The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  “And Mr. Thomas Thomas is another demon,” Merry added.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Jake said, “this fuckin’ toke—what’s in this shit? Mike, where’d you get this?”

  “At the grocery store. It’s just what we always get.”

  “I don’t feel any different, either. But maybe we’d’ve been better off doing that Jim Beam I got in that sale. We have to come down. I’m >making a pot of coffee right now.”

  “The girl is in the tree,” Mike said. “Fact.”

  “That can’t be. Nobody can climb those trees. You’ve been down there.”

  Terry waved her arms. “It flies! They all fly.”

  “That guy, he flies, I’ve dreamed about that.”

  “What guy?”

  “The hypnotist, Mr. Thomas Thomas. He goes to people and hypnotizes them and they don’t know it, and then they are outa their houses with natha.”

  “I didn’t let him in,” Terry said.

  “No, you did,” Merry replied. “I threw him out. Three times.”

  “I did not let him in!”

  “Sure you did. Three times. And you don’t even know it.”

  “Well, let him in next time, for Chrissakes. Whatever’s going on here, we need to move tout de suite.”

  “We’ll lose our homes.”

  “I’m gonna sue the Franklins. I’ll get every house back and most of their damn lottery money into the bargain. You can be sure of that.”

  “It’s not gonna work,” Jake said dismally.

  They argued for a while about going to bed together. Things to Come was on TCM and Mike wanted to watch, so they watched and drank and toked more. The girls snorted oxy. They put on the karaoke machine in the basement and sang “There is a Man Goin’ Round” with Mahalia Jackson.

  By two, everybody was asleep, which is why they were not aware that, sometime after that, the eaves began wailing, banshees of the small hours. By three, the house was shaking, a steady pulsation that might have sounded like the work of living hands had it not been the wind. The din was so great that they didn’t hear the doorbell, and would not have heard the knocking had Tom Franklin not begun pounding his shoe against the door.

  Terry was the lightest sleeper. As she came to and heard all the ruckus, she leaped out of the super-king. “Something’s wrong,” she cried.

  The banging sounded like the banging of shutters, but there were no shutters on this house.

  With a fearsome ripping noise, the roof rose up, then glided majestically off into the night. Where there had been a ceiling, there were now stars flying in torn clouds.

  Shouting and crying, everybody trooped downstairs. At the front door, two people also shouted and screamed. “We’ve called the demon, the demon wind!”

  “What?” Merry shouted. “I can’t hear you!”

  “The demon wind!”

  Jake cried, his tone a cave of despair, “Stop it, goddamn you!”

  “We can’t stop it, we don’t know how!”

  “We’ll sue,” Mike howled into the banshee wail. “Sue you!”

  Like two bits of straw, the Franklins were snatched away into the night by Mr. Thomas Thomas, who flew up, grinning just as they had grinned, grabbed them by their necks and was instantly away.

  Mike and Merry and Jake and Terry ran, trying to get out of the disintegrating house. They raced out into the street, but as they ran, one by one they too were snatched away.

  Finally, nothing was left but wind and laughter, and then just wind, which roared and wailed through the night, and bent the grass and stole away the roofs, the lentils, the barbeques, the Lexuses, the curtains, the balustrades, all the empty houses and the ruined houses, and the houses of Jake and Terry and Mike and Merry.

  With the dawn came stillness. There were no houses left, not even the Franklins’ old pile. The land had been stripped so clean that it wasn’t even scarred. Rather, it was smoothed. The land, so long lost, had been restored.

  An old man, pale and slow in his years, came walking up the hill to where the Franklin house had been. He walked and walked, struggling on an old stick, until he reached the spot where Annie was lying on her back peering into the blue sky of morning.

  “Gracias,” the old man said. “You have given me back my soul.”

  “Glad to be of help, honey.”

  He gazed down at the face. It was naked now of its theatrics, so no longer a simple girl, not exactly, but rather a face softer than that of a girl, but in the laughing turn of the lips more knowing, in the deep quiet of the eyes, more kind. It was the face of a person unknown in this world, an ancient maiden.

  “Are you of Satan or of God?”

  “Do you know that you are dead, Señor Ballesteros?”

  “Nobody is dead.”

  “Then you know.”

  “But have I called down an angel or conjured a demon? I need that answer.”

  “Why?”

  “For my rest.”

  She pointed toward the blue. “You were kind to me once, Señor Ballesteros.” She sat up. Her eyes melted into his. “We don’t forget.” With that, she swept out across the lovely long hills of old California, toward other days and missions that none may know.

  The old rancher turned and walked back down the hill, through the swaying grass that he loved, the lady grass. As he walked, he faded from view, returning now forever to the hard, sweet land that was home.

  RONOVE

  Ronove is the twenty-seventh of the seventy-two goetic demons. Both Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft and The Lesser Key of Solomon describe him in almost exactly the same way: Ronove is a marquis and an earl, and he has the form of a monster. He gives unusually good understanding of rhetoric, faithful servants, knowledge of languages, and the favor of friends and foes. He commands nineteen legions of spirits. His name is sometimes spelled Roneve.

