The Repentant Demon Trilogy Book 1: The Demon Calumnius (3 page)

“The university will not appreciate the publicity, Ms. Fitzgerald,” he warned in his final attempt.  “Never mind salary review time.  The press loves stories about attractive female teachers accused of sexually abusing students.”

“If the university cares so little for integrity,” she said, “then I belong somewhere else.  And I don't care about public opinion.  Those who know me will not believe it.”

He seemed both stunned at her naivety and angry, but Mr. Reid finally turned and walked away, leaving her to wonder if this would be the end of this ordeal.  Abigail picked up the large satchel of books and papers she had dropped, then continued on her way home, completely unaware that the conversation had been overheard.  Calumnius followed, walking in front of her backwards, examining her face for signs of what she might be thinking and feeling.

She arrived at her modest apartment building, walked up two flights of stairs due to the “out of order” sign on the elevator, and entered a cozy interior laden with piles of books everywhere.  She kicked off her shoes and turned on some soft music while the shower poured out water, which ran through enormous lengths of pipe, hoping to attain a temperature nearly hot enough for comfort.  It wasn't much, but this was Abigail's haven.

The strains of ancient instruments carried Calumnius back to Egypt three thousand years ago.  The music was a hymn to Osiris, heavy with the rhythm of the sistrum, an ancient form of tambourine.  He could see in his mind processions with millions of spectators and throngs of warriors dressed in shimmering gold, which sparkled in the light of torches.  How was it that this mortal in the twenty-first century was able to hear such sounds?  He examined the equipment and perused her collection of CDs, the random disks lying on the shelf, and the empty case that described an artist who took credit for this marvel.  Admiring this sampling of what human talents could create, he perhaps felt compelled to admit to their having some talents.

Calumnius lingered there, examining her things and reading the titles of her books.  She emerged from her bedroom and passed before him, dancing naked in Middle Eastern style with a rolled towel stretched between her upturned arms.  The music was majestic, hardly meant for belly-dancing, but she forced it somehow to work rhythmically with slow, deliberate hip thrusts.  Her face was reverent more than sensual, and her body gyrations seemed like a tribute to some ancient godhead rather than a glorification of her female attributes, glorious though they were presented before him.  Though naked, she danced with innocence, her round, full breasts bouncing in a way that even he, who did not find humans attractive, could appreciate as having a certain beauty.

Smart, gutsy, confident, and attractive, according to human standards
, he thought.  Though he was not familiar with the rules governing the institution where she taught, it seemed to Calumnius as if she had handled the situation in the alley very well.  As she showered, he watched, seeing that her body was well-proportioned, much like the women pictured in the advertisements everywhere he cast his eye in this world.  This would probably classify her as an attractive specimen by her own species—desirable, to say the least.  Yet she lived alone, without a mate, and had never had one, from what he could observe.  The reason for this did not seem clear.  Judging by his observations of her kind over millenniums, it confounded him that she was so alone in the world.

Calumnius watched her body as she lathered her long legs, her breasts shimmering in the water and her hips swaying with movements that jiggled the rounded flesh of her buttocks to the rhythm of the music filtering through the open doors.  Her rich, long, auburn hair, now wet, clung to her back and shoulders, reaching down to her tiny waist.  He did not understand sexual desire according to human standards, but he could admire the symmetry of her structure and the pleasing curves and dips of her anatomy.  Calumnius felt no physical stirrings inside himself, not that others of his kind had not had such inclinations.

Legends proliferate throughout the human world about couplings between demons and daughters of men.  Some truth exists behind the preposterous notion, Calumnius would admit.  He knew of several of his kind that had attempted such unions, but all had failed.  Even then, he supposed that their inclinations were not so much based on attraction to the creature itself, but of a strong desire to bring about offspring—a living replication of themselves.  Sensual pleasures may have been a factor for some of the lower-level demons, ones with less mental capacity.  But procreation was the greater motivator, considering the extreme effort required for such attempts.  Reproduction was another gift from God to humans that had been denied both angels and demons.  But Calumnius did not share these twisted desires.  He himself did not approve of interspecies unions.  Such biological functions he considered beneath his level of comprehension.

