Demonspeak
by Julie Cox

“So why do you want to be a demonologist, Mr. Schooner?”
    Frank Schooner shifted uncomfortably; the chair wasn’t quite big enough for his lanky legs. “I feel I have a knack for it,” he said, “and the field has more demand than supply, so it’s a growing industry, lots of potential. With the growth of the acceptance of metaphysics, the long-overdue endorsement by the Pope for Christian magic and the heavy amount of legislation currently in Congress, more people will be correctly identifying and reporting demonic problems – the world’s going to need more of us to put out the fires, ha-ha. And that means opportunity. Plus,” he added offhandedly, “that whole dedicating your life to helping protect the souls of humanity bit.” He smiled.
    “Uh-huh.” Abby Jackson, better known to the metaphysical community as Tombstone Abby, sniffed, pushed her glasses back up her nose and turned a page in the manila folder perched precariously on top of a pile of other papers. “I see you were an art major.”
    “Yes ma’am, I got my BA from Southwestern University in 2002.”
    “Seems a strange place to go for an art degree.”
    “Well, my father went there, and my grandfather, and my cousin and my uncle.”
    “So familial obligations? Pressure?”
    “Scholarship.”
    “Ah.” She held a page of slides up to the light. “May I ask why you’ve included your painting portfolio in your resume?”
    Frank leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I thought they might help you get a sense about me – and about what I know of demonology. You'll notice the symbolism . . .” He leaned forward to point out a few particularly clever references, but she was already turning them over and looking over the next page in the folder.
    “You’ll look at those later, won’t you?” Frank asked.
    “Ah, a letter of reference from Dr. Timberton.” She held it at arm’s length and took her time reading it. Frank’s chair squeaked as he shifted again. She set the letter on the desk and looked up at the man before her with a touch more interest in her eyes. Her bare, chipped nails tinked against the coffee mug.
    “I’ll be forward with you, Mr. Schooner. I don’t take on assistants lightly. A lot of delicate information passes through my operation, and the work here is not glamorous. It’s research, cataloging, reports, phone calls, inquiries and slush. I would have preferred a much stronger research background for a serious candidate here; I granted you an interview mostly on the strength of your references, especially from Dr. Foster, who contacted me personally regarding you. In truth, I was curious. So you’re going to have to do much better in justifying taking up my time than talking about the potential for a career in this field.”
    Frank sat back, and the charming smile wilted a bit. “Very well,” he said. “Let me tell you a story then, about how I got involved in demonology in the first place. When I was in college, a young woman approached me in my photography class about a party the following weekend. I went with her, and had a VERY good time.” He made an apologetic motion, to which Abby reacted not at all. “Later that night – or early that morning, rather – all but a handful of people had left or were crashed out, and the remaining people asked if I wanted to help them do a little magic. Well, I’ve never been a practitioner – sure, I grew up with all the normal superstitious stuff that everyone does, acorns on the windowsills and lavender in the garden. My parents were Christian but they didn’t really practice. I was curious, so I said sure. I assumed it would either be a Christian rite – Southwestern’s a Christian college, you know, so it’s prevalent – or else some little piddling bit of other magic.”
    Abby was tapping her nails on the coffee mug again and raised an eyebrow. Frank hesitated; he was skipping a lot, and suspected Abby knew it. He realized his story sounded a lot like ‘I tripped and fell into their ritual’ but he couldn't include everything. Not yet. Maybe he could scoot by it without further inquiry.
    He took a deep breath to steady his voice. “So they started this rite, and the girl I came with read from a book, but I could swear I could hear another voice over hers. Really HEAR it. It freaked me the hell out. About that time, I decided that I’d been slipped something, and REALLY didn’t need to do magic while I was tripping. Not . . . that I’d ever done that before,” he amended. “So I left. Ran all the way back to my dorm. And that voice followed me.”
     He gave a wheeze of a laugh. “Funny, how you don’t think the bogeyman can follow you into your house. I don’t know why I thought it would stop when I got home, like I could close my door and shut it out, because it’s just not fair for the monsters to be able to come home with you. All nightlong and all the next day, and the next, and the next I could hear this whispering, like an awful scratching on the inside of my skull – I thought I was going to go mad.
    “One of the religion professors took me aside later that week to talk with me. He was a Kabbalist, and recognized I had a demonic presence following me. I think he did some magic with me – really low key, if he did, because there was no ritual to it, the voices just stopped. I felt this relief like I’d been unleashed from something. The whole episode scared me half to death. That was when I was first set on this path – though that was twelve years ago now.”
     Abby took off her glasses and pursed her lips. “A nice story – or it would be if demons spoke on a level people could hear.”
    “MOST people can't hear them,” Frank corrected, “but some can – and I’m one of those few. I heard it in that girl’s voice, and I heard it follow me all the way home, and all over campus for days. That’s a talent you don’t ignore. I CAN’T ignore it. Believe me, I tried. But . . . the world has resources at its disposal, and people have talents for a reason. To put it one way, the world knew what I was, and tapped me when it felt it needed that resource in me. You get me?”
    Abby measured him with her gaze. “I think so.” She had at least stopped tapping her nails. “Alright then, Mr. Schooner, I believe you. Physically hearing the demonic would be a handy tool, with the materials I handle at times. I’ll keep it in mind. In the meantime, are you familiar with the Dewey Decimal system?”
