Pandemonium

“Look,” I said. “What if there is no connecting medium? What if the demons have nothing to do with archetypes?” I pushed away from the table. We’d been camped out in the dining room all this time, because that’s where the files were. “The philosophizing angels and snake women Jung saw don’t have much in common with American demons. How many gun-toting vigilantes did Jung meet when he was touring the underworld?”

“Now you’re just being difficult,” O’Connell said.

“The archetypes don’t change,” Meg said, voice even as always.

“But their expression at any given time is filtered through culture. The Truth is an imago of the father, the destroyer and protector, like Shiva and Abraxas. The Captain is our Siegfried, the eternal hero. And the Piper, obviously, is just an aspect of the Trickster.”

“There are no new ideas,” Fred said from behind his book.

“There’s only repackaging.”

“What about Valis?” I said.

“A purely rational being, absent of emotion,” Meg said. “The representation of thought itself, dressed in technological garb.”

“You said Valis was a fake,” I said to O’Connell.

“He is. Dick made him up—writers do that.”

“Maybe he did make him up, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a demon. Maybe he’ll disappear when Dick dies—kill the author, kill the demon.”

“You can’t kill an archetype,” Fred said.

I stood up. “You know what? I don’t feel like a fucking archetype.”

I walked around the end of the table and pulled out the wheelchair. Fred looked up from his book with alarm.

“I don’t know what the hell I am,” I said. “But I know one thing. I don’t belong here.” O’Connell tried to interrupt, but I cut her off.

“Here. In this body.” I gripped the edge of the wheelchair, rolled it into me. “It’s not mine. There’s a kid who got it taken away from him. So.” I pushed the chair forward again, pulled it back. I couldn’t look at their faces. “So why don’t we do something useful and find me a body. My own goat. Maybe a murderer or something, somebody who doesn’t deserve their skin anymore.” I looked up. “How about that? Got any serial killers in those files?”

“This isn’t all about you and the boy,” O’Connell said.

“No? Who the hell is it about then?”

She gestured at the fan of pictures on the table. “Those kids. Toby. Dr. Ram. Everybody who’s been possessed, everybody who’s had their lives ruined by the demons.”

“You mean you.”

“Yes, me too!” She was on her feet now, her pale skin flushed.

“And your brother, and your mother, and everyone who’s ever—”

Meg said, “Siobhan, please . . .”

O’Connell stalked toward me. “We have a chance here—maybe the first real chance we’ve ever had. You’re one of them, Del. What they know, you know. We can find out how the demons do what they do; we can find out how to turn you—”

She shut her mouth.

I raised my eyebrows. “You were about to say, turn me off.”

The Waldheims watched us. No one said anything.

“Okay.” I nodded, ran a hand through my hair. “I can get behind that. That’s what I want too. Tell me how.”

O’Connell and Fred exchanged a look.

“You already have a plan,” I said.

“We think you should try to jump again,” O’Connell said.

“What—now?”

“If you’re ever going to leave your current body, you’re going to have to practice,” she said. “Better to do it into the body of a volunteer, in a controlled environment surrounded by people who could take care of the boy.”

“Who’s the volunteer? You?”

O’Connell seemed embarrassed at this. Meg looked away. Then the Other Dr. Waldheim raised his hand.

“Fred?!”

My head swiveled between the old man and the women. “Are you