Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

Impossible Love: A Piers Knight Story by C. J. Henderson

“Piers, what a surprise. Do come in — uh, both of you.”

Having Professor Piers Knight show up unannounced on his front doorstep surprised Albert Harper. It was an unusual thing for the professor — Knight was not known to risk wasting time by dropping in on people who might not be where he presumed they should be. He liked things confirmed. He liked his routine neat. And part of his routine for some time had been visiting Albert Harper.

“I could say something inane about just being in the neighborhood,” Knight said, “with someone in tow whom you’ve never met, but that would be what we in the business call ‘a lie.’ So I hope you’ll forgive the unscheduled visit.”

Knight had dropped in on the younger man numerous times since their initial contact in one of the professor’s classes. Harper was a young man to whom Piers had taken a shine. The pair shared much, including liberal political views, a keen appreciation for Asian cuisine, and a taste for mystery novels. They were comfortable in each other’s company, and their degree of similarity had kept them in irregular touch for several years.

It was a relationship Knight wanted to maintain.

He worked as a curate at the rightly famous Brooklyn Museum. As such, Knight had access to both religious and blasphemous articles of historical significance from throughout human history. On occasion, he had found it practical to borrow certain of those items for the purpose of self-sponsored experiments and investigations. In his time he had seen horrors and wonders. And, every time he narrowly survived one of the things he had found, he realized that he wished to spend time with the Harpers.

After a while, the thirty-four year old Harper thought he knew why; he had become, for the professor, a case study. Or, if he had not himself, his family had.

The Harper clan consisted of but two souls — Albert Harper and his daughter Debbie. Both were victims, in their own way. Debbie, of the ravages of Down syndrome. Albert, of the train wreck known as divorce. When Debbie had been born, it had only been a matter of days before her condition was diagnosed. She was afflicted not only with the disease, but with its severest strand.

Many children with the same handicap led nearly normal lives. The training was grueling for the parents and teachers, but it was possible. Working harder than regular students, many Down kids could learn to communicate with their parents, after a fashion. They could go to school, ride bikes, play with others, watch and understand television programs. In adulthood they could move about town on their own, hold down simple jobs, even marry and grow old with someone.

The high-end performance children, that is. Not those like Debbie.

Debbie was not high-end. Debbie Harper would never be able to communicate with others in any fashion. She would never go to school, ride a bike, play with others. She did watch television programs, but she did so without understanding. Her eyes were simply drawn to color and movement. In adulthood she would almost certainly never go anywhere on her own, hold down any kind of job, or marry anyone. It was not even certain she would grow old.

“So,” asked Harper, as his visitors entered his living room, “what’s the reason I’m unexpectedly playing host to a man who never drops in out of the blue, and a mysterious lady I don’t know?”

Albert had raised Debbie for the last seven years on his own. Her mother, Linda, had stayed for almost eight months, after which she could not take it anymore.

It.

“It” was her word for what their lives — her life — had become. She had wanted a daughter who gurgled and cooed, whose eyes shone with recognition of shapes and faces, who delighted in new sounds, who turned her head with interest and excitement at each new experience. Linda had wanted a normal, regular, healthy daughter whom she could dress in pink and take inordinate pride in as the new arrival learned all the simple things babies learn every day.

Once it had become obvious that Linda was never going to have her long-dreamed-of perfect, bright-eyed child, that her baby would not be an accessory to her life, but that she would be one of her baby’s — a constant care giver, the rest of her days devoted to a child who could barely respond to the simplest stimuli — she had begun talking with Albert about placing their daughter in a home. Such was not an option as far as he was concerned. And so it was, after a year and five months of marriage, and twenty-two weeks of parenthood, that Albert had been left alone with his speechless daughter to stare at the numbing future ahead of them.

“This is a friend of mine,” Knight said. Giving his companion a moment, he seemed to be allowing the wrinkled black woman time to regain her strength. It had been a long walk, up the front walk from the curb to the car, and she was old, very old. It was obvious to Albert that the woman had been beautiful in her time. Indeed, her black eyes held a shine that seemed to belie the deep wrinkles.

“Madame Sarna Raniella, meet Albert Harper.” The old woman nodded in a friendly enough fashion, but did not offer her hand.

