The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  It looked—no no no!—it looked like big hands had tried to playfully stuff the daughter back into the mother.

  Candy fell back against the wall in the hall, some picture dislodging, falling to the ground, a single crack of glass resounding.

  She left by the front door, sure to lock it behind her.

  She was snuffling, crying, even though this was worse than crying.

  Terry, he—he wasn’t Terry. Or, he was, but he wasn’t. He was something. He was wrong. He had done this. He was doing this.

  Candy stepped calmly into her SUV, locked the doors, and screamed and screamed, rubbed her cheeks with her hands until they burned.

  At which point her phone dinged once, a voicemail.

  “Surprise,” Jason said, talking low like he was in a crowd, “got home early, will be there in five, four, three, two…”

  Candy pulled the phone away, thumbed for the timestamp.

  Five minutes ago.

  He was in a cab. That’s how he always talked, sure the driver was trying to tune in his every word.

  She dialed back desperately, but Jason never answered when people were around.

  She felt like she was melting. Like she was falling apart, crumbling into herself.

  Her shoulders hitched once but she didn’t let it get any further, into a real collapse.

  Jason.

  She dropped the SUV into gear.

  ***

  The front door of her house was open.

  The yellow cab Jason had taken was still there. It was under the heavy shovel of the big yellow tractor. The driver had tried to dive out. He hadn’t made it.

  The back door on the passenger side was open.

  Candy turned her SUV off.

  Feet numb, face cold, she picked her way through the construction mess, watching the ground closely enough that the blue port-a-pottie suddenly beside her was startling. The door yawning open was what had made her look up.

  No one was creeping up on her, though.

  Everybody in there, all six of them, they were dead. This was the crew Terry had fired.

  Candy shut her eyes, balled her hands into fists and pushed past, opened the front door and walked into her house. Terry leaned back from the kitchen. He was wearing Jason’s apron.

  “Oh, hey,” he said, going back to whatever he was doing. “Thought it might be you.”

  Candy scanned the front living room, the hall.

  No Jason.

  “You’ve probably got a few questions, don’t you?” Terry said.

  He was cutting vegetables?

  “Jason?” Candy said, her voice not quite shaking.

  “In the shower,” Terry said, and when Candy rushed ahead to dash upstairs, Terry’s meaty hand clamped onto her upper arm. “He’s okay,” Terry said, “really. Promise. Demon’s word of honor.”

  Candy pulled away from him—he let her pull away from him—and looked up to his face, his normal human face. “D-demon?” she said.

  “Just a name,” Terry said, batting the word away with the knife he was still holding.

  “You’re… you’re Asmod,” she said, digging the writing up from the weight room wall. The panic room wall.

  “Keep going, keep going,” he said, intent on the carrot he had.

  “Deus,” Candy completed. “Asmodeus.”

  “Ah, yes.” Terry leaned back to let the name wash all down him. “You never realize how much you might miss your own name being said, do you?”

  “You were—you came up from the hole,” Candy said.

  “Not quite,” Terry said, tut-tutting that with his knife. “I was having a good old time in Mr. James Kempel, child molester extraordinaire. But then he found that room, and locked himself in. Decided he would rather starve than do it again. Some people, right?”

  Candy shook her head no. Her hand was in her pocket, trying to dial 911.

  “But you let me out when you opened that door,” he continued. “Well, when good old Jason boy did. But you had so much more potential, didn’t you? That’s what it’s all about, potential for… for fun.”

  “The restaurant,” Candy said.

  “Ding ding ding,” Terry said, cocking his head upstairs, like hearing something beyond what Candy could. “I had to dispose of good old Jimmy boy somehow, right? Waste not, want not. I think I read that somewhere.”

  “You didn’t eat the fish,” Candy said, her voice dial-toning out. Like her mind.

  “Fish and me don’t get along,” Terry said through thinned lips, punctuating it with a slice to the tomato he’d rolled onto the cutting board. “Not that what sealed the deal for you was exactly fish, of course…”

  “What about him?” She tilted her head upstairs.

