David Bischoff - A Personal Demon

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A Personal Demon
by David Bischoff, Rich Brown and Linda Richardson
Copyright 1985 David Bischoff, Rich Brown and Linda Richardson
1
Put on your disbelief suspenders, dear reader, as Coleridge might invite, and
make yourself welcome outside this cozy little apartment near Powhattan
University, that arcade of academia tucked away in the ivy-covered ivory-white
pseudo-Greek buildings in the heartland of New England.
Powhattan-"old P.U." to friends and enemies alike-was a yawningly normal
institution of higher education, or at least it was until the fateful night of
Professor Willis Baxter's faculty party. ...
Come. Let's peer in and see how it all began.
Willis Baxter, Professor of Medieval Literature, arose from his
near-drunken slouch on the couch and, with five Irish whiskeys in him and the
somewhat encouraging voices of otherwise bored partygoers behind him, repaired
to his study for the elements he needed to conjure up a demon.
It was, he felt, the least he could do to help alleviate the boredom
which was beginning to settle on the partygoers like an unwanted and ragged
cloak. They were dutifully in attendance at the insistence of Dean Cromwell
Smith, as was Willis himself-although, in truth, since the party was being
held (at the "request" of the dean) in Willis's garden apartment, it was also
somewhat more than that. Willis was only glad his upstairs neighbors were not
at home, since the partygoers made up in loudness what the party itself lacked
in interest.
"What's this hubbub all about?" the dean was demanding, having squired
the party's wealthy guest of honor, Norman Rockhurst, into the crowded dining
room. Hot to trot with the rich man's tax-deductible charity allocations, the
dean had devoted the entire evening to attempting to toady to the man-with no
apparent success as yet.
"Baxter frequently tries it when he's sloshed," explained Larry
Hawthorne, Professor of Renaissance Literature, as he lumbered to his
size-fourteen feet and groped about in his jacket pocket.
"Tries what?" Rockhurst asked.
Hawthorne pulled out a Ronson, relit his evening's cigar for the fourth
time, and blew out an acrid stream of smoke.
"With some people, it's lampshades," he said, bellying up to the dean
and the wealthy contractor. "They down a few drinks over their limit - with
Baxter, it's two - then don a lampshade, dance about, and come on to the
ladies. But Baxter's more original - when he gets drunk, he tries to summon up
demons from the netherworld."
"Ridiculous!" pooh-poohed the millionaire.
"Demons? Balderdash!" echoed the dean-who was precisely the sort of
person who would say "Balderdash!" even in this day and age.
"Of course, it's all in fun," chimed in Gertrude Twill, the dean's
secretary and office manager.
Gertrude, against Willis's wishes, had chosen to wear a very short dress
to the party - the kind of dress that tends to draw male attention to nyloned
legs. Although her legs were not drawing much attention, it must be admitted
they were indeed her most attractive feature.
It was sometimes bandied about-usually with accompanying snickers-that
Gertrude might be Willis's one and only "girlfriend." In truth, they had dated
for eight years - and at times the professor wondered what he saw in her. He
would think, briefly, of her soft lips; then, involuntarily rubbing his mouth,
less briefly of her braces. Most of the time, favoring a martyrlike
disposition which had been drilled into him by the Catholic catechism of his
youth, he accepted the inconvenience without questioning the therapeutic value
of perpetually wired teeth which made kissing somewhat reminiscent of the
Spanish Inquisition.
"Well, conjuring, though!" Rockhurst said, suddenly struck. "I suppose a
few magic tricks might liven up this party a bit."
"They just might," agreed the dean.
Professor Baxter returned at this moment with a purple-and-red-striped
bag with "Macy's" emblazoned on its sides. At a small space he had cleared in
the center of the room, he dropped the bag to the floor and, with a certain
uncharacteristic flair, requested another Irish whiskey to fortify himself.
Gertrude supplied the sacred potion, which Willis slurped down in one quick
gulp. He rubbed a hand over his plain, long-hosed features. A hush fell over
the crowd as the dimmed lights cast odd shadows across their expectant faces,
and even Larry Hawthorne was quietly intent as he puffed his cigar, the smoke
of which hung like incense in the air.
