The Evil Inside (14 page)

The next morning, Bill dumped a bulky J.C. Penney bag on my desk.

Given my recent nine rounds with Buzz, I eyed it with a degree of trepidation.

‘It's only books, man,' Bill said. ‘Don't worry, they won't bite.'

I pulled the first one out:
Hostage to the Devil
by Malachi Martin.

‘Although they may just hijack your soul and drag you straight down to Hell!'

I pulled out the next two:
The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty and
People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
by M. Scott Peck, MD. Then there was
An Exorcist Tells His Story
by Father Gabriele Amorth and the final volume,
Beat the Devil: A Modern History of Exorcism in America
by Randall Maddox.

I looked dumbly at Bill. ‘For your alleged novel, dummy!' he clapped his hands together. ‘I thought you wanted to write the next
Omen
!'

Since we'd come back from Arcadia, I'd half-heartedly surfed the net for subjects such as ‘demonic possession in children'. Bill had looked over my shoulder one early evening and declared, ‘Typical copywriter: always researching – but never actually writing – his alleged novel.'

‘Oh yes, sorry,' I said, picking up Father Amorth's book and turning it over. ‘Of course. Thank you. Where did you get them all?'

‘My father gave them to me last year when I went to visit him.' Bill replied. ‘He was beefing up on his occult studies.'

‘Well thanks. I look forward to … learning from them.'

Bill was flicking through
The Exorcist
. ‘You know, my Dad once told me that William Peter Blatty once appeared on Groucho Marx's TV Show,
You Bet Your Life,
back in the fifties and won 10,000 bucks.'

The demon spirit featured on
The Exorcist's
cover looked just like an ultrasound photo.

*

‘So how have you been feeling this week?'

I shrugged. She was being paid a king's ransom to enquire about my well-being, so forgive me for being a little dubious about her sincerity.

‘A little anxious, I suppose.'

That was all she was getting. I really didn't feel like doing all this psycho-bullshit today.

‘You know Freud said that anxiety is the only emotion that doesn't deceive.'

‘Yes, but maybe he was lying.'

Blakely leaned back in her Mirra chair and rolled her hazel eyes behind her Tom Ford bifocals. ‘Guy, we've spoken about this before: you often use harsh humour – and it's often directed against yourself – to mask how you're really feeling.'

‘If you knew how I was really feeling, you'd crack jokes, too.'

She now looked directly at me. ‘Draw me a picture of your family,' she instructed, thrusting a fat blue Pentel at me.

I couldn't believe it: today she really was going to ask me to draw a picture. I shrugged again. Drawing would waste some interrogation time at least.

‘My new family or my old family?'

‘Your old family.'

‘I'm a writer not an art director, but anyway …'

I slowly completed my rudimentary family portrait, then handed the sheet back to her.

My faceless parents were either side of centre – about two centimetres apart – and my sister, Raine, was rocking back and forth in her own little world bottom right.

I could sense Blakely sigh a little.

‘Anything wrong? I told you I wasn't an art director.'

She rubbed her forehead. ‘There's no right or wrong, Guy. Some people draw their family as a unit; all together. Some don't. But I'd like to know where
you
are in this picture?'

I hadn't included myself. I hadn't realized I was meant to. Maybe it was a trick question?

‘In my room probably. Trying to stay out of trouble.'

Outside, the sky looked all bruised and broken up. Clouds bunched together like dirty old men in raincoats while a water tower on top of the adjacent building loomed grey and grim – like a sarcophagus.

I looked back into the room. Dr Blakely had put her fingertips together and was holding them up to her lips. She seemed to do that whenever I gave her something juicy.

‘All right, so now draw me your “new family”.'

But I was onto her this time. I drew Mia, Callum and me all standing happily together, smack dab in the middle of the page. I even drew a little smiley face on Mia's belly.

This time, Blakely looked perplexed. She pointed at the little face.

‘What's happening here?'

‘It's another joke, I'm afraid. Callum used to draw a smiley face on Mia's bare belly.'

Her headlight eyes were blinding me now. ‘But Mia doesn't have that belly any more, does she, Guy? And yet you've drawn her as if she does?'

I really had no idea why I'd drawn Bubby. I wished she'd leave me alone with all her stupid fucking questions.

