And All the Devils Are Here

By Jay Hansen

And All the Devils Are Here weaves horror, humor and science fiction together into a genre-bending odyssey that leaves no stone of the supernatural unturned, including demonic possession, alien abductors and an inter-dimensional being that is certainly no angel. No topic is taboo, no belief system off limits as sacred cows of ancient and modern thought are mutilated all along the way from the first page to the last. With engaging characters, an intricate plot and a pace that only occasionally lets the major players catch their breath, And All the Devils Are Here transcends stereotypical horror in favor of creating a story that refuses to fit into any convenient category.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781468509083

Jay Hansen

Jay Hansen is a writer and comic living in Denver, Colorado. He has been a student of the paranormal since he was seven when he discovered that Big Foot and alien abductions were far more interesting than E.T. or Curious George. From demonic possession to reincarnation to Western Occultism, he has explored it all and never lost his sense of humor. He also whistles in graveyards.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ace of Swords

The tiny, one room apartment was dimly lit by the dwindling stubs of black candles burning on a small, makeshift altar which had been haphazardly thrown together and placed at the center of the room. On the floor, encircling the altar, was a band of fused brown crystal which had originally been ordinary table salt poured there to serve as a protective element against that which had seared it into a ring of crude, dark glass. The walls were covered with disturbing movie posters from various low budget horror films all having to do with magic, Satanism, demons, and large breasted actresses of dubious theatrical talent who would inevitably survive (usually due to their much more well-honed off-camera talents) and go on to star in equally bad sequels. The disturbing posters, as well as the rest of the walls, most of the floor, and a good portion of the ceiling were covered with an even more disturbing amount of blood. The air was filled with the dense, sickly-sweet smoke of incense, making the room smell as if someone had been using the oven to cremate a Care Bear. ™

Scattered about the premises were chunks of flesh, bones, and entrails of varying sizes and textures that had once formed a human body which had been the temporary home of an entity known in that particular incarnation as Arthur Harrison. But the body had been rendered inviable and no longer fit to be lived in, and so its former occupant had departed to another phase of existence to ponder the merits and miscues of its most recent foray into the physical realms.

In its sojourn as Arthur Harrison, this soul had been a very impotent and ineffectual man who had decided to pursue the black arts as away of improving his lot in life. He believed that he had been cheated out of his fair share of wealth, power, and sexual gratification in this life (especially the sex part) and had been just bitter and angry enough about it to have resorted to these desperate and dangerous extremes to obtain what he felt he deserved.

While it was true that Mr. Harrison had enjoyed much less of these perks than almost all of the people he knew, if he had thought things through more thoroughly rather than choosing to wallow in anger and self-pity, he may have come to realize that power, as the Buddha said, is an illusion; money, as many have said, can’t buy happiness; and sex, as few have said, is overrated (although definitely true if in your pursuit of it you get yourself inadvertently dismembered before you actually get to have it) and certainly not worth getting ripped to shreds over, he probably could have avoided getting himself ripped to shreds that dayat least in that particular way.

Now it should be obvious to even the most dimwitted and disinterested bystander that who or whatever had done this to Mr. Harrison had been very, very upset with him and hadn’t been the least bit shy about expressing its feelings on the matter. And, while the ability to express one’s feelings openly and honestly is almost universally considered to be one of the hallmarks of a healthy, well-integrated personality, like anything else, the free expression of emotion can be taken too far, and the individual responsible for this grisly act of wanton carnage was clearly healthy and well-adjusted to the point of deranged, bloodlusting, homicidal insanity.

The ripping to shreds of Arthur Harrison had been performed by a demon called KrζY5Ωκ!. However, until further notice, he will simply be referred to as the demon since KrζY5Ωκ! is only pronounceable by material beings with no fewer than three tongues and comprehensive medical insurance covering an extensive number of visits to a licensed and highly competent speech pathologist.

The spell Arthur had used to summon the demon was supposed to have enabled him to control it and compel it to do his bidding. Since Arthur hadn’t bid the demon to tear him into small, bite-sized pieces, it can be safely and correctly assumed that the spell had not worked out the way he had intended.

