The Noonday Demon
Part Three
During a free period after math class, Caitlin Douglas went to her room on the fourth floor of Tom Paine Hall and found that her new roommate had left a backpack, a suitcase, and a briefcase on the floor near the closet. The bed under the room’s far window had been made, very neatly, with hospital corners. Its starched top sheet was turned down over a green-and-red striped blanket, and a rust-colored satin comforter was folded over the foot of the bed. The second desk in the room was still bare, as were the two shelves above it. But the girl herself wasn’t there.
Remembering her own first day at Saybrook, she assumed that Aidra was being given a tour of the campus by a member of the student council. But it was a weird time for that kind of tour. They usually took place in the early afternoon, after lunch and before sports. And the room smelled of smoke. Cigarette smoking was not allowed in student rooms. But the smoke didn’t smell like cigs, or even weed or hash – some of Caitlin’s friends at Brearley had been stoners, but she liked to keep a clear head. She looked around the room, checked the closet, and even peeked under the beds. When she stood up, the smell was gone. But something about it had made her uneasy. There’d been a tang of sulfur to it.
Suddenly the flickering began in her head. She groaned, but could do nothing to stop it. Pictures appeared and disappeared in rapid succession. Flick: A dark-haired girl with a slight smile looked down at the body of a middle-aged man slumped over a desk. Flick: the same girl, looking at a plump woman with her mouth hanging open and her eyes as blank as a doll’s. Flick: a young woman lying on the floor. Flick: a middle-aged man sprawled on his back on an icy walkway with blood pooled around his head. Flick: a white man in a white doctor’s coat foaming at the mouth. Flick: a black man in green hospital scrubs falling and banging his head. Her second sight always began with a slide show of static images. Caitlin had given up wondering why it was never in the form of a movie or a video, just as she had stopped wondering why she had second sight to begin with. Her mother and father showed no signs of it, nor did any of her grandparents. But her maternal grandmother, who had been born and mostly raised in Scotland, told her that her own mother had been a taibsearh, a seer who could foretell the future and cast out demons. So the knack evidently skipped generations, for Caitlin had had it for as long as she could remember. As a baby, she’d been subject to crying fits which baffled not only her parents, but also the pediatrician, who assumed she had colic, and told them to pick her up and carry her around, talking soothingly to her, until she went back to sleep.
Her memories of infancy were unusually clear – she even recalled being in a warm, safe place before she was born – and being carried around worked, to a certain extent, because it distracted her from her frightening visions. She was a precocious talker, speaking short sentences by the age of eighteen months, and the first things she tried to describe were her visions, which she called “see-sees.” “Make see-sees go away,” she would implore her mother, who had no idea what she was babbling about. By the time she was three, she had stopped being afraid of her see-sees, accepting them as glimpses of events, places, and people that others couldn’t perceive. She also stopped talking about them, which relieved her parents. They were both very smart and ambitious, her father an analyst for a brokerage firm, and her mother a junior executive at an advertising company. Caitlin had been an accident; they hadn’t planned on children until they were thoroughly set financially. She was a remarkably thoughtful child, kind and affectionate. And although they loved her deeply, they found her precociousness almost alarming. When she turned eleven, they took her to a child psychologist named Mary Kramer who gave her an I. Q. test. She scored two hundred and ten.
“She did particularly well on the simulation section, Dr. Kramer told them. “That tests a person’s skill at predicting future trends based on current situations. It also measures empathy – the ability to share the feelings and thoughts of other people. My jury’s still out on E.S.P., but there’s a test for it which involves predicting the sequence of a set of Zener cards. I’d like to see how well she does with them.”
Before either of her parents could reply, Caitlin said, “I can see what people are thinking. Sometimes I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. You hope you can get famous by publishing a paper about me. I don’t mind if you do, but it would be polite if you asked me first. You’ve been talking about me as if I weren’t sitting right here in front of you.”
“You’re right, Caitlin. That was rude of me, and I apologize,” said Doctor Kramer.
“It’s OK,” Caitlin said. “Oh, and there’s no reason to feel embarrassed. Everybody wants to be famous, and at least you aren’t planning to do something awful just so people will know who you are.”
Dr. Kramer looked at her for a long moment. “How did you know I was embarrassed? Did you read my mind?”
“I can’t do that. I felt what you were feeling.”
“That’s very interesting. Would you like to try the Zener cards?”
“OK. But I already know I’ll play them pretty well.”
