The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  I reach out, grasp the knob. It is cold glass cut in the shape of a diamond. I squeeze it so hard I feel it leave impressions in my palm.

  “What’s going on in here?” It’s Ms. Joyce, hustling into the room with a clipboard wedged under one fat arm.

  “Ronove! Ronove!” shouts Mr. Frost. The timbre of his voice is rising, becoming more a scream than a shout.

  Ms. Joyce glares at me, pulls my hand off the doorknob, then yanks the door open.

  The closet is empty.

  Mr. Frost’s cries die out in a series of raspy, breathless sobs. I look at him and see tears standing in the poor man’s eyes. His gaze is still locked on that closet, even though it’s evident nothing—no one—is in there.

  A crowd has appeared outside the door to the Golf Course, but two men in white shirts bustle through and approach Mr. Frost. I can never remember the names of the men who come and go in this place, each one nearly identical to the next, as if they roll in fresh off an assembly line. These two seem capable enough, one of them clearing a path away from the door while the other rolls Mr. Frost out of the room in his chair.

  I watch them go, then peer down at the stunningly green carpet, at the tracks carved in it by the wheels of Mr. Frost’s wheelchair. What looks to be a dead spider is curled like a tiny fist near the baseboard. Either that, or it’s a raisin.

  Ms. Joyce is staring at me. The look on her face would be quite at home on a stone gargoyle. Then she marches out into the hallway, presumably to look after Mr. Frost’s well-being. Or maybe that’s just what she wants me to think.

  Agnes Bruner whispers into the room on stocking feet. The giant glasses she wears look too heavy for her small head and thin stalk of a neck. She is visibly trembling.

  “Mr. Bruno?” she squeaks.

  “It’s all right, Agnes.”

  “That name…”

  “I heard it.”

  “Is he…?” She peers around the room, those glasses like searchlights. She pauses when she looks at the closet, which now stands fully open, thanks to Ms. Joyce. Her hand shakes as she points toward it. “Was he hiding in there? That man?”

  I look at the closet, which is clearly empty. I do not know what to tell her. I’m not even sure what I believe at this point.

  “I don’t know, Agnes. I don’t think so.”

  She doesn’t look satisfied. Things have been happening around here—they have been ramping up, as Mack Douglass said earlier in the week, and it seems Max Winston’s death has only validated such assumptions—and everyone has become a little more on edge. Or perhaps a lot more. As for me, I’m not sure where I fall anymore. At this point, curiosity has bested my fear.

  Agnes Bruner says nothing else. She turns and leaves the room, and the crowd of gawkers out in the hall seem to flee, albeit at a snail’s pace, back to their rooms.

  I’m halfway down the corridor toward my own room when Ms. Joyce confronts me. “May I speak with you for a moment, please, Mr. Bruno?”

  Because I don’t really have any other option, I acquiesce and follow her down the corridor to her office just off the lobby. It’s no bigger than a broom closet, stuffed full of filing cabinets and notices pinned to cork boards. It smells of Pine-Sol and, vaguely, of cigarette smoke, even though smoking is prohibited inside the building.

  Ms. Joyce squeezes behind her desk then instructs me to sit in the folding chair in front of her. As I sit, I notice Ms. Joyce’s cat, a mangy gray-and-black thing with emerald eyes, watching me from behind one of the filing cabinets. What appears to be a small, dead rodent is on the floor beside it, a little treasure Ms. Joyce has yet to discover.

  “What was that all about in there, Mr. Bruno?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That word he was saying over and over…”

  “Ronove,” I say, because there’s no use playing dumb about it. She’s heard me say it plenty in the beginning, before I wised up and kept my mouth shut. By then it was too late; the name had spread like a disease through Sunshine House.

  “You started this whole thing, Mr. Bruno. You’ve been frightening a number of our residents, filling their heads with stories of some intruder having accessed Sunshine House, and now everyone has become frightened.”

  I say nothing. This seems to cause her face to turn a dark, mottled red.

  “And poor Mr. Frost. What about him? He had to be sedated. Do you find some sort of satisfaction in that, Mr. Bruno?”

