The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  She was going to tell Jason that the excavation had cracked open the dirt floor, and Roff had fallen in, and Terry wasn’t answering his phone and she didn’t know what to do so she just did this, okay?

  The part about Roff was probably true, too.

  She wouldn’t mention anything about her foot having probably bled into there, though.

  It didn’t even hurt anymore. Jason need never know about that. And if he saw somehow, then she’d just stepped on a broken plate on the way to get a late night glass of water, and it was the fault of the big diggers again, and neither her nor Jason would have to picture her and Terry, writhing together.

  And Candy wasn’t picturing it now, either.

  Not even a little. Not his smell, not his breathing, not the pressure of his fingers on her sides.

  Candy stirred harder, deeper.

  The concrete was like oatmeal made from gravel.

  When it seemed to match the consistency recommended on the bag, she tried dragging the tarp over, to lift one side, let the slurry slide over and in.

  No doing. If one bag was too heavy, then six at once, with water, was impossible.

  When there were no shovels in the shed, no spades in the garage, she finally had to clamber up a tall tire of the big yellow scoop-tractor—her name for it—using the treads for ladder rungs, and liberate a wide wooden plank that had been cut to fit the bottom portion of a window without any glass in it. Candy didn’t understand and didn’t care.

  In the weight room—in the hall outside the weight room—she scooped pounds of concrete at a time onto the end of the plank, transferred it into the slit. When the slit seemed to have no bottom, was just going to drink all she had and ask for more, please, she broke up a shoe rack from her closet, laid the planks across the opening in the dirt like scaffolding, plastered the concrete on thicker and thicker, until it was a mound.

  It was an hours-long process.

  At the end of it, Candy was sheened in sweat. Air circulation sucked down here. Or, no, it didn’t suck at all, that was the problem.

  She laughed deliriously, wiped her forehead with the back of her forearm, and stood, had to steady herself on the wall.

  It was done. Fixed. Over.

  Thank you.

  She’d roll the tarp up for the dumpster later. Not the dumpster her and Jason tipped the kitchen trash in, but the big industrial one that had been delivered right after they’d signed on the dotted line.

  Just more construction detritus.

  Candy was breathing hard, and deep.

  Water. She needed water.

  She made her way upstairs, was surprised to find it was night time.

  She was less surprised to see the outline of a pickup sitting by the gate.

  She crossed to the window, couldn’t be sure, so she opened the front door, telling herself she was just going to step out as far as the edge of the porch. There were nails out there, she knew now.

  Terry was standing there.

  “I was ringing the doorbell,” he said.

  “You should—” Candy said. “I can’t—”

  “I just wanted to be sure about your foot,” he said.

  It made sense, she supposed.

  Tetanus, lockjaw, all that.

  She walked back inside, left the door open behind her, settled onto the couch.

  Terry followed, didn’t close the door behind him.

  “I’m sorry about your guys,” Candy said.

  “Just let me see,” he said, kneeling in front of her again.

  He hadn’t said anything about the obvious signs of her exertion. About the pale dust surely in her hair, in her clothes, in all her creases.

  When the light was wrong, he lifted her so easy, to set her more sideways on the couch, the pillow nestling right into the sway of her back.

  Candy told herself no, that this didn’t mean anything.

  The rough pad of his finger on the arch of her foot sent a shiver through her.

  “Sorry I’m so dirty,” she said, hugging the pillow to her stomach, now. Watching him over it.

  “I am too,” he said, his index finger pressed between her big toe and the next one.

  “I know,” she said, and leaned forward, and Candy didn’t know if this was a second christening of the formal living room or a dechristening, but, in the moment, the door open, the drapes fluttering all around them, the room filled with their breathing, she didn’t much care, either.

  ***

  Candy woke to the sun setting. She was pretty sure that was what it was doing.

  Meaning?

  The night had passed. And the day as well.

  She sat up fast, eyes desperate for the door.

  It was closed. The deadbolt was straight up and down, meaning it wasn’t locked—of course it wasn’t; Terry didn’t have a key—but that he’d thought to do that, to protect her from the leering eyes of whatever new crew he was bringing in, that had maybe been there all day already… did that count as love?

  Close enough.

  She showered until her skin was new, and when claws clicked on the tile in the bathroom beyond her foggy door, she said hello to Roff before remembering that Roff was gone.

  She opened the door to nothing, to no one.

  She closed her eyes, sat on the step in the shower and let her chin shiver.

  When was the last time she’d eaten? The last meal she could clearly recall, it was that salmon at the restaurant.

  The restaurant.

  Wrapped in a towel, having to hold it shut with one hand—against who, she couldn’t imagine—Candy opened her laptop in the bedroom, dug into the newspaper’s headlines. When she didn’t have a subscription, she bought one, who cares.

  There was nothing for the last three days, then nothing for the last week. Finally she just searched up “restaurant” plus “fire.”

  It had gone up four months ago.

  The photo gallery could have been from yesterday.

  Candy shut the laptop, made herself breathe deep and calm.

