screams.
A voice wholly his own. The note rising in his throat, then shattering into a kind of sob. His terror so instant and crystalline it dehumanizes him in a way that even his most grotesque displays cannot equal.
He looks at me and reaches out his hand.
It reminds me of Tess at two years old, learning to swim on a summer holiday on Long Island. She would take a step from the shallows and feel the sandy bottom slip deeper beneath her, at the same time as a wave washed over her. Each time she spat out a mouthful of sea her hand would shoot up for me to save her. She could repeat this near-death experience a dozen times in a single afternoon. And although she was lifted into my arms within a quarter-second each time, her desperation was the same.
The difference between Tess and this man is that while Tess knew what frightened her—the water, the deep—he doesn’t have any idea. It isn’t a disease. It is a presence. A will a thousand times stronger than his own. There is no fighting it. There is only the recognition that he is damned, coming to him anew each time.
Finally, he stops. Slumps into a sleep that is not a sleep.
4:43
Only now do my hands start to shake. For the preceding moments the camera might as well have stood on a tripod, it was held so firmly in place. Now, as the impact of all I’ve just seen hits me, the frame wobbles with nauseating jerks and corrections, as though with the man’s stillness the camera itself has come to life.
5:24
A voice.
The sound of it stills my hands. Frames the man in the chair squarely once more. Yet he doesn’t move. The voice comes from him—it must come from him—but there is nothing in his form to confirm that it has.
Professor Ullman.
It takes a moment to recognize that the voice has directly addressed me. And that its language isn’t English, but Latin.
Lorem sumus.
We have been waiting.
The voice is male, but only in its register, not in its character. In fact, though it commands in the way of a human utterance, it is strangely non-gendered. An unoccupied medium, in the way even the most sophisticated computer-generated voice is detectable as a surrogate for a real human presence.
I wait for the voice to go on. But there is only the terrible breathing, louder now.
6:12
“Who are you?”
My voice. Sounding tinny and scratched as an old 78 record.
His head lifts again. This time his expression belongs to neither the snarling madman nor his terrified “normal” self, but something new. Becalmed. His face bearing the insinuating smile of the priest, the door-to-door salesman. Yet with a fury beneath the surface. A hate contained by the skin but not by the eyes.
“We do not have names.”
I need to challenge what it says. Because what happens next will decide everything. Somehow I know this. It’s essential to not let it see that I think it might be anything other than a symptom of mentaldisease. This isn’t real . The reassurance offered to a child reading a story of witches or giants. There’s no such thing . The impossible mustn’t be allowed to gain purchase in the possible. You resist fear by denying it.
“ ‘We,’ ” I start, doing my best to smooth the trembling from my words. “Don’t you mean your name is Legion, for you are many?”
“We are many. Though you will only meet one.”
“Aren’t we meeting now?”
“Not with the intimacy of the one you will come to know.”
“The Devil?”
“Not the master. One who sits with him.”
“I look forward to it.”
It says nothing to this. The silence highlighting the vacancy of my lie.
“So you can foretell my future?” I go on. “This is as common a delusion as one believing one is possessed by spirits.”
It takes a breath. A long pull that, for a moment, empties the room of all its oxygen. It leaves me in a vacuum. Weightless and suffocating.
“Your attempts at doubt are unconvincing, Professor,” it says.
“My doubt is real,” I say, though the tone
A voice wholly his own. The note rising in his throat, then shattering into a kind of sob. His terror so instant and crystalline it dehumanizes him in a way that even his most grotesque displays cannot equal.
He looks at me and reaches out his hand.
It reminds me of Tess at two years old, learning to swim on a summer holiday on Long Island. She would take a step from the shallows and feel the sandy bottom slip deeper beneath her, at the same time as a wave washed over her. Each time she spat out a mouthful of sea her hand would shoot up for me to save her. She could repeat this near-death experience a dozen times in a single afternoon. And although she was lifted into my arms within a quarter-second each time, her desperation was the same.
The difference between Tess and this man is that while Tess knew what frightened her—the water, the deep—he doesn’t have any idea. It isn’t a disease. It is a presence. A will a thousand times stronger than his own. There is no fighting it. There is only the recognition that he is damned, coming to him anew each time.
Finally, he stops. Slumps into a sleep that is not a sleep.
4:43
Only now do my hands start to shake. For the preceding moments the camera might as well have stood on a tripod, it was held so firmly in place. Now, as the impact of all I’ve just seen hits me, the frame wobbles with nauseating jerks and corrections, as though with the man’s stillness the camera itself has come to life.
5:24
A voice.
The sound of it stills my hands. Frames the man in the chair squarely once more. Yet he doesn’t move. The voice comes from him—it must come from him—but there is nothing in his form to confirm that it has.
Professor Ullman.
It takes a moment to recognize that the voice has directly addressed me. And that its language isn’t English, but Latin.
Lorem sumus.
We have been waiting.
The voice is male, but only in its register, not in its character. In fact, though it commands in the way of a human utterance, it is strangely non-gendered. An unoccupied medium, in the way even the most sophisticated computer-generated voice is detectable as a surrogate for a real human presence.
I wait for the voice to go on. But there is only the terrible breathing, louder now.
6:12
“Who are you?”
My voice. Sounding tinny and scratched as an old 78 record.
His head lifts again. This time his expression belongs to neither the snarling madman nor his terrified “normal” self, but something new. Becalmed. His face bearing the insinuating smile of the priest, the door-to-door salesman. Yet with a fury beneath the surface. A hate contained by the skin but not by the eyes.
“We do not have names.”
I need to challenge what it says. Because what happens next will decide everything. Somehow I know this. It’s essential to not let it see that I think it might be anything other than a symptom of mentaldisease. This isn’t real . The reassurance offered to a child reading a story of witches or giants. There’s no such thing . The impossible mustn’t be allowed to gain purchase in the possible. You resist fear by denying it.
“ ‘We,’ ” I start, doing my best to smooth the trembling from my words. “Don’t you mean your name is Legion, for you are many?”
“We are many. Though you will only meet one.”
“Aren’t we meeting now?”
“Not with the intimacy of the one you will come to know.”
“The Devil?”
“Not the master. One who sits with him.”
“I look forward to it.”
It says nothing to this. The silence highlighting the vacancy of my lie.
“So you can foretell my future?” I go on. “This is as common a delusion as one believing one is possessed by spirits.”
It takes a breath. A long pull that, for a moment, empties the room of all its oxygen. It leaves me in a vacuum. Weightless and suffocating.
“Your attempts at doubt are unconvincing, Professor,” it says.
“My doubt is real,” I say, though the tone
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