  “Let’s finish with you first, shall we?” Terry said, suddenly right up against her, his hands feeling through her hair at the base of her scalp, his other hand to her hip like he knew it. Which he did.

  Candy punched what she was pretty sure was the final digit on her call, hit what had to be Send.

  A moment later, Terry’s front pocket buzzed.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, raising a finger for her to wait.

  He brought a phone up to his ear, said in exactly Kath’s voice, “Oh, oh, Candy? Yes, well, as you know, I’m just rotting in that tub I insisted Ben would like. And guess what? I think he does like it, can you believe it?”

  He dropped the phone. It cracked on the floor, rattled away.

  Candy swallowed the lump growing in her throat.

  Her face was hot now. Behind her cheeks, she was crying.

  “Let him go,” Candy said, about Jason. “You’ve got me.”

  Terry stepped back, regarded her from this angle, from that angle, the fingers of his right hand to his chin as if he was in deep thought. Important thought.

  He shook his head no, finally.

  “Nothing against you, of course,” he said, setting the knife on the island to look in the refrigerator for something, “but, Jason boy offers… I still have some unfinished business, from when I was Mr. James Kempel!”

  He said the name like an announcer on a gameshow might.

  “You just don’t have all the necessary equipment,” he added, shrugging about this sad fact.

  “I won’t let you,” Candy said. “I’ll warn him.”

  “You’ll call him?” Terry said, waggling another phone up from a different pocket. Jason’s phone.

  “Ja—!” she started, didn’t get to finish.

  From across the kitchen, Terry had somehow pinched her lips shut, was pinching her lips shut, his fingers miming just that in the air by his head.

  “I did appreciate the lard on that plunger, though,” he said. “That showed ingenuity. It kept it from sticking to the mix, didn’t it? I don’t think a man would have thought of that. As proof? A man never has thought of that. Until… let’s say tomorrow? It’s given me an idea, once I’m more, more inside your dear hubby. More at the controls. And making certain visits around the neighborhood, shall we say. And the… I don’t know. The playground?”

  “He’ll never let you,” Candy tried to say.

  Terry heard it all the same.

  “But I’m cooking his favorite meal,” Terry said, wowing his eyes out like a cooking show host. “Dine with the devil, it leaves a string inside you. One I can pull. And, I think, yes, it’s almost ready. Time! I need to get him down there. I don’t think I can trust dear old you to not warn him, so… yes, I’ve got it.”

  What Candy expected was for Terry to call upstairs in her own voice.

  Instead, he cut a sharp whistle. Roff’s whistle.

  The dog padded into the room, leaving bloody footprints.

  “Who’s a good boy, who’s a good boy?” Terry said, and, on cue, Roff’s tail flopped back and forth and he barked once.

  “Roff?” Jason called from upstairs. Meaning he’d already been missing him.

  “It’s like we think of everything, isn’t it?” Terry said, batting h
is eyes coquettishly and, with two fingers, touching Candy’s left shoulder to nudge her sideways, away from the bottom of the stairs, away from where Jason was about to be.

  She could hear his footsteps on the landing now.

  Roff stepped to the bottom of the stairs, to keep Jason’s eyes there.

  Candy bounced, unable to step forward. She could only go back. Her first thought was to circle around, come at Jason from the formal living room. But there was no time.

  Instead she edged sideways, into the kitchen.

  And—Terry. Where was he? Was he even here?

  “Mmph, mnph,” she said, straining to make a sound, to get Jason to see her, anything.

  And then, yes, she was in view!

  She looked up to Jason, coming down fast.

  Terry was right behind him, smiling, leaning in.

  Candy jumped to the side, into the island, and flopped her hand up enough to get at the knife handle. Because it was too heavy somehow, she lowered her face to its blade, slit her mouth open, screamed in the instant, “No! You can’t have him! ”

  Both Terry and Jason looked up to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Candy said, and stepped forward before Terry could stop her, plunged the knife into Jason just below the sternum, and then carved up, for the heart, or whatever she could find.