The reason that the spell hadn’t worked as planned was not that it was a faulty spell. Quite the opposite. It was, in fact, an ancient and time-tested conjuration which had, down through the ages, permitted many a skilled sorcerer to summon forth and order about demons like trained wolverines in some wildly irresponsible circus act while incurring only the occasional minor laceration as opposed to a thorough disemboweling.

There were a number of unfortunate errors which had led to Arthur’s use of the spell ending in such dismal failure, the first of which was that in lieu of spending years of apprenticeship studying under the tutelage of a highly skilled master of the occult arts before ever attempting such a perilous and ill-advised invocation, Arthur had merely downloaded it off the internet from a site called wickedevilstuff.com. Not your most reliable source of arcane knowledge. This had led to the second mistake, which had in turn resulted in Arthur’s fatally disastrous blunder. The spell, as it had appeared on the internet, contained a few minor mistakes as to the pronunciation of certain key words and phrases as well as some procedural inaccuracies and omissions. As it happens, minor inaccuracies and omissions are the first things demons look for upon arrival after having been summoned against their will to the material planes. These frequently render the summoner’s control of them null and void (or at best precipitously tenuous) and almost always lead to the kind of violent mayhem seen in Arthur Harrison’s apartment on the night in question.

It’s not so much that demons mind coming to the lower planes; they’d visit them more often if they were allowed. It’s just that they don’t like being forced to do so for the purpose of being bossed around and coerced into helping to gratify the coarse, petty, crude appetites of creatures they consider to be inane and inferior. It tends to make them cranky. They’re funny that way.

Demons don’t usually mind coming to the material worlds because they are frequently impotent, ineffectual beings on their natural planes of habitation. They feel that they have been cheated out of the higher levels of awareness and sense of serenity that the more advanced beings there enjoy as a routine aspect of their everyday existence. The demons envy these beings and despise their vibrant tranquility and gentle wisdom, although they do still spend a great deal of time and energy sucking up to them trying to ingratiate themselves to become a part of the in crowd. The higher beings, for their part, generally regard the demons as an annoying but pitiable nuisance to be endured with patience and benevolent compassionlike an angry drunk down in the alley shouting insults at the moon while you’re trying to sleep. That the demons know that they are looked upon in this way doesn’t help matters any.

On the physical planes, however, they consider themselves to be the superior beings and are free to vent their pent-up frustrations on the hapless creatures that live there. They are able to do so because so few of these creatures even know that they’re there to begin with given their noncorporeal intangibility, and even fewer know what to do about it if and when a demon is discovered. The odds that a demon will encounter someone who does know that it’s there and what to do to get rid of it are so small that some of them are able to wreak havoc on a planet for years without detection. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that some of these worlds have managed to survive at all.

It is not surprising that these worlds have survived because there are certain factors concerning demonic behavior which will inevitably come into play should they hang around a place for too long, the most basic of which has to do with a branch of mathematics called statistics. Statistically speaking, no matter how hard you are to detect and deal with, if you screw with enough people over a long enough period of time, the odds will cease to be in your favor and you will, eventually, come into contact with someone who damn well does know that you’re there and exactly how to go about kicking your ass right back to from wherever it was that you came.

Also, once it is discovered that a demon has gone missing from its home plane, the authorities there initiate an immediate search to determine its whereabouts, and the material worlds are always the first place they look. Once they do locate the demon, they rarely do more than monitor its actions since most never do much more than toss around some furniture, whisper nasty thoughts in peoples’ ears which the people concerned are perfectly free to ignore, and maybe set a few small fires—all of which is considered to be much less intrusive and psychologically damaging to the natural residents than a full-scale incursion into their reality by an Entity Retrieval Unit from another dimension, which is why such units no longer exist.

And even if the demon succeeds in taking possession of someone, which sometimes happens, about all that they ever manage to do is cause the person to float around the room being verbally abusive while spouting off unspeakable heresies regarding local spiritual ideologies. If the people down there can’t deal with something as trifling and mildly inconvenient as that, these higher beings reason, what can they deal with?

