Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (26 page)

“Mrs
Roeben,” I murmured, thinking of Chris’ sad loneliness.

“It’s okay,” she assured me, though I caught a hint of ‘but’ in there. “I have my own work, my hobbies and my friends. And I love Karl. Or perhaps I love taking care of him.” She pulled herself together with admirable guts and continued, “So that’s why I liked Gerry. And the few times she stopped long enough to actually talk to me, I liked her as a person as well. She told me about Chris, how they were separated and how she didn’t know what she’d done wrong to make him leave. Everything she said about him led me to believe he was like me, understanding of our spouses’ nature and accepting of it. Which is why I was so shocked when Chris showed up one day, in a terrible temper, accusing Karl of having an affair with Gerry.”

I had no reason to think Mrs Roeben would be lying to me. Until now, I hadn’t thought Chris had a reason to, either, but one of them clearly was. “When did this happen?”

“The day Karl had his episode. Chris found us at the university campus and he attacked Karl. Punched him right in the face and accused him of sleeping with Gerry.”

“Was Gerry there?”

“No. She was at the rooms she and Karl were working out of. I rang her later and told her about it, before Karl’s episode. She was furious with Chris and said she’d talk to him. I guessed they’d argued and that’s why Chris killed her.”

In a few short sentences I suddenly had more information than I’d got in the previous few days. It was starting to look like the pieces were falling into place.

“Can you tell me about this place your husband and Gerry were working?”

“It’s office space in a building in Hamilton. I never went there so I don’t know much more than that.”

“Was it in Karl’s name? No one could find records of Gerry renting space anywhere.”

Mrs Roeben pursed her lips. “If it was in Karl’s name he didn’t tell me, and we weren’t paying the rent, that’s for sure.”

“I believe Gerry would have definitely been paying the rent.” She had the money to spare and putting it in Karl’s name had probably been a deliberate move to cover her tracks. “Do you have the address?”

“Right here.” She opened her purse and dug around for a moment, finally pulling out a battered business card. It was a generic card for an office block with a hand written phone number on the back. “They’re on the sixth floor.”

Tucking the card into a pocket, I felt a big surge of hope. Things were definitely moving forward.

“And Karl’s episode? Can I ask what happened then?”

“After Chris’ unwarranted attack, I took Karl to a doctor and got him cleaned up. Nothing broken, thankfully, but there was blood everywhere and a tooth was loosened. Then I took him home. All the time, he seemed a bit dazed and the doctor had said it was only to be expected.” She shivered a little bit. “But when we got home, it was like he woke up and got really scared. He didn’t know where he was or what had happened. The next thing I know, he’d got a knife from the kitchen and was trying to cut into himself.”

“Dr Jones said he had attacked you with a knife.”

She shook her head. “No. Just himself. Kept ranting that there was something inside him and he had to get it out.”

“Dear God.”

Mrs
Roeben gave me a direct look. “No, Mr Hawkins. Not God. The Devil.”

Perhaps taking his life into his own hands, Paul Angelshire, Karl Roeben’s doctor, refused Mrs Roeben’s request for me to see her husband. At least he resisted long enough to claim his own chance to check up on my credentials. Rather than interrogate some poor person I happened to cross paths with, the doc took the direct route of ushering me into his office and closing the door in Mrs Roeben’s face.

Angelshire
was tall and lean in that ascetic, academic way that reminded me of all the older, commanding, mentor-wanna-be figures in my past. His glasses were round and wire rimmed, perched firmly on an eagle-beak nose and under his white coat his suit was dark blue and sharper than a wonder knife that could cut through a shoe.

“Did you win or lose?” he asked as he sat behind his desk and gestured for me to sit as well.

“Sorry?”

“You injuries. Does the other person look worse or better?”

I winced. “Better, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t win.”

He gave me a small smile then got down to business. “This is highly unusual. We don’t normally allow outside...” he glanced at me over his glasses, “specialists to see our patients.”

“I understand that, sir. But I did promise Mrs Roeben I would try to help her husband.”

A fleeting, knowing smile crossed his mouth. “Beatrice is not one to be trifled with, that’s for sure. But I have to ask, what do you think you can accomplish? Karl
Roeben is in what we call a stupor. The patient shows no critical cognitive function and is unresponsive to external stimuli. From what we can gather, Karl isn’t predisposed to the state, so it is likely it was brought on by trauma.”

“The fight with Chris Davis,” I supplied.

“Though the response is hardly equal to the extent of the trauma. A punch to the face, even a powerful one, is rarely enough to cause such an extreme effect. No. There is something psychological underlying Karl’s state, encompassed in the reason why he was assaulted.”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“How?”

This was it, Hawkins. Best policy or admit you were wrong.

I leaned forward in my chair. “I don’t know.” Best policy it was, then.

Angelshire
considered me a for a moment, then nodded for me carry on.