  She was mistaken. That had to be it. She was mistaking one place for another place. It had been dark when they got there, hadn’t it? And—and Jason had made that stupid joke, about how no cars in the parking lot meant they would be getting good service.

  It hadn’t seemed odd, though.

  Why hadn’t it seemed odd?

  Oh: because then Terry’s white pickup had pulled up alongside them, so he could usher them in.

  There had been other diners, she was pretty sure. Almost certain.

  There had been the clatter of silverware in the darkness. The rustle of napkins on laps.

  And, their waiter… Candy had assumed Terry had a rapport with him. Something like that. It was because, instead of speaking, Terry had pointed to his steak on the menu, and then, after Jason had decided on the salmon for him and Candy—not a decision at all—Terry had pointed to the menu again for the waiter.

  A language barrier?

  And it had been good, hadn’t it? For fish? For healthy stupid normal fish?

  Candy felt it rising in her throat. She turned to the side, kicked the trash can over just in time to splash her stomach’s contents down into it.

  It was nothing. It was pink bile and clear juices and some grainy stuff. Probably concrete, Candy figured, and had to laugh about it, because otherwise she was going to cry and cry and cry.

  Shouldn’t Jason be home by now? How long was this trip? What floozy was he shacked up with?

  She didn’t know where that last thought had come from, exactly. Floozy? Was that even in her vocabulary?

  She felt around for her cell, touched Jason’s face, let a line open between them.

  Voicemail.

  Candy hung up, was afraid what her mouth might say, how it might betray her.

  We’re going to need to do the front living room again, dear.

  Your dog is dead.

  There’s a hole opening up under our house.

  But… but ther
e wasn’t anymore, right?

  Candy pulled on some clothes, stepped into her house shoes, and made her way downstairs, turning on each light as she went, and waiting for it to fully glow on before she submitted to crossing its expanses.

  You’re being stupid, girl, she told herself.

  You’re guilty, so you’re spooking yourself out as punishment.

  Before going downstairs, she stopped to roll open the breadbox, pull out a corner of the French bread Jason had been pinching off, to feed her… how many nights ago?

  She was watching the windows, the corners, so she didn’t see the bread before she put it into her mouth, and she didn’t spit its fuzziness back out until she was on the stairs down to the basement.

  Green. Mold.

  She gagged again, didn’t have anything to throw up.

  Had she been asleep on the couch for two days?

  The lights in the basement were all still blazing. It was like stepping into a tanning bed. Candy squinted but didn’t turn any of them off.

  The basement door was still shut as well.

  All was in order.

  Candy repeated that to herself: this is all normal, this is all perfectly all right.

  It wasn’t.

  She creaked the invisible door open—did it used to creak?—and, in the weight room, the lights were off.

  A wall of hot air breathed out across her.

  She stepped back, let it pass, spread out, then she felt in for the switch, clicked the light on. It sputtered, caught.

  The concrete was still there—her first fear had been that it had been swallowed, like Roff—but the slit in the dirt, it had bulged more under the concrete, it looked like. There was an opening in the concrete, now. It made the concrete look like puss.

  And it was so hot. What had Terry called it? Exo-something?

  Exo-hot was what it was.

  Like the sex they’d had down here had kept happening. The walls were sweating with it.

  Candy stepped forward to touch one, her house shoe squelching into the outer edge of the concrete. It was supposed to be rock, but her house shoe stuck.

  She stepped back, her shoe staying, and retrieved the crusty plank she’d stolen from the yellow tractor. She pushed its other end into the thickest part of the slurry of concrete she’d slathered onto the broken pieces of her shoe rack.

  It was still soft.

  She shook her head no, stepped back, her hand finding the wall, her fingers coming away from that contact with… paper?

  Terry had been wrong about one thing at least: concrete drying wouldn’t peel the paint in the weight room. It would peel the wallpaper.

  Under the wallpaper there was just light gray sheetrock.

  Candy felt an edge out, pulled it all down in disintegrating clumps, the tearing not sounding like tears. The air was too damp in here for that, too moist, too thick. The gun mounts stayed in place, each standing now on a small pad of wallpaper. Like erections, Candy thought, and giggled. It wasn’t good giggling. She was out of crying, though. She was running out of a lot of things. This week was hollowing her out, leaving her empty. Soon she would just be a face, nothing behind that face.

  She started to back out through the doorway but caught on some writing on the sheetrock. In the lightest pencil.

  It was some drywaller’s scratch pad. A math problem, measurements tallying up here where no one would ever see.

  And at the next join there was another math problem. And lower, like—yes—like this piece of sheetrock had been written on while it was laying down somewhere. Probably the family room out there.

  The next measurement was upside down, proving her theory, and then, back around by the doorway, where she could already see the last equation taking shape in slanted-gray numerals, there was something else, way down by the baseboard like a secret.

  asmod

  But it broke where the drywall stopped.

  Candy stood, focusing all over the weight room at once, tracing the joins with her eyes. Most of them had been mudded over, or whatever they called it. But high up on the wall, upside down again, behind Jason’s weight bench he’d had since college, the word maybe completed.

  eus

  Unless there was a missing part in the middle.