Usually, the demon gets bored after a while and comes home on its own anyway. If, on the other hand, one of them does manage to somehow find a way to do some real, far-reaching damage, the higher authorities are required to intervene on behalf of the threatened species. The actual statute goes like this:

Just because some half-baked moron on a lower plane decides to unleash a force that he/she/it has no real comprehension of on his/her/it’s own world, that doesn’t mean that we can just sit back and watch while some dysfunctional, malcontented knucklehead decimates the population down there. He is, after all, our knucklehead.

All of the laws governing ethical behavior on the higher planes are written in this kind of straightforward, easy to understand fashion. They don’t have politicians there.

The demon summoned by Arthur Harrison had been drifting through the city for hours since dismantling the one who had brought him there. He floated down the dark, mostly deserted streets finding nothing but inebriated fools sleeping in alleyways or clumsily making their way back to wherever it was that they called home. He kept himself amused for a time by playing nasty tricks on some of them before quickly losing interest. They were a dull and inexcusably ignorant lot whose chemically impaired brains enabled them to absorb much of what he was able to throw at them without their ever knowing the difference. In their altered states of consciousness, they seemed to be not at all surprised to find themselves coming face to face with the unexpected, and their perceptions were too numbed by alcohol consumption for them to be anything more than mildly intrigued by any of it. He soon exhausted their pitifully limited potential for keeping him entertained and moved on.

He swept through stores and offices, which were vacant except for the occasional security guard dozing at his post. He explored the homes of those who laid sleeping, unaware of the evil presence that paused momentarily over them to probe their minds and explore their dreams. Many of them would have horrible nightmares which would haunt them for days afterward as a result of this intrusion without their ever knowing what had caused them.

He wandered the city for most of the night and was becoming frustrated. He was no closer to finding what he was seeking than when he had begun his search. What he was looking for was a suitable host that he could take possession of. He would need one if he was going to have any real fun here. On his own, all that he could do was throw around some furniture, set a few small fires, inspire some horrific nightmares, etc. He had had enough experience in these kinds of places to know that having a body was the only way to fully enjoy his time on this world and make the most of this opportunity.

He could have easily assumed control of the one who had summoned him and then harnessed much of the force unleashed by the casting of the spell and utilized it to commit acts of magical savagery on this world, but his temper had gotten the better of him as it almost always did. Instead, he had opted to take the latent energy released by the opening of the portal between their two worlds and had used it to fold, spindle, and mutilate the impudent little worm responsible for creating the gateway and compelling him to pass through it. Killing the presumptuous little maggot for that may have been an error in judgement on his part, but it was one he regretted not at all.

He became more optimistic as the sun began to rise and most of the humans awoke and started to move about. The greater clarity of lucid thought vs. the relative inactivity of the sleep state would make it easier for him to the find the one he was searching for.

Not just anyone would do. For a demon to take possession of a physical being, there had to be a commonality of spirit to act as a catalyst: a deep and seething anger, an inner malevolence, the desire to inflict harm were all qualities he could exploit to gain control of an unsuspecting host.

He found a number of those who possessed the requisite character flaws. There appeared to be no shortage of rage or malice on this world, and he was amazed at the diversity between the many humans who were mired in them. Some well-groomed people of status driving in their shiny new vehicles felt them, but so did filthy people living on the streets whose brains were little more than alcohol ravaged paperweights. It was in the sneers of spoiled brats whose parents gave them everything but love, and in the fearful eyes of abused and neglected children who would grow up to beat their own kids as viciously as they were beaten now. His outward contempt for them filled him with an inner euphoria of self-righteousness malignance as he imagined how much pleasure it would give him to destroy these creatures and how richly they all deserved it. But his fantasies brought him no closer to achieving his objective, and so his search continued.

He could just as easily have taken over any one of these misbegotten creatures as he could have the one who had brought him here, but he could feel the dullness of their minds and sense the weakness of their spirits. Once inside of them, he would be almost as stupid and powerless as they were. All he would know about these beings and their world would be the knowledge he could assimilate from the thoughts and memories of his host, and he wanted to find someone specialsomeone with vitality and a keen intellect that he could use to really shake things up around here.

