The Demonologist Read Free Page A

intensity.
    “I represent a client who demands discretion above all. And in this particular case, as you will no doubt appreciate, this requirement limits me to only relating the most necessary information to you.”
    “A need-to-know basis.”
    “Yes,” she says, and cocks her head, as though she’s never heard the phrase before. “Only what you need to know.”
    “Which is what?”
    “Your expertise is required to assist my client in understanding an ongoing case of primary interest. Which is why I am here. To invite you, as a consultant, to provide your professional insight, observations, whatever you may feel to be of relevance in clarifying our understanding of the—” She stops here, seeming to choose from a list of possible words in her mind, and finally settling on the best of an inadequate selection. “The phenomenon.”
    “Phenomenon?”
    “If you will forgive my generality.”
    “It all sounds very mysterious.”
    “Necessarily so. As I mentioned.”
    She continues to look at me. As if I have come to her with questions. As if it is she who waits for me to move us forward. So I do.
    “You refer to a ‘case.’ What does it involve, precisely?”
    “Precisely? That is beyond what I am able to say.”
    “Because it’s a secret? Or because you don’t understand it yourself?”
    “The question is fair. But to answer it would be a betrayal of what I have been charged to disclose.”
    “You’re not giving me much.”
    “At the risk of overstepping my instructed limits of conversation,let me say that there isn’t much for me to give. You are the expert, professor, not me. I have come to you seeking answers, your point of view. I have neither.”
    “Have you yourself seen this phenomenon?”
    She swallows. The skin of her neck stretched so tight I can see it move down her throat like a mouse under a bedsheet.
    “I have, yes,” she says.
    “And what is your opinion of it?”
    “Opinion?”
    “How would you describe it? Not professionally, not as an expert, but you personally. What do you think it is?”
    “Oh, that I couldn’t say,” she says, shaking her head, eyes down, as though I am flirting with her and the attention is cause for embarrassment.
    “Why not?”
    She raises her eyes to me. “Because there is no name for it I could give,” she says.
    I should ask her to go. Whatever curiosity I held about her when I first spotted her outside the office door is gone. This exchange can go nowhere now but into some revelation of deeper strangeness, and not of the amusing anecdote variety, not something about a crazy woman’s proposal I might later repeat at dinner parties. Because she’s not crazy. Because the usual veil of protection one feels while experiencing brief intersections with the harmlessly eccentric has been lifted, and I feel exposed.
    “Why do you need me?” I find myself saying instead. “There are a lot of English profs out there.”
    “But few demonologists.”
    “That’s not how I would describe myself.”
    “No?” She grins. A show of giddy humor that is meant to distract from how clearly serious she is. “You are a renowned expert on religious narrative, mythology, and the like, are you not? In particular, the recorded occurrences of biblical mention of the Adversary? Apocryphal documentation of demonic activity in the ancient world? Is my research in error?”
    “All that you say is true. But I don’t know anything about demons or inventions of that kind outside of those texts.”
    “Of course! We didn’t expect you to have firsthand experience.”
    “Who would?”
    “Who would indeed! No, professor, it is only your academic qualifications that we seek.”
    “I’m not sure you understand. I don’t believe .”
    She merely frowns at this in apparent lack of comprehension.
    “I’m not a cleric. Not a theologian either, for that matter. I don’t accept the existence of demons any more than that of Santa Claus,” I go on. “I don’t go to church.