Dirty Eden (28 page)

The demon smiled, proud. “Why yes I am. It’s good to know I’m so popular.”

At least the self-possessed attitude had not changed.

“WELL, DON’T YOU KNOW who I am?” I said. I thought Samyaza would finish chasing me as he was doing right before I ‘woke up’ in the hospital office, holding the license plate.

Samyaza studied me, but not as if trying to remember. It seemed more as if trying to think of something witty to say. “Unlike me, you don’t look like someone worth knowing, or remembering.”

“Oh I see,” I said, feeling a little more bold, “so that version of you in the forest clearing, back in Creation, it was just an illusion then?”

Samyaza’s smile faded, but he did not answer.

“I mean, sure,” I went on, “if I was ever going to create an illusion of myself, I would make him look more attractive than I really am. Who wouldn’t?”

“Shhh!” Tsaeb hissed through his teeth. “What are you trying to do? You’re gonna get us killed, you idiot!”

I saw Tsaeb hiding under a bench against the side of the building.

“Trying to be funny?” Samyaza growled.

The ground rumbled beneath me. I swallowed hard, hoping my plan, which was being put together as I went along, would not prove Tsaeb right. I stepped back just an inch, enough only to make me feel a fraction of an ounce safer.

“No,” I answered, my voice cracking, “Sorry, I-I was
—
I guess I just don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I went further as that underdeveloped plan of mine was unfolding in spurts. “But since I’m here and there’s nothing else I can do
—
what was I supposed to bring?” I pretended to be thick, injecting laughter into my words. “I thought I was supposed to brush Paschar’s hair myself, or defeat you, the great Samyaza, in a duel.”

Samyaza’s laughter almost knocked me from my feet.

“
You
defeat
me
in a
duel
?” He laughed again, throwing his head back and holding his oversized gut with one clawed-hand. One of his enormous curved horns smashed into the brick building behind him, chipping away a large chunk that collapsed into the courtyard.

“I’ve heard some ludicrous theories before,” he added, “but that one’s the most hilarious yet!”

“Why don’t you humor me, then?”

“It shouldn’t matter much,” said Samyaza, “when you’re about to die. I can think of several other last wishes to make the top list of any
smart
person.” He pursed his rubbery-looking lips. “But then you’re not very smart, so I guess I can’t hold that against you.”

“You’re probably right.” I nodded. “But just the same
—
never mind, it doesn’t matter. Probably isn’t even a very interesting thing I’d have to do anyway.”

Though I wasn’t looking at Tsaeb, I sure could feel his judgmental eyes glaring at me from the side.

“Now, I wouldn’t go as far as saying
that
,” Samyaza cut in, the concern for his delusional reputation hiding in his voice. “I bet you’d be amazed. It was my idea, after all.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, “so you think you can amaze me?” I brought my fingers to my chin. “I
dun-no
. Some people have tried before and didn’t get the response out of me that they wanted.”

Samyaza seemed nervous and ambivalent now, and while he was weighing his options, a small crowd of patients in hospital gowns and matching pants emerged from the glass door behind Samyaza. Most of them wore terrified faces, refusing to step into the courtyard. Three nurses tried coaxing them, as an adult might explain to a child there was no monster in the closet. They would not budge. The other four patients were obvious naïf’s and walked right past Samyaza without flinching.

“I’m going to kill you soon,” Samyaza continued, a decision evident in his words, “so I can go ahead and tell you.”

“But what if I don’t care to know now?”

“Why
wouldn’t
you care?” Samyaza was truly bewildered.

I held my hands out to my sides, palms up. “To be completely honest,” I said, motioning them and sighing, “I don’t want you to be disappointed that I’m not as amazed as you hope I’ll be. I’m afraid you might make my death more painful just to get back at me for it.”

“If that was true,” said Samyaza, “then you could just pretend you were amazed.”

“No, I’m a horrible actor.” I shook my head slowly. “You’d know I was lying right away, I’m afraid.”

Samyaza paid no attention to the naïf’s strolling aimlessly through the courtyard. One even passed right through his body as if he were a ghost, and the patients behind the glass all gasped and covered their faces with their hands.

More windows in the building filled up with faces. The sound of hands pounding against the glass was slightly more audible now. The glass must’ve been quite thick. It moved and shook with every thrust but did not make the vociferous noise it should have.

“It’s her eyes,” said Samyaza. “You were supposed to find them and bring them to her.” He laughed, gloating.

I faked my amazement and was a better actor than I had led Samyaza to believe. “Wow. Why didn’t I think of that?” My shoulders hunched over with false disappointment.

“You never would have found them, anyway,” Samyaza went on. “After I captured Paschar and took out her eyes, I hid them where I knew no one would ever think to look.”

The sun began to flicker sporadically.

“It was the greatest plan I’d ever devised,” said Samyaza, pride covering his features. “I tricked her and cursed her, stripping away her memories. And then I stole her power, using it against her. To keep her from ever knowing the Truth again, I made her believe the Garden and the Tree of Truth that she once nurtured were still there.”

