Demon: A Memoir (17 page)

“But the man was steadfast. There was a purpose to the fasting, and he wouldn’t be tempted to eat. He wouldn’t yield to the dictates of his human flesh.”

I thought of all the times I had been nearly incapacitated by low blood sugar. By plain hunger. By pain, by sleeplessness.

“So Lucifer appealed to his pride, taking him up to the top of the temple in Jerusalem.
If you are the Son of God,
he said,
throw yourself down.
It was ingenious.”

“Why is that ingenious? Wasn’t he essentially telling him to take a flying leap? To die?”

Lucian smirked. “I never thought of it that way. But no. The temple was the one place people expected to see the Messiah. And the Host would never have let him die from a physical fall; it was guaranteed in Scripture, and Lucifer knew it. You could argue that he was doing the God-man a favor—at least this way people would know who he was. And I heard Lucifer’s thought:
Let them see him then. Let him throw himself down and prove who he is.
”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. His ego held no sway over him. Rather surprising for a man who went about saying he was God. By now Lucifer was showing signs of strain. So like a gambler on the last hand of the night, he held back nothing. He drew the God-man to a mountain and cast a mighty vision, a menagerie of nations, against the sky—Babylon and Persia, the government of Rome and commerce of the Mediterranean. Spices and olives and wine, fleets of ships, the jealous pride of kings and queens and emperors.”

As he was talking, the tabletop shimmered, emitting more light than the reflected lamps of our corner nook. Between the abandoned bowl of bread pudding and his coffee cup, I saw the sun, setting in a dark gold disk. As it melted into the horizon, it became the wheat fields of Egypt. Then the stalks of wheat were not wheat at all but a field of people. A nation of people. Lucian’s voice wafted toward me in what could have been the voice of a singer:
the mighty millions of the land of Han, flowing with silk, roads pulsing with trade.
The roads swept beneath me, beneath the surface of the polish, of my bird’s-eye view, miles at a time until they became a sprawl of cities and I recognized pyramids—Egypt. No, not Egypt. These were the stepped ziggurats of an undiscovered west.
Teotihuacan, city of gods,
came the voice. I saw the gold masks, the priests in their robes, arms raised to the sun.

A coffee cup sailed over the image. Lucian had pushed it across the table toward me.

“Treasures of the East and fertile lands yet undiscovered, rich in commodities of a future age. Lands of people pagan and unconquered, of client kings and vassals and dominions to come. Like diamonds against black velvet, he showcased the world and all that might belong to the God-man so splendidly that those of us who had walked the streets and corridors and dwelt in the inner chambers of those places blinked and staggered at the sight of their collective glory. It was the mosaic of all of Eden’s wealth. And Lucifer offered it all to the God-man if he would do one thing: fall down and worship. Just one, simple, singular act.” He looked up at me. “It would have been so easy. I knew from experience.”

“What good would that have done Lucifer?”

He shook his head. “It was the thing he had always craved and often won—except from the one from whom it would mean something. And now El stood a hand’s reach away in the body of a man, with a man’s cravings and a human’s proclivities. We hardly dared breathe. For a moment it was as though I stood again in that ancient rock garden, the sand of the desert as hot under my feet as the rocks of that place had been. And I watched from below with spirit eyes as Lucifer, arrayed with Legion and surrounded by Host, aspired to the godhood he craved, his beautiful eyes as covetous as they had been that first day an eternity ago when he cast his ambition like grappling hooks up into heaven.”

His gaze wandered. He seemed to be looking at something in the direction of the bar. But when I tried to discern what it was, I saw only a cluster of random business travelers, a few stray reception-goers bored with whatever was going on upstairs, a man and woman talking together. He seemed more and more distracted of late, and it was starting to concern me.

I looked from him back to the bar and considered the reception-goers more closely. They were two women, possibly sisters; both looked half Asian, one with curly, highlighted hair. She sat at the bar while the other leaned against it, turned in our direction. The seated one gazed sidelong in what I thought was my direction until I realized that no, she was looking at Lucian.
Figures.

“This time there was no violence. Clay, listen to me! Our time is short.”

My attention snapped back. “I’m listening.”
As though I could do anything else!
I was fairly certain that whatever he said would return to me later, regardless of how closely I listened.

“This time there was no violence.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair. “This time he would take heaven by word, by simple trade, offering the world in exchange for that proclamation of divinity.”

“Was he offering that much, really? I mean, considering that El made it?”

“It was the sum of Lucifer’s wealth, his kingdom, his all. He was jealously possessive of everything within it. Would he sacrifice it so readily for the sake of one dangerous temptation posed to God himself as he stood hungry in the desert, strained by human flesh? Yes. Yes, I knew he would. And it would be Lucifer’s best and greatest moment. You have to know that wealth meant nothing in comparison to that—to this victory.” He glanced over his shoulder.