Pointing toward the child sitting motionless in the living room beyond, Knight said to Harper, “Madame Raniella is going to sit with Debbie for a few minutes, while we take a walk outside.” Knight turned to the old woman, and, seemingly responding to an unspoken question, she said, “As we discussed, I shall talk to her, Piers. Constantly. Fear not — I will keep her engaged.”

“Good. As long as she doesn’t answer, everything should be fine.”

Without a further word, she made her slow way toward the sofa. Sitting down near Debbie, she began a seemingly endless stream of conversation. She spoke with the girl about cartoons she remembered, the snack cakes her mother had baked her, how fascinating it was that leaves changed colors in the fall — apparently anything that came to mind. Albert noticed that her gaze seemed intently focused on Debbie.

On her eyes, he thought. She’s watching her eyes.

And then he finally responded to the gentle pressure on his arm, allowing Knight to maneuver him out onto his front porch and down the steps. As the two men headed for the sidewalk, Albert said, “Going to tell me what this is all about now?”

“Yes, I am. And I’m not certain how you’re going to react. I have something very disturbing … well, not to me, but to you…

Knight stopped speaking, obviously at a complete loss as to how to proceed. It was clear something of great importance was clawing at him, demanding release. Suddenly, as if struck by inspiration, he said, “Albert, you once told me the story of the first time you held Debbie. Tell it again, won’t you?” Harper looked at his friend through hard eyes. He started to protest, but Knight cut him off gently.

“I understand your reluctance, my boy. Truly. But I promise you, I have a purpose. I do.” Harper turned his head away, his shoulders shaking slightly. After a moment’s silence, however, he closed his eyes and began to speak.

“It was in the delivery room. Debbie’d just been born. I was standing there a little stunned. They’d cut Linda; I wasn’t expecting, no one had warned me … blood had just flown through the air. ‘Normal,’ they said. ‘Nothing to worry about’ — but I wish someone had prepared me for … anyway, let’s just say I was in a state, you know?”

Knight nodded, listening patiently.

“So, while I’m still reeling from it all, out of nowhere the nurse brings Debbie over to me.” Harper’s face softened, the approaching memory so gladdening his heart the air seemed to freshen about him.

“She was so tiny, so fragile, I took her from the nurse, and I was staring at her. Of course, her eyes weren’t open, but I could feel this, this need, you know, spilling out of her, looking for something to grab onto, and before I knew it, I’d raised her up to where I could press my forehead against hers, and when I did that, I swear I felt her inside my mind. I…”

Knight waited, but Harper stopped his thought, choking it back, as if suddenly spent. After a moment’s silence, he muttered, “Anyway, you know all that.”

“I wanted to hear you tell it again. I wanted to see if you still believed it.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe it? I was there. I know it happened.”

“Yes, of course,” Knight responded, “but after all these years, with Debbie’s reversal, with no further contact with that mind you swear you felt, it is possible you might start to believe you imagined the whole thing.”

Knight let the fall breeze blow about them for a moment, then interrupted its soft whisper. “Have you, Albert? Have you ever been tempted to think you were wrong about that day?”

Harper’s eyes narrowed. When he finally spoke, his voice came out low and growling, bitter with sarcasm. “Sure, all the time. That’s why I let my wife walk out. That’s why I still won’t put Debbie in a home. And that’s why I’m working double shifts, driving my mother and aunts half-crazy baby sitting! How can you ask me that? How, Goddamnit? You know what Debbie means to me!”

“I do, Albert—”

“I’m telling you…” Harper paused, his voice choking, eyes threatening to betray him, “I know — I know she’s in there somewhere. I felt it. I goddamn well felt it, do you understand? You’re not taking that away from me. Nobody’s taking that away from me!”

“I’m not trying to,” Knight told him softly. “And I apologize for upsetting you. But it had to be done.” Knight tilted his head down for a moment, running a hand through his hair and then down the back of his neck.

“You see, I’m going to tell you something. Something incredible. Something you may not be able to comprehend. But you must trust me about one thing. I believe what you just said. I don’t just believe that you believe it, I think it happened just as you said.

“And after that,” Knight added, his voice going dark and stiff, “I think something monstrous happened. Something I don’t quite know if I will be able to explain or prove to you.”