‘Guy?'

I decided I didn't like her so much today. She'd done something different with her hair that didn't suit her. She looked a little tired.

Plus, I was in an evil mood and felt like she was baiting me.

‘So what?' I growled.

She gave me a few moments.

‘You know, Guy, anger is usually masking something else much deeper. Like grief or loss. That's why you need to work through it. To get behind the mask … '

She was still going on about ‘getting behind the mask', as if I were holding something back.

Truth be told, I'd wanted to tell her about the incredible events involving Callum over the past few months – and which I'd almost been able to get my head around because things had appeared to settle down for a short period of time after Arcadia – but just hadn't been able to find the right way to broach the subject.

Maybe that was why I'd drawn Bubby – as some sort of subconscious strategy? Callum seemed connected to Bubby in some mysterious and malevolent way, and introducing her into the discussion was the lead-in I needed?

But in recent weeks my terrifying Callum experiences seemed to be gaining in momentum, and I was again unable to make any sense of these events – even to myself.

So I still couldn't go there.

From the couch to the shoot for our commercial.

‘Mia's going home.' I told Lucy.

‘Jesus, Guy! When?' Was there some barely disguised joy in her question?

‘In about ten days. She's taking Callum with her.'

‘Oh God. What are you going to do?'

Bill had a quiet word with our female director – a frizzy-haired, highly strung little firecracker – who then instructed the actor playing the head detective to bring the note up closer to his face, rather than holding it at waist-height to read it.

‘Dunno. It's beyond me.'

The actor did another take. He was still holding the note too low. Lucy squeezed my hand. ‘Maybe you two should try some counselling?'

‘Been there, failed that.'

Two of the coolcams clients – the older, fatter VC and the twenty-something CEO – looked at me uncertainly. I'd laughed too loud.
They
were worried about their precious ad baby – so why wasn't their creative director? In fact, for a while now they'd all been acting somewhat distant toward me.

‘Don't worry, guys,' I whispered. ‘We'll nail it!'

‘Quiet on set!' the director yelled again.

‘Oh dear,' Lucy said through her shine-in-the-dark teeth.

The actor did it right. Then he did it even righter on the next take. And the next one. We finally had a coolcams commercial.

‘That's a wrap!' The director slumped down in her chair and clapped. ‘Congratulations, people.'

‘In the can, baby,' Bill's voice cracked with fatigue.

People already had their coats on. The director's assistant was pouring mid-priced champagne into paper cups.

Lucy leaned into me in the darkness. ‘Would a slow, comfortable screw make you feel better?'

Compared to Mia – even unpregnant, unencumbered, non-depressed Mia – sex with Lucy was sharp, fast and brutal. It had a quicksilver, electric quality to it that reminded me of the down and dirty sex I used to have in my twenties when I was coming down off speed or coke.

In fact, Lucy was a wildcat with a very healthy and vivid fantasy life.

She loved to turn all the lights off in her apartment, put candles out and fuck standing up, on the floor, on the edge of her bed or over a sofa arm. She loved to slowly strip to a cranked-up ‘Closer' by Nine Inch Nails or Donna Summer's breathy fuck-anthem ‘Love to Love Ya, Baby' as she groaned and gyrated around me. Sometimes purring, sometimes screaming, Lucy would willingly abandon herself to pure primeval lust.

She also enjoyed role-playing, blindfolds, handcuffs, collars, dildos, anal sex, and talking dirty. ‘I want to be your dirty girl' was usually the way she began proceedings. She used to love it when I slung her wet panties around her neck like a bridle, pulling her head down to feast on my cock and calling her a ‘hungry little whore'. On a number of occasions, she asked me to handcuff her hands to the legs of her dining table while she lay face up across it wearing a sleeping mask she'd purloined from American Airlines with her open, pleading mouth tilted backwards to meet me.

‘Fuck me everywhere!' she'd stage-whisper.

She had no inhibitions that I could discern and I was more than happy to match her recklessness. She also liked to wipe herself with her panties afterwards and give them to me as a kind of titillating trophy that I could enjoy later.

In fact, the only thing she wouldn't do was missionary position, which she dismissed as ‘male inferior'.

She handed me a joint.