Something is wrong.

“What were all the kingdoms in the world against the triumph of proving El’s so-called son a fraud, a mortal as hopelessly weak in his clay trappings as the rest of them?” he said, his voice trailing over his shoulder.

“What is it?” I said finally, exasperated.

He blinked at me. “I’m fine. Listen now, this is important. There was something more than that, though. I realized it as I stood there, with Lucifer as close to the human act of sweating as a cherub can be. I didn’t know it at the time, but Lucifer had seen in this man some great vision, some latent danger.” He shifted in his chair, glanced at his watch. “And though he never said it, I saw in that moment that he was desperate.”

I had never seen Lucian quite like this, and I was becoming nervous by proxy. I was worried he would leave too soon. And I needed this—every word he spoke. For the completion of my manuscript. For myself.

But his state unnerved me for other reasons: What could possibly make a demon uneasy? I glanced at the bar. The two women were gone.

Lucian pushed the coffee mug away, checked his pocket for something—the phone number of the waitress. As though sensing just that thing, Nikki appeared, all curves and cheekbones and lips. She set the check down on a tiny tray, and Lucian pulled a large bill from his pocket, telling her with a hasty smile to keep the change.

When she left, he said, “The man, weak, thirsty, hungry, buffeted by wind on that summit, refused Lucifer. He sent him away with the authority of El himself. And the kingdoms in the visions painted in the sky shattered like a great glass window, sprinkling shards onto the far horizons as the man collapsed to the desert floor.”

He stood, rifling his fingers through his curly hair, seeming to look for the nearest exit.

It wasn’t nearly enough! I leaped up. “And then? Then what?” I hated myself.

“Lucifer wasn’t finished.” He stepped around the chair.

He strode out, not even noticing Nikki when she tried to wave at him.

22

The produce section of the co-op was filled with alien life forms: bell peppers, carrots, tomatoes. I could not remember the last time I had cooked anything from scratch. The concept seemed like a forgotten ritual, mysterious and Zen.

My eating habits of late had been abysmal. Often I forgot about food altogether. Coffee got me through the morning and early afternoon. At home after work, I ate leftovers from takeout the night before. Late into the evening, I emerged ravenous from a stack of reading or, more likely, from shaping my expanding account of the demon memoirs. And then I called and ordered enough food for a late-night binge before falling into a coma on my sofa.

I logged a workweek’s worth of hours on the Internet and in the online Bible, researching demon fiction, demon encounters, and novels about angels for the marketing section of my proposal. I even researched accounts of angelic and demonic visitations. But I found nothing like my own experience. I wondered if all such accounts might be lurking in bookstores, already sheathed in fiction.

Sometimes I thought of Aubrey, though not by the hour or even the day as before. The most random things triggered my memory: A pillow beneath my sheets might remind me of her recumbent body, the sway of a woman’s wide-legged slacks recalled her favorite gabardine pants. Looking at the bell peppers, I remembered how she used to stuff them with rice and meat; it had been one of my favorite dishes. I picked up a large pepper, turned it over in my hand, and then put it back.

If the committee accepted my manuscript as Lucian seemed certain they would, would she find out that I had published? But of course: Sheila would tell her. Would Aubrey read it? And would she see herself in it, even though I had changed her name along with my own? Would she put the book down in disgust that I had not spared her but had included candid glimpses of our life, delusions and dysfunction, of my myriad emotions toward her, or would she simply consider it part of the story and not recognize herself at all?

Aubrey, you are so stupid!
The flare of my anger took me by surprise.
To do what you’ve done to a writer, knowing he has the power to crow it to the world!

But even as I thought that, I had to wonder: If the book were received even moderately well—well enough for me to make some appearances, to take an interview (perhaps in the Bristol Lounge), to travel to a few cities on a short tour—would she think of me in a new light? Would she wonder how I was and want to talk? And would Richard, fully assimilated into the culture of Aubreyland, become a little less interesting to her in the light of my new, self-propelled life? And if any of these came to pass, what would I do?

The thought of her returning to a discarded husband, so like Lucifer returning to his ruined Eden, infuriated me. I vowed right then that I would never throw open the door to her, that even if she left Richard, I would not be easily won back, that if we were ever to reconcile, it would be with grave changes on her part and fewer compromises on mine.