Harper turned to stare at him. The two had reached the end of his neighborhood, and were on the edge of the local business district. After surveying the block for a moment, Knight said, “Over there, I think. Come on.”

Knight moved them close to a wall between two storefronts, their large neon signs buzzing “Sarah Jane’s Boutique” and “Hobbies & Crafts” on either side of them. When he looked at Harper again, his expression was grim.

“Albert, I’m going to simply say this as bluntly as possible — I do not believe your daughter has Down syndrome. I believe she is possessed.”

Harper gaped, as if his mind could not choose between the hundreds of possible responses that were all occurring to him at once. Before he could speak, Knight went on.

“You must understand, I came across the general idea the first time years ago. It’s an ancient notion, and in older times people were more prone to recognize the signs. But, simply put, oftentimes what we think of today as Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s or DS, cancer, all manner of ailments — they’re really cases of demonic possession.” Harper shook his head several times, as if trying to drive the idea out of his brain.

“We’ve known each other a long time,” answered the younger man, “and a joke this sick is completely out of character for you. So, all right. Let’s say you’re not deranged.” Throwing his hands up helplessly, Albert demanded;

“If you’re not, then just what am I supposed to do? Call the church? Get a witch doctor? Bring in the Enquirer — what? What?”

“Calm yourself, Albert.” As Harper turned away, Knight put up a hand and gently stopped him. “And, please trust me when I say you don’t want to leave this spot, just yet.”

Harper made a gesture that took in the wall, the neon, the sidewalk — everything. “Why? What’s so damn special?”

“My research has led me to a number of references to priests and shamans, across cultures and throughout history, waiting for thunderstorms, so they could prepare their defenses against such creatures.” Pointing to all the pulsing lights behind them, the professor said;

“Apparently these ‘entities’ dare not approach a barrier of charged electrons. No one knows why, although many mythologies posit lightning as a weapon of the gods, not their infernal counterparts. In any case, if there is a demon involved here, and it is trying to listen to us, it shouldn’t be able to make anything out through all the interference these signs are putting out.”

“You’re serious; you’re really serious. Aren’t you?” Harper snapped, teetering between rage and tears.

“Yes, Albert, I am. And if after all the years you’ve devoted to your daughter, if you’re ready to risk throwing away what time you have left on this Earth in a desperate gamble of freeing her from this thing’s clutches, I may be able to help you.”

Harper tried to stop thinking like a protective father and strove instead to actually listen to his friend. Part of his mind had instantly rejected what he was hearing out of hand. Such ludicrous jabber was, obviously, insanity.

New Age grasping at straws. Superstition.

Nonsense.

On the other hand, a different section of his mind added, knee-jerk reactions were often born from fear. Applying only a tiny bit of rationality to the subject, Albert had to admit the professor had travelled the world to seek out the occult in a thousand dark and terrible places. The older man had told him incredible stories over the years, swearing they were true. And because it was Knight relating the accounts, the younger man had believed them.

Harper knew with utter certainty that the professor would not have come to him that night if they were not friends. Looking into Knight’s eyes, he understood it was time for him to make a decision. The younger man admitted he was not certain what he believed, but he could not think of any reason why the professor would lie about such a thing. Glancing left, then right, Harper looked at the electrical signs supposedly protecting his thoughts, then said;

“All right, let’s not waste all this fine wattage. Tell me what you know.”

“Demons,” said Knight, “in these deceptive cases of possession, are not torturing the souls they possess. Their purpose is far more devious. They torture the care-givers; crippling their lives, disrupting possible futures by diminishing those it was deemed good to distract. Reshaping fate, the monsters terrorize with guilt and duty, forcing those they feared to bleed rather than build. Holy men in every century have been attacked thus, their families set upon by afflictions brought, we have been told, by minions of Satan.”

“You’re saying I’m supposed to be some sort of holy man?”

“I’m saying that some thing has taken an interest in you for reasons the two of us will never be able to interpret. The motivations of demons are their own, and a distraction from what is important at this moment.”

Knight was careful to look about from time to time. He felt safe from supernatural spies between the glaring neon displays, but he did not relish the notion of their conversation being interrupted by human agents, whether unduly optimistic muggers or an unusually curious police officer.

