The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

But there was more to it than just a vague association, of course.

  When they’d taken possession six weeks ago, they’d been diligent—diligent to the point of pills and lubrication—about christening each room of the house, to prove that they owned it. Toward the end of the process they’d cheated a bit, by starting in one room, moving through another, finishing in a third, up against a wall if there wasn’t any furniture, but still, cheating or no, a crime scene unit would have found proof of them in each and every room.

  Except this one. Because they hadn’t found it by then.

  Candy knew this was where they should have brought the pillow last night, not the hallway.

  But she could make up for it.

  In the old days, you christened a ship by breaking a bottle against its hull.

  She wasn’t sure exactly how a person might ceremonially welcome hairsprayed dirt into the world—or into a home—but she imagined that it might involve letting that dirt have its first breath of air in years.

  And there was nobody there to tell her otherwise.

  ***

  She woke to the walls shaking around her, to dust sifting down from the ceiling.

  She was lying by Jason’s workout bench.

  Upstairs, Roff was barking at the front door.

  Somewhere a plate crashed into tile floor. Then another.

  It was starting, then.

  Candy worked her arm under her, angled herself up.

  Had she really slept here? Of all places?

  She stood, unsteady at first.

  The vapors had conked her, she decided. Yes, as it was supposed to, the fingernail polish remover had interacted with the hard, supposedly permanent shell over the dirt, but in this closed space, that reaction had had nowhere to vent. So it had had to filter through her lungs, which gave it access to her bloodstream, and the rest was blackout history.

  That had to be it.

  When the house shook next, it was hard enough that Jason’s weights jingled on the bar. From how this assault felt, Candy assumed the tractor was backing up to the street to get a running start, then throttling forward through as many gears as it could before it slammed into the house. Something along those lines.

  She knelt to slide the subflooring panel back in place and timed it poorly—right when the next tremor came.

  This one cracked the crust over the dirt in two.

  A breath of hot, corrupt air sighed up.

  “Oh,” Candy said, standing back, impressed.

  This was something.

  Without taking her eye from this development, she collected the empty bottle of fingernail polish remover, checked the floor by the bench to be sure she wasn’t forgetting anything, and then she whistled once, sharply, for Roff.

  For maybe the first time since his training, he didn’t respond, was having a panic attack about the end of the world he could hear happening right outside the front door.

  “Well then,” Candy said, and skirted the dirt and the subflooring panel, stepped out into the hall, sure to close the invisible door behind her.

  ***

  After a quick change of clothes and some general freshening up—tennis skirt, messy bun, eyeliner—Candy edged out the door, careful to keep Roff in, and walked into the noise and clamor. She was carrying a plastic platter of patio glasses, with a pitcher of lemonade set among them like a queen, the glasses already sloshing full.

  The diesel engines whined down and six hard hats tilted back on their respective heads.

  Candy flounced out among them, eyeing the damage along the way.

  They were indeed digging a big expensive hole under her house.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, presenting the tray, and six hands took six glasses, then a few of those faces split into a secret smile.

  “I don’t see Terry’s truck, do I?” Candy said conspiratorially.

  “No, ma’am, you don’t,” one of the men answered.

  In the patio glasses—cups really, since they were made of plastic—was Jason’s beer. It wasn’t the same color as the lemonade in the pitcher, but the glasses were foggy green.

  “Hot day,” Candy said, and looked up into the sun. It was swimming with worms of flame. She tried to blink it away.

  What was happening to her?

  What if Jason pulled up now, his meetings cancelled, his flights all early, and saw her out here barefoot, showing this much leg, giving his beer away to men who needed steady hands if they were going to keep the house from crashing down?

  “Kath,” she said to herself, just remembering her intentions to call her, and she turned to do just that, stepped on something sharp halfway to the door. She collapsed around the pain.

  Ten minutes later she had been hand-delivered to her couch, and Terry was walking in, not smiling.

  There were no engines rumbling outside. No great shovels tearing into the earth.

  “I apologize,” Terry said, his yellow hard hat in his hands. “They’re all gone.”

  “Gone?” Candy said.

  “Fired,” Terry said. “One, no drinking on the job, ever, zero excuses. Two—shit.”

  He was just now seeing the bloody nail on the coffee table.

  He checked his boots, crossed to the couch to inspect Candy’s foot.

  She winced away but he caught her calf, was kneeling already.

  “We’re not even using nails,” he said, disgusted. “This is an excavation right now.”

  “I’m sure it was already there,” Candy said. “The landscapers.”

  Terry wasn’t buying it.

  “We need to wash it,” he said, and went to the kitchen for water. He stopped at the doorway.

  “Those were already broke,” Candy called across to him.

  He lowered his head, stepped in—crunched through—ran the faucet, was still running it when Candy stepped in behind him.

  He looked over his shoulder, continued wringing the dishrag he’d found.

  “You shouldn’t be—” he said, but was interrupted by a white platter crashing onto the tile.

  He looked from it up to Candy.

  She pushed a white saucer off. It shattered.

