Demon
Chapter 24

March 2002

Brenda

The time has passed so quickly. It’s impossible to believe that it has been four months since Ron proposed, and that the wedding we’ve been planning is already next week. When school ends on Friday for spring break, we’ll be picking the kids up from school and heading straight to the airport.

Then Sunday is the day. We’ll have a brief morning ceremony at the church, just with a few people there, before heading to a restaurant for a celebratory lunch. Ron and I will be husband and wife again. Although, I already feel that way. It’s like that few years in the middle never happened. How long was it? Like six or seven years? Well, it’d have to be, Natalie is seven, and Ron left when I was pregnant. But all of that hardly matters now. I am back to feeling like Ron and I have always been married, and always will be. If soulmates is really a thing that exists, that’s us. It’s a comfortable feeling, of total fulfillment. Together, we are complete.

So, although I suppose I have some nerves about the big day, they aren’t about the marriage part. Just thinking about making sure everything comes together and the ceremony is pleasant and will make a nice memory for the kids.

Then, the rest of the week we will just hang around Albuquerque, see the sights, eat lots of Mexican food.

For now, though, I have to get the office in order for me to take a vacation for a week. I’m still the manager for this little insurance office, but at least now we have a second staffer who can take care of everything in my absence. I’m planning to spend the rest of Wednesday going over everything with her, then tomorrow I’m just working half a day so that I can go home and start packing. Then Friday we’re off!

I imagine how Ron is spending his day. Much the same as I am, I assume. As though he could hear me thinking about him, my phone chimes. I pick it up and see his text message. Just a little heart emoji, nothing more. Just enough for me to know everything that I need to.

Jonathan

“Want some of my cookies?” I ask them, passing around the full baggie. My Dad always packs way too much food for my lunch. He’s the one who packs it up now, since Mom is too busy with school and whatever else she’s doing. I think Dad thinks I can eat as much as he does, like he doesn’t realize that I’m only nine. Which is strange, considering that we just had my 9th birthday party a few weeks ago.

So here I am with two sandwiches and an apple and chips and cookies and some other stuff he tossed into the bag for good measure. Gabe takes a handful of cookies when I wave the bag under his nose.

Natalie takes one, making sure to touch my hand as I pass it to her, and she very politely thanks me. It still feels good whenever she touches me, but she doesn’t have to do it all the time anymore. She says that Angel told her I’m almost back to normal. We hardly ever talk about my missing guardian angel any more. There’s still no sign of him, and I’m starting to think he’s just gone. That’s fine. I feel okay. Natalie tells me that him being missing was a problem, but it doesn’t seem to be any more. I used to be afraid of him coming back and controlling me again. But I don’t think it will happen now. I don’t remember any of it anyway, so I don’t feel like it is a real threat.

Timothy even takes a cookie when I hand him the bag, and sits there munching it while staring off into the distance.

I think everyone else in the school is used to this now, the four of us eating lunch together every day. We didn’t used to, before the “jungle gym” as we have been calling it. The day that everything changed. But now Natalie is my friend, just as much as Gabe ever was.

Even Timothy. I’ve gotten used to his weird little personality. Who could have ever known that such a quirky dude could be so interesting and smart? I don’t remember everything that happened before the jungle gym, but I’m pretty sure that I used to tease him for being a weirdo. I’m sorry about that. I just didn’t understand him. Being around him, especially with Natalie’s help, has given me a whole new appreciation. He even helps me with my homework sometimes, even though he’s a grade lower than me.

“Hey, Timothy?” I say.

He focuses back on reality, obviously coming back from wherever he just was in his head. “Yes?” he asks.

“We were talking about something in science this morning that I thought you’d be interested in.” He’s in second grade and I’m in third, and he always wants to hear what we do in science. He replaces it more interesting since it’s at a higher level. Although I’ve started to realize that even third grade science would be too easy for him.

His eyes light up. “Really? What was it?”

“We’ve been talking about different kinds of energy, and batteries and stuff. The teacher told us that you can actually make a battery out of a potato!”

Gabe laughs. “I can think of better things to do with a potato. Hmmm. Now I want some of your chips!” He grabs my bag of potato chips, while Timothy and I start talking about how to make a potato battery. It sounds like he knows more about it than my teacher does.

Natalie smiles and watches us all.

Timothy’s

To watch my beloved enjoy the company of a group of friends, aside from his relationship with Natalie, is a joy. It is all because of the Seer, of course, but his friendships with Gabe and Jonathan are genuine. They both appreciate and tolerate his personality quirks.