  “Of course not.”

  “This… fearmongering…”

  “I’m not frightening anyone.”

  “Telling fantastical stories about strange men—”

  “I’m not telling any stories, either.”

  Ms. Joyce’s cold gray eyes simmer on me. She looks catlike herself, and in that moment, I have no difficulty imagining her hauling around dead rodents in her mouth.

  She reaches into a desk drawer and produces a stack of colored construction paper. She sets the papers down in front of me so that I can see the figure drawn on top—the gangly, skin-and-bones, featureless man. What at first looks like an additional appendage is actually a crude staff being held in one hand. The artist has even included the figure’s name at the top of this drawing, in block capital letters—RONOVE.

  I look away from the drawings, not because I’m troubled by the figure (although I am), but because I am overcome by the distinct feeling that I, along with the rest of the residents of this place, have been reduced to children. The fact that these poor souls have resorted to expressing their fears with crayons and construction paper only reinforces this.

  Without a word, Ms. Joyce shuffles through the pages, and I can’t help but look at them again. Each one shows that same man, although rendered by a different artist. Sometimes the name, Ronove, is at the top of the page, sometimes at the bottom, or sometimes not there at all. The faster Ms. Joyce flips through the pages, the more it looks like the man holding the long staff is moving.

  “This,” she says, “is a serious problem. You’ve spoken about a man in this house who fits this description, and now half the floor claims to have seen him. They’re frightened, and Nurse Skarda has told me that a few of them fear that what has happened to Mr. Winston…that his heart attack was caused by this… this… character.”

  She waves a dismissive hand over the papers.

  “They’re drawing this figure, obsessing over it, Mr. Bruno. And that’s making my job more difficult.”

  I clear my throat and, despite still feeling like a child who’s in the middle of receiving a reprimand, I say, “With all due respect, Ms. Joyce, they aren’t just drawing pictures. Haven’t you noticed? Mr. Torry is singing, and he sounds beautiful. Millie Broome is able to play the piano again. Constance Montague has been reciting Shakespeare in the cafeteria!” I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

  “That’s well and good, Mr. Bruno, but that isn’t the issue here. The issue is that you’ve claimed to have seen this man in this house, and now you’ve got half the residents believing they’ve seen him, too. They believe that he’s somehow responsible for Mr. Winston’s heart attack, and now they think he’s done something to poor Mr. Frost.”

  “Ms. Joyce,” I say, peaceably enough. “If they claim to have seen him, then maybe they have.”

  It looks like she wants to say more but is at a loss. No doubt she thinks of me as a doddering old fool. I can’t say I think any better of her.

  “There will be no more talk about this… this Ronove,” she says. “Is that understood, Mr. Bruno?”

  I want to argue the point, because there is someone here in this house with us, but what’s the use? There’s nothing I could say to convince her.

  “Mr. Bruno?”

  “Understood,” I say.

  “Very good.” She flits a hand at me and tells me to go to lunch.

  I rise out of the chair, bones creaking, and am reaching for the doorknob when I pause and turn around. “Has there been any mail from my son latel
y?”

  “No,” she says curtly, not looking at me. She is stuffing the drawings back into her desk drawer.

  “He usually sends a letter every Tuesday.”

  “It’s Saturday, Mr. Bruno.”

  Is it? Or is this just another of Ms. Joyce’s deceptions? I’m about to make an accusation when I happen to glance at the paper calendar on her desk, the kind with the one-panel cartoon on each day. I see it is, in fact, Saturday.

  Unless, of course, the level of her deception is so great that she has changed the date to fool me, that she has—

  But that doesn’t seem likely. Not even for Ms. Joyce.

  “Good day, Mr. Bruno.”

  I nod, suddenly tired and weary and unsure of myself, and step out into the hallway. Out of nowhere, I feel like the doddering old fool she thinks I am.

  3

  Two nights later, I’m awakened by a dull thump near my head, a sound my hazy, dream-laden brain believes is the singular beat of a giant heart. I drag myself to a seated position and glance at the window to the right of my narrow mattress. The pane shimmers with moonlight. I climb out of bed and notice, as I approach the windowpane, that there is a perfect circle of blood on the glass. Smaller than a dime, but there.

