The Cost_An Introduction to Demonology, Part 1 Read online

  An Introduction to Demonology

  Part 1

  The Cost

  By R.W. Holmes

  Copyright © 2017

  Ryan Walter Holmes

  Chapter 1

  Boredom

  It can be said that boredom is the root of all evil.

  How curious it was, then, that Gael Walsh would find himself perusing books of indefinite age for information on fictitious nonsense for fools with an eye for the supernatural.

  Gael himself had no eye for the supernatural, and in fact no one seemed to anymore. It was the year four thousand and eight, not even a decade since the last Millennia had turned, and the idea of something being 'supernatural' had existed solely in fiction for nearly a thousand years already.

  And yet, because of boredom, and the new matter printer that had recently been installed in his room, Gael was now about to embark on a journey of spiritual enlightenment.

  To Hell.

  Gael himself saw no issue with it, mostly because he and his family hadn't practiced a religion for more than a dozen generations, but also because succeeding wasn't the point.

  But that would have to wait.

  The harsh pinging noise intended to wake the residents of the dorms up resonated throughout the complex, and for a moment Gael had to close his eyes and attribute every ounce of his willpower towards getting the sound from the intercom out of his ears.

  The lights of the complex clicked on, and the stark metal walls of his dorm room lit up to reveal the twilight world reflected in their dubiously hazy finish. A bed, equally stark, sat between a nightstand and a relatively strange, squarish device about the size of a small refrigerator. Likewise, it had a small door on it, and was where Gael would go for food, but that was where the similarities ended.

  The device was hooked up to the rest of the complex, and funneled raw materials into its complex center within. Here, anything one could want, from a strawberry smoothie, to an entire cooked dinner, or even a plastic figurine in ones own likeness would be synthesized by the matter printer.

  Gael's had discovered his to be broken the week before when he first arrived, and for that week of having to rely on the kindness of other students, he had ended up with the most modern model yet; a model that could matter print nearly anything that was both inorganic or otherwise... so long as it were dead, of course.

  What followed for Gael was much like any other day. It started with breakfast in the mess hall, followed by a trip to his first class. Every step of the way he was greeted by yet more metallic gray, whether it comprised the walls around him or the furniture he sat at. Classes, at the collegiate level they were, engaged, but did little more than offer a momentary distraction from the listless existence attending such a school offered.

  It wasn't that the future had forgotten comfort, of course. There were many colleges Gael could have attended that included more comfortable day to day sights, but he wanted a quality college, and quality without an exorbitant price tag came at a cost elsewhere. The tax this had put on Gael's mental state was unexpected, though.

  Gael's day continued as it usually did, with classes in criminology and psychology rounding out most of the morning and early afternoon. His lunch was unsatisfactory, his peers were largely oblivious to his existence, save for the few who held a strange conviction to insist on Gael that his name was primarily one parents chose for girls.

  The school day concluded with a sociology class, which Gael had taken a slightly heightened interest in. His teacher wasn't the cause, although he would give the smartly dressed Clarissa Thomas anything but exceptional marks on her own personal knowledge of sociology, or her ability to teach it, for that matter.

  No, what had sparked Gael's interest was the very thing that had set him on his course from the start: boredom, and that boredom had festered into the topic he would write his first year thesis on.

  Or at least, that's what he'd hoped.

  When class concluded, and most of the students had filed out or had their turn speaking with Ms. Thomas, Gael at last stood up from his seat and made his way over the painfully complementary silverish metal desk she sat at.

  “Do you ever wake up and just wish we could have a day with the lights off?” he said to her, momentarily forgetting his reason for coming over.

  “Every day” Clarissa murmured drolly. Turning her attention away from the stack of papers on her desk, she looked up at Gael and smiled. “And how is Mr. Walsh fairing here at Academy Nine?”

  “Well, we're supposed to be thinking about topics for our first year thesis, correct?” queried Gael. “I had an idea, but it was kind of a stretch.”

  “It's your first year, Mr. Walsh” Clarissa replied reassuringly. “Anything is fine. Just make sure it's relative to the overall subject of our first year: society as it was. Sociology is a science that evolves with society, so what I really want to see out of you and the rest of the class is an understanding of how the ideas and workings of the past provide clues to society's behavior today.”

  “Yes, well, I wanted to do something along the lines of superstition” said Gael. “Superstition, in regards to theology.”

  “Ah! The boogeyman” Clarissa said with a smirk. “Heaven for the good, hell for the bad. It's a good choice, lots of material to make a powerful point with. If it's my recommendation you're after, then you have it.”

  “Yeah, I had an interesting idea of how to go about it that I wanted to run by you” continued Gael. “A lot of the superstition of the past was built on people not understanding things. I'm kind of embarrassed by admitting it now, but I wanted to reenact some of the old rituals and ceremonies that propagated the concept of a 'religious experience'. I want to understand the feelings and sensations people got from it, and make the paper about that in particular.”

