His interrogator asked:

“How did you let it in?”

The boy said:

“If I tell you, you won’t believe me. If I tell you, you’re gonna say we’re insane. I’m not stupid. I know what you think. You think, ‘here’s this 16 year old who probably killed all these people and now he doesn’t want to have to take the blame so of course he blames it on demons.’ But here’s the thing: I was there. You weren’t. I saw them. I saw her..”

“Where?”

“Inside me. I saw her inside me. She’s inside all of us. It’s too late.”

“And where is she now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe sleeping. Maybe she’s waiting. Maybe…”

“Yes?”

“Maybe she wants all of this to be forgotten and then maybe she’ll come back, years from now, maybe she’ll come back because we hurt her, we wounded her in some way, and she doesn’t have as much power. Maybe when she’s all healed, she’ll come back.”

“What did you do to hurt her?”

“Not just me, all of us.”

“How did you hurt her?”

“There are rituals. One of us knew how. Maybe he didn’t know how. Maybe he lied. You gotta understand it was crazy. It was crazy. Everything was burning. Everyone was dying or dead. It was like this little point of – I don’t know – craziness that made total sense. What we did. At the time. It seemed right. It seemed like the only thing. But now it sounds insane. It sounds like something evil. What we did.”

A pause on the tape.

The question was repeated.

“We stopped her,” the boy finally said.

“You stabbed her with this knife that you mentioned? The one that – “

“Sends people to hell. That’s what it was supposed to do. But, no. We didn’t. We should’ve maybe. You weren’t there. It’s crazy. What we did.”

“What did you do?”

“All of us did it. We all did.”

“How can you stop a demon?” the man asked.

2

A girl said into the tape machine:

“I don’t remember what happened. You tell me.”

The man asked, “You mean you don’t remember what happened to your family?”

Silence on the tape for several minutes.

Then, “My grandmother gave me a Bible to read. In it, there are demons, but none seem very real. Do you believe in God?”

“That’s the search of life. But yes, I believe in God. Perhaps not the way some people would think of God, but yes.”

“I guess if you believe in God, you’d believe in demons too, wouldn’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

“I don’t believe in demons. It’s stupid to believe in demons, isn’t it? It’s like fairy tales or dreams. It makes no sense. I think it’s all a lie. I think one of them did it all. I saw him kill my mother. I saw him kill all of them.”

“Where are the bodies?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember. I told you.”

Then, after a moment’s pause, she added:

“I do remember one thing.”

“What?”

“I remember a wall. I remember a shadow on the wall. I remember…wings, like bats, in a cave, all around me…and seeing a light so blue that it was like a perfect sky and then I saw what looked like a wolf above me lean down and whisper something dreadful to me.”

“What did the wolf say?”

“My name. That’s all. He called me by name. He knew my name. But it was a dream. It was a nightmare. I’m awake now. It didn’t happen.”

3

A different boy laughed as the tape whirred. “This is a big contraption,” he said.

“I don’t like cassettes.”

“Yeah, I guess they suck. So, I guess Peter probably told you that completely nuts story about demons and stuff, right? Yeah, I knew he would. He’s delusional. There’s no way that happened.”

“Alison told me that you did it.”

A pause.

“Is this for the cops?”

“No, it’s for my own research.”

“Okay. Well, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me anyway even though I guess my hands did some of it.” He laughed again. “All right, I’ll tell you the truth. It wasn’t demons, it was the Devil, I’m pretty sure, yeah. It was like the Big Bad Guy. Possession and all that – I mean, I’m not Catholic or anything, but I sort of believe in Hell at this point and I sort of believe in Heaven, and maybe I’m as messed up as all these docs say and maybe I really think I saw the Devil or maybe it was like a movie of the Devil or maybe I really did murder a bunch of people, but hell, find their bodies, ok? Find their bodies. That’s what the lawyers said. Find their bodies, and then you can come execute me or whatever they do to kids who kill.”

“What did the Devil look like?”

“See, I can tell you don’t believe in this. That’s cool. Most jerk-offs in this world think there’s no such thing and that it’s all make believe and stuff, but that’s because they never experienced it. They never got touched by it, like we did.”

“I’ve studied cases of demonic possession before.”

“Yeah, like The Exorcist, right? Shit, a kid in a bedroom spitting pea soup’s kind of sweet compared to what we went through.”

“Tell me about the Devil.”

“Ok. Well it’s not just one thing, is it? It’s many. It’s goo dripping out of someone’s brain and that someone still talking to you and maybe it’s got claws and maybe you’re just dreaming standing up – and maybe its crawls across your hands like ants and scorpions and then it just looks like maybe a pretty girl. A pretty girl who knows how to get boys. A pretty girl who has things inside her. Well, there was this girl – wait, she was more like a woman – and she was a demon only not like you think of demons, and she could sort of change things, she could bend things, you know? Like a mirror – like a funhouse mirror -- and she had this thing where once she had you, you were hers and she made all kinds of things happen…” He kept laughing as he spoke, giggling, sniggering. “Like, you know, people would…I can’t even say it, you know I saw all kinds of shit, stuff that you only dream about. It was all in us to begin with. I don’t think she could’ve done what happened without us. I think we were each part of her. But it was all the Devil, you know? It was all this other thing going on, I mean, I got this from the source, I got it from the person who knows. Shit, we’re still part of her. She’s in us. I tried to stop her. Hell, we all did. I even had this knife – this sort of ritual thing. It was called an athame. It could’ve sent her to Hell. I know it could’ve.”

“Are you possessed?”

“I don’t know, but even when I’m talking to you now, I can see her, over there, calling me. But that’s why I’m going into the looney bin, ain’t it?”

“Over here? By the window?”

“Yeah. Right there.”

“Describe her.”

“Well, Christ, she’s really pretty and she – wait…she’s…”

“What’s she saying to you? Right now?”

“If I was to tell you, she’d kill me. And maybe you, too. I can’t tell anyone. It’s something that’s between her and me. Until the end of time.”

4

The last tape played.

“Who are you?”

A sound like rushing wind on the tape.

“I am that I am.”

“Why are you inside him?”

“He has sacrificed to me. He has given his soul to me.”

“What do you mean to do with him?”

“What I mean to do with all of them. All of those I have touched. All of those who have partaken of me.”

And then, something that sounded like a screeching howl, overlaid with another sound, like hundreds of people whispering secrets in an echoing cavern.

When the sound had finally stopped, the man asked: “Are you a demon?”

“I am the enemy of your kind.”

“And your name?”

“Lamia,” and even though the voice was still the boy’s, it sounded like a woman speaking from within him.

“Why are you here?”

“You called me.”

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