  Terry turned the faucet off, rubbed his neck with the hand not holding the wet dishrag.

  “We needed a new set anyway,” she said, pushing a coffee cup off. A red coffee cup, one of the standalones, not part of any set.

  “Our insurance can cover it,” he said, crossing to her, kneeling again, to apply the wet rag to her foot. “Just tell your husband that—”

  “My husband isn’t here,” she said, and when he looked up to her about that, all the way up her, time dilated around them. This moment.

  She stepped outside of it, kind of saw herself.

  Was there any reason to be doing this? Really?

  No, she told herself.

  Somehow that made it even better.

  “Not here,” Terry said into her neck five minutes later, when she had him pressed up against the sink, the window directly behind him like a picture frame.

  “I know just the place,” Candy said, and took his hand, led him down the hall, every other footstep on the tile dabbed red. All the way down the carpeted stairs. All the way to Jason’s weight room.

  “No windows,” she said, spreading her arms, spinning slowly, losing her clothes.

  When the weight bench creaked underneath them, threatening to give—apparently it wasn’t rated for love, or whatever this was—they rolled onto the floor, and Candy’s raw foot pressed against the raw dirt, and that brief grit was just the right thing, just the perfect thing.

  ***

  Kath wasn’t answering her phone.

  Terry wasn’t even two minutes gone. She could still feel him.

  Candy paced.

  Roff was licking up the blood from the tile.

  “Good boy,” Candy said, sweeping past.

  She couldn’t stop moving, wasn’t sure what would happen if she did.

  Things were happening fast, weren�
��t they?

  And: things?

  “Cheating on your husband, you mean,” Candy said aloud. “Breaking your flatware.”

  Were they more or less equivalent?

  They were, she told herself.

  It’s not like she’d used the special pillow with Terry or anything.

  It’s not like she’d needed it, she added.

  Next, an actual blip later, it felt like, she was back in the weight room.

  She expected it to smell like sex, but if it smelled like anything, it was just… earthen, she supposed. Like the digging outside.

  She knelt to rub at a wet place in the carpet with the belt of her robe, and then another place, and then Roff was there as well, helping her.

  She sat on the weight bench with her face in her hands, and of course that was when the phone upstairs started ringing.

  Candy made a dash, caught it on the fifth ring.

  “Thought you weren’t there,” Kath said.

  “I was—I was downstairs,” Candy said, out of breath.

  “You were downstairs, or he was…?” Kath said.

  Candy looked around the room, said, “Jason’s in Philadelphia. Somewhere up there.”

  The pause that came next was meaningful.

  “I was calling to ask about who used to live here,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The former owner, you know,” Candy said.

  “Oh,” Kath said. “Jim, you mean? The pervert?”

  “The what?” Candy sat down.

  Kath explained: it never went to court, the allegations, but Jim K-something—Koppel?—had evidently liked to stand around playgrounds, and just watch.

  “Maybe he missed his son or daughter,” Candy offered.

  “Or maybe he was stocking the spank bank,” Kath said.

  “There was an indictment?”

  “Everybody knew,” Kath said deliciously. Her the mom of eight-year-old twin boys. “But then he just pulled the old eject lever—not that one—and, blip, no more Jim Koppel. Probably some country with, you know, a tourist industry more suited to his, ahem, tastes.”

  Candy had her eyes closed.

  Jason had told her that the mounts in the weight room were for rifles and shotguns and pistols. And they looked like that, didn’t they? She could imagine firearms on the walls down there. A walk-in safe.

  But could it have been something else? If so, what?

  “Anyway,” Kath went on, “his loss, your gain, right? I’d always wanted you to live closer like this.”

  Candy nodded, didn’t know what to say.

  “Do I see trucks in your driveway?” Kath asked then.

  “Workers,” Candy said. “They’re all fired.”

  “Interesting…” Kath said. “Even that—what was his name?”

  “Terry,” Candy said, then added the necessary “Something like that.”

  “I found him in Ben’s house rolodex,” Kath said. “Can you believe I live with someone like that? He has three rolodexes. Business, house, and personal.” Kath laughed, added, “Three that I know about anyway.”

  “So he did work on your foundation?” She prayed Kath wasn’t going to repeat foundation in a suggestive way. “I just need it for Jason,” she added, digging in the desk drawer for a pen.

  She scratched the info down, Kath still talking into her ear even though the conversation was long over.

  “Are you all right, girl?” Kath could have said.

  I don’t know, one part of Candy would have said back.

  There was another part of her too, though. Now there was.

  “Roff!” Candy said, as if he were doing something he shouldn’t be. As if he were even in the room. “Listen, I’m sorry, but my dog, he’s—” and that was how she got the phone hung back up.

  She sat on the couch, hugging the special pillow to her chest.

  This wasn’t so bad, she told herself. She’d always been pretty sure that what Jason did out of state, that was none of her business. No questions, no answers they would have to deal with. That’s what marriage was. Just, she didn’t travel out of state. So she was having to make do.

  That was exactly it.