Willis stood silently a moment, as if preparing himself for the
ritual-while, in truth, he was praising the Irish for inventing so sassy a
whiskey. Abruptly he began to mutter the Desiderata in Latin.
"All right, Baxter," Hawthorne said derisively, "precisely which demon
are you thinking of inviting to join us in these festivities?"
"What the devil difference does it make?" asked Rockhurst, smiling
broadly at his own quick wit. Dean Smith laughed uproariously, and, as he cast
a stern eye over the partygoers (university employees, all), so did everyone
else in the room.
Hawthorne explained, "I really don't believe in this business, but I've
read a little about the stuff-and it's supposed to make a difference. The
demon must be summoned by his or her True Name. One of the most respected
scholars in the field of demonology, Raymond de la Farte, theorized in his
most recent book that the reason it's nearly impossible to invoke a demon in
this day and age is simply that most of them have been consigned to Hell
forever."
Observing that his knowledge of the obscure had, for once, aroused interest
rather than ennui in his listeners, Hawthorne took the cigar from his mouth,
struck a pose he often affected in the classroom, and continued: "You see,
when someone tries to summon a demon and fails, the ritual requires him to
consign the soul of that demon to Hell forever-otherwise, it's believed, the
demon can use that entry way to our world at some later date and, without
someone there to control it, wreak all sorts of havoc."
"I guess that makes sense," Rockhurst said.
"Yes, but can you believe this sort of thing?" Hawthorne asked, dropping
his pose as he turned to the millionaire.
Rockhurst made no answer, so Hawthorne resumed both his pose and
lecture: "De la Farte suggested that demons, while endowed with magical
powers, might not be able to be in two places at the same time. That is, if
indeed there was some 'limit' to their magic, it might be such a thing as
this. An interesting possibility. Because, you see, de la Farte demonstrated
that, with what was once a considerably more widespread interest in demonology
and what with the number of demons being finite, the chances are quite high
that most of them would have been summoned by two or more conjurers at or near
the same time. The best-known demons certainly, the lesser-known demons almost
as certainly."
He paused to note that he had indeed captured the attention of several
other partygoers. Not wishing to lose their interest, he continued, "Thus,
while one demonologist might succeed in summoning a demon, if another tried to
get the same demon while it was doing something for the first, he would fail
in the attempt-since the demon wouldn't be there to be called. And, by the
requirements of the ritual, the one who failed would have to consign that
demon to the netherworld forever. When the demon returned to Hades, after
doing the bidding of the successful magician, it would thereafter be unable to
leave Hell by virtue of the second conjurer's ritual and therefore could never
be successfully summoned again."
Willis, who was busily working with his tools - drawing a pentagram with
Silly String, laying out a star within the pentagram with drink straws and
swizzle sticks-could hardly contain his amusement at Hawthorne's words.
For you see, dear reader, although Professor Willis Baxter's most daring
in-person feat to date had been when he had fondled Gertrude's elbow at a
local drive-in movie, he also led something of a secret life. And it was one
of his most closely guarded secrets that he was Raymond de la Farte. The good
professor reveled in his confidential study much as a fire-and-brimstone
preacher might in a private pornography collection.
Hawthorne, turning to indicate his rival with a slight nod, went on: "So
if Professor Baxter here hopes to be successful, he'll have to use the True
Name of some obscure or lesser-known demon who, one presumes, might not have
suffered such a fate."
Willis started to ask, "What's your mother's name?" - but then
reconsidered as he remembered Hawthorne's short temper and long reach. He
substituted, "What would you suggest, Larry-should I consult the Yellow Pages,
under 'Demons, Unlisted'?"
"Well," said Hawthorne helpfully, "there's the new Wilheim, Minor Demons
of Egypt."
"Haven't seen it yet," Willis admitted.
"It has a few obscure names in it, I believe. How about Ptenagh? A sort
of Pan, I think."
"Obscure? Hardly!" Willis scoffed. "Pembroke. Solomon in Egypt. 1934."