I found myself staring into the glass of a freezer full of organic beef and free-range chickens. My solitary form peered back. There was something forbearing in the tilt of that head, as if patiently waiting for what I must inevitably realize: that this thing I longed for was impossible. Aubrey would never change, and I could never be transparent with her again. I could never tell her about all that had happened in these weeks and months, my encounters with Lucian. And not just Aubrey; I could not tell anyone. I, who prided myself on my principles and on my honesty—and who prized honesty more than ever after Aubrey’s betrayal—could never be completely honest with anyone again.

A figure in a fleece pullover appeared behind me in the freezer window. He was broad across the shoulders, a little rough looking, some two days’ worth of stubble encroaching on his brown goatee. His hair curled out from beneath his skullcap, the curls girlishly at odds with his stark masculinity. “You don’t have time to cook.”

“A man can dream.” But he was right. I wasn’t going to thaw and cook organic beef, buffalo, or formerly happy free-ranging chickens.

“Come on. You can get salmon in the café and something else to go. You don’t have time for this.”

“You want me to have more time?” I spun to face him. “Then you read the sophomoric thrillers, the
Lovely Bones
copycats, the
Sex and the City
rip-offs and Joyce Carol Oates wannabes in the pile on my desk. That would give me more time.” I waved the empty green grocery basket, both relieved and angry to see him. There had been nothing on my calendar to prepare me for his appearance. Could I not be allowed even this semblance of a mundane life, a moment to mourn the closing of my chapter with Aubrey?

Apparently not.

Our little table in the co-op café reminded me of the brown, two-person one I had willingly shared with a gorgeous redheaded demon at the bookstore. I stabbed into the pink flesh of wild salmon, speared limp stalks of broccolini.

Lucian leaned into the curved back of his chair, stretched his legs out to the side of our table, and silently watched me.

You’d better start talking,
I wanted to say,
because I told Helen I’d get as much of the manuscript as I had to her before I left for vacation.

But I ate in sullen silence, having given up altogether on trying to complete a synopsis. The story wasn’t finished, I told Helen, and I had no idea yet how it would end. “I just don’t know where my characters are going to take me right now.” It was one of those writer’s claims I had always treated with derision, always contending that writers were in control of their characters, even if only subconsciously. I still believed this, though I had come to wonder if there were indeed other writers in my position, influenced by forces they could neither publicly own nor predict.

At any rate, Helen thought whatever I had might be enough for them to make a decision. They would look at it after the offices reopened in January, while I was sunburning on the beaches of Cabo during the day and holed up with my laptop at night.

Meanwhile, the attention I’d focused on when and where Lucian might show up and on writing the account was giving way to my growing fixation on how the account would end and whether our strange relationship would end with it. Would he disappear from my life once his precious story was published?

The thought brought me no peace.

Lucian locked his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Lucifer failed.” He sighed. “I was confused. Nothing about this made sense to me, and my lack of answers only unsettled me more.”

I knew that feeling. “What were you unsettled about?”

“Everything.” He shook his head, the boyish curls brushing against the thick cords of his neck. “This God-man, this aspect of the Almighty in the body of a mortal, this Messiah, went about his business in exceedingly unsavory conditions. I mean, he hung out with whores and extortionists. I was flummoxed. Having gone to the trouble of becoming human, why not choose better company? Why not announce it with fanfare? A little panache? Hades. Why not awe the masses? This was the creator of the universe, after all.” He threw his arms up.

“What did it matter to you?” I scooped couscous onto my fork.

“It galled me, the way people treated him—not because I wanted to see him welcomed or worshipped, certainly, but for the sheer fact of who I knew him to be.”

Like so much of Lucian’s account, it was something I had not thought about. The story of Christ was such a cultural fixture, such a central theme throughout history that I had never dwelled on these details.

“He had more coming. I simply didn’t see it yet.” He lowered his chin, studied the zipper dangling from the neck of his polar fleece. “He performed a few miracles at least. It was something. Still, I came away disappointed, waiting for more. This was Elohim, the Alpha and Omega!”

“More, such as?”

“A mass-healing. Something.” He lifted his head and rubbed his goatee, his mouth slack. “Even your televangelists purport to do that much. But this was
El.
He could have reshaped the earth, restored Eden, shown even a portion of that terrible power that had spoken the green and wild earth into existence. He could have restored the humans to their original state. Hadn’t he come to save them, after all? They were uninspiring creatures to begin with, but at least he could have done that much.”

“Why do you think he didn’t?”

Lucian’s face went blank, “He seemed more interested in restoring individuals. I didn’t understand it. Why mend one vessel when the rest are cracking all around you? Why mend one when the rest don’t even like you?” He laughed. “But it got stranger: The priests of El himself called him a blasphemer and claimed he derived his powers from us.”

