THE DEMON
One night around 1970, Michael attended a party in the student center of Antioch University, and had a Halloween adventure in the middle of summer.
Michael was drinking a beer, when he heard someone whisper in his ear.
"Do you know Professor Reynolds?"
Michael whipped around and found a young woman he had seen around campus on many occasions, but barely knew.
"The music professor?" he replied.
"That's him, right over there." She responded. Michael looked in the direction she was staring, and found himself looking into the eyes of Professor Jim Reynolds, the professor of a history of jazz course he had taken two quarters ago. He looked back at the girl.
"What about him?" he asked.
"He told me," she returned, "that he killed a baby."
Michael was quite shocked and asked her what she was talking about. She told him that she had encountered the professor walking on the green around eleven p.m. a few weeks earlier, and got into a conversation with him. He told her he had killed a baby with his bare hands, and he told her where he left it.
"So you know where it is?" Michael asked. "Did you go look?"
"No, I never went." She said. "Do you think we should?"
They left together. In the parking lot, the girl -- we'll call her Chris -- suggested they take her car, and then asked Michael to drive. She said she was too drunk, and indeed, Michael observed, she did seem to be extremely tipsy. So he slid behind the wheel of her beat-up station wagon, and she took the passenger's seat, giggling. He started the car and pulled out of the parking space, and said "Where to?"
In an instant, she stopped giggling, and said "You take a left out of the parking lot entrance on the Elm street side, and go up four blocks and turn right on Bread Road. You drive 7.25 miles on Bread road, and fork left when it junctions with County Road 17. Take CR 17 for just about four miles, and you will see two huge boulders standing close to the side of the road together, on your right. Slow down. There is a gravel road between the boulders, and you turn right onto that road. Drive a mile and a half through the woods, and when the trees stop on the right, slow down and park. Off across the field there on the right, there are two really tall, old trees, standing about eighteen feet apart., and right beyond the trees is a cliff. The baby is between the trees."
Michael, mildly stunned for reasons he was too buzzed to put together at once, turned left on Elm Street, and commenced to follow the directions she was able to repeat from memory each time he required a prompt. They left the campus, and then the town, and then the lighted roads, and then the paved roads, and finally, out where the stars were very clear and intensely bright, he slowed the car to a stop. Off across a field on the right side of the car, he could just barely make out two very large, tall, old treetops about twenty feet apart, against the starry sky. It occurred to him to wonder what in God's name had possessed him to come to this desolate and isolated spot. It occurred to him that he was a MAN. He told Chris to wait in the car, and assured her he would be right back. Then, leaving her the car keys, he left the station wagon and began faltering his way across the field, in darkness like crossing a cave toward a distant entrance. He felt tentatively with each foot as he moved forward, before shifting his weight for the next step. He stumbled in a couple of potholes, and it seemed to take forever, but finally, he arrived at the trees. It was so so dark. He could FEEL he had arrived at the trees, and swinging his hands in front of his face, he encountered the bark of the tree on the left. He felt around it and moved into position until he was standing with his back against the tree trunk. Then he stood very still and tried to quiet his breathing, and he listened.
Nothing.
Michael stepped forward. He put his right foot down, wincing, lest he step on a tiny corpse. Then, he swung his left foot about on the ground in a wide arc, before planting it ahead, and shifting his weight. Swinging the right foot, he moved forward, and then the left then the right, until he found he had reached the far tree, without finding the Dead Baby. He turned. More confident now, he moved back toward the first tree, sliding his feet in wide arcs along the ground, and out to the sides as far as he could, and he ranged from right to left, all the way back across the dark divide. No body. He stood where he was, when he reached the first tree again, standing very still in the dark, listening, quieting his breath, thinking about what to do. Did Professor Reynolds lie? Should he look harder? Should he go back and tell Chris it was a mistake to come at night and they should look in daylight? Then he heard the voice, behind him.
"Here it is." said Chris.
Michael jumped out of his skin, and turned. Chris had joined him, and he had never heard a sound. And there on the ground at her feet, was a large-sized Purina dog chow bag.
He couldn't think how Chris could have arrived so noiselessly, but more immediately flabbergasting was the bag, there on the ground between the two trees. Michael could not think how he could have missed it. He picked up the paper dog chow sack by the corner, and together they went back to the car. Chris opened the tailgate of the station wagon, and the inside light came on. Michael gently laid the sack on the open tailgate, and together they stood looking at it. "Well?" Chris finally said, and Michael gingerly pinched the two corners of the closed end of the bag between his thumbs and forefingers, and UP he yanked.
Out fell a pillow case. It landed on the tailgate with a thud.
There was something IN the pillow case, which was some pastel color like yellow or pale pink -- Michael could never remember which. And there was something ON the pillow case. Somebody had straightened a coat hanger and wrapped it over and over around one end of the pillowcase. There was a small, round bulge above the coat hanger, the size of a small grapefruit. And there was a dark deep smear on the bulge. It looked like blood. Michael looked at the pillow case where it lay. Chris never made a sound, so finally he looked over at her, and she was looking at him. "Are you going to open it?" she asked.
So Michael did his best to grasp the raw ends of the coat hanger, and unwrap them from the pillow case, whimpering out loud and machismo be damned, each time his fingertips brushed ever so slightly against the firmness beneath the cloth. The bulge eventually was freed in this manner, and the small weight clunked again down onto the tailgate, as Michael pulled the metal strip free and tossed it to the ground beside them. He was stark sober now. He felt as though the alcohol in his system was all burned away. And then he WENT for it. He pinched the cloth covering the bloody bulge, and rudely pulled the cloth away and lifted, whipped and JERKED the case.
Out slipped a dead poodle.
Chris and Michael had quite a talk on the drive back, trying to figure out why the professor of the jazz class would kill a poodle. Whose poodle was it? Was it missed? Was it his? Was he crazy? Was he dangerous to people? Why did he tell Chris about it? When Michael parked her station wagon outside her off-campus apartment, she invited him in, and they had inspired sex for most of what was left of the night.
After that night, it was as it had been before, with Michael knowing little to nothing about Chris. He still did not know her last name. He saw her around campus a few times, and always said hello and she greeted him in a casual way and they moved on. It did eventually occur to Michael to wonder about how someone so drunk could so mechanically recite such a lengthy set of directions so accurately, without having them written down. But that and some lingering sadness and revulsion about the poor little dog were pretty much all he retained from the experience, until one year later.
It was summer again, and Michael, a junior now, was attending the annual summer party at the Antioch student center, when he felt goose bumps rise along the back of his neck. He turned around, and saw a young man he knew slightly from his job on the local newspaper. The young man was a print setter at the paper, and he was staring at Michael with a startling intensity. And immediately behind him, just visible over his left shoulder, was Chris, whispering something in his ear.
Ed. Note: Told to me as truth by Michael for no particular reason but that it was late and dark one summer night in 1978. I changed one of the names.