“Albert, understand — demonic possession is real, and it’s terrible. Then again, so are scorpions. So is bubonic plague. We can get used to anything we can comprehend. But moreover, we can stand up to it, as well.”

Having gotten Albert to the point where he was willing to accept the possibility of Debbie’s possession, Knight then explained what he might be able to do about it.

“That day in the hospital, when you placed your head to hers, felt her mind, new and fresh and searching, touching yours, melding with yours — all you need do this time is go further. Go all the way inside…”

Knight paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. His eyes locked with his friend’s, he said, “Once there, you’ll have to find this thing, drag it out of Debbie, and kick its literally Goddamned ass until it leaves her for good.”

“I just go into her mind and stop this thing, just like that?” Harper’s tone was a mix of incredulity and near-hysteria. “I mean, saying this is all real, this demon I’m going to go after, it’s been doing this kind of thing for thousands of years. How am I supposed to, I mean … shouldn’t I, I don’t know — what? I…”

The professor made to speak, but Harper cut him off, racing forward with his thoughts.

“I’m not afraid, not of dying — that’s not it. It’s Debbie. If something goes wrong, if I screw this up, I could be destroyed, wind up brain dead, or completely dead — right?” When Knight nodded, Harper went on. “Okay, say it happens. I’m not good enough. I go down. I’m dead. What happens to Debbie then? Who takes care of her?”

“You’re being straightforward,” Knight said, “so I’ll return the courtesy. The way Debbie is now, it really doesn’t matter who cares for her — does it? If you die, she becomes a ward of the state. She lives out her vegetable existence and then follows you into oblivion. End of the Harpers.”

Albert swallowed hard. Knight darted his head from side to side, checking the air around them, adding, “Madame Raniella has travelled the dreamplane before. She is one of the most reliable dreamwalkers to be found.” As his young companion simply stared, the professor added:

“She’ll take you inside, help best she can. You’ll find her far more vigorous in that realm than our own. No matter what she and I can do, however, the thing you must concentrate on is that, if you can catch this thing by surprise, you could give Debbie the rest of her life. If you can’t, then really…” Knight paused for a moment, then in a voice filled with nothing but cold practicality, he asked, “Is it actually going to matter to her how much time she has left … or if you’re there or not?”

The inside of Harper’s head fizzled with an anger tempered by practicality. Knight was correct, of course. He hated to admit it, but at present there was no connection between himself and his daughter. She was a lump of breathing meat that he cleaned and fed and dressed and put to bed. She could not button buttons, take herself to the bathroom, brush her teeth — none of it. She did not know who he was. If he was dead, she would not care.

She did not know how.

A tear on the verge of breaking free from his left eye, Harper growled, “Tell me one thing. If you’ve known all this for so long, why’d you wait? Why’d you fucking wait?”

“I’ll be honest,” answered Knight, his voice low, “yes, I did need to find someone like Raniella to assist, but also … I got distracted … and … please understand—” The professor coughed, excused himself, then went on.

“Listen, I’m certain if I were to go from hospital to hospital, I could find hundreds, thousands of cases like yours. I don’t go looking for horrors to combat. I’m not some supernatural policeman. Or demon hunter. I’m just a man. But you’re my friend, and once I was certain I was correct about Debbie, then I had to pull my courage together and act like your friend.”

“Yeah.” Harper spat the single word, his mind still reeling from all it had been asked to accept. Finally, after several seconds that dragged on for hours, he said, “I’d call you a bastard, but you’d still be right. So, okay, since you’ve got me in the mood where I’d like to kill something, let’s go see if I can.”

Twenty minutes later, it began. Upon returning to his home, Harper took Madame Raniella into the master bedroom while Knight remained with Debbie. Knight had started in with the same kind of distracting chatter the old woman had thrown at her, keeping the girl’s attention while the assault was prepared in the next room.

Giving Harper an opened bottle, Raniella told him, “Hold it under your nose. Breathe the fumes deeply.”

The pungent vapors began to relax him immediately. Then, while Harper stretched out on his bed, the old woman sat in a chair next to it, cautioning him not to wander off into his own dreams.