"How about his daughter, Anathae?"
"Daughter?"
Hawthorne brightened, preened at what so clearly demonstrated both his
own obscure knowledge and his rival's ignorance. "Yes. Anathae. Half demon,
half human."
"All right," Willis said. "It'll do."
Rockhurst, obviously a bit tired of all the talk, suddenly grinned and
asked, "When do we get to the good part? You know, virgin's blood and all
that? More important, where do
we get the volunteers?"
Willis glanced briefly at Gertrude-but decided it was better not to
broach a potentially touchy subject in front of everyone. Instead, he said,
"We'll have to make do with mine," and pricked his finger with a pin.
Then he raised his hands - slightly bloody finger and all - for silence.
He was determined to try his best to make the ritual look
impressive-since, despite his scholarly interest in the subject, no matter
what demon he decided to call nor how inebriated he became, he did not expect
the summoning to work. For, indeed, he had no belief in these things; it was
the correctness of the form, the proper incantations, the very antiquity of
the ritual itself which appealed to the scholar in him and therefore held his
interest.
As he lowered his hands in a curving gesture, a hush settled over the
company.
When all was quiet, Willis's fingers began to twitch like a squid's
tentacles and he started to incant the appropriate phrases in guttural
Franconian - to capture the soul of the meaning, and also to mask its more
than slightly obscene content.
A fevered zeal-which some may have believed only to be the effects of
the alcohol-suffused his face with a red tint, and his guests began to murmur
to themselves uneasily, like a crowd watching a trapeze artist working without
a net.But as Willis stooped to light candles the circus air seemed to
dissipate; the room darkened as he became stationary at the norm tip of the
pentagram.
The silence surrounding Willis's words was somehow ominous-it was almost
too quiet. His discourse slipped into Old Bavarian-"Gueliche lande cumen ger .
. . "-his arms wriggled like frightened snakes, snapped together with a
flourish: "... Anathae!"
The stillness and silence which had hovered around his chant like a
voiceless swallow gave way to the feel and sound of wind.
Wait a minute.
Wind?
In an inside room of the apartment?
Yes, the causeless breeze seemed to ruffle through Willis's rumpled
hair, and even the candle-thrown shadows began a slow dance up the wall. Then
he heard a tentative whisper, a feminine voice as soft as a butterfly's wing:
"In francia fui."
Frankish, thought Willis. Quite frankly Frankish.
His breathing hastened. No longer entirely aware of the people around
him, Willis Baxter felt very much alone with that silken voice-which, he knew
instinctively, was no joke.
"Guaes ge dar daden?" he whispered tremulously.
And that voice, young-girl-sweet, responded: "Disnaui me ibi."
There was now no question that the wind was a wind; it blew full and strong
and whooshed to a mighty crescendo.
Then there was a blinding flash of light, like that of a tiny nuclear
explosion -and, just as suddenly, the wind stopped and the room was quite
normal again.
Only...not quite.
For there, in the south corner of the pentagram, facing Professor Willis
Baxter, stood a girl-not more than sixteen, by her features-clad only in long,
tawny red hair.
2
Two tiny horns sprouted from her forehead, and a short barbed tail curled from
the base of her spine just above her smooth, absolutely bare, undeniably
perfectly formed derriere.
Her breasts were firm, her nipples large and creamy pink.
Her lithesome legs tapered to a pair of dainty hooves; a sprinkling of
curly red hair grew up almost to her knees.
Her waist seemed almost too thin when, suddenly, it curved deliciously
out to meet the well-formed curve of her delicate hips.
She angled her angelic (fallen variety, of course) and faultlessly
freckled face about, surveying the people around her with curiosity. Her eyes
darted like captive birds until they lighted on Willis-whereupon they turned
mischievously green and she fluttered long dark eyelashes at him.
"So it was you who called," she breathed huskily, her voice the coo of a
nightingale in heat. "Did you have anything special in mind? Or do you want me
to be ...inventive?"
Willis swallowed hard, his disbelieving eyes abulge, and stepped
back-scattering a couple of the swizzle sticks which made up the pentagram.