‘You know, Guy, it's funny but even though I live for my career, I'd like to have a baby, too, some day.' Her body was slick with sweat.

‘Babies are cute,' I said, drawing back and coughing a little, ‘but sometimes not strong.'

‘I know, you poor thing,' she gently squeezed my foot. ‘How are you going with your therapy round all that stuff?'

How did she know about my fucking therapy? ‘Did Bill tell you I was seeing someone? That bald-headed arsehole, he told me he wouldn't say anything!'

‘Don't be angry with Bill – I made him tell me. He's worried about you, and so am I. And so is Anthony – when he has the time.'

I took another long, slow toke. The end glowed orange, black and white in the candlelight.

‘Well, funnily enough, Madam Inquisitor doesn't spend much of her time on recent developments. She seems much more interested in what happened to me when I was a kid.'

‘But that's good!' Lucy enthused. ‘My aunt's a shrink in DC – boy do they need them down there. And she says that
everything
– the way we act, the people we choose, the way we respond to traumatic situations and life in general – all goes back to our early childhood development, even infancy. Maybe even
before
infancy.'

*

Callum's little blackboard was blocking my view of the TV. He was already in bed and Mia was staring dumbly at
Letterman
, doing a final lap of her Chardonnay. I leaned forward and swivelled the blackboard to the right with my toe and saw that something new had been drawn on the other side.

It was the figure of a man approaching the spreadeagled figure of a woman on a chair. Expertly rendered in different coloured chalks, the depiction was much more impressive than mere childish stick figures. There seemed to be a computer on a desk in the background and, now that I looked more closely, I could see the man was sporting an enormous erection. On the bottom right of the board, someone had chalked the words
fuck you!

I blinked and then felt Mia staring hard at me over the rim of her glass. ‘Are you fucking with me?' I asked her.

‘What do you mean?' she said. She tugged at the ugly brown coverlet with the black moons that had once again slipped off the crest of the couch.

I punched the board hard. ‘Still the frustrated artist, eh, Mia? Are you fucking with me?'

‘Am. I. Fucking. With. You?' She repeated each word slowly for maximum sardonic effect. She stood up unsteadily, reached into the top pocket of her shirt and leaned towards me.

‘Am I fucking with you?' she said again. ‘No, Guy, I'm not fucking with you.' A spluttering Vesuvius approached Pompeii. ‘But it certainly seems like you're fucking with SOMEONE!'

And with that, Mia flung Lucy's scrunched-up purple panties into my face and tipped the dregs of her wine over my bowed head.

At the end of the second week of May, my Australian friends Jim and Nadine hit Manhattan like a meteor.

I'd completely forgotten they were coming until Anthony stuck his head in my office on Friday afternoon and announced that ‘Sid and Nancy' – as he called them – were cooling their heels out in reception.

Anthony had met Jim and Nadine a couple of times back in Melbourne, but they were never really destined for his Rolodex. Although Anthony could shoot the shit with almost anyone, Jim and Nadine were a little too edgy for him, a bit too rock 'n' roll.

‘Can't wait to meet 'em!' Bill enthused for the very same reason.

Over his circuitous and endlessly entertaining career, Jim had been a soap opera actor, manager of a U2 cover band, a game show host, a Winnebago salesman and, more recently, a much-in-demand voice-over artist.

In his early TV incarnations, Jim was always the good looking but not-quite-good-looking-enough leading man's best friend. He was like a big, friendly bear. His speaking voice was as deep as a cave and his laugh shook you like an approaching avalanche. It was often prefaced by the warning rumble: ‘
Ya know what?
and ended with a loud ‘HA HA HA!'

I first met Jim when I auditioned him for some radio spots for a new Australian beer brand I was working on. ‘
A really cool mate
' was the sign-off line he had to deliver, and that's exactly what Jim became when we went out for drinks after the session.

I'd known Nadine only slightly before she hooked up with Jim. After ten years of ‘rooting around in the regionals', she had finally worked her way up to the exalted position of music director at one of Melbourne's top FM stations. ‘3 NNN!' she'd yell after a few champagnes and a line or two of white mischief. ‘That's
Nadine, Nadine, Nadine
!'