  Jason made his mouth into the first shape of a question, one that was in his eyebrows just the same, and then he folded around her, hugging her.

  His insides were warm.

  Candy looked down over his shoulder, down his back.

  Roff was still sitting there like a good boy, his tail wagging.

  She turned her face to Terry, two steps up the staircase, his hands neatly behind his back.

  “A little more slashy than I was going for, but I’m sure we can still save some portions,” he said, and caught Jason right as he was falling, pulled him and the knife away from Candy.

  There was nothing to say.

  He hadn’t had her, not all the way. Not until now. Not until this.

  She’d eaten the fish named Kempel in the restaurant that was burned, and she’d stepped outside her marriage, but none of that was unrecoverable-from. All of it could be, Candy thought, undone.

  Except this.

  She sat hard back onto the second step, watched Terry haul Jason up onto the island and lean in, bite the tongue up. It stretched, stretched, and then Terry reached under, popped the white string under the tongue with the knife. The tongue stretched longer, until Terry sawed through it.

  He tossed it to Roff. Roff sucked it down, his tail a blur.

  Then Terry went to work on the butchery part of the night, completely disregarding Candy.

  “Can I?” she said, tilting her head back down the hallway, and he dismissed her.

  She walked past the bathroom, went downstairs. To the weight room, the gun room, the room she wasn’t going to panic in. That was all past. It was too late for any of that.

  There was only this left.

  Using the plank, she guided the slurry of concrete to the side, exposed the slit in the dirt again. It was still bulging.

  You can start over, she told herself.

  You can do it all again, better.

  With that, she stepped in, moved side to side to work herself down, until, when she looked up, there was just a slash of light overhead. One already sealing itself back.

  In the darkness a male voice asked her how old she was, and she closed her eyes, let Jim Kempel’s fingers probe her face, her shoulders, the rest of her. For all time.

  It was a nice house, she thought.

  It had been a nice life.

  Until.

  MARCHOSIAS

  Marchosias, or Marcochias, like Hanar, hopes to return to the seventh throne after 1200 years—hinting at the possibility of the redemption of the fallen angels, which most Christian theologians, except for Origen in the third century, deny. Before he fell, he was one of the order of dominations. Reginald Scot, in The Discoverie of Witchcraft, writes about him: “Marchosias … sheweth himselfe in the shape of a cruell shee woolfe, with a griphens wings, with a serpents taile, and spetting I cannot tell what out of his mouth. When he is in a mans shape, he is an excellent fighter, he answereth all questions trulie, he is faithfull in all the conjurors businesse,” a description more or less identical to that in The Lesser Key of Solomon. Like most or all of the other demons in the goetias, he claims noble status in the infernal hierarchy (in his case, that of a marquis), and he says he has thirty legions of demons at his disposal.

  WHIMSY

  MICHELLE BELANGER

  Rashida summoned the demon on Saturday, just before dinner. Hunter was on his computer across from her, and he looked up when a thunder of sound poured from her speakers.

  He was in the middle of a raid with his gaming guild, so she was surprised he’d looked up at all. A backwash of brilliance danced across her features as special effects blazed on her screen. The candles around the virtual summoning circle vomited gouts of blue and purple fire while the sigil in the center crackled with dazzling power.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “You’d have to see it to understand,” she said. “And you’re busy.”

  His fingers hammered the keys in an endless repetition of fight maneuvers. “Don’t give me that shit, Rashi,” he snapped. “I’ve been gaming way longer than you have. Just tell me what game you’re playing. Think I can’t figure it out from there?” The insect murmur of disembodied voices buzzed from the headset curled around his ear. His tone changed as he responded to his guild. “No—nothing. Just my girl again.” He whacked the space bar four or five times in rapid succession, then shoved back from the keyboard, grinning wide through his beard. Hoots and shouts crackled from the earbud. “Booya!” he cried. “Good fight, guys. We’ll start for the next boss in a minute. Smoke break.” When he rose from his chair, the smile had vanished. “What are you even playing these days?”