"You," he gasped, his tongue taking on the texture of a potato chip, "are
Anathae?"
"None other-and yours, for so long as you may desire," she said. She
curtsied with admirable grace, her slender hands outstretched as if to hold
what was her entirely nonexistent dress. "Do you desire me now?"
As a teacher, Willis had usually been able to appreciate the beauty of
young women who had taken his courses without feeling any particular
desire-or, if human enough to perhaps at times feel the desire, not any real
need-to become intimate with any of them. But the female before him, although
younger in appearance than any P.U. coed, did not (he admitted to himself)
precisely inspire him with fatherly feelings.
This was in part because her voice was the epitome of seductiveness-Bo
Derek rising from a foaming sea, disdaining a towel, yet with young-girl
innocence glowing off her in cool, stunning waves. At the same time, her words
and fiery gestures seemed to invite, if not actually beg for, frantic,
clutching debauchery.
The girl-demon wiggled excitingly toward Willis, her bare breasts
bobbing only slightly and her long red hair flowing behind her in the
afterwake of the breeze. Willis continued to step back as he tried desperately
to summon up such words, thoughts, feelings as he had used like a shield to
protect himself on the rare occasion when a P.U. coed had caught more than his
passing fancy-what people would say of him, how it might have an adverse
effect on his career, how he should feel ashamed of having such feelings about
a female obviously so much younger than himself. But he could not help but
believe that, somehow, the summoning up of a demon had been, comparatively
speaking, a piece of cake-at least, he couldn't easily shake the strong
feeling of desire which this petite red-headed female, with so few words and
movements, had sent coursing through his veins.
She followed him out of the pentagram, stepping over the breach he had
caused. And then, with nimble hands, completely ignoring the partygoers around
them, Anathae plucked at the top button of his shirt. She had the shirt half
off and was licking her ruby lips in moist anticipation when the stunned
silence of the forgotten company erupted into an excited babble.
Willis heard a squeal and noticed, peripherally, that Gertrude had
fainted dead away.
"What is the meaning of this outrageous spectacle?" demanded the dean.
"Don't be a killjoy!" Rockhurst shouted out enthusiastically. "This is
better than any show in Vegas!"
Willis had turned slowly toward the dean, hoping some explanation might
occur to him before he would be called upon to open his mouth, when he felt a
small hand give his pants zipper a frenzied tug.
Aghast, he looked down.
Sure enough, Anathae had his trousers halfway down, exposing his purple
polka-dot underwear for the assembled multitude to see.
He said the first thing mat came to mind: "Stop that and get out of
here!"Anathae withdrew her slim hands from their mad disrobing lore and pouted
prettily at him.
"Later," she said, licked her lips, then winked naughtily - and, with
another flash of light, she disappeared.
Given a choice in the matter, Willis would have preferred to believe she
had never been there at all. But then his trousers, freed of her hands, fell
all the way down to his gartered socks, and several of the faculty wives
present gasped and clutched at their husbands for support.
Willis's face quivered at the redder levels of the spectrum as he made a
violent attempt to resheath his bare, pale legs.
But this hasty and, indeed, decidedly frenzied action set him off
balance-he teetered in the middle of the floor, wavered, stumbled forward a
few wobbling steps, tripped on the manacles which had once been his trousers,
and fell headfirst into the ample lap of Mrs. Hildagarde Boothbuthle, who
immediately began to yelp in the contralto that was the pride of the Powhattan
University Glee Club.
Willis, asprawl across her lap, fried to mumble an apology-but Mrs.
Boothbuthle merely shrieked again and heaved him onto the carpet.
From this vantage point, he managed to work his trousers back over his
knees by holding his legs up off the floor; he then regained his feet, pulled
his pants back up over his hips, and zippered his fly.
He immediately saw, somewhat incongruously, that the dean, Rockhurst,
and most of the other partygoers had turned their attention to efforts to
revive Gertrude, who seemed to be making noises somewhat between that of a
castrated sheep's bleat and a ship's foghorn. Only Horace and Hildagarde
Boothbuthle and Larry Hawthorne continued to regard Willis- the two former
with looks of indignation and horror, the latter with a pitying smile.