He knew that the chances of finding such a one were slim. Beings of superior intellect with powerful auras who were also filled with hate were rare on every plane. Those kinds of emotions tended to burn out the fuel that drives them rather quickly and leave the psyche a spent and fading shadow of what it once was, making it what it then is: a tragic waste of potential. The one who had brought him here was almost certainly such a person, and the demon was starting to feel a kind of self-centered remorse for having killed him. He would have, in all likelihood, made an excellent and willing servant.

The demon was fast approaching his threshold for patience, nearing his maximum capacity for frustration and ready to assume control of the next helpless, ill-tempered idiot he stumbled upon to use to commit senseless acts of bloody, random violence until he got bored with it and went home when he spotted the boy.

A cursory scan didn’t reveal any hint of darkness that might be used against him, but the extreme intelligence he radiated and the intensity of his aura were intoxicating. This human was clearly superior to any of the others he had so far encountered. The possibility that he could possess such a creature was virtually nonexistent, but what the hell? He didn’t have anywhere better to be just then. It might be worth his time to take a closer look. Maybe, he thought, he’d get lucky for once.

Chapter 2

Ten of Wands

Michael was walking home from school alone that day. He usually walked home with his sister, Katie, but she hadn’t been feeling well that morning because of what had happened the night before. She had tried to get out of bed to get ready to go with him, but she could barely even stand up on her own and so she had no choice but to stay home. Michael was nervous because the boys who picked on him at school always left him alone whenever Katie was around. She was pretty and they all liked her and knew how protective she was of her little brother. They also knew that she threw a wicked right cross when she was pissed. But without her or any teachers around to look out for him, there was nothing to stop them from jumping him and beating him up right there on the street. They all would have noticed that Katie was absent that day.

He felt better once he rounded the corner away from the school and was within sight of Santino’s Mini-Mart. Mr. Santino was a nice man, although not too many people thought so. Most people thought he was a crotchety old bastard who only managed to stay in business because his was the only convenience store for eight blocks in any direction because he was the only one mean enough not to be scared away by the constant threat of being gunned down in one of the armed robberies that were as common as welfare fraud in that part of town. He liked Michael and Katie, though.

You the only two kids in this whole damn neighborhood who know how to act, he always told them.

Whenever there was no one else in the store and he saw them passing by, he would wave them in from the front door and give them candy and sodas.

Don’t you tell nobody else I do this, he would caution them. The last thing I need is a store full of no-good punks all thinking I’m giving them something for free. I only do this for you because you good kids and I want you to know that there is a lesson in that. You be good to most people and most of them be good to you back.

If Mr. Santino saw anyone giving him any trouble, he’d put a stop to it.

As was often the case, he was standing out in his parking lot arguing with a customer and abusing one of his antique gas pumps. They barely worked anymore and only Mr. Santino knew the correct sequence of slaps, kicks, and lever pulls required to get them to function. That he always insisted that the buyer pay in advance before discovering that they couldn’t get the damn things to work right did nothing to enhance his reputation for customer service.

Michael waved to him from across the street as he walked by.

Hey! Mr. Santino shouted over to him, where’s you sister today? She better not get in trouble and have to stay after school.

She’s sick, Michael called back, knowing that, basically, that was a lie.

You tell her I say to get better. I got candy bars in here with expiration dates on them that don’t gonna eat themselves.

Michael waved again and Mr. Santino went back to bickering with his irate patron over why the gas pump had shut itself off five dollars and twenty-three cents too soon and just what he intended to do about it.

Michael’s uneasiness shifted now from his fear of being bullied by his schoolmates to the daily sense of dread that always grew stronger the closer he got to home. This time it was different, though. This time the feeling was more sinister, more suffocating, like the fear was a shroud closing in from all around him. He glanced over his shoulder to see if maybe he was being followed, but there was no one thereat least no one that appeared to pose any kind of threat to him. Then something instinctive made him stop. He spun around and looked up at the sky, not knowing what he expected to find there. He only knew that he sensed that something was there, stalking him. He had no idea what he thought it might be.