The level of difficulty in attempting copulation is nearly impossible for a being without a body.  While demons, like angels, have mustered the power to produce structures of flesh and blood for short periods of time, it required great strength and much concentration.  Angels have been known to have appeared as physical beings, not only in Bible stories and in legends of all cultures, but even in modern times.  The tales are too numerous for any serious person to completely discount.  To perform a sexual union, the strategy is even more ambitious.  According to the Sacred Scripture, the Sons of God found the daughters of men fair—but those passages were something Calumnius could not take seriously.  The demons he knew of who had attempted this feat exhausted all their resources for eons of time.

Mastering the creation of molecules from the finest antimatter is difficult enough.  Constructing a male genital organ—something demons do not require for any reason—is arduous work.  To then produce cells and DNA capable of reproduction, ones that can carry traits of demons for which there is no human counterpart—the task is beyond the capacity of even the most powerful of creatures as themselves.  No such viable life-forms have thus far emerged from the uterus of any human woman—to his knowledge.  If such a thing had ever happened, the news would be astounding.  It was not something that interested Calumnius in the least, though he amused himself with such thoughts as he continued to watch his victim in her shower.

Abigail Rayetta Fitzgerald interested Calumnius, but not in a sexual sense.  He noticed the things on her desk, her choices in music and art, and a small sampling of antiquities, which dotted the shelves and tabletops in her living area.  Most of these items were small, less precious items from the Middle East.  A fossil or two, a shell, and an amulet.  The most valuable piece of all seemed to be the Egyptian amulet of Bes, the dwarf god, also known as Pataikoi.  These were worn to pray to the god for fertility and were commonplace during the period of 1000 – 700 B.C.  This one he saw displayed on a bookshelf would be worth several thousand dollars in the current market, a price that seemed beyond the budget of a woman who wore second-hand clothes and refused to pay for cable TV.  This possession and its prominence in the room spoke volumes about her.

Bes was used to produce magical spells in the pagan world.  Idolatry proliferated among the heathen, illiterate cultures.  Now intellectuals considering themselves of superior mental abilities labored to understand such portals to hell.  They tended to regard primitive people who made potions with frog eyeballs and foretold the future in pig guts as admirable teachers with ancient secrets while those who chose to pray the rosary were considered narrow minded and of lower intelligence.  If they had any inkling of awareness about the fear such prayers evoked in demons, they would not be so smug.

Abigail had assisted in excavations in Israel, Jordan, and Turkey—as her budget and the regulations of the variously changing regimes would permit.  Although it hadn't been her discovery, she had been privileged to excavate at the diggings in the Valley of Siddim, just south of the Dead Sea and the site at Numeria, which are believed to be the ruins of the legendary Sodom and Gomorrah.  Contrary to common knowledge, there were more than just the two cities that were destroyed by fire.  Archaeologists have actually located the northeast gate with two flanking towers through which Lot traveled with his family to escape the destruction as forewarned by the angels of God.  Angels—angels that were nearly ravished by the sexual appetites of the very reprobates whom God sought to destroy.  Their behaviors, in their extreme perversity, justified God's wrath because they actually threatened the human DNA pool.  These people actually mated with animals, producing grotesque offspring.  God could not permit such corruption in His infant civilization.  And it wasn't the first nor the last time God destroyed huge segments of humanity to purge it of its loathsomeness.

Another group of archaeologists, one which Abigail was also unable to join, had discovered the remains of Noah's Ark near the top of a mountain in Turkey.  The relics procured from the site are dated at 4,800 years old.  Such things are still being studied by scholars worldwide, and they only prove the point further in the mind of Calumnius—that the human experiment is a failure. 
God Himself should be ready to admit this by now.  How many times must he cleanse the world of human debris?  How much dead, putrid flesh must be carved away by the Master's scalpel before He realizes that the creature itself should be permitted to die out?  Did not the very first disobedience by the original pair prove their worthlessness?  It would have been better to have destroyed those two before they'd had a chance to fill the world with their flawed species.