Hawthorne sidled up to Willis.
"Well," he said conversationally, "it certainly looks as though you may
have cooked your own goose here. Of course, the dean probably would've named
me head of the department anyway-but a stunt like this . . . Frankly, old man,
I can't begin to understand what you could've had in mind. By the way, in what
topless bar did you pick up that delicious-looking female?"
Willis intended to say that it had not been a magic trick. He also
intended to explain, in the properly frigid tones, that he was not in the
habit of frequenting topless bars-but the words he tried to form never reached
his lips.
Instead, in their place, he found himself saying in what sounded very
much like Anathae's breathy soprano, "Eat camel dung, eunuch! Copulate with
syphilitic lepers! Suck the rotten eggs of a vulture! French-kiss a Nile
crocodile!"
Hawthorne's eyes grew wide-but no wider than those of the distraught
Willis. Good grief, he thought, she's possessed me. Well, at least it's
limited to my tongue.
Not so, lover boy, rejoined a voice in' his mind-and, to his horror, he
found that his right hand with a will of its own was folding into a fist.
"No!" he shouted, stepping back quickly so that Hawthorne would be out
of reach. Nonetheless, he felt the urge to swing.
Ah, Willis, you're no fun, he heard the demon-girl's pouting voice claim
in his mind.
I've got to get out of here, he thought as much to himself as to her,
before she makes me do something I might regret.
Willis's shout had drawn the attention of the partygoers back to
himself. He stammered apologetically, "I'm . . . I'm sorry. Pardon me. I'm
afraid," he managed to smile, "I've had a bit too much to drink. Please, all
of you, stay. I think, perhaps, if I got a breath of fresh air. ..."
"Yes," Dean Smith was quick to say, "I really believe that would be ...
advisable, to say the least, Professor."
Rockhurst, one of the few people at the party without female
accompaniment, was able to verbalize his disappointment: "Will there be a
second act to your show tonight?" he asked.
"I'll be back," Willis promised.
"Good man!"
Willis turned, shuddering, trying desperately not to see the hocked,
stunned, and even horrified expressions on the faces of the other members of
the faculty present. They seemed to be saying that they found their previous
boredom preferable to what they had witnessed, whatever that might have been,
and they were wondering why he had not had sense enough to perceive this
beforehand.
His feet seemed not to be his own as he stumbled to the hall closet,
threw on his camel-hair overcoat, and attempted to propel himself in the
direction of his front door.
Wait a sec, Anathae's voice sounded in his mind. It's going to be cold out
there-let's at least bring a bottle.
No! he wanted to shout back-but found his unwilling legs propelling him toward
the kitchen. He struggled against the notion even while conceding to himself
that another drink certainly couldn't hurt him and just might help, and gave
up the struggle when his trembling arm opened a cabinet, reached in, and
snared a half-full bottle of Teacher's Scotch.
There. Now we can go, if you like.
Willis slipped the bottle into a coat pocket, and negotiated his way back
toward the front room of his apartment.
Dean Smith, he noted, cast a disapproving frown at the bottle in his pocket as
Willis went by but apparently did not want to interrupt what he was saying to
Rockhurst.
Blushing, Willis heard the words of others hanging in the air-"disgraceful,"
"undignified," and even "shameful" - which he realized his guests were using
in reference to what they thought had happened. Mrs. Petruccio, the chemistry
professor's wife, was smiling and whispering something in her husband's ear.
Then he was out of his apartment into the chill early January air.
He checked only to make certain that his nosy neighbor, Henrietta Bradmorton,
wasn't peeking out of her apartment window, as she so often did, with her hand
on the phone ready to call the police if anything she saw should displease
her. Then, slipping and sliding on the icy sidewalk, Willis made his way to
his dented green Volkswagen, which, as always, was parked out front.
Leaning against it, he shook his head breathlessly, half in disbelief
and half trying to clear the alcohol he had already consumed from his
enfeebled brain.