He stared directly at the demon that had been watching him from afar for most of the day but, not being clairvoyant, looked right through it seeing nothing but the gray winter haze above him. He continued to stare at what he could not see but felt in his gut was there for several seconds before turning back around and heading for home faster than usual, all the while telling himself that it was only his imagination playing tricks on him, that he was still just upset over what had happened last night. That made him realize how badly he wanted to get home to Katie. His own foolish imaginings were nothing compared to how much she needed him now.

He ran the rest of the way, that mysterious sense of menace he couldn’t identify keeping pace with him all the way. He jogged up the stairs to his family’s apartment and, for the first time he could remember, felt relieved to open that door and close it behind him. To be with people, any people, was better than being alone on the street with that terrible, invisible presence.

Michael’s parents pretended not to notice him. His father was on the couch watching television, probably half-drunk already…as usual. His mother was in the kitchen making their dinner, a look of sour desperation permanently engraved on her face. He pretended not to notice them either as he sloughed off his backpack onto the living room floor and went straight back to the room he shared with Katie. He found her lying there on his bed, gazing quietly up at the ceiling.

Are you okay? he asked meekly.

I’m okay, she replied sadly. I was just wondering if the stars are really as far away as we think they are.

He never knew what to say to her at times like these. Everything he could think of sounded so hollow.

I don’t think that they are, she said, half-lost in a dream that she couldn’t quite remember but was just beyond her grasp. Sometimes I feel like they’re so close I can almost reach out and touch them. I guess that sounds silly.

Michael laid down next to her to comfort her while she counted the imaginary stars only she could see woven into the plaster pattern on the ceiling above his bed. He rested his head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

The change that had come over Michael as he entered his home intrigued the demon and eased his misgivings about just how impenetrable the boy’s defenses might truly be. The second he had walked through the door, his aura had dimmed considerably, as if some oppressive force permeated these walls, deadening everything that was good and decent within them. His shoulders sagged noticeably. His head hung lower. Even his mannerisms became more subdued. And while the demon couldn’t be sure of this, from his vantage point it appeared that the boy’s eyes never once wandered up from the floor until after his sister had spoken to him in their room. Some of the vitality of his essence had returned once the two of them were alone together, however, and the demon made a mental note that she could create problems for him if he tried to take the boy while she was present. That would be a situation to be avoided.

A short time later, they were called to dinner.

At the table, both children exhibited the same demeanor as Michael had upon entering the dwelling. Another human, an adult woman, presumably their mother, behaved in much the same way. They spoke little. Their expressions were blank. And their eyes seldom landed on one another long enough to invite any sort of conversation, especially upon the fourth one, an adult male whom all of them avoided making eye contact with. It was a joyless assemblage and one borne only of biological necessity. There would be no discussion here of how anyone’s day had gone or of what they might hope would happen tomorrow to interfere with their meal. It was evident, even to an otherworldly visitor, that having dinner together at the table was for them a mere formality devoid of any sort of familial bonding which was its historic context and a miserable experience imposed upon three of them. It was also clear that it was the male who was responsible for their pointless and demoralizing adherence to this ritual, that they regarded him with fear, and that he was the primary source of all their misery.

The man, almost certainly the father, was an obvious idiot full of bitter hatred projected out at the entire world but taken out almost exclusively on his family. Whenever he spoke, it was only to berate or belittle them. The only thing that made his despicably offensive existence in any way interesting was the way he used the others’ fear of him to wield absolute control over them. The more he watched, the more the demon came to admire the despair this man had been able to instill in his family and the way in which he had used that to make them all timidly subordinate their wills to his own. He was still, undeniably, an idiot, but he was not without his own brand of brutal charm. The demon considered the prospect of taking possession of him if his attempts with the son failed. It would be easy enough to do. There was no question that he harbored more than an adequate amount of malice in his heart to make him readily available. He would be a poor consolation prize at best, but at the very least it was an option and would give him the opportunity to get to personally crush the boy’s sickeningly superior spirit should direct control elude him. In addition, it would allow him to remain near the boy while providing a safe haven for him in which to reside should future opportunities for a takeover present themselves, perhaps under more favorable conditions, in the event that his first efforts were to fail. It was definitely an alternative and one worthy of consideration.

