MY EYES ARE NORMAL. THE OPHTHALMOLOGIST USED A VIDEOkeratography computer to create a complete corneal imaging of my eyes. No defects, nothing oddly shaped, nothing to explain why I see demons that other people don’t.
Of course, for my mom, not any ophthalmologist would do. She wanted only the best, so she wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of her friends. Which was why she arranged for me to see a leading specialist in downtown Boston. She didn’t go with me, obviously, but she put on a show last night of acting the concerned mom, probably for my dad’s sake.
“Henry,” she told me, “while you don’t need me to, if you’ll feel more comfortable, I’ll come with you, you know I will. The doctor’s office is only a several minute walk from the Government Center subway stop.”
A flash of anxiousness showed in her eyes while she sat hoping I wouldn’t double-cross her, but she probably knew I wanted her to accompany me even less than she did herself. I let her off the hook and told her I’d be fine going myself.
My appointment was at ten thirty, which meant I would be missing school, but my mom needed to have the right chichi doctor for me, and Dr. Robert Gelman fit the bill and was a busy man and hard to schedule appointments with, and she wasn’t about to face the social stigma of having me see a lesser ophthalmologist just so I wouldn’t have to miss school. When I got to Dr. Gelman’s office, a technician performed half a dozen tests, including a corneal topography. After that I waited forty-five minutes before I was brought in to see Gelman. He was in his late fifties. Tall, broad shouldered, full head of silver hair, and looked a lot like Tom Selleck without a mustache, except that he didn’t dye his silver hair black. He smiled patiently as he looked over the test results and then peered into my eyes as he shined a penlight into them, and finally tested my vision. I was crestfallen when he told me my eyes were perfect. If I was seeing demons because of a physical deformity, then that would’ve been only a random event, something that could’ve happened to anyone. Maybe I would’ve been able to replicate the deformity with a pair of special glasses like they did in They Live, maybe not, but at least the fact that I saw demons when others didn’t wouldn’t have meant anything. But if it wasn’t physical, then it was something else—like I had been chosen by a higher power and for a higher purpose. The responsibility I’d been feeling ever since I accepted that Hanley and the others were truly demons was real.
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with my eyes? Nothing out of the ordinary? Nothing oddly shaped?”
“No, nothing at all wrong with them, Henry. You have perfect eyesight and perfectly shaped corneas.” He gave me an inquisitive, yet patient smile. “You seem disappointed?” His smile shifted from patient to patronizing as he considered me. “You may need to get more sleep at night,” he said. “Or possibly take more breaks from your reading. Try to remember to simply close your eyes every ten minutes for a few seconds of rest. But your eyes are fine.”
So that was it. It was noon when I left his office. Lower Washington Street where the strip clubs were was only a fifteen minute walk away, and I made my way over there thinking I’d do another demon count, although this time with a more heightened awareness of any cops in the area. After a half hour of counting the number of suited guys and lowlifes walking into and past the clubs (but trying hard to look like I wasn’t loitering) I lost my enthusiasm for doing a demon count and I left the area. Cornwall’s was close by, and it had been two weeks since I’d been there, but I didn’t even have the enthusiasm for that. Instead I bought some pizza for lunch, then picked up a couple of Dark Knight comic books and read them on the subway back to Waban, which was one of the few pure kid things I’d let myself indulge in since seeing demons.