3
"Okay," Willis said, his voice a whisper, "you've had your amusing bit of
fun."
He drew in several bracing breaths of the cool night air. "You've probably
also ruined my career," he added in a weak, tired voice. "Now kindly, if you
please, get the hell out of my head!"
But, Will, it's so nice and comfy in here! Really, you're quite extraordinary,
you know-although not always in a positive way. For instance, I've just been
leafing through
your piles of pleasant childhood memories-
"Out, I said!" Willis shouted. "Or would you like to hear me use an exorcism?"
"Oh, Will, you're so . . .forceful" she cooed. "At least, you are when you're
sloshed."
He found himself staring at the nude, shivering Anathae, who had appeared
seemingly out of nowhere and was now perched on the fender of his car. He
wondered, inanely, if he
should let her call him Will-and then, almost instinctively, he drew off his
coat and put it over her shoulders.
"Thank you." She smiled. "I'm really not used to this sort of climate, you
know. Nor, for that matter, to acts of kindness. You're truly a kind man,
Willis. And I know precisely what kind. Screwed up - but kind."
"Am I, now?" Willis growled, pulling the Scotch from the coat pocket for added
warmth. "And precisely which university in Hell gave you your degree in
psychology?"
"Dear, dear Will," she said. She fondled his cheek with her warm little
hand-from which he drew back to take a long bracing gulp from the bottle of
amber liquid.
"I was inside your head-I know you . . . know you as only you can know
yourself," she went on in a somewhat more serious tone of voice. "And you may
not realize it, but you're astoundingly different from most of the other
humans who've conjured me up." Her green eyes narrowed as she reflected on
this. "Most of them, you know, are full of hate and pride and the desire to
impose their will on others.
Really, in many respects you're quite admirable. As for the areas where you're
not ... well, I could take care of them, change you for the better with a few
words and gestures-but they're the sort of things you'd resent, and anyway you
should really work on those yourself. But, of course, I also saw some nasty
hang-ups and repressed guilts cluttering up your psyche - and I could help
there, especially in the psychosexual area. What you need, hon, is a little
couch therapy."
She hopped down to the pavement and embraced him. Smiling brightly into
his astounded face, she giggled and suggested, "Let's go behind those bushes."
Involuntarily, Willis glanced in the direction of the bushes before
getting a grip on himself.
No, no, ridiculous-it simply wouldn't do.
He grabbed her arm, opened the door of his trusty if somewhat ancient
VW, and thrust her into the passenger seat. "Don't move!" he told her in a
loud but not quite angry voice.
"I won't. But isn't this car a little small for-"
He slammed the door and ran to the driver's side.
"-couch therapy? Still, I suppose we could try."
As Willis was getting into the car, Anathae was busily slithering out of
his coat, her eyes glowing like fiery coals.
"Stop," he said quickly, surprising himself when his voice cracked at
the edges. "You're at least supposed to do what I say. So listen, Anathae, you
either start behaving yourself and doing that or I'll have to send you right
back where you came from."
"Willis! You wouldn't!"
"Look-I have half a mind to do it anyway right now. You'd better believe
I would!"
"No. You're a kind man-you wouldn't do that. You've no idea what it's
like for me Down There." A tear seemed about to form on the edge of her eye,
and it was all Willis could do to resist the urge to wipe it away-tenderly.
Poor child, he thought.
In an attempt to feel a little less sympathy on her behalf, Willis
slurped some more of the Scotch.
"Listen," he said, "if you're a demon, I assume you must have some
magical powers. Do you think you could maybe use some of them to whip up
something for you to wear? I'm cold. I need my coat."
She proceeded to doff the coat again.
"No! No! For goodness' sake! What's happened already is bad enough-if
Miss Bradmorton should look out her window and see me, or if a cop should pull
up and find me here with a naked teenage girl in my car, that would be the end
of me, my career and everything. Get some clothes on first, then give me my
coat.""You wouldn't really send me back, would you?" she asked as her hands
moved busily under the coat. "You've no idea of how tormented I am Down There.