  Clarissa failed to contain a smirk, which in itself was the slightest bit cruel, as the realization of what exactly it was Gael was getting at finally became obvious to her.

  “You're very bored” she said aloud, chiding both herself and reassuring Gael all at once. “But, I don't see why it's not a good idea... It could even turn out to be an excellent one. Just, uh, don't get carried away, I suppose? Yes, that. Getting carried away is exactly what these things have a history of making people do, after all.”

  “Of course” Gael replied brightly. “Thank you so much. I think I can finally have some fun with one of my assignments.”

  “Oh, well, not too much fun” insisted Clarissa. “You're here to learn, Mr. Walsh. And not every memory of this place is going to be full of fun by the time you've gotten all your degrees.”

  Gael nodded back knowingly, before taking his leave and heading back to his dorm.

  It was as he'd left it: sparse, and with naught but a thin piece of plastic about fifteen inches tall and twenty six inches wide laying atop his own metallic gray desk.

  “Lighting dim, please” Gael called out to no one in particular as he stepped over and picked up the plastic.

  The room dimmed anyway though, and for a moment the harshness of the reflective walls was abated.

  “Printer, I need candles” he said next. “The droopy ones, like you see in horror movies or at haunted houses.”

  Gael touched the plastic screen, and it lit up with a computer display. His previous research, as well as the ingredients he'd need going forward, were now illuminated before him.

  “I'll also need melted wax in the symbol of a Baphomet, a pentagram, the alchemical symbol for brimstone, some arraignment of three sixes, and uh...”

  Gael trailed off as the realization of how ridiculous he must sound hit him. He had listed off
a series of things that for the mere mention of at one time would have gotten him burned at the stake for heresy, and he'd done it as casually and as monotone as his mother might have while reciting a shopping list out loud.

  “Right, you know what...” Gael said as he stepped over to the printer. “Here.” He placed his 'computer' down atop it and added, “Interface. Read list, produce ingredients.”

  The matter printer dinged, and a timer illuminated itself on the seemingly opaque door.

  “Eight minutes, awesome” he said nonchalantly, before scooping his computer back up once more. “Just enough time to go over rites and passages one last time...”

  In the eight minutes that Gael had left himself to research and look up rights and passages, he found himself extraordinarily disappointed by the offerings of the web. There were lots of things said, and in tones that were manipulatively serious or self-important, but nothing that seemed to hold true with dialect that denoted it came before sixteenth century.

  “This really is a great subject” Gael admitted aloud optimistically to himself. “People faked it for hundreds of years, even though nothing ever happened. Time to find out why.”

  As ridiculous as counting out the list of ingredients he'd need to make a convincing attempt at contacting some supernatural entity was, Gael found it hardly compared to the anxiety that came with dimming the lights low and arranging various templates of melted wax into combinations of mildly ominous imagery. It had, in not so many words, left Gael feeling like a child playing pretend again; he was well into twenties now.

  Playing pretend usually didn't involve going through quite the motions he had, though, and before long his wax circles and dimly lit flickering candles were in their properly ominous places in front of him. At the very least, it didn't feel quite so childish anymore.

  Behind Gael sat nearly two dozen bowls of other odds and ends, whilst a last bowl lay in his hands, empty, and awaiting whatever combination of nonsense he decided to throw in from the other twenty-four.

  “Offerings and sacrifices, offerings and sacrifices” Gael repeated aloud to himself, his mind working furiously as it ran through various depictions of demons.

  Goetic, Christian, Hebrew, Gnostic, Islamic, Hindu, Thelemite, Ayyavazhi, and even folklore and religions that didn't outright name its less savory creatures of myth as demons were among the legions he'd taken time to study.

  In the end, he settled on the oft-referenced and ever popular 'Belial' as his first subject of contact.

  “This was a bad idea” Gael said immediately as he realized his mistake. “How am I supposed to make an offering to someone whose name is synonymous with 'worthless'? On the other hand, the Satanic Bible says it means 'without a master', and that Belial represents independence and personal accomplishment.

  “That's pretty far apart, but at least I can work with it.”

  Reaching behind himself, Gael pulled several feathers from one bowl, and a pinch of yellowish dust from another.

  “Eagle's feathers for freedom, and gold, the metal of first place, for personal accomplishment” he said aloud with a smirk. “How does one go about calling it, though?”

  Gael took a moment to set his now-full bowl in the center of his collage of wax demonic imagery, and then scooped up the largish plastic panel that was his computer and went over his notes once more.

  “Daemon, esto subjecto voluntati meae” he read aloud lazily.

  Nothing happened, and Gael quickly typed out his lack of results.

  “Where's the really really long one...” he murmured thoughtfully, before finding it and immediately reeling at its source. “Oh, wait. This is crap. I mean, it's all crap, but this one is especially crap. I don't think the Latin is important anyway, not unless demons don't speak English. How do I apply logic to something like demon summoning? I guess the point is to make it believable to me, right? That's what matters here. That's what makes it seem real, even if it isn't.”

