Page 83 of Devil Inside

He’s laughing. Listen to him, the giddiness of this man. There’s such an energy to him, racing like this, always on the move, always on the go, never stopping long enough to let the world pull him down. Gravity does not own him. He wants to ascend. To fly.

We’re running, too, passing from person to person to person, man to woman to child to adult, going faster,faster, keeping up with him, getting ahead of him, slowing down, then letting him take the lead again, all with a dizzy electricity. Look at us go, look at us run.

And then—Jordan halts. The peal of his shoes skidding against the floor is so shrill, it echoes through the gallery.

Jordan has stopped before another painting, taking it in. His chest heaves, out of breath from all the running. We want to swim laps in his lungs, caught in the flow of his hyperventilating, in and out, in and out, back and forth, back and forth.

What’s so special about this particular portrait that it’s caused him to stop? What’s caught his attention so wholly? The colors call to him. So let’s have a look. It looks—feels—familiar. Thecanvas is a mottled white, bruised with layers of paint. Filling the frame is a hand, fingers to the ground, white as well with blackened contours, almost like a glove.

Overlaid across the hand itself is the cerulean outline of a wraithlike face. Blue eyes settle overtop the wrist. There’s no other features, but the fingers below take on the impression of teeth. A skeletal grin. Something about the head and the hand merging.

It’s a skull. The head possesses the hand, the two becoming one, inseparable.

Someone steps up behind me. They’re very close, whoever they are. I can sense them, that friction of proximity, the electrical current of their person reaching into me.

I feel their breath across the back of my neck. It’s such a jolt. A wave of heat.

“They’ll kick you out, if you’re not careful.” It’s a woman’s voice.

“Let them.”

Footsteps shuffle behind me, heels clicking against the tile floor, until this woman I’ve never met stands by my side, admiring the painting. She’s bound to be in her eighties, wearing a mink stole and a crisp jacket. A pearl necklace wraps tightly around her throat.

“Nice digs,” I chide. “Vintage.”

“You love it,” she says without turning her head my way. Her focus remains on the painting.Blue Headby Susan Rothenberg. Lilith, using this woman, reads the artist’s statement mounted to the wall.“I was searching for an image and all I had to find it with was my head and my hand... That’s what a painter is—a hand and a head.”

“Is that how you feel when you’re inside someone?” I ask, nodding at the painting.

The woman considers this. The slightest hint of a grin plays across her face. “There are other artworks here that are more... how to put this...applicableto possession.”

“That so? Show me.”

“Better keep up...”

The elderly woman lifts her hand and gently pats the man passing by with his wife and children. I try to spot the inflection point, that passing of the demonic baton, there and gone, as Lilith drifts further and further away from me, one host after another.

She’s gone. Just like that. I’m left behind, blocking the flow of foot traffic.

I have to find her. Sift through so many strangers.

That man up there. A purple satin tracksuit, with a tiger sewn across its back. Red velvet tennis shoes. Look at him go. He’s picking up his pace, running now.

My turn.

I start running, ready to grab hold. Catch her—him?—before she can slip away.

But just like that, I see the man’s hand rise and take hold of the woman next to him and—shit,shit, Lilith’s gone, her advantage stretching ahead, the gap between us widening.

I have to catch up. Run faster. Faster. Before she gets away.

Fuck, I’m too late. She beat me.

Where did she go? She’s not going to expose herself just yet. And she’s definitely not going to make it easy on me. I have to play along. See if I can pick her out from the crowd.

There. I think I’ve caught up to her.

That man. In the gray suit. He’s alone, standing before an oil painting of the Garden of Eden.Adam and Eve (Expulsion from the Garden)by Roger Brown.