The most difficult one for him to get a read on was the woman. On the surface, she appeared to be just as frightened of the man as either one of her children, and yet also the most eager to please. She interacted with him more than both of the others combined in an apparent attempt to curry his favoran endeavor she consistently failed at and which only resulted in her being subjected to more verbal abuse than if she had simply kept her mouth shut and her eyes low. However, underneath her facade of masochistic servility, there was a deep and seemingly jealous rage directed primarily at the girl. Why this should be so the demon was unable to tell, although he did notice later that this hostility became more pronounced when neither of the two males were present.

For instance, after the conclusion of their meal while the two of them were cleaning the soiled utensils, the girl accidentally dropped one of them, breaking it, at which the woman had referred to as a stupid little whore. The demon found this reaction to be somewhat puzzling as he could find no direct correlation between the incidental destruction of an inanimate object and sexual promiscuity. Perhaps, he thought, he had misread her intent. He had no actual comprehension of their spoken method of communication and had to rely solely on his ability to interpret their exchanges psychically and symbolically in order to get the gist of what was being conveyed. It was possible that he had misunderstood the comment.

That would no longer be a concern after he had assumed control of a human vessel. His psychic capabilities would be weakened considerably once inside a body, but he would have at his disposal his host’s complete knowledge of their language as well as everything else that it knew. Their customs, habits, and subtle nuances would all become second nature to him then, provided he spent enough time bothering to study them. He told himself that this was exactly what he intended to do.

He was thankful when Michael and his sister were finally ordered off to their room to sleep. The tedium of their meager lives had grown tiresome as the evening wore on, and he was anxious now to put his plan into action. While the boy was sleeping would be his best opportunity to launch an invasion. That was when Michael’s defenses would be at their lowest. There would be no conscious thought to warn him of danger and no awareness of what was happening to him to cause him to try to resist. The tricky part would be finding something dark inside the boy, some level on which the two of them resonated in acidic harmony. Normally, that would be easier to do while the boy’s mind was active, but penetrating his powerful aura against his will would be next to impossible then, especially if the girl happened to be around. The strength he could draw on from her would make his mind a virtual fortress.

While he slept, the boy would be the most vulnerable during the deepest phase of sleep when mental activity was at its lowest and the most cleverly concealed recesses of his mind more accessible. That access would be crucial, for the demon knew that under these conditions, not only would he have to find something possibly hidden in the furthest depths of the boy’s unconscious memory, he would have to latch onto it, pulling it forward to the surface, making the boy feel those emotions all over again, perhaps even relive them in a dream. For him to have any chance at gaining control of the boy, Michael must have at some point made a conscious decision, even if only for an instant, that darkness rather than light would be his master. That might be enough to give the demon the opening he would need.

It would be a difficult process, but it was one he had had some success with in the past, although not with this species, nor with any physical being of such remarkable talents. He wasn’t sure that it could be done, but it would cost him nothing to try…he hoped.

He waited impatiently as the boy slept, restlessly biding his time until Michael reached that nether stage of sleep. His innate lack of patience almost caused him to move in too quickly a time or two. This was taking much longer than he had originally anticipated, and it took every last bit of restraint he could muster to hold himself in check until the time was finally right. Only the possibility of winning a prize of such enormous value could have motivated him to that extent.

Once Michael had at last achieved the desired state of conscious oblivion, the demon demonstrated an even greater degree of composure by reminding himself that it would be necessary for him to proceed delicately. Any sudden rush on his part to storm the boy’s psyche could agitate his nervous system causing him to awaken, thus forcing the demon to spend a second intolerable period of waiting for the right moment at which to strike.

He moved in slowly, cautiously melding the essence of his being with Michael’s. Once the link had been established, he began carefully thumbing through the pages of the story of the boy’s life. Any instance, however brief, he could find of true hatred, violent rage, or evil intent, if he could harness it and raise it to the surface, could turn out to be the key that turned the lock. He began by looking for memories involving the father. That seemed like the most logical and potentially fertile ground on which to begin the hunt.

