Otherworld (36 page)

The others echoed those words, hurling accusations and wild theories Graham's way. The man reached his breaking point. “Listen, here, you idiots. There is no UFO, and there never was. You all need to go home.”

“Stop avoiding the truth, and do your job,” yelled a woman.

“You listen to me! All of you!” The ferocity of Graham's emotion quieted the crowd instantly. Even the unrighteous know righteous anger when they hear it. He continued: “We've got a murderer on the loose. He's killing people from our community, from our town. He tried to get a little girl. And all you care about is lights in the sky. And none of you's really seen 'em. Admit it, if only to yourselves. Now you can keep on grousin' on about aliens and sheesh, or you can go home and be with your families. You all got kids who are probably scared to death. Or don't you care? Now, put your stupid signs away and go home. Go! I've got work to do, and I can't catch a killer if I gotta mess with y'all.”

With much grumbling under their foggy breaths, the protesters slowly ambled off. Graham felt pleased. He had just delivered a giant, waking slap to the collective face of Trumbull's disgruntled citizenry.

That's all it would take to squelch the UFO madness in Trumbull. Private complaints carried on for several days, but there were no more protests, no more angry calls or letters. No more reports of UFO sightings. The whole episode would eventually become an obscure footnote in Trumbull history. Many of those involved would later speak ill of others, denying their own involvement. But the whole UFO mess was merely tangential to the darker goings-on in areas nearby. That episode was not over yet.

Graham knew this. A still, small voice recited a familiar refrain:
Be assured
.

From “Unclean Spirits and the Acts Thereof” by Dr. Leopold Sutzkever in the
Journal of Contemporary Theology
:

… [S]o I must address, of course, the fellows in my own camp who have made a virtual mockery of the dealing with unclean spirits. They, in essence, see demons in every bush. Every disease, every catastrophe, every misfortune of any kind sends them to binding and casting out. They give our Enemy far too much credit. Even more unfortunate, they believe him more powerful than he actually is. They endorse the literal equivalent of the American comedy routine catchphrase, “The Devil made me do it.” This approach is not without humor but is theologically suspect (at best). We are to emulate Christ's ministry, not Flip Wilson's. So the demon hunters cast out spirits of disease and handicap, and all the while lend support to the critics of
ekballistics
in general.

Let me be clear: I do not see good coming from the attribution of all problems to the working of demons. This teaching creates fear where there should be confidence, doubt where there should be faith.

Nevertheless, I cannot join the general critics. They are like the rider who, in fear of falling off one side of the horse, falls off the other. There are two dangers in our understanding of the Enemy and his minions. One is that we become obsessed with them; the other is that we take them too lightly. The Devil is real, and though the physical proof of demonic manifestations is rare in the West, to disbelieve in them is to grant the Devil his greatest goal—the disbelief in the Devil himself.

 

Malcam hadn't noticed Bering leaving the room. The creature was too consumed with Mike. He found the professor upstairs in a corner, seething. “What have you done, you?” Bering said. “You … you
mutant
!”

Malcam sighed. His brow spilled downward, his eyes narrowed. “Tsk, tsk, Samuel. Such insolence.” He said it calmly but sternly, conveying a warning.

“What's so great about him?” Bering asked. “Why is he so special?”

“Didn't you answer that question yourself?” Malcam replied. “Didn't I ask that of you? Let me remind you that Michael's involvement was your idea.”

“Was it? Was it? Didn't you put it in my head? Didn't you?”

“I don't like your tone, chum.”

“You said you would teach me things, teach me about reality. You would enhance my science. Teach me the secrets of hyperspace. But this is all mystical gobbledygook. You haven't taught me anything.”

“You're missing the big picture, Samuel. Don't you think there's a greater purpose to my visits than expanding your mind? Can't you see outside yourself? It will all come together soon.”

“But Michael? I had no idea—”

“Don't tell me you're jealous,” Malcam said. “You're a little too old for that.”

“I brought you here,” Bering insisted.

Malcam's smile disappeared. Rage boiled over. He grabbed Bering by the neck, his leathery hand wrapped full around, his razor-sharp nails piercing flesh. “I don't think you know what you're saying, Samuel,” he said through gritted teeth. He squeezed. Ignoring Bering's gasps for breath, he continued: “You have no power over me. The power is mine, you understand? If I want to come or if I want to go or if I want to plant daisies in your forehead, I will do it.”

He released his grip. Bering flopped down, his red face smacking the floor, his purple lips wheezing deep breaths into the carpet. Malcam stood over him, smiling once again. “Relax, chum. I have the same plan for both of you.”

 

Mike couldn't remember how he made it home. His hike from Bering's house to his own passed for him in a state of conscious unconscious, like sleepwalking. But he remembered his trip into the otherworld vividly. Its synthetic landscape, voiceless friends. Its inner garden. Its hold upon his wife. He remembered how her face looked as she hung in and against the thorny branches restraining her. He remembered the hold upon himself, Malcam's strong hand unbearably tight on his arm.

