Halfway up the car, sitting alone by the window, staring out at the dark of the passing tunnel wall. A Riesling-colored braid just visible in the gap between the seats.

It takes what feels like a long time to make my way to sit next to her. For a longer time, neither of us move. The familiar orangey smell of her skin, now mixed with diminishing traces of wet hay, of animals kept in an unclean pen.

Her stillness suggestive of sleep. But in the window’s reflection Tess’s eyes are open. Taking both of us in. Chalky phantoms in the glass. The breath of her voice drawing a fog over us both.

“Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“If I turn to look, will you still be here?”

“I’m here if you are.”

The train speeds through the earth, under an island of millions. Soon we will rise on the other side of the river.

She turns and I see it’s her.

It’s her, and I believe.

Many thanks to Sarah Knight, Marysue Rucci, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Kate Gales, Jessica Abell, Kate Mills, Jemima Forrester, Kevin Hanson, Alison Clarke, Amy Cormier, Felicia Quon, Max Arambulo, Dominick Montalto, Jonathan Evans, Jackie Seow, Molly Lindley, Esther Paradelo, Chris Herschdorfer, Jackie Levine, Anne McDermid, Monica Pacheco, Martha Magor, Chris Bucci, Stephanie Cabot, Peter Robinson, Sally Riley, Liv Stones, Howard Sanders, Jason Richman, and to my ring of angels, Heidi, Maude, and Ford.

A
LSO BY
A
NDREW
P
YPER

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Praise for
The Guardians

“Initially employing a quiet, confiding tone, Pyper reveals his skill with pacing as the story takes on the speed of a midnight dash through a graveyard. . . . This is a page-turner that will make your heart pound. You’ve been warned.”

—
The Globe & Mail

“Everything you could ask for in a thriller. It’s psychologically unnerving, moves like a bullet, and is fraught with so much tension you might crack a tooth reading it. Outstanding in every way.”

—Dennis Lehane, author of
Mystic River

“Ambitious . . . With a well-executed dual narrative, both past and present, strong characterizations, and some truly arresting images,
The Guardians
is a compelling and genuinely creepy read.”

—
The Guardian
(U.K.)

“A perfect haunted-house story, a crisp, eerie, October night of a book that had me in its clutches from page one.”

—Joanne Harris, author of
Chocolat

“A master of psychological suspense. Andrew Pyper knows just how to lure you in to all the deep dark places of the human heart and then . . . twist.”