Demons Read Online Free PDF

bedroom, the farthest from the front door and the balcony; the little satellite-seeker TV was on her bed. How I’d longed, in better times, to be in her bed.
    “Oh, we have a brief interview with a—it just says a ‘theorist from San Francisco State”—Dr. Laertes Shephard.”
    “Shephard!” Paymenz burst out. “A theorist, is he! Why don’t they mention why he’s here instead of at Stanford—kicked out of Stanford . . .”
    Footage showed Shephard looking strangely calm and collected standing by a window, smoke rising from the skyline behind him. “We will need to look at this phenomenon from every angle, from fresh angles—from below if necessary, as it were—and ask ourselves, could this be a part of the natural order, just coming into its own? Perhaps this is not their first time here. Could they have visited Earth at the time of the dinosaurs and contended with the great reptiles? Could they come along to precipitate a jump in evolution? If we understand their natural function we will—”—
    “We lost that feed,” the newscaster muttered, as he replaced Shephard. “We . . .” He seemed to stare into space for a moment.
    “Poor man,” Melissa said, looking at the newscaster. “He so wants to run and hide.”
    “Why did they interview Shephard?” I asked. “What’s an economist got to do with all this?”
    “Putting a finger in every intellectual pie is his specialty,” Paymenz growled. “He insists that economics is natural selection and natural selection is economics—got a minor degree in biology so he could make the argument and not be laughed at. . . .”
    “We . . . we’ll go on now to . . .” The newscaster was shuffling through the paperwork on his desk as if it were something that newscasters actually used. “I have here somewhere . . .” The newscaster looked off camera. His lower lip quivered. A shadow fell over him. He lunged from his seat, leaving the frame, and the image dissolved into snow.
    But the sound feed continued for a moment. “They—!” It sounded like the same newscaster, but his voice was attenuated by distance and terror. “—demons, just—my family—if you could—stay in your— No! ”—
    Then came a voice speaking in some language I didn’t recognize. A silky voice, but the silk ribbon stretched into an infinity of darkness.
    The professor dived the length of the bed, nearly bouncing the little TV off it as he went, stabbing at the button on the built-in digital recorder.
    “Dad—we do have a remote!” Melissa said.
    “Quiet, girl.”
    The voice babbled from the static and snow in some unknown language. It rose and fell in painfully unfamiliar accents and rhythms.
    When the silky, murderous voice finished its rant, the television went silent; there was not even the sound of static.
    “It—it sounded sort of . . . well, sort of like Greek,” Melissa ventured.
    “No, I don’t think so,” the professor murmured, combing crumbs out of his beard with his stubby fingers. “If we succeed in recording it, we shall make its translation one of our plansof campaign.” He looked around. “So this is my daughter’s room.”
    “You’ve been in here many times, Dad,” she said, “bursting in on me to tell me something that could easily have waited.”
    “Been in here but never really looked,” he said. “Not really.”
    The room contained raw wooden shelves with books on two sides; stacks of books functioned as bookends upholding more shelves. In one corner was a zigzag tower of old magazines: the entire print run of Visions . The third wall was dominated by an elaborate homemade shrine to the Sophia, the feminine spirit of wisdom: a dozen goddess figures—Hindu and Greek and others—surrounded a Black Madonna, an Africanized Mother Mary. The corners of the room hung with dusty violet and green scarves, and the table next to the bed was scarred by fallen sticks of incense. Opposite the shrine was a poster of a movie star, Jason Stoll,