  A lamppost looms just outside the window, and as I look through the glass and down at the concrete walkway that circumnavigates Sunshine House like a moat circles a castle, I see a bird down there, twitching. A finger of dread rises through me.

  I do not bother to shove my feet into my slippers, do not hassle with the robe that hangs on my wall—I open the door and peer out into the corridor. The hallway is empty, dark, silent. All the doors to the residential suites in this wing are closed. We are on a hallway surrounded by other hallways, so there are no visible windows, no light except for the startling red lettering of the exit sign that seems to float in the darkness.

  Something moves down there. It does not move quickly, but does not seem to want to avoid detection. In fact, I am struck by the opposite impression—that the figure wants to be seen, even though it has cloaked itself in darkness.

  The figure is very tall, to the point where its narrow head must bend to miss the exit sign. Its torso is a thin husk, its limbs impossibly long and slender. It moves at the end of the hall in silence, and the only sound it generates is when the base of its long staff, which it clutches in one hand, thumps against the floor.

  “Ronove,” the figure whispers, a sound like wind shuttling through autumn trees.

  “Wait,” I say.

  But it does not wait; it shifts across the hall—its head briefly eclipses the glowing red letters of the exit sign—and vanishes into the adjacent corridor.

  I want to pursue it, to get to the bottom of this nightmare, but I am frozen in place. This whole thing started weeks earlier, when I was awoken to a sound in the hall only to be greeted by this death-like wraith, and we have continued to play this game of cat-and-mouse in a seemingly endless loop.

  There comes another thump at my back. Then another. I turn and glance into my room, into that dark box and toward the rectangle of lighted window glass, just as another bird strikes the pane—whump! Tiny red asterisks are stamped like chicken pox on the glass.

  Someone screams—a shrill, throaty cry that rises in pitch before being silenced. It startles me, but also breaks my paralysis. I hurry down the hall toward the exit sign, my hands blindly swatting at the darkness ahead, my heart chugging like a locomotive within the walls of my ribcage.

  When I turn down the next corridor, I can see a wall of windows at the far end, which casts some illumination into the nighttime house, but also causes a confusing shift in my perspective. I stumble, lean momentarily against the wall. I’ve gone only a brief distance, but I am breathing in great, reaching gasps.

  That scream again, causing the hairs along my neck to stiffen. There is the shotgun blast of a door swinging open and slamming against a wall. An instant later, I see the wraith swipe across the bank of moonlit windows. I give chase as best I can, a hurried limp, a hobbling gait, and I curse myself, curse myself, curse this crumbling old manse that has been sinking into its foundation for the better part of eight decades, nearly a century, and I hurry, hurry—

  It stalks quickly down a series of passageways and I do my damnedest to keep pace. It isn’t until I make a succession of sharp turns that I realize I am unfamiliar with this wing of the facility, that perhaps I am not even in the facility, that my pursuit has ushered me through the veil and into the dark void on the other side of the world.

  The doors along this hallway all stand open, exposing black rectangles through which frigid air hisses, like steam escaping a busted pipe. Disoriented, I stagger down the corridor, one hand bracing myself against the wall, searching the darkness for that impossible visage. That thing who whispers his own name, drilling it inside my head. Inside all our heads.

  I hear the thud-thud-thudding of Ronove’s staff grow louder as I advance. I am accosted by a blast of cold, fetid air every time I walk past one of the open doorways. I am tempted to look into each one, but I do not, for my fear has begun to replace my curiosity.

  Thud-thud-thud…

  The sound ceases as I reach the end of the hallway. There is an emergency exit here, and a stainless steel water fountain in the wall. I feel around for a light switch but can’t find one.

  A wail echoes down the hall from the opposite end—the direction from which I’ve just come. Confusion rattles me. How is it David has gotten lost in this place? He’s just a boy. I should have been keeping a better eye on him. I should have—

  But David, my son, is not a child. He is a grown man. This has nothing to do with David; I wasn’t awoken by David, haven’t been searching for him down these foreign passageways. It was the intruder, the wraith. Ronove.

