Pandemonium

was in the hall, but I was furious at my neighbor for waking me up. I yanked open the door, and he told me I’d been screaming my head off for fifteen minutes. So, a nightmare, right? What do I know.

“It happened again a few nights later. I woke up in the kitchen this time, the phone ringing. I’d gone through the refrigerator, pulling out everything and breaking bottles and ripping open packages. I thought, Jesus Christ. So I started putting chairs in front of my bedroom door, turning my bed around—little obstacles to trip me and maybe wake me up. It didn’t help. So I went to see that doctor in Colorado Springs I told you about. He started me on Ambien, but that didn’t do anything for me, so he switched me to Nembutal. The attacks kept happening, though, and that’s when I checked into the nuthouse. They kept watch on me, doped me to the gills, and I went a string of nights without any adventures. Of course, it was right about then that the insurance ran out.”

“So you came back home. And it started happening again.”

“It’s still happening. Every night I—”

I started to say, Every night I chain myself to the bed. I could tell her everything: the bike chains, the combination locks (because keys could be lost thrashing around, or could be found by whatever was running my body at night), the whole Lawrence-Talbot-at-Full-Moon melodrama. But not yet. Not here in the coffee shop. She waited for a long time, then said, “Del, tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m a little slow,” I said, “but even I figured it out eventually. The Hellion, the demon that possessed me when I was five?”

She nodded. She knew I was stalling, and wasn’t about to interrupt.

“He hasn’t been seen since. Okay, a couple reports in the news when kids acted strange, but those were just guesses, they weren’t confirmed possessions. And then, even those rumors died out. There’s been nothing reported about the Hellion since the eighties.”

I leaned forward. “Doctor, the Hellion didn’t come back when I was fourteen. It didn’t come back after the car accident.” I made a noise that was something between a sigh and a laugh.

“It never left.”

Dr. Aaron didn’t move. I looked around at the quiet people quietly sipping their lattés and fruit smoothies.

Finally she said, “You know this.”

“I can feel it in my head, Doctor. It’s pissed off. Somehow when I was a little kid I . . . I trapped it. I think my mother helped me lock it down the first time. And you helped me the second time—we just thought that the exercises were helping me keep the noises out, when they were really helping me keep them in.”

“Oh, Del. I’m so sorry. If you feel I’ve—”

I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t mean it that way.” I stood up, and pulled my jacket off the back of the chair. “You helped me a lot, got me through a really tough time. You were great.”

“Del, you don’t have to do this alone. I can help.”

“You got your scrip pad with you?”

“Del, I’m talking about therapy. We can start meeting again, work on this together.”

“I don’t want to work on this, Doctor. I don’t want to lock it down anymore.” I yanked my arms through the jacket. Fuck the prescription. “I’m done with exercises. I need an exorcism.”

Lew and Mom were in the kitchen, Lew talking on his cell phone and pouring a cup of coffee.

“I’ll be ready in a second,” I said, and moved past them quickly. They’d be able to read how upset I was from my face. “I just need to pack up.”

“No way, no way it should be that slow,” Lew said to the phone.

“Did you ping it? Run a trace route.” There were crumbs in his beard.

“Hey Mom, your ‘Self Clean’ light is blinking.”

“I put your laundry on the bed,” Mom called after me.

“Thanks.”

“If it’s self cleaning, why’s it just blink at you? Shouldn’t it just clean itself?”