I wondered where I had missed all of this, growing up. How pale, how superficial and ritualistic, had been my early experience with the church and their packaged God.

“As though our powers could compare. It was too ridiculous. El was humiliating himself and getting spat on for his efforts. And I came to think that now, at last, he would experience firsthand the misery of this mud race, and that in this way he deserved it. Still, as I look back on the hatred, the scoffing, the pointed fingers, I don’t know how he stood it.”

“Why did they do it?”

“Because he went against the religious establishment!” He laughed, the chords dancing in his thick neck, the sound of it arcing up now beyond his earlier chuckles to an octave it should not have reached, rankling. The man in the apron behind the café counter glanced our way. I was prepared for the instant composition of the demon’s features but not for the haunted look that crept into them.

“Lucifer, for his part, wasn’t happy about having this walking testament of his failure roaming the earth, embarrassing him. And something began to happen with him. His luminescent eyes turned shifty. He raged as he had not since the new Eden. We avoided him, entertaining ourselves with all the usual things—the running of his earthly government, temptation of the faithful—in hopes of raising his spirits. But he paced and stalked, and followed this Jesus wherever he went. He was obsessed, filled with loathing yet unable to stay away from him.”

I piled crumpled napkin and plastic silverware on my plate. “How long did that go on?”

“Several years. Then, in the space of one night, everything changed.

“It was Passover, and though Jews knew it as the saving of the firstborn by the lamb’s blood upon the doorframe, it will always be, to my mind, the thwarting of a perfectly good mass killing.”

I stared at him.

“That night the God-man did a strange thing. He broke bread with his followers, saying it was his body, and he gave it to them. He gave them wine, saying it was his blood. But then he said something that chilled my immortal heart—now mark me well—he said it was spilled for them in a new covenant for
the forgiveness of sins.
Do you hear this? Do you understand it?” He leapt to his feet, pacing several steps away and back, not waiting for my answer. “Pardon my human reaction: my skin crawled.”

He sat down again and leaned over the table, closer to my face than I liked. “We had waited an epoch for El to do away with these people, to, in the very least, give them their due condemnation. If we, glorious creatures, had fallen so far from favor, then we would never stand by and willingly allow these clay people—these
humans
—to replace us in his affections. Never.”

The hairs along my neck stood on end.

“But those words spoken over the Passover table sounded with the hollow echo of a vault, sealing for eternity. As the first words of your creation had been full and pregnant, these rang now with the harsh sentence of exclusion, finality, and damnation.”

“Maybe the forgiveness was for you, too.”

He laughed, and this time the sound was low like thunder tumbling beyond the horizon.

“You are so blind, Clay.”

For a long moment we stared at one another, and I felt the gulf between us as I had never felt it before, as one breed considers the other, and his own mortality with it, knowing that he will be surpassed and survived by the other, that the other has unwittingly succeeded him.

“With sickened sense I saw it all,” he said softly, his expression expansive, eyes slightly widened. “They were going to kill him. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. It didn’t matter that his trial wasn’t even legal. It was a fiasco, politics and government being the twin playgrounds of Satan. It didn’t even matter that he was God. It was an appalling thought, the created killing the Creator. It went against every natural law.”

The tinge to his voice was not sympathy or horror but a strange brand of wonder.

“But Satan was out of control. The danger ran off his back like so much rainwater on slick and well-oiled feathers. El would not bend to the temptation of his flesh. Well then, let him suffer in it! More, the God-man would suffer by the hands of the people he insisted on submitting to, these miserable clay creatures that he loved so dearly—and he would suffer greatly. Our prince rose up with a glamour to blot out the sun and roared,
Let him see how they love him in return!
”

“Are you saying you didn’t want that, too?”

“Oh, I did. But this was error, this was folly. I saw too clearly the God-man’s refusal of temptation, the immaculate life, saw in him the image of the Passover lamb. I raised my arms, my voice, took to wing, frantic for it to stop. I understood what was happening, and it had to stop—abruptly, violently, by any means, any force. But there was no one to hear me in the roar of voices both human and angelic. Lucifer and all my blind sibling minions were mad, frenzied as berserkers before a battle, intent on hauling this Jesus to the cross like a child before a runaway train.” He rubbed his forehead. “I saw it,” he said faintly. “I saw it coming. But I was only one being. I could do nothing.”

“You didn’t want to kill him,” I said, incredulous.

“Oh”—and now his lips glistened—“a part of me wanted him laid open, flayed apart, rent in ways that humans were not meant to suffer and survive. And I reveled in the sight of his suffering. I wanted it, I lusted for it. But even then I knew it for seduction. And as I saw the blood running from his back and his arms and down his legs and into the ground . . . ”