  In Philadelphia or wherever Jason was, he was probably right now sitting down the bar from some tall leggy thing. Some inevitable thing.

  Good for him.

  Maybe he’d learn some new tricks.

  With Terry, just now, Candy thought she might have a thing or two she could apply, when Jason was home.

  Without really meaning to or thinking about it or making a decision, she dialed Jason’s number.

  It rang and rang.

  She didn’t leave a voicemail.

  “Roff!” Candy called, then did the whistle the trainer had trained him on.

  No clawed feet, slipsliding down the tile of the hallway.

  Still clutching the pillow, she searched the house room by room, tarting at the top even though it was too hot upstairs for a dog.

  Eventually she had to go back downstairs.

  The invisible door was open, just like she hadn’t left it.

  “Roff?” Candy said.

  She carefully turned on every light in the basement. It was so empty down here. Jason had suggested wicker furniture, so he wouldn’t have to carry heavy stuff down the stairs, ha ha. Candy had said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with this space yet.

  And the door at the end on the right was still cracked open.

  Candy whistled again, harsher, harder.

  Nothing. No dog.

  It was just a stupid leftover secret room, right?

  Candy stifflegged it down there, looked in, the light already on.

  No Roff.

  It still smelled like fresh-turned dirt, not like sex. Which was good. Which was great.

  Except.

  The crack in the shell of dirt, the slit in the ground, it was… it was bulging, now. That was the only word for it.

  Like there was pressure down there.

  Candy turned the light off, closed the door, and went to the hardware store.

  ***

  She had to get someone from Paint to help her load the bags of concrete onto her flatbed cart. He said he didn’t mind.

  “Patio or bathroom remodel?” he asked, trying to look like the bags weren’t heavy.

  “Basketball goal for my son,” Candy lied. It came so natural.

  “Must be going deep,” he said, throwing the sixth bag on.

  “Thanks,” Candy told him, and leaned into the cart’s wide handle, to push, ended up pulling instead, which meant doubling back through Tools.

  Another worker loaded it into her SUV, patted the last bag into place, like telling it to stay. As if its weight could possibly shift. Candy tipped him eight dollars, all the cash she had, and drove away. The road looked different, now—the hood of her SUV was in the way, with the back end squatting down.

  She turned the radio up. It wasn’t a station she ever listened to, but screw it.

  She let off the accelerator halfway home.

  The restaurant, the one Terry had wined and dined her and Jason at.

  It was a blackened husk.

  Candy stopped in front of it.

  This must have happened… the last day or two, she figured. How had she not heard? Every time a liquor store got knocked over, it made the paper. A snooty restaurant would be front-page material.

  Terry would know, she told herself, and looked around, like for the left or right turn that would lead to the road that would lead to the highway that would take her to his place. To wherever he was.

  But she’d left his info on the pad of paper on the desk, hadn’t she?

  “Shit!” she said, and banged the heel of her hand into the steering wheel.

  Terry would also be able to tell her the best way to mix this concrete, too. The directions were there on the bag, but she didn’t think they guaranteed success. There was nothing about covering a hellhole in the surprise room
in your basement, say. The one that was less a crack, she had to admit, more a slit. Like it was going to birth something early one morning, while she was sleeping.

  She called Kath. Of course.

  For once Kath was rushed, which meant she was helpful, could reel off Terry’s address from her weird memory instead of having to paw through Ben’s rolodex again.

  Terry’s house was only fifteen minutes away.

  His white truck wasn’t parked in the driveway. But there was a minivan with a plastic tricycle wedged under it from the side. Which made sense, Candy supposed, there being a minivan. A family. And it made her aware, too: she’d only been factoring Jason into this dark equation. But that was just her side of the problem. There was also a wife to take into consideration. And a son who liked to tie yarn around his father’s thick wrist. And a daughter, still teething.

  Candy closed her eyes, didn’t quite come to a stop. That would be a giveaway. That could prompt questions, whenever Terry finally got home.

  She mashed the pedal, turned hard enough that that top bag of concrete, which had been patted into place, told to be good, to behave itself, slid off the pile, impacted the floor of the SUV’s cargo space hard enough that Candy felt it in the wheel.

  She was crying a little, she had to admit. It was stupid to pretend you weren’t doing what you were already doing.

  That included fucking the contractor.

  She hit the steering wheel again, and again, and screamed through her teeth.

  ***

  The basement hall in front of the weight room—the sex room, the cheating room, the room she hadn’t meant to ever find—was swirling with concrete dust.

  The garden hose was draping in through the window of what Jason had told Candy had probably been the rumpus room for the last owners.

  Candy doubted that, now. Though a pedophile probably would have wanted it to be a rumpus room. Just, he would have his own inflection on that word, “rumpus.”

  Candy was mixing the concrete on a dark green tarp. She’d wanted the wheelbarrow, but guiding it down the stairs had gotten immediately complicated. For a stir stick, she’d spun the head off a plunger and coated the wooden handle in shortening. Her pecs and delts and triceps were on fire from all this churning, but she was determined.