He remembered the altar. He remembered realizing that Malcam wasn't offering an awakening but a horrible sleep. Mike had never lost his fear of death. The one thing that had drawn him to Malcam ended up moving him away. Oddly, his experience didn't send him spiraling into his previous madness. Despite his catatonic stagger home, he sensed a clarity stealing into his mind. He saw the otherworld not as an entrance into something, but as an exit into nothing. And as this clarity cultivated hatred of Malcam within him, he could not help but think differently of Dr. Bering. Converging with his gradual awakening was a growing line of concern. He saw Bering in his true place—not as Malcam's conjurer, but as his captive.

Mike couldn't see everything. Not yet. But he could see that the otherworld was more danger than delight. And he knew he wanted to get Bering out of it.

He thought better of returning to Bering's house alone and decided not to continue attending classes. He located the number of the only friend of Bering's he knew and made a call.

“Ah, Mr. Walsh, nice to speak with you again,” Dr. Leo Sutzkever said.

“It's about Dr. Bering,” Mike said.

“Oh, yes,” Sutzkever said in a serious tone. “I had a feeling.”

Mike said, “I'm not sure really what to say.”

“Just tell me what's wrong.”

“I want to, but I'm not sure how. I don't know if you'll believe me.”

Sutzkever chuckled. “I think you will find, Mike, that I am hard to shock.”

“But this is weird. Real weird.”

“I don't doubt it. But there's no reason to hem and haw now, is there? Out with it. I'll promise not to think weird thoughts about you, if you like.”

Recent history for Mike contained experiences of inconceivable occurrence. How he ever started believing in Bering, or hyperspace, or the otherworld, or how he ever decided to test its waters, he could not fathom. They were the decisions of a desperate mind—a lunatic mind, to be truthful—yet their recent occurrence could not tell him why he felt, at this moment, years from them in understanding. But he remembered the relative ease of those wild decisions. Somehow, just talking about them was harder.

He did talk about them, though. He began with his first introduction to Bering, recalling the chance encounter in the library and his reading of Bering's articles. He tiptoed around meeting Malcam but finished with the unbelievable trip Malcam had taken him on. All the while, Sutzkever remained silent.

When Mike finished, the professor said, “You interact with this Malcam.”

It wasn't a question, but Mike said, “Yes.”

“That is extraordinary.”

“It is?” Mike mistook the comment for praise.

“Oh, yes,” Sutzkever responded. “It is much worse than I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mike, you have stepped into a place as interesting as you think it is, but more dangerous than you can ever know. It is not hyperspace or a parallel dimension; at least, not the way Dr. Bering believes those things to be. It is the spirit world.”

“You mean, like ghosts?”

“No, no. Spirits. The stuff of angels and demons.”

Mike recalled his conversation with Steve Woodbridge in Dallas. Steve attributed real alien sightings to demons. Mike found that very superstitious then. It seemed very prescient now. “Are you saying Malcam is a demon?”

“Yes. You've gone too far for him to be a hallucination. The fact that you and Dr. Bering both speak to him, and he to you, says to me that he is real. And he obviously means you harm. Therefore, he is a demon.”

Mike was troubled.

“Do you not believe in demons, Mike?”

“Well, I can't say for sure anymore. If we had had this conversation months ago, I would have chalked it up to religious hoo-ha. Now I don't know. Dr. Bering's claims had so much science to back them up.”

“How can I express to you the seriousness of your experience?” Sutzkever asked, primarily to himself it seemed. He finally said, “I am going to ask you some questions, Mike. Make some guesses, all right?”

“Shoot,” Mike invited.

“You have other problems, correct?”

“What do you mean?”

“It is my experience, Mike, that completely happy persons, people otherwise fulfilled by what their lives bring them, do not usually interact physically with demons. What, for lack of a better word,
problems
do you have?”

All of a sudden this guy's a shrink
, Mike thought. “My wife left me.”

“Hmm. That so? Very interesting. And so, of course, you feel empty, perhaps?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That can't be all. I don't mean to downplay your problem, but lots of men's wives leave them. Perhaps I can approach it this way: what is your greatest fear?”

Mike leaned back in his chair. Again the scene felt very reminiscent of a previous one: his chat with Steve in Dallas.
These religious guys really cut to the chase. My greatest fear?
He held the phone away from him for a second, contemplating whether to drop it on the ground and walk away. He slowly brought it back to his ear. “I don't know,” he said. But he did know. After a pause, he offered, “Death?”

It actually felt good to Mike to finally verbalize it.

“Hmm, yes, classic,” Sutzkever said. “Fear of death. But not of actually dying, right?”

“The whole deal,” Mike responded. “But more than that, yeah.”

“You think about it a lot.”

Mike nodded.

“You are, as they say, neurotic?”

“Yes,” Mike said.

“You worry a lot.”

“Yes, about everything.”

“It is practically debilitating. It interferes with your thoughts. And you probably have related childhood trauma. Stop me when I'm wrong.”

“No. No, you're right. You're so right, it's scary.”

“I'm an old man given to fanciful speculation. Don't let me put words in your mouth, Mike.”

“No, no. I … I saw a freaking rotting corpse when I was a kid.”

“Yes, I suppose that would do it.”

“And I've been seeing it ever since.”

“Extraordinary. I am no psychologist, Mike, but allow me to suggest something. Wave it off, if you must. It is not necessarily death that you fear, but what death brings. At least
for you
. I'll come back to that in a second. But you are afraid of ceasing to exist.”