The Space between Atoms 53

 Wednesday stood menacingly in the night.  The convent didn’t deter him.  Nothing would.  Conditions were right so that Terah could see him.  Lindsey hadn’t ever stopped.  Now he stood in the basement room they’d designated as their sleeping quarters, leering.  As a matter of safety they continued to share the same room, but chastely.  Wednesday clearly had other things on his demonic mind.

“Why isn’t he doing anything?” Terah asked in the dark.  He couldn’t believe how calm and frightened he was.

“Most of the time he doesn’t.  You saw him attack me at the asylum, but I’d never seen him do that.  Who knows what the end game is for demons?”

“I wish I’d paid more attention to the supernatural while I was studying religion.”  The irony remained like a miasma in the heavy air.  Scientism had neutered the humanities, but to those able to see that only meant denial of what all people experienced.  “Do you suppose we should try an exorcist?”

“What, while livin’ as squatters on Catholic property?  I think we’re on our own.  Demons exist to torment us.  That’s their goal.”

Although a demon Wednesday retained his human aspect.  Threatening and unnerving as a dean drunk with power, he leered with a superiority that made Terah cower.  He looked like a Kentucky senator with a slim majority.  Lindsey kept a wary eye on the devil, but outwardly remained calm.  Terah couldn’t comprehend how she simply let the paranormal fit in with daily life.  He’d been convinced it simply didn’t exist.  His middle-aged brain had trouble adjusting.

Terah wanted to talk about what they could do about Wednesday, but it seemed pointless to do so with him right there in the room.  There wasn’t much light and he remained draped in shadow.  If felt weird to try to talk about anything else at a moment like this.

“There’s a showdown coming,” Lindsey said, making Terah shudder.  Didn’t she know not to threaten demons?

Then everything was chaos.  Wednesday rushed through the darkened room and Lindsey ran straight at him.  The demon had every advantage.  Terah, not knowing what to do, ran into the fray.  He wished he knew more about exorcism.  You couldn’t grab a demon.  As he reached the center of the room he saw Lindsey standing defiantly as the demon growled and screamed in unearthly registers.  Threats and blasphemies echoed off the once hallowed walls.  Lindsey stood her ground.  It was like a hurricane was blowing her.  Not trusting his own eyes Terah saw her hair blowing back from her face, her clothes snapping as if on a line.  The demon was changing shape from senator to scaly, clawed, thrashing evil.  His ripping claws flew out at Terah, knocking him across the room.  He’d never felt such force before.  Stunned, he strained his eyes to see if Lindsey was okay.  He panicked.  Crawling to his pack, he fished out a flashlight and shone it to the center of the room.

Lindsey alone stood there.  Glaring at the door she shouted “Go to Hell you son of a bitch!”  

Picking himself up, Terah ached all over.  “Are you okay?”

“Let’s light some candles.”

They had found the convent still abandoned and had located a basement room where they could make a temporary headquarters.  A supply closet of candles had been left behind and using them prudently they’d managed to stay a couple of days with the food Lindsey had managed to forage.  They now lit some of those candles in silence.  After a suitable vigil Terah asked, “what happened?”

“You really don’t know about demons, do you?”

“I read a book once that said they were defined in different ways by different ancient cultures.  Some saw them as fallen angels and others saw them as elemental forces of nature neither good nor evil.  I don’t remember much else.  It wasn’t my specialization.”

“You’ve got to open your mind.  You still cling to the idea that this world can all be explained by physics.”

“That’s the enlightened approach.”

“That’s only part of the story.  You need to read more.”

Terah was still shaking too badly to be offended.  “I used to be a professor of religion.”

“But the universe is all our problem.  We all need to understand it.  I was goin’ to be a scientist, but I read reputable books about the things science sweeps off the table.  Anomalies are thrown away as bad statistics.  If they hadda account for all anomalies the ‘laws’ of physics would break down.  I’m not against science, but it just doesn’t go far enough.”

Terah wasn’t sure how to respond.  His heartbeat was slowing down, but Lindsey’s way of looking at things caught him off-guard.  “The space between atoms?” he asked.

“Now yer gettin’ it!  Demons are real.  You’ve just seen one.  A scientist would say it was all some kind of psychological projection.  If we had some kind of equipment here that could measure,  say the movement of air, they’d claim it was a draft or a hoax.  Scientism dismisses what it can’t explain.  Do you think that’s a way for understandin’ reality?”

“It’s Occam’s razor.”

“Well Occam oughta stop shavin’ for a bit, then.”  She moved to the corner of the room where she’d made her bed, such as it was.  “Demons wanna torment, and I don’t wanna let ‘em.  I used to read about ‘em and I guess the advice hasn’t been changin’ much over the years.”

“But what if he’d hurt you?”

“Have you ever stood up to a bully?  Force is the only language they speak.  And what’s force but a will that won’t bend?”

“We’re not in Dickinsheet anymore.  Did the guys there know this about you?”

“They knew some.  You know some.  Nobody knows everything.”

“Is Wednesday going to come back tonigh?.”

“I don’t know.  He won’t stop tryin’.  Meanwhile we should try to sleep.”

She blew out the candles on her side of the room, darkness steeping deeper at each puff.  Terah felt too much adrenaline to drift off.  He would need some time.  They would have to figure out where to go from here.  Demons, he now knew, could follow them anywhere.