“You must stay focused. Wait for me to arrive. Once we find each other, we will then search for your quarry.” Harper nodded. Then, just as he was sinking into unconsciousness, Raniella added;

“And remember, dear boy, this is the dreamplane where we go. If you can imagine something, you can will it to be — as real as anything around you.”

“Meaning what?” Harper asked groggily.

“Meaning,” Raniella told him, “Whatever this thing throws at you, you just throw it right back…”

Everything worked as Knight had said it would. In seconds Harper was asleep. Remembering what he was supposed to do, he searched his memory, bringing the image of Madame Raniella clearly into his mind. The drawn face, silvered hair, delicate hands, stiff, slender body—

And then, suddenly the two were together, the scenery within Albert’s mind taking on a disturbingly real substance. The two stood on a vast and open plane, a red and purple expanse stretching in all directions. As vague bits of crimson dust swirled about them, she said;

“Concentrate, Albert. Return yourself to that first moment you saw your daughter, back in the delivery room — remember it, take yourself back to it — be there…”

Time shattered into millionths of a second. In each passing fraction Harper saw pieces of his most cherished memory reconstructed. Bit by bit, it fell into place — the unexpected cut, the gushing blood, his shock, the assurances, and then the nurse, walking forward—

“Would you like to hold your daughter, Mr. Harper?”

He took the bundle without hesitation. Held her for the briefest of instants, then raised the tiny, fragile body upward, touched his head to hers—

—flash—

Albert Harper fell to his knees, screaming. Bolts of pain shattered his chest and ricocheted off his nerves, blasting his senses, spinning him around, slamming him onto his back—

“Look at the maggot come to hold his little freak.”

Harper tried to drag himself away from the assault. Molten metal poured over him, searing flesh from bone, evaporating his skin, boiling his blood, dissolving him—

“I just knew I was going to meet you in here some day.”

The taunting voice did not issue from a mouth of any kind. It rode the electric jolts pummeling Albert, crawling into his organs and ripping them open one after another. It had a female lilt to it that somehow managed to be both familiar and frightening.

“I wish I could say it was good to see you again.”

That voice was one he knew. Recognizing notes, Harper began to identify its pattern. Despite the furious pain lashing every fiber of his essence, still he began to pull a face together within his mind.

“Linda?”

“Very good.” The voice chuckled. “Now I suppose you’re going to pull yourself back together and, how did he put it … kick my damned ass until I leave for good. Is that next, Albert, dear?”

Harper strained to open his eyes. Madame Raniella was nowhere to be seen. He was no longer in the delivery room, but further back in the past, sitting in a movie theater, the voice of the creature snarling behind him.

“This is where we met, isn’t it, darling? This is where you fell in love with me.”

Exactly as he remembered it.

“Is it all coming back to you, sweetheart? Is it?”

Harper remembered it all — being in a bad mood, going to a movie alone, not caring what he saw. He remembered throwing himself into the middle of the emptiest section of the theater. Remembered two women coming in and sitting directly behind him. The two talked throughout the film, but having his theater-going experience interrupted by the pair did not bother Harper for long. He was too busy falling in love with one of them.

“It never did dawn on you, did it, Al? A beautiful woman, with an interest in mystery novels, and gaming, and comics … a beautiful woman who voted the same way you did, who couldn’t wait to leave the theater and go to that new Vietnamese restaurant … how vain are you?”

Harper turned in his seat.

“Do you think I’m going to believe anything you tell me?”

“Baby,” the form of his wife said sweetly, lifting a hand to point a single finger at him, “do you think I care?”

An arc of blue-white flame erupted from her hand, cascading over Albert, roasting his skin, boiling his eyes. Remembering himself whole, inside his shower, he drenched himself, regenerating his body as he screamed:

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you care about, what you think, or what you have to say. Just get out of my daughter’s head!”

“Al, sweetie,” the familiar thing smiled. “What makes you think I’m in her head anymore?”

The Linda-like thing waved its hand and boils flooded forth from every pore of Harper’s body. Hundreds, thousands of them, they burst open, pus and blood bubbling up from each of them. Harper endured the torment for a moment, then rejected the plague, throwing it off as he had the earlier torments. As he did, the ever-changing landscape settled once more into the red and purple wasteland he first encountered. As Harper steadied himself, the Linda thing strode purposely into his field of vision.