  Gael paused and looked about himself as he remembered that he was alone. There was nothing but his odd combination of 'ingredients' and the the dull gray of his room's walls dancing peacefully in the candlelight.

  “This is starting to feel kind of silly” he said instead.

  A quick glance back to his computer told him that all of his setup and careful arranging had taken more time than he'd thought, and that he'd have to start work on his other classes soon if he wanted to be in bed by a reasonable time.

  “What a waste” Gael said as he stood back up. “Lights default, please.”

  The room re-illuminated itself, and Gael was reduced to what he was before it all started: bored, and wanting more.

  The following morning, Gael awoke to another day of classes. Criminology and psychology piqued the deep, dark interest he had in why the world's problems manifested as they did, but an underscored frustration for the continued lack of excitement in his life had begun to pull at his better senses.

  Lunch brought with it another bout of name calling, but when Gael's tormentors came by that day he decided to engage with them.

  “You get your name changed yet, Ms. Walsh?”

  Gael looked up at the trio of young men, each a year or two his senior, as they continued on their way past him.

  “Sorry, what's your name?” Gael called after them.

  The one in the center turned to face Gael incredulously.

  “What, you don't know?” he said incredulously. “That's not very polite” he added derisively.

  “Well I figured I'd ask” continued Gael. “Although you can't be very important if I don't already know...”

  The young man stepped forward aggressively and pointed threateningly at Gael.

  “You making fun of me, Walsh?” he queried angrily.

  Gael blinked as he realized that he was, in fact, antagonizing his peer slightly.

  “Sorry, it's been a long day” he said to the bully with a disarming smile.

  “Kennedy” said the bully. “Kennedy Adams. Don't forget it.”

  Gael forced himself to remain as he was, still wearing his disarming smile as the bully turned to go.

  'I wonder if his middle name is a last name, too' he thought humorously to himself.

  The cafeteria around Gael continued on as it always had, completely oblivious to the exchange that had just occurred. A still-growing line of students waited patiently beside series of automated serving machines. The octopodian devices reached out with their array of thin, metal, claw-tipped arms and served up plates to the students eight at a time against the usual background of bleak, unending grayness that was Academy Nine.

  It was becoming unbearable for Gael. His first year of college had only just begun, and yet already he found himself longing for his old, tight-knit group of friends and the worldly comforts of earthen soil beneath his feet.

  'It'll get better' he assured himself. 'And you're unapproachable. Those guys are only poking fun at you because they don't know another way to start a conversation.'

  Sociology came next, and the half-circle lecture hall that Ms. Thomas called her own was quite a bit more devoid of students than it had been the previous day.

  Clarissa Thomas went about her day usual though, paying the half-absent hall little mind as she droned on about the various societal power struggles of the world at the start of the computer age for what felt like the thousandth time in her career.

  When class ended, she felt her own battle with boredom insist that she call Gael over and check in on his unique activities.

  “So?” Clarissa queried as he approached. “How was it?”

  “Disastrous” Gael answered bluntly. “The stories of what people went through when attempting all of this supernatural stuff was so much more interesting than what actually happened. I think I'm too much a skeptic to get the results I need.”

  “Oh, I see” said Clarissa, equally disappointed with the results. “You shouldn't be too upset, though. You have to be very well grounded not to get caught u
p in something like that, and I imagine you'll find being objective that much easier for it. That's a useful talent for someone with your curriculum.”

  Gael sighed back to Clarissa and nodded.

  Clarissa frowned though as Gael turned to go, the longing in his sigh easily recognizable to her. He was one of the few students that hadn't immediately decided to go home and listen in on her lectures from where it was live streamed, and his quirky thesis idea had conjured the image of a very successful future graduate in her own optimistic mind.

  “You have lots of time, Mr. Walsh” she called after him.

  Gael paused just as he got to the door and looked back at Clarissa curiously.

  “For your experiments, I mean” continued Clarissa. “The school year has only just begun, and I'm very excited to see the results.”

  “I, uh, I hope they meet your expectations” Gael replied awkwardly, before making his leave.

  In the end, when Gael returned to his dorm, he decided that giving up immediately wouldn't be for the best. At the very least, he felt a long list of attempts would help assure his sociology teacher that his initial assessment of hopelessness was accurate.

  For half an hour, Gael went about the previous ritual of getting everything set up, before taking his seat before the all important collage of occult nonsense on the floor.

  “Dim lights, please” he called out as he lit the candles.

  'Think to yourself now' thought Gael. 'What more can I do? What haven't I tried?'

  Gael pulled up his notes as he thought things over, specifically looking for the various alternative methods that involved deep meditation.

  “Perfect” Gael said as he placed another eagle feather and a pinch of gold dust into the central bowl. “Meditation is exactly what I need right now.”

  In the moments that followed, Gael learned that he was wrong. Very wrong. Invading thoughts of the nothing that was happening, the doubts he had of the process, and the unequivocal ridiculousness of the whole activity broke down any sense of relaxation Gael would have gotten from the exercise and merely allowed his frustrations to fester instead.