  The wail persists. Someone is moaning. There is also the low susurration of voices. I see a light wink on and reflect along the far wall. I follow it, able now to recognize the familiar alabaster walls of Sunshine House, the tiled hall floor in its checkerboard pattern, dried mop swirls creating ghost patterns atop real ones.

  I cross the lobby to join a few more residents who have been roused from sleep by the wailing. Who is it? Someone is sobbing.

  I squeeze through the crowd and make my way down the lighted hallway. The night nurse is on duty tonight, Nurse Diaz, and she is not as nice or as pretty as Nurse Skarda. As I approach the lighted doorway to Millie Broome’s room, aware now that I am holding my breath, I see Nurse Diaz beside Millie’s bed, and I think, Oh no, please, not Millie Broome, please, not Millie, she has just learned the piano all over again…

  Millie is alive, sitting upright in bed, her bulging hands and twisted fingers pressed against her mouth as if to stifle another sob. Her eyes are glassy with tears. When I appear in the doorway, she shifts her gaze from the perplexed Nurse Diaz and stares at me. There is an imploring look in her eyes, and it makes my knees weak.

  She speaks no words, instead points to the bell-shaped parakeet cage that hangs from the ceiling by a hook. I notice that the cage is swaying back and forth, but there is no breeze; the single window beside Millie’s bed is closed.

  “Stay out in the hall, sir,” Nurse Diaz instructs, but I ignore her. I go to the birdcage and peer inside.

  Sweetums is on the newspapered floor of the cage, dead. Its plumage is still as bright as ever. Its eye—I can only see one, given the position of the head—looks like a tiny dollop of India ink.

  “Sir,” Nurse Diaz says, a bit more forcefully this time. She is standing beside Millie’s bed with her hands on her hips, staring at me with unmasked contempt.

  “Never you mind,” Millie tells the nurse. To me, she says, “He was in here, Mr. Bruno. You were right. And just look what he’s done to poor Sweetums.”

  She is lucky it is only Sweetums whose heart has seized up. I don’t say this, though; I merely nod at Millie, show her the sympathy she needs at the moment, and feel a twinge of relief in
my chest because she is, from what I can tell, unharmed.

  “Who?” says Nurse Diaz. “Who did what?”

  “The bird is dead,” I say.

  Nurse Diaz looks at me, then hustles around the side of the bed and joins me at the birdcage. She stares at what’s inside for a second or two before turning back to Millie.

  “What’s going on?” says one of the old-timers standing in the doorway. Seems this place has been nothing but impromptu crowds lately.

  “Everyone needs to go back to their rooms,” Nurse Diaz insists.

  “You okay, Millie?” asks the old-timer.

  “Sweetums has been killed,” says Millie.

  There is a gasp from the audience out in the hallway.

  “Killed?” says Nurse Diaz. “It’s died, dear. No one did anything to your bird.”

  “That man!” Millie cries.

  Again, Nurse Diaz looks at me.

  “No,” says Millie. “Not Mr. Bruno. That man with the staff. He was in my room! He killed Sweetums and he was going to do the same to me.”

  “It’s true,” I hear myself say. Eyes stare at me from the darkened hallway. “I saw him. He was running down the hall. I couldn’t keep up.”

  “Do you see?” someone from outside says. “Do you see?”

  Nurse Diaz claps her hands. “Enough. Everyone, back to your rooms. I do not want to call Ms. Joyce.”

  I can feel disquiet emanating from the residents out in the hallway. I feel it like a heat radiating from a nuclear reactor.

  “Ronove,” someone whispers.

  “Ronove, yes,” echoes Millie.

  A rumbling chorus ensues, that name repeated like a mantra by all the frightened villagers.

  Nurse Diaz goes to Millie, hands her a paper cup and a large white pill. Millie pokes the pill into her mouth and brings the cup to her lips, hand trembling. Out in the hall, the mumbling chorus continues.

  “Goodnight,” Nurse Diaz says to everyone and no one in particular. She stares at me. “Goodnight, Mr. Bruno.”