To get ahead in what she described as an industry of ‘big swingin' dicks and buckets of bullshit', Nadine had developed a powerful persona as self-defence: half sex kitten, half rabid bulldog. ‘My bite is worse than my bark,' she was fond of saying. In honour of her star sign, she had a scorpion tattoo slinking down the middle of her back, with the sting strategically positioned near her tail. Jim sometimes called her Nasty Arse. Only Anthony called her Nancy.

‘4 p.m. Friday: beer o'clock. Pens down and pucker up, Guysville!' Nadine lifted one high heel off the ground to reach up and kiss me on the lips.

Then Bill slunk out, rubbing his head as he did when he was shy – which never lasted too long. ‘Hi, I'm Bill,' he said, extending his hands effusively. ‘You must be Guy's carers from Australia. We're so glad you're here – did you have a good flight?' He patted my shoulder like a kindly psychiatrist and suddenly became very serious, shook his head and looked down at his shoes. ‘Our boy Guy's made a lot of progress since he arrived here. But there's still so much more work to do.'

Jim and Nadine stared at Bill as if he was insane. Then they got it and began to laugh so loudly that two or three of our hard-working VPs stuck their heads out of their offices at the commotion. Terry the Terrible even held his finger up to his lips as if to shush us.

‘Come on, Bill,' Nadine ordered, locking her arm round his. ‘Let's get the party started.'

Unfortunately my other drinking partner, Lucy, had gone home early and wouldn't be joining us. She'd been feeling a little queasy.

A number of hours of drinking later, Johnny Cash chuckled his way through the final verse of ‘A Boy Named Sue' and the jukebox suddenly cranked up a Richter point or two. The Village Idiot bar was now officially bursting its britches.

Before we'd gone inside, Nadine had spotted a dreadlocked drug dealer shivering on the corner in a natty three-piece suit and dragged us up a dangerous-looking alley, where we'd snorted fat lines of coke off the lid of a rusty old iron drum.

‘Jet lag begone!' Nadine threw her head back and howled like a coyote. ‘Just like the old Barbie Benders, eh, Guy?'

The edges of the lid were sharp and jagged. ‘Yes, as long as we don't catch tetanus off this drum.' I took a deep hoover myself and immediately felt a glorious whoosh of narcotic relief: this stuff was certainly the real deal. The worries of the week, of my entire time in New York in fact, blew away in a nano-second.

Only Bill declined, saying, ‘I prefer beer to coke these days: I have no need to turbo-charge my many anxieties and insecurities.'

Maybe I should have taken Bill's lead and stuck to beer. But then I thought: what the hell – maybe some reckless R & R with my decadent old friends could help me forget about life for a while? It was worth a try.

Now safely inside the Idiot, Nadine, Jim and I were still exchanging knowing, powder-powered smiles when a growing murmur went through the crowd.

‘Uh-oh,' Bill said. ‘This is where the interesting part of the night begins. Take a look at ole Tommy, will ya?'

Dressed like a lumberjack, the black-bearded, bear-like owner of the pub was shaking a can of Pabst furiously up and down and roaring along to the music. He then put the whole can in his mouth, crushed it with his teeth and chugged the entire contents. People cheered. So did we. ‘But this is the real fun part,' Bill warned us. ‘You better start singin'!'

It was a song I only vaguely recognized. ‘What is it?'

‘It's called “You Don't Even Call Me by My Name”,' Bill advised. ‘And you better sing up or Ten Ton Tommy might piss on you!'

It was true. A clearing had formed in the middle of the floor because Tommy was whirling 360-degrees with one massive hand aiming his chubby-looking penis out of his fly at anyone who looked as though they weren't sharing his passion for the song.

‘You take us to all the best places, mate!' Jim clapped me on the shoulder.

‘Shoot to kill!' Nadine cried, as she distributed another round of shooters. The song finished and Tommy clumsily zipped up his pants. The crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief and clapped the finale of his vulgar one-man show.

‘So I don't have to do a “Tommy” myself, where's the Ladies in this place?' Nadine asked. ‘In fact, is there even a Ladies?'

‘It's not really a toilet – more a portal directly to hell,' Bill replied. ‘Why do you think Tommy pisses out here? I strongly advise an elegant lady like you to deport yourself instead to the much more salubrious and hygienic facilities at Hungry Jacks three doors down. It's a lot, lot safer,' he pushed back his chair. ‘Hey, maybe I'll join you. So to speak.'