“I don’t know how you feel about psychics as a medical professional, and truth to tell, I don’t know how I feel about it either. I’m not keen on the label psychic but it is convenient. I could tell you about some of the things I’ve done. I could even scrounge up a partial explanation of how I do it, but I can’t say exactly why I can do the things I can.”

Beats me why I said so much, why I was that honest, but there was something about Angelshire that my old shrink, Doc Campbell, didn’t possess. Perhaps it was the way he said things straight up or the way he’d been firm yet understanding with Mrs Roeben. Or maybe it was because the whole psychic thing was already out there in the open. Campbell had been a decent therapist for someone dealing with anger issues, but I’d kept the more eccentric problems to myself. So maybe it had nothing to do with the doctors. Maybe it was all me. Campbell might have been able to understand me better if I’d been honest with him.

“What you’ve just said describes a good portion of psychological disorders,”
Angelshire said. “So contrary to what you were probably thinking, I can understand what you mean. When I was younger and more adventurous I worked with a  parapsychology research group. I won’t say my time with the group changed my overall world view, but it did show me that sometimes there is no clear explanation. In Karl Roeben’s case, however, I am more inclined to believe in an underlying psychological condition.”

“You don’t agree with Mrs
Roeben’s possession diagnosis?”

“Not at all. Do you know much about possession, Mr Hawkins?”

“Matt, please, and not much beyond what I learned from ‘The Exorcist’.”

Angelshire
stood and went to a bookcase, scanning the titles while he spoke. “As far as it goes, the movie isn’t a bad representation of the phenomenon. Ah, here it is.” With consummate care, he removed a book and brought it back to the table. “A left over from the days we operated out of a Catholic convent.”

He opened the book and turned it to face me. There was a drawn picture of a woman in a nun’s habit contorted into a fantastic knot while a black clad priest stood over her holding a crucifix and reading from what I assumed to be a Bible.

“True cases of possession are very rare,” Angelshire said as he turned pages, showing more drawings of people levitating, their faces screwed up by either pain or anger. “There are many criteria that have to be met before the church will declare possession. Levitation, superhuman strength, fits, convulsions, contortions, knowledge of the future, speaking in languages previously unknown to the person and revulsion to holy objects. Before his stupor Karl didn’t exhibit any of these symptoms. Beatrice has only done what family members always do. She’s latched onto something that is defined and, in her mind, curable. Believing an external force is to blame is easier than admitting she might not know everything about her husband.”

I smiled tightly. “You sound like someone I was talking to the other day.” Mental note, don’t let Lila near
Angelshire. She’d forget about me in a split second. “Thoughts of possession to the side, are you going to allow me a chance to see Karl?”

“I will, but I do insist that you refrain from anything overt.”

Wondering what his idea of ‘overt’ might be, I agreed and we went to see Karl.

He was a small man, as short as his wife and about half her width. The bed swamped him and though he was dark skinned, the white sheets and lighting left him with a faint yellow tinge. He sat propped up on several pillows, face blank, eyes dull and staring toward the window that had a spectacular view of the city.

Holding Angelshire’s hand in what had obviously become a familiar gesture over the past week, Mrs Roeben smiled at him. “Thank you for allowing me this one thing, Paul.”

Paul
Angelshire looked down at her with a tolerant expression. “This one thing, along with all the other one things.” But he patted her hand and stepped back. “I’ll be at the nurse’s station if you require me, Beatrice.”

I waited until the doctor had reached the station before going into the room. Didn’t want to appear too eager to be about my disturbances and it gave Mrs
Roeben a chance to go ahead and fuss at her unresponsive husband. She plumped his pillows, straightened the sheets and fixed his hands, draping them over his little pot belly. All the while she kept up a quick dialogue about what sort of day it was, what Aunt So and So had said the other day and how he had a special visitor and please be polite to him.

She had told me she loved taking care of him and I witnessed it now. Except it wasn’t all consuming research that kept him from responding to her care this time. It dug a little pit in my stomach to hear the hitch in her voice, to see the slight tremble in her hands.

The Devil. Karl said there’d been something else inside him and his wife firmly believed he’d been possessed, but that the devil had left him after Chris’ attack and taken her husband with it. While Angelshire was convinced it wasn’t the case, I wasn’t so sure. So far demons weren’t conforming to the traditional religious idea, so it didn’t seem impossible possession wasn’t always about pea soup and Tourette Syndrome.

I went in and stood by the bed, opposite Mrs
Roeben. She fell silent and looked at me with that same calm seriousness she’d had when we spoke. This lady had some serious strength and composure that couldn’t be dinted by a tank at ramming speed. I couldn’t help but admire her and hope desperately I didn’t piss her off.

“I’ll do my best,” I whispered and she nodded.

I took Karl’s left hand. It was cool and limp. His eyes were pointed at me but he looked right through me. There was a smudge of porridge on the corner of his mouth. It was a little unnerving.