    “Of course.”
    She pushed her chair back from the overburdened desk and stood up. “Come on then, I’d like for you to show me what you can do with the library.”
    Frank went to bed late that night, rubbing his eyes. The Santa Fe hotel was all southwestern kitsch – an Old West poster in a cheap frame on the wall, the same red Navajo style pattern on the comforter, drapes, lamp and shower curtain, and little plastic decorations that were supposed to look like adobe houses. He could hear the Spanish guitar from the restaurant next door. The room smelled like paint. His mind was tired but churning, coming up with answers he ought to have given and connections he should’ve made. He’d been off his game. He wasn’t used to a woman so thoroughly, utterly unmoved by his looks and charm. Foster had warned him he’d have to rely on merit with Tombstone Abby, the bane of demonkind.
    He shut off the lamp, though the room dimmed only slightly. He got up and pulled the curtain across the window to shut out the streetlight; it was half-effective. The light still shone through the thin red curtain, muffled to a dull red, like a harvest moon through the trees, a hazy shimmer of noise from the highway, the restaurant, the rooms around him . . .
    He sat up, heart racing. There was a whisper, a scritch-scratch murmur, beneath the ambient noise of the city. He flipped the light back on, but it didn’t banish the noise. He threw back the covers, stood up, and scanned the room, trying to locate the source. He pushed back the red drapes, letting the moonlight sweep across the room. He looked in the drawers, under the sink, in the toilet tank. Nothing. He pulled up the bed skirt and looked under the bed.
    There was a grating, held on by four loose screws. Plaster on the floor – it had been removed recently. He went for his knife.
    Frank stood on Abby's front porch, looking far more disheveled and scruffy than the polished young thing who’d flashed his smile at her all afternoon. He was pale and ruffled, hair askew, in plaid pajama bottoms and a grey T-shirt. He was holding a small plastic container that said, “I Can't Believe it's Not Butter.”
    Abby opened the screen door and leaned against the doorframe. “Well done, Mr. Schooner, I really thought you made that college story up.”
    “I didn’t. Well, most of it. Here,” He thrust the box at her.
    She pulled open the lid and looked inside. “Wow, you really . . . liquefied it.”
    “You put a demon’s heart under my bed!”
    “He must’ve been saying some awful things.”
    “What if I’d been lying?” he pressed. “What if I couldn’t hear it, and I’d slept all night next to a demon’s heart whispering in my ear?”
    Abby closed the lid and met his eyes with a steady, self-assured gaze. “I had to know for sure. If you were virtuous it wouldn’t have affected you, much.”
    Frank shook his head, and stepped off the porch. He crossed his arms and stared out across the scrub-ridden plains towards the distant line of mountains, the whole world glowing faintly blue under the moon. “You risked something awful happening to me, just to find out if I was lying.”
    Abby stepped down next to him. “Will it make you feel better if I say I felt a little bad about it?”
    “Really?”
    “Just a little.”
    “That’s so very comforting.”
    “Then maybe this will help. If I’d hired you without testing that little claim of yours, without seeing what you’d do faced with an unexpected encounter, a lot more innocent, charming little people could get hurt as a result of your inability to do the job.”
    Frank half-turned to study the pudgy, middle-aged glorified librarian that stood next to him. “You make those kinds of decisions a lot?”
    She nodded without hesitation. “All the time.”
    Frank nodded. Long moments passed between them, lost in their own thoughts. “You going to stand there holding the remains of that demon heart all night?”
    “It is starting to smell.” Abby walked out past her gate to a little metal plate in the ground; she unlocked it, raised it and dropped the mangled heart in, tupperware and all. She locked it back with a satisfying metallic clunk. As she walked back, dusting her hands, she jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Hazardous material disposal. I’ll call in a removal in the morning.”
    Frank smiled, but it was tired and genuine. “A frequent occurrence?”
    “Too frequent.”
    Frank breathed out slowly and let down his barriers. It had been a trial, keeping his magical strength in check, hiding it from someone like Abby. Now his energy swept out across the dusty yard. Abby jerked in surprise and looked up at him.
    “You pass,” he said.
    “What exactly was I being tested on?” she said, a furrow appearing in her brow.
    “Whether you’d be able to make the hard decisions. If you had the guts to do something awful to prevent truly horrible things from happening.”
    “What are you?”
    Frank tilted his head just a little, and it gave him a more natural, mortal look. “Human,” he said. “Just like you. Only . . . maybe more than that, I don’t quite know the depths of what I am. But I’ve been looking a long time to find someone with the moral fortitude, conviction and knowledge to . . . wield me against the demons.”
    “You weren't kidding when you said the world had given you a gift.”
“A gift I don't have the knowledge or experience to properly use,” he admitted. “All I have is the raw power, blank magical energy. Those kids at school . . . they used me to call something up. I know what can happen when I offer up my magic to the wrong person. And that's either someone with ill intentions, or someone unwilling to make the hard calls. Inaction can be just as bad, if not worse, in our field.” He opened his hands before him. “I'm just a battery, now. You have the experience, the guts – together, we can do something REAL.”
    Abby forced a weak smile. “You offering me the job, then?”
    He smiled, real for the first time. “You’re hired.”

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