THE QUESTION

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

—William Samuel Johnson

Adem remained quiet for a long time. He looked down at his hands splayed flat on the table in front of him. Ray glanced at his watch and noted that it was now pushing into mid-afternoon. It had been nearly five hours since he entered the prison that morning. All at once, exhaustion swept over him. He hadn’t realized how fatigued he had become listening to Adem’s story until this moment, and was quietly thankful that there would be no more to tell.

Ray knew how the tale went from this point. When Adem awoke, he found himself surrounded by state and local police. Someone had driven by the farm and noticed a car pulled off the side of the road, its lights and engine still on, and investigated. They eventually discovered the grisly scene out in the field and called the authorities. The knife was found with Adem’s fingerprints and Sam’s blood all over it, and Adem was quickly indicted for the murder of his sister. The rest, of course, was history. Here they were.

“Well?”

Ray looked up to see Adem staring at him. “Well what?”

“What do you think?” Adem asked. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

Ray shrugged. “I told you before, it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“It matters to me.”

“Adem, not long ago, I made a promise to myself that I would never write again. Despite my better judgements, I’ve decided to break that promise. I’m going to give your story to the world, just like you gave it to me. I can tell you right now, based on what I’ve heard today, you’ll have plenty of detractors. But you’ll have believers, too. I’ve done this enough to know that people are going to make up their own minds about what really happened. Trust me, before this is all over, you’ll have more people on your side than you can possibly imagine.”

“I don’t care what they think,” Adem said, “I care what you think.”

Ray rubbed a hand over the top of his head, then removed his glasses and set them on the table. “What do you want from me?” he asked, exasperated.

Adem said nothing.

“Okay, I’ll be honest with you, since I promised you that much. I think your sister was right. I think you have a mental disorder. Your mind created this elaborate story about the chorus and the demon, and when you killed your sister for whatever reason, it filled in all the details so that you wouldn’t have to live with the guilt.”

“Dammit, Ray, why would I kill my sister? She meant everything to me. Just from a logical standpoint, you know it doesn’t make any sense.”

“The ‘why’ isn’t all that important. I can name ten reasons off the top of my head, but it would be an exercise in futility at this point.” Ray scooted closer to the table. “Here’s the part that really bothers me, the puzzle I can’t seem to solve. It seems like your mind came up with a scenario far worse than the truth.”

“I don’t understand...” Adem said.

“This whole thing with the demon, about your family being cursed and everything. If all that were true, I frankly can’t think of a worse fate. It means that your ancestors and all of their descendants will forever remain under the heel of this malevolent being. All future generations of your family will suffer your same fate, and if they ever try to cut ties with that farm, then they’ll all perish and there will be no more generations after that. Just like what happened to the church when they sold the land. Isn’t that right?”

Adem’s fists were clenched, his face red.

Ray continued. “It’s an awful fate. If you simply murdered your sister, at least it ends with you. But if you’re right, if this thing is real, then all bets are off. Your bloodline will continue to suffer for as long as they walk the earth. Worst of all, you’re on death-row, which means that there isn’t a thing you can do about it. You’ll die in here, and that evil creature will go on tormenting your family until there is no one left. So my question is this. Why? Why would you want to believe in something like that?”

“It’s all I have,” Adem whispered.

“What?”

Adem slammed his fists on the table and stood up. “It’s the only hope I have left!” The door opened up and two guards stepped inside, hands on their sidearms. Ray stood and held his hands out to the guards.

“It’s okay, we’re okay.” He turned to Adem. “Right?” Adem shook his head and sat back down. Ray turned back to the guards. “We’re almost done. Just give us five more minutes.” The two men looked at each other, then hesitantly backed out of the room and closed the door. Ray sat down again. “What do you mean, Adem?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Maybe not, but you know I’ll listen.”

Adem’s eyes glistened. “Before I came back home to the farm, I was finished. I’d given up on life, but I was terrified of death. Like I told Sam, I had nothing left to believe in, certainly not in God or anyone else. I was completely alone, utterly without hope. And then I saw the demon. I saw with my own eyes the proof that there are things beyond this life, beyond our understanding. Things that persist. As horrible as this curse is, it gives me hope, because now I know that evil spirits exist. That means there must be good spirits too, and a whole other supernatural world beyond this plane of existence. Maybe it even means that God exists. At the very least, now I have hope that death is not the end. I don’t have to be scared anymore.”

Ray tried to think of what to say, but couldn’t. How does one respond to something like that? Thankfully he didn’t have to think for very long, as his phone rang at that moment. He pressed the answer key and held it up to his ear.

“This is Ray.”

“Ray-Ray, it’s Martha. I was just getting back to you about your request from earlier.” Ray looked across the table, confident that Adem couldn’t hear Martha’s side of the conversation.

“Alright, what’d you find out?”

“Nothing. No Lanston Conroy ever worked at LSU, and we couldn’t find anything about him in the Terrance public records. You sure you got the name right?”

“Positive.”

“Then he’s a ghost. Sorry Ray, I’ve got nothing else for you.”

Ray rubbed his eyes. “Okay, thanks Martha.” He ended the call and then dropped the phone back into his pocket. He looked up to see Adem watching him, looking for any sign of confirmation. “You’re a pretty sharp fellow, so I’m sure you figured it out by now. That was my private investigation firm. I called earlier to check up on your friend, Professor Conroy.”

“And?”

Ray almost told him what Martha had found out, but caught himself. The man across the table reminded him of how his wife looked when Ray found out she’d been cheating on him. She was genuinely sorry, horrified that she’d hurt Ray so deeply, and her eyes pled for one more chance. Ray hadn’t given it to her, and the resulting devastation on her face still haunted his dreams.

Adem wore that same look now, begging Ray to tell him that everything might yet turn out okay. He was obviously insane. Ray thought about the men at Eli’s Bar, how they kept giving Adem strange looks. Then there was the old blind man who likely didn’t exist, and the bookstore that was almost certainly nothing but an abandoned building. All of them were nothing but carefully constructed fantasies to help him cope with the terrible reality of what he had done. Ray wondered if he should destroy these delusions that gave Adem that last bit of hope, or even if he could. After all, Adem Comeaux was going to pay for his crimes, whether he believed he’d committed them or not. What difference did it make? Was it worth it to take that away from him?

“What did she tell you?” Adem waited, his face straining in anticipation.

“She, uh…she said he owned a bookstore in Terrance, just like you said. I’m driving over tomorrow morning to talk with him about what happened.”

Adem shifted back into his seat and looked up at the ceiling. His eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you.” He stood and walked to the door where the guards entered and escorted him down the hallway. Ray didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say anything.