Stephen Graham Jones - Demon Theory

MacAdam/Cage
155 Sansome Street, Suite 550
San Francisco, CA 94104
www.macadamcage.com

2006 by Stephen Graham Jones
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Stephen Graham, 1972
Demon theory / by Stephen Graham Jones. 1st ed.
four parts
ISBN 1-59692-164-1 (alk. paper)
1. Medical studentsFiction. 2. HalloweenFiction. I. Title

2010
Paperback edition: April 2007
ISBN 978-1-59692-216-7

Cover design by Dorothy Carico Smith

Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

for my dad, Dennis and for Marta

And is not that a mothers gentle hand that
undraws your curtain, and a mothers sweet
voice that summons you to rise? To rise and
forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams
that frightened you so when all was dark.

Alice in Wonderland

Part I of a three-part novelization of the feature film trilogy The Devil Inside, as adapted from D, the unauthorized best-seller inspired by the case notes of Dr. Neider, as recorded in a series of interviews conducted during his residency at Owl Creek Mental Facilities and originally published in the journal P/Q as Narrative, Me-dia, and Allocution: Genre as Mnemonic Device.

I know what happens at the moment of death.

Evgenii Kharitonov

Wearing jeans and a couple of mismatched shirts, running shoes with blood or iodine on the toes, a detail barely perceptible before the close-up of the duffel bag hes digging through.

In the bag are the various clothing changes, pill bottles, and anatomy books of a medical student, possibly an emergency room intern. The one book title that resolves itself is Brains Clinical Neurology. Below it is the justification for the close-up: a pair of human forearms, cleanly severed just below the elbow, and, below them, a mess of roan-colored hair that seems to originate from the back of what nearly has to be a human head, getting jostled as Con removes the forearms. Just before it rolls face-up, though, a door crashes open down the hall. A female skeleton and a male flasher emerge, holding hands, running the other way, disappearing into the elevator, already all over each other.

Con smiles.

In his right hand is the severed right forearm. With his left he fishes a cigarette from the pocket of his outer shirt, spreads two of the cadaver fingers, and fixes the cigarette between them, then leans the forearm carefully against the wall. It stays. The left cadaver forearm isnt so easy: to get the hand to hold the custom lighter, he has to break the hand into a fist, surgical tape it shut, then set the lighter in the well between thumb and forefinger. Success. He takes the left forearm in his left, the right in his right, and inspects, smiling, then hooks a foot through the duffel bag, drags it with him to the door the skeleton and the flasher spilled from.

He swallows his smile, holds one forearm in the crook of his own, and just manages to get the lighter going. With a cadaver finger he rings the buzzer, then adopts a consciously romantic cigarette-lighting pose [leaning down to the cigarette as if theres wind in the hall], recites poetry to himself:

Let me stand in your
doorway and light my
cigarette with the sun

But the door opens before he can finish, party noise drowning out any more lines he might have had, the song a slow and sadistic remix of Knockin on Heavens Door. In the doorway is a mid-twenties female with large, obviously false breasts stretching her T-shirt to its fabric limits. Pooh-bear pajama bottoms, animal slippers with lidless eyes. VIRGINIA. Con exhales smoke, appreciating her breasts.

Virginia he says, displaying the cadaver arms, so you going to invite me in? Trick or treat

Virginias eyes remain level on Con. She shakes her head. Thought you were on tonight.

Im on every night, havent you heard?

Virginia rolls her eyes, extends an arm to invite Con in, but Con doesnt pass by immediately, instead takes advantage of their closeness by patting the outside of her false breasts with his false arms.

Youre what now, he says, the prototypical teenage victim?

Virginia smiles. Not yet. But the nights an embryo.

She doesnt dignify the groping cadaver arms by shrinking away from them, either. She does direct Cons gaze to the left one, though. Your thumbs on fire, she says, already walking away, and after Con extinguishes the forgotten lighter and the charred thumb his POVstop-motion blurring into animation, animation resolving that one trembling image of the bird and the bat.

Soon enough the bat-figure perched on the back of the couch becomes important, easy to segue toEGANa slender guy wearing all grey, no skin showing, and on his head an expensive gargoyle mask, pointy ears and all. Hes balanced well, oblivious to the party going on around him, oblivious even to the cat-dressed intern screaming when someone gooses her, setting off a cycle of false screams culminating in Virginia, outscreaming them all. Back to Egan though, whos looking at the television set no ones watching, one of the Howlingsthrough the convex glass ourselves, above this house in the woods.

T HE ext. yet, but the genre is familiar enough that the visual shuffle through the still-unopened front door isnt uncomfortable.

On the other side is a living room in keeping with the age of the house. Its unlit, vague shapes of furniture hulking in the spaces between windows. A doorless kitchen entry to the right, landingless stairs to the left.

The shuffling noise comes from upstairs.

Its irresistible.

Its an old woman in her bedroom, a MOTHER on her nightgowned knees, scrabbling through her nightstand drawer for something, holding the telephone in the crook of her neck. Via a close-up on the drawer theres the scrap of paper she was looking for, the phone number with Hale written above it in block letters, and we stay close on that name and number as she rotary dials it in.

T HE cordless phone rings beneath the party noise. Its on the counter directly behind the CPR dummy. The television isnt in the shot. Soon all that is is the phone, ringing and ringing, until a female med student typeTJ, not in costumehappens to lean on it as shes squeezing around a wide someone in the kitchen. She draws her hand back, startled, then picks the receiver up.

This is TJ.

She listens, nods, and then navigates dutifully through the party, bee-lining the shut door of the master bedroom, which weve already cut all trench coat and will to believe. When he lingers too long with the baby powder over Seris farside breast, Nona smoothly withdraws an undeniably real 9mm from a shoulder holster, levels it on Hale.

Uh-uh, mister. Assume things. Bullets, position. Our first official date?

The shot now is stand-off wide, so theres no cutting back and forth. Seri cups her breast in her hand, as if protecting it. Hale assumes the position, hands up.

I he begins, but is mercifully cut short by the door opening, TJ taking stock as she enters with the phone.