  Rashida quashed an unreasonable urge to ALT+Tab so she could hide her game. Not that he wouldn’t know that trick—he used it all the time when the guild chatter got particularly crude, as if he was saving her from something. On her screen, the dazzle of light cleared and a nude figure crouched in the shadows of the circle. It looked like it was draped in a tattery cloak, and then she realized those were supposed to be wings. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard, eager to welcome the new being, but then drew away to curl in her lap as Hunter strode over. He put a calloused palm on the back of her chair and the base creaked beneath their combined weight. Beard hairs tickled her ear as he peered over her shoulder.

  “Oh, lame,” he declared. “You’re still playing Whimsy? No wonder you didn’t want to admit it.” He grabbed her Coke and took a swig, grimacing when he found it warm.

  “I like how every player helps build the game,” she said.

  “Then you’re an idiot.” He slammed the Coke next to her keyboard like the can was responsible for the sad state of its contents. Wordlessly, she moved it to its coaster, dabbing the spatter from her screen. “That game’s got zero population. Half those other players are bad AI. More than half. Why would you even bother?”

  She stared at her fingers where the skin faded from brown to cream, the pigment feathering in the creases around her knuckles. The demon summoned by her virtual self waited, patient and strange as tectonic drift. “I’ve got to play something, and your friends kicked me out of the guild.”

  “What were they supposed to do?” he retorted. “You weren’t pulling your own weight.”

  Maybe he put too much emphasis on the final word, she couldn’t be certain, but she tugged her shirt down over a strip of exposed belly anyway. “I don’t really like Blasteroid,” she said. “It’s too violent. This one’s pretty.”

  Hunter frowned at her screen. The figure in the circle hunched in on itself, as if the program sensed her boyfriend’s derision. “These graphics suck,” he said. “But, whatever. You do you.”
He patted her shoulder, once. “I’m on a smoke break. Make sure dinner’s ready by seven. We’ll be done with this level by then unless someone totally shits the bed.”

  She made spaghetti. Quick and easy. He complained that there was no meat in it, but she’d used all the ground chuck for his hamburgers the night before. She tried telling him this, but he didn’t want to hear it. He just stormed from the table and went back to his gaming rig. As Blasteroid loaded, the opening fanfare of the space opera sounded through their cramped living room.

  “I thought you were done raiding for the night,” she called over the sound of dishes. The water was nearly scalding. She cranked it even higher.

  “Pryss and Jicala are having a meeting. Guild business. I need quiet for a few hours.” A flurry of clicks erupted from his mechanical keyboard, the sound a staccato counterpoint to the rush of running water.

  “ERP?” she asked.

  He scowled over the top of his monitor. The expression made a tuft of his beard jut forward like a frizzy tongue. “You said it wasn’t a problem, Rashi.” Maybe he only yelled so she could hear him. It was loud in the kitchen. “You gonna make it a problem?”

  She put the bowl aside. “No,” she said firmly. With one nail, she dug at a bubbled smear of red sauce that had dripped down the chipped enamel of her main cooking pot. The water practically steamed from the spigot, making her hands prickle. She found the immediacy of the sensation soothing. While he clacked away in chat, she watched as the water brought color to her palms and nailbeds. Pink, then nearly crimson.

  His ERP—short for erotic roleplay—hadn’t seemed like a problem a few months ago. He had explained it as how his guild built storylines for their characters in between raid events, when the system locked them out of the dungeons so they couldn’t just power through to the end. She’d tried the text-based roleplaying a little herself and found it was a lot of fun. It reminded her of fan fiction, which she loved reading. But the fun abruptly ended when the guild voted her out because she couldn’t do enough damage in the actual battle portions of the game.