“They’re not playing cards.”
“They are too,” Caitlin said. “You use them to play a game where you show me some of them and put them back in the deck, and then you ask me if I can remember the patterns I saw. You know, a yellow circle, a red cross, three wavy blue lines, a black square, and a green star.”
The psychologist paused again, staring at her. Then she got the cards out of her desk drawer, shuffled them, and dealt the first five. Circle, cross, blue lines, square, star. Her professional composure blew away. “Wow!” she said. “That’s spooky! How did you…”
“Don’t worry,” said the girl. “It’s just my second sight. And I never use it to hurt people.”
“How old are you, Caitlin?”
“Eleven, this time around.”
“What do you mean by ‘this time around?’”
“I’ve been alive before. Lots of times. Sometimes I was a boy. I like being a girl better. Girls are smarter than boys, Mary.”
“How did you know my first name is Mary?”
“Same way I knew about the cards.”
“I see,” said Dr. Kramer, although she didn’t. “It’s been fascinating talking to you. I’ll be very interested to see how you turn out.”
“Me, too. I’m glad I can’t see my own future. That would take all the fun out of it.”
“Yes, I suppose it would,” the doctor said. “Well, good luck, Caitlin.”
“You make your own luck,” Caitlin responded. “But thank you for hoping that mine is good. You’re going to have another child, which will make two. And they’ll give you eight grandchildren, and twenty great-grandchildren, and you’ll live to be a hundred and one and die in your sleep.”
“That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Caitlin.”
“There’s no need to thank me, Doctor,” Caitlin said. “It’s your life. I’m glad it’ll be a good one.”
She left with her parents, and Dr. Kramer put the Zener deck back in her desk drawer. Two months later she found out she was pregnant again.
As Caitlin proceeded through elementary and middle school, there were two bad incidents involving her second sight. A boy in her fifth-grade class started bullying her at recess, slapping her and pushing her around. She told him to leave her alone, or he would fall down the stairs and bash his head in. He laughed and continued to pick on her. Two days later school closed for spring vacation. In his rush to leave, he tripped and fell down the stairs that led from his classroom’s floor to the exit. The tumble didn’t kill him, but he suffered a skull fracture and spent months in the hospital.
For her seventh-grade English class, she wrote a variation on The Frog Prince. In her version, the Grimm brothers’ enchanted prince turned out to be a vain, stupid braggart, and the princess turned him back into a perfectly nice frog. The English teacher was delighted with the story, and she said so in front of the whole class. Caitlin got an A-plus. A girl named Susie, whose own story about hating her Christmas presents because they weren’t what she had asked for had only gotten a C-minus. She resented the praise Caitlin had received, and told her in the playground that she was a suck-up and a teacher’s pet. Caitlin was hurt, and said that the girl was only being mean because her parents had just gotten divorced. The girl burst into tears, and Caitlin instantly felt guilty about blurting out what her second sight had revealed. She tried to take back what she had said, but the damage had been done. Susie stayed her enemy for the rest of the year, and turned the other kids against her. She wound up with no friends except her teachers, so her enemy proved right after all: she had become a teachers’ pet. She told herself that was all right; she preferred the company of adults, anyway, because children were, well, childish. But she always regretted not having a normal childhood. And from then on, she tried to keep her see-sees to herself. She was successful, until she met Aidra.
The math class had covered quadratic equations, and Caitlin’s homework involved solving several of them. She sat down at her desk and opened her math textbook. Although everyone at Saybrook had a cell phone with Internet access, and could easily cheat by downloading a math app, Caitlin preferred to work the assignment out with pencil and paper. That way she could be sure that she understood it fully. Although she didn’t intend to become a mathematician, the logic of calculus appealed to her: if this, then that, except when something else intervenes.
She had just solved the first problem when the door opened and a dark-haired girl came in.
“Oh, hi!” Caitlin said. “You must be Aidra.”
The girl curled her lip. “Must I? Who says?” Her voice was low and raspy, almost a growl. Caitlin realized that something else had indeed just intervened. She stood up, putting her hands on the desk to brace herself, and waited.
The attack came immediately. Aidra – or the thing that inhabited her – snarled, “Your father’s a crooked stockbroker who rolls over his clients’ accounts without telling them and skims off the profits. Your mother’s a slutty junior executive at an advertising company who fucks the head of the tv department. And that lump in your left tit is a malignant tumor.”