  Candy licked her finger, rubbed the letters.

  They smudged into nothing.

  She nodded that that was good.

  She was still in control. All this could still be dealt with, swept under some rug.

  She went off to find that rug.

  ***

  It was at Kath’s, Candy was sure. Ninety percent certain.

  Not a physical rug, but advice.

  Candy was going to spill to Kath about all of this. She wasn’t going to censor or edit. That was always the problem: people in trouble A) never ask for help, and B) when they do, they always try to tell the story which makes them sound the least culpable.

  Candy was culpable as hell, and she knew it.

  She hadn’t had to open her robe for Terry.

  At the same time, he hadn’t had to run his hand up under it.

  Candy wondered if she even knew herself anymore.

  And maybe Kath would have something to eat, too. If Candy could tell her the whole sorry affair without breaking down, and be honest about it, throw herself at Kath’s feet and ask for guidance, for help, then maybe Kath would light a torch, show Candy the way out.

  So far the only thing that had really been lost was Roff, and some plates.

  And Jason was going to be so distraught about Roff that he probably wouldn’t even notice if Candy’s right hand was still sticky with Terry.

  We can use that, Kath would tell Candy. And then pass her a dishrag.

  But—Candy shook her head no, turned into Kath’s long driveway.

  The writing on the wall in the basement, that didn’t mean anything. It didn’t factor in at all. What mattered was what Kath could help with. Kath who, two years ago, had stepped out on Ben and still kept the marriage together somehow, when Ben had even walked in on them at what, in Kath’s whispered retelling, was both the best and the worst moment, depending on where you were standing, or not standing.

  So, if anybody could help her, it would be Kath.

  Candy braked hard, left the door of her SUV open like an announcement to Ben that this was emergency stuff, and walked into Kath’s without even bothering to knock, like always.

  The house smelled… not bad, but like the dining room in Candy’s parents’ house: like dust. Like it hadn’t been walked through in ages.

  “Kathy?” she called, half-imagining she was about to walk in on Kath with whoever her next not-Ben was.

  The downstairs was empty, though.

  She gripped the handrail on the way upstairs, announcing herself the whole way with both Kath and Ben’s names.

  Nothing. No one.

  Even in the master bath.

  Except… the bathtub had a blanket spread over it?

  Candy stood before it for a full two minutes.

  “Kath?” she said at last.

  The surface of the blanket didn’t rustle.

  Candy was breathing hard now, shaking her head no, her fingers clutching the lip of the sink behind her.

  “I just talked to you,” she said to the blanket, at which point a bird or a squirrel fluttered or scampered outside the window right above the blanket and Candy startled, knocked Kath’s perfume rack onto the floor.

  Some shattered, some rolled.

  Candy, barefoot again, had to step between the shards.

  Halfway down the stairs, she couldn’t help it: she ran.

  In her SUV she held onto the wheel until she could stop hyperventilating.

  Terry.

  Terry, then.

  It didn’t matter if his wife answered the door.

  ***

  The deal Candy made to herself, sitting outside Terry’s house, was that however these next few minutes went down, she was going to check in to a hot
el immediately afterward, she was going to order everything room service had, and she was going to stay there and recuperate, recover, deal.

  Now that there was no dog to feed, she could do things like that.

  It’s not like Jason didn’t have enough reward or loyalty or whatever points. She could probably stay there a year before it cost anything.

  Also? Screw the money.

  Satisfied with her plan, she stood from her SUV, closed the door this time and beeped the lock, made fists by her legs for the walk up to the front door.

  She was the other woman now. And she looked like boiled shit, she knew. Would that make it better?

  She confabulated on the way: the digging outside her house, it had, it had messed up a water line, it had sprayed her in the kitchen, her house was a mess, Terry wasn’t answering his phone.

  That would work. Another woman would sympathize with an exploded kitchen, wouldn’t she? She would have to.

  The doorbell didn’t pull any moms with kids on their hips up from the depths of the modest home, though.

  Neither did a second ring.

  And, this time, the door was locked.

  Minutes too late, Candy noticed that the minivan was parked in exactly the same place, with the same plastic tricycle wedged under it from the side.

  But it had only been a day, right? No, two days. Or three.

  Candy stepped timidly out onto the lawn, cupped her hands around her eyes to see through the front window, into the living room.

  Nothing. No one.

  But, with the minivan here, and Terry’s truck just having a front seat, where could a family of four be?

  Candy let herself into the backyard, stood on a storage bin, peered into another window.

  A kid’s bedroom. A boy, it looked like.

  She stepped down, went deeper.

  The sliding glass door was open.

  She shook her head no but went in all the same. Because she had to see. Because not seeing would be miles and years worse.

  There was a splash of what had to be blood across the television screen.

  It was dried black.

  And the smell.

  Kath’s house had just smelled unused.

  This was different.

  And, now, Candy knew where to go.

  In the bathtub, the blanket sloughing off, were three bodies. Mom, son, daughter.