With absolutely no idea about what to do, I decided to start with a trick I knew I could do.

There was a seat beside the bed which I pulled close and sat in so I could look Karl in the eyes without having to bend. His eyes were a rich brown so dark it was hard to distinguish between pupil and iris. The whites were bloodshot and there were dried tracks of tears glistening on his cheeks. Even as I watched, another drop of water welled, shimmered and rolled from the corner of his eye, down the side of his nose and onto his top lip. He never blinked.

I got scared. This… this was awful. It was so far beyond my experience it was entirely plausible I could do something very wrong.

Crap. Let’s face it. What more could I do? Something so horrible had happened to this man that instead of facing it, he was turned so completely inward the rest of the world just didn’t exist for him anymore. Something so horrible that even as he pushed it away as far as he could, he could still cry. That was already about as wrong as it could get.

So I stared into his eyes and concentrated. Unlike your average vampire, who can’t wait to throw its aura at you like knickers at a Tom Jones concert, humans tend to hoard their auras, keep them close and guard them jealously. It takes work to touch their aura and it took a lot of work to reach Karl
Roeben’s.

At first it was just flickering touches—hints of pepper and mushroom on my tongue, a vague taste of lemon at the very back of my throat. I focused on those sensation while exploring the variations of colour in his eyes; dirt brown and flecks of black and paler tan. Then, all in a rush, the flavours burst into a full flood in my mouth.

I pushed back, overwhelmed by the thick earthiness, the threads of tartness. But the sensation wrapped around my head and pulled me in. I fell forward and into those unseeing eyes, flailing helplessly, trying to fight clear of the sudden pressure drawing me in. Black pupils widened and expanded and I dropped right into them.

Karl
Roeben stood at a blackboard, his back to me, the chalk in his hand scratching over the board in hurried, frantic motions. Mathematic equations filled most of the space already, and to his left was a long line of blackboards already filled with senseless scribble. Well, senseless to me. To his right was another long line of boards stretching out into the distance, blank, waiting to be filled.

The space around him and the boards was a featureless grey room. There were walls, a floor, a ceiling and yet the space felt limitless. When I didn’t look, I could see walls from the corners of my eyes. When I looked directly, all I could see was board after board after board.

For myself, I was squashed into a ridiculously small seat with a flip down table over my lap, like something you’d find in a lecture hall if it was a uni that catered only to five year olds. I was jammed in pretty tight but was sure I could get out if I had to. Thing was, there was this really, really strong compulsion in me to not stand up.

“Karl?” I called. “Karl
Roeben. Can you hear me?”

Karl bent down to scrawl the last of his equation into the very bottom of the board, his writing getting smaller and smaller until it was barely decipherable as numbers and letters, yet he ran out of room. He gave a wordless cry of frustration and stepped back. The board in
front of him shifted to the left and a blank one replaced it. With a happy little sigh, he began all over, his writing big and clear.

“Karl?” I yelled louder this time, with no apparent effect.

Still compelled to remain where I was, I studied the boards filled with his work. While the nature of the maths remained completely unfathomable to me one thing jumped up and bitch slapped me.

Every board was exactly the same. Karl began the same problem each time, in the same confident hand, but as he worked his way down the board, it became more cramped and scratchy, more upset. All of them ended the same way, with hurried, mashed up writing pushing up against the edge of the board, clearly unfinished.

It was then I realised Karl was talking.

He mumbled over and over as he scribbled, his free hand worrying at his hair and throat. I forced my way through the need to stay put and squeezed myself out of the chair. The air felt as thick as water, a pressure working against me but nothing I couldn’t get through. But as I got closer to Karl, it thickened and actively pushed at me, trying to keep me away. With each step I managed, though, Karl’s voice became clearer and with every syllable I caught, my determination to reach him increased.

I can only imagine I looked like a miserable Marcel Marceau impersonator, but I persevered and eventually got to Karl’s side. Whatever had hindered my approach changed tactic then. I was there, it wasn’t going to get rid of me, so it gathered itself between us and wouldn’t let me touch him. For the moment, I was letting it have that victory, because I had what I wanted.

“Two and two do not equal four. The maths is not enough. It never was. We were just too blind.” A nervous, scared giggle. “Blind. Blind. We were so blind but he opened our eyes. It was never about the math because two and two don’t equal four. Two D plus two D doesn’t equal four D. Nothing equals four D. Four is an impossible number for the blind but he opened our eyes, he let us perceive, showed us how to see, how to hear. Four divided by three equals one point three
three three recurring, not one, but four into three is closer to one. Him. The observer. It’s all in our heads. In his head. From a three D spatial observational point in space, dimensionality is not a reality but a concept created by the observer, by us, by him. He opened our eyes but we’ll never see it because two plus two doesn’t equal four.”