Thousands of well-endowed males all around me-"
"You poor girl," sighed Willis, quite sincerely. "No wonder-"
She banged the dashboard in frustration. "And there's a damned glass
barrier all around so I can't get to them!" The Volkswagen rocked with her
fury. Willis muttered, "Boy, am I in trouble!" Then he took another long
lesson from his Teacher's before he asked, "Have you got any clothes on yet?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Let me have my coat."
"You really could be fun, Will, if you gave yourself half a chance," she
said, removing the coat.
She was wearing a quite attractive red silk dress with a modest neckline
and matching boots to cover her hooves. Her hair had assembled itself to
conceal her pert little horns.
An ember, seemingly, had begun to glow in Willis, and he was
uncomfortably aware that not all of it had been caused by his consumption of
alcohol. He had to admit that, even fully clothed, this half-human and
half-demon female was surpassingly beautiful. No, more than that; provocative
and, yes- either despite or because of the fact that she seemed indecently
young-desirable. And it was, he realized, in some way he could not define,
something even more than the provocative desirability of a beautiful movie
star or pinup.
"You like?"
"Yes," he admitted reluctantly.
Willis slipped into his coat with difficulty in the confined space, his
mind ajumble, trying to find something negative about Anathae which would let
him stop regarding her in quite this fashion. Too young looking, he tried to
tell himself, although, of course, some older males are attracted by that. But
I'm not. Besides, she's a demon - or at least part demon - and she might be
bewitching me. Anyway, there's Gertrude-
"I'm not," Anathae said.
"Not what?"
"Not using my magic to bewitch you, Willis. And as for comparing me to
that dog you've got for a girlfriend-"
"Now just a minute," Willis said heatedly, "I'll not have that sort of
talk about Gertrude."
"I'm not talking about her looks," Anathae said. "She's not much to look
at, but of course that doesn't mean anything, anyway. No, Will, I'm talking
about her personality - how it's affected your relationship with her. The
thing I find hardest to understand is that you both know you don't love each
other-in fact, you know when you're honest with yourself you don't even like
her for what she's done to you. The truth of it is, you can't understand why
you've let her get you in a position where she can henpeck you."
Willis found he was breathing hard. Before he could mouth his intended
rejoinder-"Oh, yeah?"-Anathae went on: "You know damned well that, at some
point, Miss Twill will have marriage on her mind, even though you both make
each other uncomfortable, and also that you'll never know beforehand, and
perhaps not even afterward, if you're compatible in bed-where you're bound to
spend at least a third and maybe as much as half of your life-because she
won't let you get in her pants now and might not even then. For all you know,
she might be a walking, talking mannequin!" Anathae smiled slyly. "At least
you know what I've got is real!"
"Can't we change the subject?"
"All right. Let's talk about you." She held up a hand, and suddenly
there was a long thick cigarette in it. "Want one?"
"No thanks," he said.
"As I see it, you've got a lot of potential, but no gumption." She
flicked a finger, and it sprouted flame, which she used to light her
cigarette. "That's like a Mack truck without wheels." She blew it out. "A hell
of a lot of horsepower going nowhere in a hurry."
She sucked hungrily at her weed, held the smoke in her lovely lungs for
a long moment, then blew it out in square shapes. "Nice trick, huh? You learn
a few things like that when you've got a few thousand years on your hands to
practice."
The headlights of a car flashed by, catching the first few flakes of a
snow flurry in its beams. "Not much chance for stuff like that where I come
from," she commented wryly.
"Anyway, as I was saying, you need some self-assertion. I know your problems
on that score, so I can sympathize. But it takes action to clean out your
skull-"
"Who says I want to clean out my skull?"
"I do. Because that's what you need to get what you really want. And
what you really want, modest though it is, is to be head of the university's
Literature Department."
"I don't have to be told that, and anyway, I didn't give you permission
to go poking around in my brain!"