“Very slow, sweetheart,” it told him. Hands on its knees, body bent to show all its parts off to their best advantage, the thing told him, “Too slow, really. I mean, seriously, what do you think can really come of all this?”

Before Albert could answer, the ground opened and swallowed him. He tried to leap away, but he could not compensate for the slam of crushing gravity sent to shovel him into the latest torment. As he fell below the surface of the dreamplane, the ground rushed in, sand and gravel and choking dust, not just piling atop him, but grinding against him, digging its way into his skin — tearing it from his body, shredding it. First one layer, then the second, hair torn away, scalp bloody, nails being etched, eye brows and lashes ripped out by the roots—

“No!”

Albert clawed his way to the surface, breaking the ground open with his back and shoulders. His head felt cracked; blood sluiced over his ears, down his forehead. His hands ached from clawing his way free. The Linda thing cackled as he gasped for air.

“You can’t do it, you know.”

“Do what?” Albert’s voice was a ragged, panting thing, weak and feeble.

“Beat me. Can’t be done.”

“Bullshit,” Harper said weakly. “Human beings been … kicking the ass of your, your kind for centuries.”

“True, perhaps.” Sitting on a large violet rock seemingly carved to resemble a great, rolling tongue, the Linda thing added, “But that takes actual faith.”

With a snap of its fingers, the thing unleashed a ravenous horde of insects to devour Albert. As quickly as he could shield himself, regenerate his flesh, the overwhelming waves of chittering creatures would find their way to him once more, begin chewing again, ripping again, tearing, slicing, stinging, gnawing—

“The moment Linda first sat down behind you,” the thing snickered, “you had no faith in your chances with her.”

Albert cleared his mind enough to summon a great wind to carry the horde away from him. He had nearly a full second’s respite before the Linda thing turned his body to glass and began tossing shards of rock at him.

“When she started to talk,” the thing laughed, shattering Albert’s left arm at the elbow, “you wanted her so badly. But you never believed you could actually have her.”

Concentrating, Albert was able to reform his body, but only for as long as his opponent allowed it. While he wiped at the sweat running down his forehead, half of it water, half of it tiny glass beads, the Linda thing took the moment to finish its thought.

“You don’t have the belief in you to get rid of me, sweetheart, and that’s what’s going to make this so much fun.”

“Fun?” asked Albert, confused. “What’s going to be so much fun?”

“Why, us — darling.”

Before he could react, the thing was behind him, its all-too familiar arms encircling his chest. The touch jarred too many memories, splitting him, rending him — making him ache for his ex-wife the way a starving man yearns for food. The feel of her was fire; crisping skin, sweat that tasted like bacon — alluring, forbidden, salty — delicious. Her breasts came against his back in exactly the way he remembered; the heat of her breath curled across his neck, into his ear. He had been so long without female contact — any female contact — let alone hers, that his body surrendered to the touch involuntarily. Craving it; luxuriating against it — simply, pitifully, longing for it to never end.

“You’re my dog, Albert,” the thing whispered. “You may fight against me, but I’ve got you.” The young man struggled against the all-too-pleasant hold binding him. The arms held him securely while their owner whispered; “Poor boy — you just don’t understand yet, do you? You can’t resist me. No matter how many pains you endure, how many trials you turn back, I can always think up more. You don’t have any way to resist me. You don’t have any faith in anything, sweetheart. And, without faith, I can’t be driven away.”

Chuckling, its voice a mad titter swirling the dust about his head in never-ending spirals, the creature shifted its grip and suddenly drove its hands into Albert’s sides. Pulling organs free from his body, it tossed them casually over its shoulder, saying;

“And, even if you could ever drive me out of your head, what would it gain you? You sad, stupid man…”

Albert sagged, tiring from the pain, the endlessness of it — the futility of it — hurt too much, so terribly much he simply had to rest. As he gasped, struggling desperately to marshal his thoughts, the red-handed thing above him sighed, dribbling spittle into Albert’s face as it said;

“After all, if you ever get me to run from you, where do you think I’ll go?” The demon let him go then did a little dance, spinning itself madly as it screeched, “I’ll just go back into Debbie.”

