The Demonologist Read Free

gulp.
    Then it’s gone. Leaving me glad that nobody witnessed my spontaneous wall hugging.
    Nobody but the woman sitting on the chair outside my office door.
    Too old to be a student. Too well-dressed to be an academic. I put her in her mid-thirties at first, but as I approach, she seems older, her bones overly pronounced, the premature aging of the eating disordered. She looks to be starving, in fact. A brittleness her tailored suit and long, dyed black hair cannot hide.
    “Professor Ullman?”
    Her accent is European, but generically so. It could be an American-flavored French, German, or Czech. An accent that hides one’s origins rather than reveals them.
    “I’m not holding office hours today.”
    “Of course. I read the card on your door.”
    “Are you here about a student? Is your child in my class?”
    I am used to this scene: the helicopter parent, having taken out a third mortgage to put her kid into a fancy college, making a plea on behalf of her B-student Great Hope. Yet even as I ask this woman if this is the case, I know it isn’t. She’s here for me.
    “No, no,” she answers, pulling a stray strand of hair from her lips. “I am here to deliver an invitation.”
    “My mailbox is downstairs. You can leave anything addressed to me with the porter.”
    “A verbal invitation.”
    She stands. Taller than I expected. And though she is as worryingly thin as she appeared while seated, there is no apparent weakness in her frame. She holds the balls of her shoulders wide, her sharp chin pointed at the ceiling.
    “I have an appointment downtown,” I say, though I am already reaching for the handle to open the door. And she is already shuffling close to follow me in.
    “Only a moment, professor,” she says. “I promise not to make you late.”
    M Y OFFICE IS NOT LARGE, AND THE STUFFED BOOKSHELVES AND stacked papers shrink the space even more. I’ve always felt this lends the room a coziness, a scholarly nest. This afternoon, however, even after I fall into the chair behind my desk and the Thin Woman sits on the antique bench where my students ask for extensions or beg for higher grades, it is suffocating. The air thin, as though we have been transported to a higher altitude.
    The woman smoothes her skirt. Her fingers too long. The only jewelry she wears is a gold band on her thumb. So loosely fitting it spins whenever she moves her hand.
    “An introduction would be customary at this point,” I say, surprised by the crisp aggression of my tone. It doesn’t come from a position of strength, I realize, but self-defense. A smaller animal puffing up to create the illusion of ferocity before a predator.
    “My real name is information I cannot provide, unfortunately,” she says. “Of course I could offer something false—an alias—but lies of any sort make me uncomfortable. Even the harmless lies of social convenience.”
    “This puts you at an advantage.”
    “An advantage? But this isn’t a contest, professor. We are on the same side.”
    “What side is that?”
    She laughs at this. The sickly rattle of a barely controlled cough. Both hands flying up to cover her mouth.
    “Your accent. I can’t quite place it,” I say when she has settled and the thumb ring has stopped spinning.
    “I have lived in many places.”
    “A traveler.”
    “A wanderer. Perhaps that is the way to put it.”
    “Wandering implies an absence of purpose.”
    “Does it? But that cannot be. For it has brought me here.”
    She slides herself forward so that she is perched on the bench’s edge, a movement of perhaps two or three inches. Yet it’s as though she has come to sit upon my desk, the space between us impolitely close. I can smell her now. A vaguely barnyard whiff of straw, of close-quartered livestock. There is a second when I feel like I may not be able to take another breath without some visible show of disgust. And then she begins. Her voice not wholly disguising the scent, but somehow quieting its