What he found there was a veritable treasure trove: a tomb of horrors filled with psychological torture and emotional agony capable of scarring the boy for the rest of his life. There was pain and violence and suffering and humiliation in an abundance that was beyond his wildest dreams. So far, none of it was anything that he could actually use against the boy. Most of the damage done had been internal. Unlike his father, almost all of his negative energy had been reflected inward and experienced as guilt and shame rather than deflected outward as hate, which would have been infinitely more useful. But the demon wasn’t worried. He trusted that it was only a matter of continuing to sift through the emotional wreckage and sentimental rubbish before he would eventually strike gold.

When Michael suddenly awoke, the demon was taken by complete surprise. He feared that the battle—at least for now, and perhaps forever—had been lost. They were too intimately connected at that point for him to make a hasty retreat and hope that the boy wouldn’t realize that he had been there. He should have known—did know—that with a creature of such extraordinary capabilities as this one that he couldn’t go undetected for long, but he had thought that he would have more time than that. He had been caught off guard, unshielded and exposed. If the boy recognized him now for what he was, there would never again be an element of surprise. Michael would feel him coming, sense his presence a mile away, and bolster his defenses against another attack. Even in sleep, his unconscious awareness would be alerted to the threat of a familiar enemy. His proximity to the boy would automatically cause a wall to be thrown up in psychic self-defense.

In desperation, the demon clamped down on Michael’s mind like a vise. Until the strength of the boy’s will forced him out, he would fight. But without the memory he had sought to find, it was an unwinnable battle. Nevertheless, he would not surrender and go quietly: not to a mere, lowly human, and certainly not to a child. If the boy wanted to be free of him, he would have to fight as well.

Michael woke up and was immediately overwhelmed by fear. When he tried to move, he found that he was completely paralyzed. He felt a crushing weight on his chest and a sickening churning in his head that made him dizzy. He had had a concussion once before, but this was much worse. This was a kind of mental nausea that he wished he could vomit out if only he could figure out how. He could breathe only in short, shallow gasps, which made him even dizzier and more disoriented. But what terrified him was not his physical condition, it was the chilling presence he felt enveloping him.

It was the same one he had encountered while walking home from school that afternoon. It had subsided for the most part after he had gotten inside the apartment, but a hint of it had lingered with him for the rest of the evening until he had fallen asleep. It was the same presence, he was sure of that—only now it was much, much more intense. This time it wasn’t just near him, surrounding him. This time it was inside of him. This was the sick sensation of an evil aggressor ravaging his mind.

He tried to cry out to Katie for help, but all he could manage was a hoarse whisper that would never wake her even though she was only a few short steps away. He couldn’t even move his head to look at her. Just being able to see her sleeping peacefully so close to him would have eased his fear a little. He needed to know that, whatever was happening to him, she was still there and that she was safe.

Then the thought crept into his brain that she might not be okay, that she might be suffering the same fate and trying desperately to call out to him. He began to panic. He tried frantically to struggle against this thing that held him. If only he could turn his head an inch to see that she was all right, he believed that would give him the strength to call to her and then she would come and save him.

Katie could always save him. She was his protector. When the bigger boys at school picked on him, she was the one who stood up to them. When their father beat him, she would wrap him in her arms and use her body to shield him from the blows. She was the one who was always there for him, the only one who had ever been there for him. Now, if the same thing that was happening to him was happening to her, there was nothing he could do to protect her. There was nothing he could ever do to protect her. When their father hurt him, she could always make him stop. When their father hurt her, there was never anything that he could do.

It always happened late at night, after they had gone to bed. He would come into their room while they were sleeping, drag Michael out of bed, and shove him into the closet. Then he would brace the chair up underneath the doorknob so that Michael couldn’t get out. The chair was of the plain old wooden variety, like one you might expect to find tucked under a desk in an elementary school classroom in the 1950s. Neither of them ever sat in it. They tried not to look at it, to make believe that it wasn’t even there. It served only one purpose: to keep Michael trapped in the closet on those nights when Daddy came to visit. The rest of the time it just sat there in the corner of their room, a constant reminder of those terrible nights that both of them tried to ignore.