Jonathan’s status is confounding. After Demon’s departure left his soul so damaged, it seemed unlikely that he would ever be able to recover. But with the Seer’s touch and presence, he has revived tremendously. His soul glows as healthily as that of the humans around him. It has never recovered the flaming brilliance of its former days, but it is perfectly satisfactory. The symptoms of lethargy and disinterest that resulted from his diminished soul have long vanished. As have, interestingly, the sides of his personality that alienated my beloved from him in the first place.

Jonathan is now a good friend to the other children, and has none of the dark thoughts that used to direct his actions. It has been many months since the last time that he played a cruel trick, or attempted to harm another. His sense of humor has returned, and his enjoyment in life is back to normal. He engages in many activities with enthusiasm. But never darkness or cruelty.

Angel and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing this. It was Natalie’s touch that healed Jonathan’s soul. Did she also imbue it with her own sensibilities? Her guiding principles are those of love, kindness, mercy. Have they overlaid Jonathan’s darker tendencies, obscuring them into oblivion?

If Demon were to return, what would happen? Would Jonathan immediately revert to his prior proclivities? We tend to think not, as long as Natalie remains nearby, and continues to hold sway over Jonathan’s life.

Despite the way that Demon had become an evil and controlling spirit, lusting for the pain that Jonathan could inflict, I do not believe that he started that way. Jonathan’s Guardian used to have the same priorities as the rest of us, for the human being Guarded to grow in goodness and light. It was Jonathan’s own tendency to be cruel to others that transformed Demon, not the other way around.

Angel and I are convinced of that.

But that being the case, why has Jonathan changed so much without Demon?

There is only one conceivable explanation. It must be the influence of the Seer.

Stefanie

I shift in my seat, and try to get comfortable as I index the patient files in the back room. Still another couple of months before this baby comes, but I already feel like a whale. I was definitely not this big with Jonathan.

Meg comes in. She’s the psychiatrist who works in the office where I’m interning. “How’s the project coming?”

“Good,” I tell her. “I’ve gotten most of them organized, and I’m starting to upload them into the database.

I’m helping her with a research project she’s working on, and she’s been going back through her old patient files to include them in the study. She’s trying to disprove any connection between vaccinations and autism, since there’s a lot of people these days who seem to think that childhood vaccines cause it. She wants to start by indexing all of her old records, then she’s going to expand the research into the files at Children’s Hospital where she also practices. She wants to get a huge sample, so there are a lot of patients who have been diagnosed and also those who haven’t. She’ll try to access the vaccination records of as many as possible to see whether there is any mathematical correlation.

We have to be careful not to include any identification in the database, just the symptoms and treatment information, and any medical history that would show vaccination status. I’ve been learning a lot more about data entry than I ever expected. I’m really enjoying it.

She sits down across the table and opens a can of soda. She looks into a file on the top of the pile closest to her. “Oh yeah, this guy,” she says, leafing through her old handwritten notes. “One of my first patients on the spectrum. I wonder how he’s doing these days,” she muses.

She closes the file and sips her soda. “How’s it going?” she asks me. “With school and everything?” She waves her hand at my growing torso, indicating my pregnancy.

“Pretty good,” I tell her. “My course load this last semester is a little lighter than usual, since I had to fit in the time for this internship. So I don’t have too many finals and projects to worry about before the end of the year.”

“Are you feeling well? When are you due, again?”

“Yeah, I have been feeling fine. Just huge. My due date is at the beginning of June. Fingers crossed that I get the semester finished up first.”

She laughs. “Let’s hope.”

She takes another sip of her soda. “Do you have anything lined up for after you graduate?”

“Not yet. I had figured that I’d do a lot of job hunting this semester, and try to have something lined up by the summer. But since the baby will be coming then, I’m just going to wait a couple of months. Take some maternity leave before I start the job search.”

“Well,” she says, “I have a proposal, if you’re interested. I don’t have any other research assistants right now. After you take a couple of months off, would you be interested in coming back to work for me? As an actual paid position, not just for the internship? We could make it part time at first if you like, until the baby is a little older. This project is probably going to take at least another year of research before it’s ready to publish, and I could really use the help.”

Oh! “Oh, wow, that would really be perfect!” I love Meg, and the idea of continuing to work with her solves so many of the issues I’ve been wrestling with. Especially if I could work part time at the beginning, and even take a couple of months off after the baby is born. “Thank you!”

“So that’s a yes?” she asks, with a lopsided smile.

“Um, yes! Absolutely!”

“Great,” she says. “We can sort out the details as it gets closer. I still get you for free for a couple of months until your internship ends!”

We laugh.

I can’t wait to tell Brad. This is going to work out just great!