‘So how was your trip?' I asked Jim as the others left us.

‘Shit music but great fun,' Jim said. ‘Naddy was off her tree most of the time with her record company buddies – I don't think she ever saw daylight while we were there. In fact, she's probably still flying.'

‘So how did you amuse yourself while she was out playing?'

‘It was great, actually. Bit of windsurfing, and a lot of just sitting by the pool with my book.'

‘What were you reading?'

‘
No Logo
by Naomi Klein. You heard of it? It's a bit negative about our day jobs, I suppose. Makes you feel a bit guilty. But it really makes you think.'

‘No, I still haven't read it. I have a hard enough time at work as it is without having to hate myself for doing it. Mia's been reading it, though.'

‘So how is the wife holding up after your … disappointment last year?' Jim asked. ‘And, just as important, how are
you
travelling, my fine feathered friend? Have you guys managed to settle in yet or what?'

‘Oh, we have our ups and downs, like anybody. Just a few more downs at the moment.' I wasn't ready to go into any detail. ‘So how are you guys getting on?'

‘Us?' Jim leaned back, possibly relieved to move onto safer territory. ‘Oh you know us, mate: extra-marital equals extra fun.'

Jim and Nadine had had an open sexual arrangement for years. They were allowed to sleep with other people if the situation presented itself. In earlier years, they even encouraged the experimentation so they could enjoy talking about the liaison together afterwards.

Jim sighed a little. ‘Like anything, the novelty soon wears off. Now she gets more pissed off when I don't get jealous!'

‘Lucky you,' I said. ‘Mia's a bit more old-fashioned than that.'

I didn't mention Lucy.

‘She's a good girl though, your Mia,' Jim said. ‘She certainly helped get you back on the straight and narrow all those years ago.' He blew a crooked smoke ring. ‘I really hope the … baby thing … is something you guys can get over.'

‘Thanks, mate,' I said, standing up. ‘We're doing our best.' Although, in reality, I felt as though my ‘best' was a good four or five years behind me. ‘Wish me luck – I'm going to brave the Idiot's facilities.'

‘You idiot! I'll man the fort.'

Bill was right: the toilet was an absolute shithole. The stomach-turning stench, rotting wood panels and cracked mirror put me in mind of the makeshift latrine on Captain Olav's leaky old trawler. The graffiti was strangely serious and thoughtful, as if massive alcohol intake had helped certain patrons achieve higher levels of philosophical or transcendental awareness. The multi-coloured hand basin looked and smelled as though it also doubled as a second toilet for those looking for some quick relief, while the naked light above the mirror crackled and buzzed like a fat predatory insect.

There was no urinal (aside from the aforementioned basin), so I pushed open the broken saloon style door to the cubicle itself: the light switch to this foul, fetid chamber hung off the doorjamb by its twisted wires so you only had the outside light to navigate your ablutions by. There was no toilet roll holder, let alone paper. The handle end of a toilet brush was sticking out of the balsa wood wall at a 90-degree angle while there was no top on the empty cistern and no button to push even if you dared to. There were black, chubby leech-like things swimming butterfly in the rusty gurgling water in the bowl itself.

I unzipped my fly. As my torrent of piss joined the cesspool below, I heard strange whisperings from the ‘bathroom' outside.

Make me a cuppa, ya lazy bastard.

Do I have to bloody do everything?

I miss your sister but I'd never miss you.

My piss kept flowing but my heart stopped.

I pushed the cubicle door open a fraction.

The electrical sockets above the washbasin were sparking and smoking as if they were about to explode.

Then they started smiling at me.

You're a disgrace.

You'll never be anything.

You're useless.

And then the whispers became hysterical screams of laughter.

I almost knocked Bill and Nadine over as I burst out of the Idiot's front door into the cold night air. I needed another drink desperately, but I needed to clear my head and escape even more.

Bill just presumed that I'd had second thoughts about using the Idiot's putrid WC. ‘Uh, Guy, ya might want to do up your zip before you go down there, buddy,' he called after me, guffawing.

‘Cos unlike here, they have hygiene standards at Hungry Jacks!'