My concentration divided between Samyaza’s explanation and our quickly changing surroundings. It seemed the more Samyaza spoke, the more undecided the status of the sun became. I felt Paschar stirring behind me and heard her mumbling soft words that I could not make out. But I did see what was going on now. Samyaza was the one holding the key to her memories, the one with the power of deception over her. As he carelessly told the truth, the Angel began to remember and to understand.

“But hiding the Angel herself,” said Samyaza, “was as important as hiding her eyes.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, playing along, “that makes sense. That’s why you brought her here. No one in Creation from the Outside would think to look anywhere but
in
Creation.”

“Ah-ha!” Samyaza raised his long, thick index finger high into the air. The patients in the window nearest him cowered and scrambled away. “Wrong again!”

“Oh?” I had expected to be right about that.

“Paschar exists in both,” Samyaza revealed. The wickedest grin ever spread across his lips. “Her body there, her mind here. Paschar is in-between realities.”

The sun disappeared and this time it did not come back.

I waited quietly for it, crossing my fingers in my mind, hoping that it wouldn’t come back even as much as I loved it. Samyaza was still too wrapped up in his own self-proclaimed genius to notice anything had changed at all. The four naïf’s walking through the courtyard even noticed that something was different. “A storm is coming,” one of them said. “A tor-na-do! Has ta’ be! Tha sky only gets dark that fast when there’s a tor-na-do a comin’,” shouted another with a heavy Southern accent.

A nurse ushered them inside. They walked slowly, looking up at the sky, awed by it.

“But no one will ever figure it out,” said Samyaza. “Every man he’s ever sent has failed and that’ll be the outcome every time hereafter. It’s almost a pity, really. I’ve grown quite bored with this game. I may just have to find something new to devise.

“Won’t be hard though,” Samyaza added. “I know I can come up with something grand and brilliant, if I do say so.”

Samyaza went toward me then.

“So!” he said, changing his thoughtful tune. “For now I get to entertain myself by killing you.” He said it with a huge and happy smile.

And then Samyaza’s demeanor changed in an instant and his giant demon face stiffened in a chaotic, teeth-baring snarl. His slit-eyes flashed and his snake-like tongue slithered out of his mouth. I began stumbling backward toward the Angel. Fear gripped my senses and stripped me of my bravery and mind tricks.

Tsaeb somehow had managed to find his way to the glass door unseen. He stood inside the hospital watching through a window. The patients in the windows above, overlooking the courtyard were worked into a frenzy. One slammed his head into the glass so hard that when he pulled back the pane was covered with blood.

Pandemonium broke out within the hospital.

Nurses ran past the tall glass windows chasing after patients and patients chased nurses. There were screams everywhere.

I screamed inside myself.

Samyaza picked me up by the waist with one massive hand. I had always wondered why the victims always did that in the movies. Now I knew. Fear has a way of paralyzing every muscle and sucking the breath straight out of a man’s lungs. Worst of all, it has a way of breaking his spirit and stealing his soul.

My lungs found air again and I let out a scream of agony. I felt my ribs crushing beneath the force of Samyaza’s grip. My eyes opened and closed. I could feel consciousness slipping away from me, but I would not have known the difference between dying and fainting if I had been given the chance to ponder it. I saw faces in my mind, those of my mother and my father. I saw Kate’s face and Amanda’s. I saw the face of the old smoking hag that had been influenced by the Devil somehow to catch her apartment on fire and put me on the Devil’s puppet strings. I saw the faces of Hugh Bastardi, Martin
Scovolli
and my best friend Danny and even those of people I’d never met, but saw every day in passing on my way to work.

Faces. It was all that I saw. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. There was no white light, or even a terrifying dark tunnel. Just faces.

And then my body hit the ground with a hard
thud
. I felt something pulling me across the ground and I heard a frantic and high-pitched voice. But I couldn’t open my eyes. It felt like they were attached somehow to my crushed ribs. Nothing worked other than my mind, the one thing I would rather stop working so that I couldn’t understand or know such pain.

“Norman,” said the frantic voice, “you have to see this!”

I could not put anything together: where I was, who was speaking to me, or what was going on around me. I wondered if I was dead and this was the beginning of my own personal Hell. The thought thrust my mind further into panic. Compared to the Hermit, Samyaza was as gentle and as beautiful as Paschar even in his demon form.

I screamed, “No! Just let me die!” Tears barreled from my clenched eyes. My hands clutched my face and my head.

Sophia smacking me in the face brought me out of the prison that was my mind. I saw her and the woman who had brought us across the lake hunkered over me. I was no longer on the Outside at the hospital. The forest trees loomed high in the sky. I could feel the dampness of the air on my face. But the sun was not shining and there was no soft green moss underneath me anymore. Instead, I lay on the forest floor against moist, dead leaves and broken branches.

“The Angel,” said Sophia, “she has eyes!”

I rose on my elbows until the pain from my broken ribs sent me crashing back onto the ground. But I had to see, to watch what was happening and so I pushed through that pain long enough to tilt my head to the side.

Paschar did have eyes and they were the most beautiful eyes set in the most beautiful face. A great white light surrounded her, but it was by no means blinding. Her white hair and skin seemed made up of that light. She still wore the sheer black gown. A nine-foot snake, black as tar, slithered around her neck and in her petite white hands.