“OK, goody for you, you got my parents’ jobs right,” Caitlin said. “But Dad’s too smart to be a crook. And Mom loves him as much as he loves her. She wouldn’t fool around with the head of the tv department even if he were straight, which he isn’t. And I don‘t have a tumor in either of my breasts. My doctor says the lump in the left one is just a sign that it’s still growing. So get out of that poor girl and go back to hell where you belong.”
Aidra hissed like an angry snake. Her face turned brown and leathery, her ears grew points, her eyes went red, and two small horns sprouted on her head.
“Puh-lease. I went trick-or-treating in a mask like that when I was ten. Show me something really scary.”
The demon’s head morphed into a skull. “Bo-ring,” said Caitlin. The skull became the head of Dracula, complete with fangs and a widow’s peak.
“The Count was a guy, dummy.”
Dracula was replaced by the Bride of Frankenstein.
“In the first place, that movie should have been called ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’s Monster.’ Doctor Frank wasn’t married. And in the second place, Elsa Lanchester was beautiful. She was just having a bad hair day.”
Shrek the Ogre took the Bride’s place.
Caitlin laughed. “Oh, come on! Shrek’s a sweetheart. He has to be – he’s a Disney hero. You’re really not very good at driving people crazy. You must be one of Hell’s new hires.”
Suddenly Caitlin was looking at her own image, perfect in every detail. The double’s auburn hair was twisted and wrapped into a bun at the back of her head, her own blue eyes stared back at her, and both of her wore the same clothes.
“Not bad,” she said. “Do you do voices, too?”
“I do everything. I can be anyone.” The voice sounded like Caitlin’s, but she’d never heard a recording of it, so she couldn’t be sure.
“Hurray for you,” she said. “If you ever get tired of living in Hell, you should move to Hollywood and become an actor.
The double tittered girlishly. “I already spend some of my time in Hollywood. Some of the actors and directors have sold their souls to me in return for fame, and of course I own all the producers.”
“Busy, busy, busy,” said Caitlin.
“Oh, it’s easy for me to be in a lot of different places at once, because there are a lot of me.” The double’s voice was oily with self-satisfaction. “My name is Legion.”
“Hah, the Devil quotes scripture. I’ve read the Bible, Mister Legion. May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead. I love bandying words with mortals.”
“O.K., then. I know from my ancient history class that there were five thousand soldiers in a Roman legion. How many of you are possessing Aidra?
“Just one. She’s only a child. Very tasty. I think I’ll gobble her up.”
“Not going to happen,” Caitlin said, with a confidence she didn’t really feel. She knew she had the knack, but she’d never tried an exorcism before. Her grandmother hadn’t told her the exact form her commands to a demon should take, only that if you could make it contradict itself, it would vanish. Easier said than done, she thought – and realized the phrase was the key to solving her dilemma. She was fighting a war of words, not deeds; insinuations, not accomplishments.
The Caitlin clone showed its teeth. “Cat got your tongue?” it purred.
“Which cat? The one in the cradle? Or the one that ate the canary. Who told you cats eat peoples’ tongues?”
The toothy smile disappeared. “What are you babbling about?”
“You answered a question with a question. Don’t you know the answer?”
“The answer to what?”
“Don’t ask me. It’s your question.”
For a second Caitlin’s double went out of focus, but it sharpened again. “Don’t try to change the subject!” it snapped.
“Why not? “
“Because I ask the questions around here!” Its voice was a petulant whine.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Caitlin said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Go ahead, ask away.”
The outlines of the double blurred again. “Now you’ve made me forget what I was going to ask!” it complained.
“Weren’t we talking about cats. Or maybe canaries? Canaries in cradles?”
“Stop that!” Aidra’s features began to appear through the blur. “I know what you’re up to!”
“But you told me you forgot,” Caitlin said. “Maybe your memory isn’t what it used to be. Are you confusing me with someone else? Aidra, maybe?”
“I never get confused!” The voice was the demon’s gravelly snarl again. “I cause confusion!”
“Cool! Cause some! Create some chaos! Drop the dishes! Make a hot mess! Blow something up!”
“You can’t order me around!”
“Can I order you a square? Square you away? How ‘bout a sphere? Are you sure you’re here?”
The blur rippled like a windblown cloud. “You’re not making sense!” The demon’s voice was a whine again.
“Are you feeling tense? Are you going astray? Who are you, anyway? What’s your name? What’s your game? Can I play too? Or is it just for you?”
“It’s not a game! It’s what I do! I deny! I’m the Lord of the Flies!”