"You didn't forbid me, either. What I'm saying is that I'll help you, if
you really want to succeed. Now listen-"
"Hold it!" Willis said heatedly. "Let me get this straight. I call up a
demon and suddenly she wants to take control of my life. And I don't even have
to ask because I know at what price. So you listen, Ana." She seemed to be
giving him her full attention, but he nonetheless paused for a few seconds,
wetting his lips, since the alcohol was beginning to slur his speech. "I'm
fully capable of meshing . . . of messing up my life on my own without help
from you."
She chuckled, not unkindly, at his mistake and said, "That's precisely
my point."
"I mean-"
"Oh, I know what you mean. Really, Willis, I do. You want to do it all
on your own, rather than have the help of magic, which is quite admirable.
But, as you've said, my appearance here, among other things, just might block
your way. Fortunately, I'm grateful for what you've done - I would, frankly,
rather be Here than There. So I'll help you get rid of those stumbling blocks.
Maybe, later, I can help you in other areas where you need it, too."
Willis was truly beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol and,
consequently, was starting to regret the amount he had consumed. But, he told
himself, he wasn't that drunk. Calmly, he asked, "And what price would you
charge for this little service, Ana? My soul? Sure, I grant you I want the
position, even want it somewhat desperately - I have ideas on teaching that I
would really like to see implemented. But thanks but no thanks-not at that
price."
To his surprise, she giggled. "Oh, Willis, some human ideas about demons
are so silly! I'm not that kind of demon. You did me a favor, getting me out
of That Place-so, if you want, I'll do you a few. The first is to help you get
that job you want so much - even if you wouldn't give your soul for it. Of
course, I already knew that."
She blew a triangle of smoke in his face, causing him to cough.
Funny kind of smell, he thought.
"So let me get the lay of the land," she continued, brushing back a
stray lock of hair. "Thanks mostly to what's just happened, the man most
likely to get the job is Larry Hawthorne, right?"
"That's right. He's also been making passes at Gertrude lately."
"Well, unfortunately that form of dementia won't disqualify him,"
Anathae said. "So, it seems to me, if something happens to him, your way is
clear. Of course, you wouldn't condone pushing him out the window of his
high-rise apartment-"
"Heavens, no!"
"I know you wouldn't, Will. So we'll have to do it the hard way. Hey,
you want a drag of this?" She proffered the half-smoked cigarette. "I'd like
some of that Scotch. After all, even though I probably shouldn't have, I had
to really work to get you to bring it out with us."
He paused only briefly, realized she had to be much older than the
sixteen-year-old she appeared to be, and handed her the bottle but waved away
the cigarette. "Uh-uh. No tobacco. Alcohol's my only vice."
"If anyone knows that, Will, I do. But who said it was tobacco?"
"Do you mean it's . . ."
She shrugged. "It's all we smoke, where I come from."
"Gaahh!" Willis exclaimed.
4
This should be noted, dear reader, and noted well: As a university professor,
while Willis Baxter was a bit of a nebbish in some respects, he was
nonetheless well aware that a few members of the faculty (to say nothing of a
substantial number of students) indulged in the smoking of Other Substances.
And although he did not partake in this practice himself and made it known
that he did not want it at his parties, he considered himself a tolerant man.
If anything, people who indulged in his own legal vice, liquor, seemed to
suffer more ill effects. And alcohol, too, had once been illegal. In any
event, Willis Baxter, while at some times a bit of a Milquetoast and at others
something of a bookish boob, lived in the modern day and age and was not a
hypocrite. To each his own, he felt.
For that reason, it must surely follow that the "Gaahh!" which Willis
exclaimed was not a "Gaahh!" of disdain or disapproval, nor even a "Gaahh!" of
dismay or disbelief.
No, the "Gaahh!" which came so suddenly from Willis's lips was entirely
the result of the fact that just as Anathae made her calm admission, he espied
摘要：

APersonalDemonbyDavidBischoff,RichBrownandLindaRichardsonCopyright1985DavidBischoff,RichBrownandLindaRichardson1Putonyourdisbeliefsuspenders,dearreader,asColeridgemightinvite,andmakeyourselfwelcomeoutsidethiscozylittleapartmentnearPowhattanUniversity,thatarcadeofacademiatuckedawayintheivy-coveredivo...

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