The taunting voice grew louder as Albert pushed himself toward his scattered bits. Beside itself with laughter, the Linda thing watched with amusement as its victim labored to reconstitute himself. Stretching its body out to its fullest, the creature cooed;

“Face it, sweetie, you’ve got no chance. Not you or your little bitch.”

Albert glowered, summoning every bit of resentment he had ever felt toward his ex-wife. Every hurt, every scorn, every bit of meanness that festered within him. If his enemy wanted to play those rules, he told himself — okay, fine — he could accommodate it.

“You whore…”

He muttered the words, staring for a moment, taking in once more the face that haunted him. Then he spun away and used the image to focus, shielding himself in familiar armor. Without warning, Albert threw himself upward, flashing backward across the dusty plane at the Linda thing. The creature dodged his efforts, but he turned in mid-air and followed its path. His life over, shattered by despair, he approached the monster’s taunts with all he had.

Wrapping all the hurt he had within him around his fists, Albert burst with a dark brilliance which collapsed its way through all barriers and knocked the demon onto its back. His eyes wild with the flash of a thousand moments in time racing forward to a single instance, he slammed the laughing monstrosity across the jaw repeatedly; split open its mouth, broke its nose — closed one eye. The creature tittered as it said, “I bet you’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

“Not as much as I do…”

Both Albert and the Linda thing turned toward the new voice. Hands made of lightning and fire grabbed up the creature, squeezing its insides into jelly.

“You made my mommy leave me!”

The shape of Linda Harper disappeared, replaced by a noxious form, a repulsive creature comprised of a squat, flaccid body animated by long, angular hind legs. Its eyes were a frightened yellow hue, bulbous sacs filled with a red liquid which sloshed freely inside them. As the monstrous thing bellowed, its voice echoing raggedly across the dreamplane, the blazing hands tore it into smaller and smaller shreds, finally incinerating the bits when they were too tiny to grasp.

Albert Harper watched as his daughter dispatched the last scraps of their foe. Smiling, he attempted to rise to his feet. Finding he could not, he tried to speak. No words came forth, however, and he collapsed in a broken heap, all the fight gone from him.

Silent, but content.

“Well, look who’s awake.”

Albert blinked. The room was only dimly lit, but even the single, shaded bulb was more than he could take. Feebly placing a hand over his eyes, he croaked:

“Wha — what, what happened?”

“Shhhhhhhhh,” answered Knight. “Don’t try to talk. You rest. I’ll explain.” Albert nodded weakly. He could just make out the figure of Madame Raniella somewhere in the background behind the professor. His body hurt so fiercely, he felt that the only thing keeping him from screaming was the simple fact his voice could barely work.

“If you’re thinking you were sent into something all the facts, it’s true,” Knight said. “Why this thing chose to bring you suffering, as I said before, there’s no way for us to know. But, once you stepped onto the dreamplane, I was certain it would leave Debbie’s mind to get at you.”

“So … what’d that accomplish?”

“After Raniella led you to it, she abandoned you to face the demon alone. While you held it off, we repeated the same procedure with Debbie.”

“I, I don’t…”

“Albert, please, don’t try to talk. You’ll only injure yourself further. Anyway, the rest is simple. Remember, with the demon no longer blocking Debbie’s higher functions, she could think as clearly as anyone else.”

“Your Debbie,” Madame Raniella said, “once that horror left your mind for hers, she could think as clearly as anyone. It took me but a few minutes to inform her as to what was happening. She knows who you are, Albert Harper, and all that you have done for her.”

“You have to understand, Al,” Knight said softly. “She’s always known what you were doing for her, or at least, half her mind has. The demon sat at the juncture between those sections of the mind where knowledge’s stored and where it’s utilized. The block removed, she could suddenly make sense of all she’s learned over the years.”

Albert blinked, the pain from the effort nearly unbearable. Although his encounter had left him with no actual physical damage, his nerve endings were afire, all his muscles bruised. As he pieced together what Knight had told him, he whispered.

“You mean…”

“I mean, there’s someone here who wants to say ‘hello.’”

And then, the professor and his companion stepped away from each other to allow Debbie access to the room. Heading for her father’s bed at a run, she threw herself through the air, arms outstretched, hair flying wildly, eyes ablaze with happiness as she screamed:

“Daddy!”