“You’re bustin’ rhymes! You’re rappin’ fine! But if you’re a fly, you’re going to die! I’ll swat you!”
She slapped Aidra’s cheek. The girl’s skin felt warm and soft, but her eyes were still red. The demon hadn’t quite left her.
Caitlin suddenly recalled something so simple she felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier. Satan was the Father of Lies. So if he told the truth, he would contradict himself.
“You’ve taken over Aidra, right?” she said slowly.
“Yes!”
“Is that true?”
The Aidra thing choked and clapped both hands over her mouth, as if it were trying to keep from vomiting. But a word burst out of it.
“No!”
It convulsed violently and fell to the floor. There was a loud farting noise, and sulfurous smoke filled the room. Caitlin heard a long shriek of rage. It died away, and the smoke dissipated as quickly as it had materialized.
She knelt down to make sure Aidra hadn’t hurt herself. The girl stirred, yawned, and stretched. Her eyes opened. “Who are you?” she asked. “I’m Caitlin Douglas, your roommate.”
“Oh, right.” She looked around. “What in the world am I doing on the floor?”
“You don’t remember?”
Aidra sat up, furrowing her brow. “Wait, it’s coming back,” she said. “There was something the matter with me. Something awful. Oh, my God, I think I killed somebody!”
Caitlin helped her up. “Some people died,” she said said, “but it wasn’t your fault. You were possessed by a demon.”
Aidra’s eyes went wide. “No way!” she said.
“Way.”
“Oh, come on!” Aidra said. “That’s right out of that old movie The Exorcist!’”
“Yes, but without the priest.”
“Jesus. Did the demon rape me?”
“You’re thinking of ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’”
“I saw that one on TCM. It was super creepy.” She frowned. “But wait, if the demon made me to kill people, why wasn’t I arrested?”
“He made it look like they had died of natural causes, or by accident.”
Aidra’s lower lip quivered, and her eyes welled up. “Now I remember. Dean Benedict, Mrs. Winters, Millie Parsons, Reverend Grevin, Doctor Isham, and that poor hospital orderly. So many!” She began to cry. “What am I going to do?”
Caitlin put her arms around the girl. “Just keep on keeping on,” she said. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Aidra stopped crying, gulped, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Did you make that up?” she asked.
“No. Nietzsche did. Hitler’s favorite philosopher.”
“Do you think Hitler was possessed by a demon?”
“Well, it’s hard to believe that any normal human being could kill six million people just because of their religion.”
“The Spanish Inquisition burned a lot of people at the stake because they weren’t Catholic,” Aidra said.
“So back then, maybe the Pope was possessed.”
“Sounds like it. How do you know all this stuff, anyway?”
“I got interested in the history of religion while I was at Pearson Hall. The school didn’t offer a course in it, so I asked the chaplain if he could recommend some books. He suggested something called ‘A Handbook of Comparative Religion,’ by a guy named Kellogg. And he offered to meet me in his office the next Sunday after chapel, and he’d give me some instruction. Turned out to be hands-on instruction – his hands on my tits and ass. I ran away and went straight to the Head of School to complain. She didn’t believe me, because Chaplain Gardner was like this saintly guy who ran soup kitchens and helped homeless people get off drugs and booze and find work. So I asked my parents if I could transfer to Saybrook. They asked me why, and I told them I thought a co-ed school would be a healthier place than an all-girls’ academy. I didn’t mention Gardner, but I think my mom sensed that someone had done something pervy to me. She wanted to contact Brearley, but I told her it wasn’t that important. And it wasn’t. I looked ahead and found out he was going to molest another girl in his vestry two weeks later. This time he was going to get caught by the organist. He would be fired, and the girl’s parents would press charges. Attempted rape’s a felony, so he would go to prison for a long time.”
“Wait, what do you mean, you looked ahead?” Aidra asked.
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m clairvoyant. I can see into the future – not very far, but the clairvoyance might get more powerful as I get older.”
“Can you see my future?”
“Do you really want to know it?”
Aidra hesitated and said, “No, actually. I mean, what if I knew I was going to get run over by a bus next Tuesday? It would make the last days of my life miserable.”
“Of course. That’s why I’m glad I can’t foresee my own future.”
“There’s one question I hope we can both answer,” Aidra said, lying down on her bed.
Caitlin smiled at her. “I know what it is. And the answer is yes.”
She lay down next to Aidra and kissed her.