Free Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory Page A

End card, but there might still be a few inches of breathing space near the ceiling of my Citibank. “Let’s do Discover Card,” I said. I had maybe $800 left on that one.

I kept my relaxed smile in place until the transaction cleared.
    * * *
    Ten minutes in the room and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to unpack, so I’d toured the bathroom (fantastically clean) and closets (oddly small), then inspected the mandatory hotel room equipment—TV, telephone, minibar—each with its own tented instructional card. Some poor slob with the same college degree as me had probably spent weeks designing each card. Or even sadder, they’d fired the poor slob with the useless degree and hired a high school kid who could use Microsoft Publisher.

I opened the drapes, and sat on the king-sized bed. I was thirty floors up. The second Hyatt tower blocked my direct view, but to either side I could see Lake Michigan: a broad plain the color of steel stretching to the horizon, scored with whitecaps. So huge. Repeated exposure to maps had never eradicated my boyhood conviction that this was no lake, not even a “great” one, but a third ocean.

The thing in my head paced back and forth, running a stick along the bars.

I got up, closed the drapes. Sat down in one of the chairs. Got up and looked through the drawers in the bedside table. Empty, not even a Gideon Bible. There hadn’t been one in the last hotel I’d stayed at, either. Maybe the Gideons were falling down on the job.

I opened the duffel and looked through the printouts from the ICOP website.

Dr. Ram only showed up on the schedule for two events. The first, in less than an hour, was a poster session (whatever that was) with several of his grad students. The important event was his talk at 3:00 p.m. today in the Concorde room, one of the underground conference rooms.

So. Ambush him at the poster session, at the talk, or somewhere in between?

I pulled out the two collared shirts I’d brought—one blue, one white—both of them wrinkled as hell. I couldn’t decide which one to wear and decided to iron both of them. The room’s iron, annoyingly, was heavier and more fully featured than any I’d ever owned.

I didn’t know when it would be best to approach Dr. Ram, or what I would say. This part of my plan had been hazy, even though I’d written over a dozen letters to him since I’d first read about his research, explaining my situation and proposing that my condition and his research interests seemed to intersect. Some of these letters were eloquent and cogent. Some were written from inside the white-noise cocoon of Nembutal.

I hadn’t sent any of them. The problem was this: Demons didn’t write letters to neurologists; therefore I wasn’t possessed. Perhaps I had been possessed, but in that I was no different than thousands of other victims. There was no such thing in the literature as half-possessed—demi-demons weren’t on the menu. So I was either a possession victim unique in the annals of the disorder, or I was crazy—and frankly, my credentials for crazy were impeccable.

I had managed to work up the courage once to call his office. He wasn’t accepting patients—at least not walk-ins like me. I’d considered flying to California and pitching my case personally, but then I’d read on his website that he’d be attending this year’s ICOP. I’d convinced myself that this was my best chance to get to him.

I put on the blue shirt and hung up the white one, and changed from jeans to beige, wrinkle-free khakis. I looked in the mirror. My hair was sticking up in the back, but otherwise I looked perfectly normal. Just another sane, reasonable person who had every right to walk up to a neurologist and introduce himself.

The thing in my head shifted like a toolbox sliding around the bed of a truck.
    * * *
    In the lobby I acknowledged the security guard with a nod and tired smile and walked through the frame of the metal detector.