Calumnius considered that he had perhaps chosen too ambitiously—that he would never be able to seduce Abigail into any form of sin whatsoever.  But he was not a quitter, and she had been chosen for the level of challenge she presented.  He faced ridicule and mocking by the other demons if he returned to hell in failure or with another insignificant success.  Life there was miserable enough, though he could easily endure isolation, be that their form of punishment.  It proved effectual with some humans, but they knew him too well to go so easy on him.  They would use torturous methods suited to his own disposition.  It would be unbearable.  He required nothing short of bringing down some good, holy person, a saint, to make up for all the poorly executed and mediocre performances over the past hundred years—every temptation after the encounter with Maria Goretti.

Abigail entered the area where he stood examining the amulet, walking past him to her desk, and began poring over papers—lists, pamphlets, booklets.  Miss Abigail was planning a trip, or trying to, if the expressions on her face were any indication.  She opened her laptop and checked online, bringing up her bank account, then scribbled some numbers on a pad of paper.  Exhaling through clenched teeth in exasperation, it was easy to read by her demeanor that she was experiencing financial problems.  Calumnius would never have imagined that a woman who lived as she did would be susceptible to the sin of Greed—but he considered that now.  She did not hunger for luxuries or wealth.  She hungered for knowledge, and knowledge had a price tag, too.  One she couldn't afford.

Hunger was at the root of every one of the seven deadly sins.  Something she seemed to lack utterly and completely—so content, so complacent in her world.  Hunger for honors lay behind Pride, hunger for sex—Lust, for food—Gluttony, for revenge—Wrath, for unearned reward—Envy, and behind hunger for ease lay the deadly sin of laziness called Sloth.  Miss Abigail did not long for riches—not wealth, nor jewelry, nor even security—but she would put her life on the line for the ability to travel to exotic places and excavate with experts in antiquities.  He had found her weakness—possibly her only one.  But that had been sufficient to bring down many a soul.  One weakness, indulged, could bring with it a myriad of sins.

If he could entice her to cheat or steal, she would become embroiled in a possible lifetime of lying and other forms of deceit to hide her sin or avoid punishment.  Or perhaps he could tempt her to do something out of her character to earn the money—exotic dancing possibly.  Would that be enough to keep her out of heaven?  Only if she lost her faith in the process. 
It would be a long shot
, he thought.

First I must take the smaller steps; I must instill in her an intense desire to join an expedition.
  As she threw herself upon the bed, attempting to sleep in spite of her troubled mind, Calumnius went to her desk to see the details of the hunger within her.

Her brochure contained a list of expeditions scheduled for the current year to several dozen countries and sites.  These were sponsored by the Archaeological Institute based at the University of Chicago.  Spread open on the desk, Calumnius saw that she had circled the one for Iraq—the digs at Nineveh.  It bore a price of $5,700.  With air fare and incidentals, she needed close to $7,000, and her account—still on the computer monitor—indicated she had barely $4,000 in the bank.  Considering she would need to pay ongoing bills and keep up the rent on her apartment, Miss Abigail was coming up short in the neighborhood of perhaps five or six thousand.

She lay on the bed, looking depressed as she tried to sleep.  Calumnius rushed to her bedside and crawled next to her like a giant cuddly toy, although no one could possibly consider him cuddly with his gnarled claws, tangled, matted fur and peeling hide.  His huge, curved, bull-like horns rested on the pillow beside her.

He whispered in her ear, “Iraq, Iraq, you must go to Iraq.  You need money desperately.  You deserve the money.  Other people have more money than they need.  You should look for ways to find the money.”  He repeated this mantra throughout the night.  Such techniques worked with humans because of their subconscious minds—yet another physiological inferiority of the human race.

In the morning, when Abigail awakened, her normal cheerful attitude was replaced by the strain of worry, and her face sagged with signs of stress.  He had seen her in her morning routine before, and she appeared quite different—in the worst way.  His subversive technique had been successful.  Now he would prepare the next step—providing a source of temptation.  This world was full of them.