Michael could always hear them through the closet door. Their father would tell Katie that she was his little angel and to be a good girl for him while she cried and pleaded for him to stop. Michael cried too. Sometimes he would pound on the door and beg for his father to stop hurting her. His father only yelled back angry threats at him to be quiet, and his anger caused Katie’s cries to become more pained. Usually, he curled up in a ball on the floor and pressed his hands over his ears to drown out the sound of her tears. Sometimes he pressed so hard that he gave himself a headache. He always felt like a coward when he did that, like he was trying to pretend that he didn’t know that she was suffering.

It was always Katie who let him out after their father had gone. They would huddle together in his bed (she never wanted to sleep in her bed on those nights) and hold each other and cry until Katie finally fell asleep. She always fell asleep first. Michael would lie there awake for hours holding her, kissing her, caressing her hair. He didn’t know what their father had done to her, and she would never tell him. All he knew was that their father was hurting her much worse than he had ever hurt him and that there was nothing he could do to protect her, the one who always protected him, the only one in the world he loved, the only one who loved him.

Now he was helpless again. This thing had him and, for all he knew, it had Katie, too. And once again he could do nothing to save her when she needed him the most. He did the only thing he could think to do. He prayed. He said that he would do anything to help her. He told God that this thing could have him if only his sister would be spared. In his prayer, he consented to surrender himself to it, but a consent of compassion was worthless to the demon. In fact, it only made things worse. It was an act of selflessness and courage in the face of fear that nearly caused him to lose his grip on the boy.

Michael began to cry. Tears rolled down the sides of his face and pooled in his ears, adding to the sickening feeling inside his head. He was frightened for himself and even more afraid for Katie. The echoes of her muffled cries seeping through the cracks around the closet door on those awful nights burned in his memory and filled him with an unbearable sense of utter hopelessness.

Reality spun away from him. He could feel himself back there on that cold, hard floor, his hands pressed over his ears, the sound of Katie’s shattered innocence filling him with an impotent and agonizing rage. He wasn’t sure where he was anymore, on that stone cold floor sobbing uncontrollably, or lying frozen in his bed. In his mind, he was in both places at once.

He only knew that he hated them both: his father for what he had done to Katie, and this thing that was trying to take him away from her. He wished that he could take his father and feed him to this thing and send them both spiraling down into Hell together to burn for eternity. From the deepest, darkest depths of his soul, he wished that. In that moment, and with all of his heart, he hated them both, forever.

And that gave the demon the opening he was looking for.

Chapter 3

The Hierophant

Throughout the course of Earth’s history, there have been many great people who have accomplished many wonderful things. Most of these people and many of these things went largely unnoticed at the time, or were briefly noticed and then soon forgotten only to be brought up again later on in history classes before being forgotten yet again the day after finals. However, if a person played a significant enough role in the development of the planet to warrant a substantial percentage of a test being devoted to their accomplishments in one of the aforementioned history classes, a handful of students might not have completely erased them from their memory after the exam. For example: One in twenty graduating high school seniors knows that Winston Churchill was the King of the Nazis during World War I, or something like that.

The reason so few humans know about all of the truly outstanding people who have helped to shape their world and made things like modern medicine, home computers, microwave ovens, and microwaveable pizza rolls possible is that there are so damn many of them spread out over such a relatively vast expanse of time that it’s practically impossible to keep track of them all. It’s not that people don’t care (?), it’s just that most of them simply don’t have time to wonder about where every little knick-knack that so enriches their lives may come from. Therefore, those for whom recognition for their contributions to contemporary society has been lost in the murky mists of antiquity will just have to get over it.

And then there are the messiahs.

A messiah is a person who has had such a profound impact on the world as a whole that they absolutely cannot be forgotten or ignored. They change the course of history forever, alter entire cultures’ ways of looking at life, and make the world a much better place in general. At least that’s the plan.

That’s not to suggest that messiahs have been sent to try to create a Heaven here on Earth. They have not. They have been sent here on very diverse and specific missions (the outcomes of which have not been predetermined) to teach humanity what it is hoped that they are ready to learn or to help them cope with what they are not.

Many messiahs are recognized and revered almost immediately. For others, generations may pass before the true significance of their genius is realized. Galileo was branded a heretic