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I didn’t expect to remember myself, down in the well. It’s not like I could remember a time when I wasn’t Del. I figured letting go of my old life would lead to entropy, a dissolution. That wasn’t the case. Even in the primordial ooze of ideas, I was aware. Maybe too aware.
The figures I’d seen standing just beyond the precipice were now my neighbors. I could see flashes of possibility as we touched: a storm cloud filled with lightning, a gleaming sword, the now familiar farmhouse. Stories yet born. I wondered what the others saw when they brushed against me, now that my creator was gone.
Lew came to mind sometimes. When I’d left, his grip on my shoulders was tight but trembling, his face was pinched with misery. I had no doubt that little Del was in good hands. At least the life I’d stolen could be restored.
I’d hardly had a chance to contemplate this when things shifted. There I was, was navel-gazing sans navel, when that not-drowning feeling of being pulled rushed through me. It was the same as when I’d yanked my own dying self from the lakebed in a borrowed body. Moments of dizzying black, and then—
I blinked, my vision filled with spots of golden light. Fine hair tickled my forehead as I squinted. When my eyes adjusted, I found I was sitting at a table with candlelit giants. A chandelier hung above us, one of its bulbs burnt out.
“Happy birthday,” the giants sang, voices out of tune.
My heart pounded, drowning out the rest of the song. I only just heard someone say, “Aren’t you going to blow out the candles?” when I pushed my chair from the table. I nearly fell from my seat as I fled the room, tripping over short legs.
“Andy!” someone cried, but I didn’t turn to look.
The hallway yawned before me. Portraits of unfamiliar faces hung overhead, too high to see clearly, like smudges of paint pretending to be human. As I paused for breath, I stared at the unswept floor. I was close enough to see a hairball in the corner.
Lew was allergic to cats. I’d never had one, growing up.
My hands curled at my sides. My fingers pulsed with my still-pounding heart. All that easy talk of giving in, of letting yourself say goodbye to blood and flesh was hard to do when you’re amped on adrenaline in a too-small body.
“Hey,” I murmured under my breath, voice high-pitched and alien. “If you can hear me, uh, I’m trying to leave.”
There was no reply, of course. Poor Andy was drowning, stuck in the blackness of the well. Given how little the possessed remembered their demon encounters, he’d likely forget everything about this unlucky sixth birthday. Maybe that was for the best.
I heard muffled voices. As floorboards shook, I darted forward, ducking into a bathroom. I locked the door. The shaking became pounding as someone yelled Andy’s name.
Let go.
There wasn’t an instruction manual for demons. Hell, it took an exorcism to realize I was one. Why had I mistaken acceptance for knowledge?
Let go.
It’s not just letting go of life, you know. The mind is more than a gloopy mess of neurons, just like the heart isn’t just a muscle. Physical existence is different from the self.
Entering the well should have been emptying myself of all but the Hellion. For the rest of my life(?), I’d pop into the real world, possess a kid, maybe wreck a cake and pop some balloons. Just another Tuesday.
But I’d grown up. I wasn’t sure who I was, not Del, not the Hellion. Something new.
Let go.
“Andy, what’s wrong?”
“Open the door!”
“You okay, honey?”
I was running out of time. My gut churned at the thought of creating another Del. Memories of another life swarmed me, and it took everything I had to cast them aside.
Just as the doorknob started to shake, I saw it. The well, churning and wild. It was the least scary it’d ever been, a welcome home. I detached from breath, ignored the nausea and dizzying heartbeats, and accepted death even as the kid began to wail.
Sorry, I thought as the world drew away.
I floated, faintly sick from the sudden absence of a body. I could sense my neighbors moving like air currents around me. At least if we were here, we weren’t out there.
How did it all work? We’re special, Valis had said, but that didn’t explain how demons found their targets. Was my destiny an eternal childhood, regardless of how I’d changed?
That sucked.
“I’m not the Hellion anymore,” I declared. If anyone heard, they didn’t stop to reply. It’s not like my voice was real. Still, saying it aloud, here in this birthplace of ideas, had to lend some weight. A pronouncement as heavy as any truth.
And so I existed in that dark place. Sometimes I would think of my childhood with Lew, and there would be a tug. I stopped thinking, and the tug stopped. Over time, I realized that just as I was a thought, so did my own thoughts affect the world of the well.
I rebuilt myself down there. Memory by memory, fast-forwarding past those Hellion times into the moments of calm. Or what passed for calm for a twentysomething fuck-up. I was no outsider to the twitchy, nervous man at the therapist’s office, trying to think past the rumbling terror of a little boy.
Lew, smiling where I couldn’t see it as I finally began to calm down.
Mom, handing me a card filled with cash after I skipped my 18th birthday party.
Me, chest aching as I read the card: “You’ll find your way.”
There was another tug. As I stretched my senses, I could almost see where it came from. There were lines of energy, or thought, or whatever the fuck it was that manifested thought into self. And one of those lines led to a familiar face. Bertram.
I remembered an offer. A vessel as penance. The line snapped taut, the darkness bloomed, and then—