  THE WRAITH OF SUNSHINE HOUSE

  RONALD MALFI

  1

  There is commotion outside room 2A. The nosier, more ambulatory residents of Sunshine House have gathered in the hallway to rubberneck, determined to catch a glimpse of whatever is going on beyond the partially opened door. Nurse Skarda is good at keeping them at bay. She talks to them with a stern and direct voice, yet she is also somehow kind in her delivery. That is probably why most residents like her. The male residents also appreciate her youth and movie-star looks. I certainly do.

  Ms. Joyce from the front office arrives, her face a pale oval, her rotund little body hermetically sealed in a lavender pantsuit. She is ungraceful, dour, the polar opposite of the attractive Nurse Skarda. Ms. Joyce informs the onlookers that they need to return to their rooms or, at the very least, go to the rec room and watch television. Breakfast, she tells them, will be delayed.

  It’s ten after five in the morning. The dawn looks as dark and uninviting as seawater against the wall of windows in the recreation room of Sunshine House. I have been awake for hours, completing yet another circuit around the perimeter of the room, counting the dead flies on the windowsills, the cockroaches flipped on their backs on the smudgy tiled floor. I am noting, too, the profusion of artwork that has come to paper the walls—not only in the rec room, but in the cafeteria, the hallways, and in some of the residents’ rooms. But that’s not all: Old Millie Broome has even taken to playing the piano again, a feat that is quite impressive given her arthritis.

  Things are changing in Sunshine House.

  When the paramedics arrive, the residents shamble back out into the hallway, or appear in doorways like raccoons in the holes of tree trunks. I know I resemble each one of them, just another gazing raccoon. I have been a resident of Sunshine House for the better part of seven years. Or is it eight? Whatever the case, I have begun to see things differently. Some lights are brighter than others now.

  I watch the paramedics roll a gurney down the hall toward Max Winston’s room. Nurse Skarda talks with them, then they all disappear into the room together. Ms. Joyce remains like a sentry outside t
he door. She is on a cellular phone, talking in a low voice so none of the residents can overhear. There is something toad-like about her face—the squat, stretchy composition of it, bulging eyes and lips like thick elastic bands.

  I do not like Ms. Joyce. For one thing, she is a liar. She lies to the residents of this house and she lies to me. She keeps my mail from me and tries to keep David, my son, from visiting. She may fool the feebleminded, but she does not fool me. Particularly since things around here have been changing. Even she can feel it. She must have sensed something like this coming. I do not have to peer into room 2A to know that Max Winston is dead.

  Millie Broome comes up beside me, dressed in a flannel pink nightgown. Her feet look like two blunt pegs swaddled in thick white tube socks. On her right shoulder is Sweetums, her neon-yellow parakeet.

  “I hope Mr. Winston is okay,” Millie says.

  I say nothing.

  “It was that man, wasn’t it?” She looks at me, as if I’m complicit in whatever has happened to Max. “That horrible man.” Yet there is no accusation in her eyes, only concern. Fear, maybe. “I know you’re right about it, Mr. Bruno,” she continues, this time in a whisper.

  I see that her hands are up, that her fingers—those gnarled, bony talons—piston almost hypnotically in the air, striving to dispatch some coded S.O.S. through the ether.

  I say, “Why don’t you sit down and play us a tune, Millie? It might help to lighten the mood.”

  Her eyes widen. “Do you think it’ll help?”

  “You never know.”

  “All right.” She pats me gently on the shoulder, then creeps over to the rickety piano against the nearby wall. Sweetums the parakeet flaps its bright yellow wings but does not take flight; under conditions provided to her by Ms. Joyce, the only way she was able to keep the pet bird was to have its wings clipped. Millie eases down on the bench with difficulty, then raises the lid that covers the discolored piano keys. “Any requests, Mr. Bruno?”

  “How about something jaunty?”

  “Something jaunty,” she mumbles… then to my surprise she begins to play a jazzy little Spanish rhumba. Sweetums continues to flap his wings and hop along the old woman’s shoulder.

  A few stragglers still out in the hallway pause to listen, turning their heads in the direction of the music. They are like hounds tracking a scent. Some come shuffling over to watch Millie play.

  Midway down the hall, the gurney reappears, bookended by the two paramedics. Max Winston’s body is covered by a white sheet that makes its profile look like a miniature mountain range. The paramedics wheel the gurney quickly down the hall and out the glass doors of the lobby. There is an ambulance waiting in the circular driveway just beyond the portico, red lights twirling. I note, with some trepidation, that there is a dead bird on the pavement just outside the door.

  Outside room 2A, Ms. Joyce is still on her cellular phone. When Nurse Skarda vacates Max Winston’s room—although it isn’t Max Winston’s room anymore, is it?—they exchange a look that suggests this is going to be a long day. Then Ms. Joyce hurries off while Nurse Skarda, summoning a smile, approaches me.

  “Hello, Mr. Bruno,” she says, touching me right on the shoulder where Millie Broome had moments before. There is a sadness in her voice and on her face. She saw me watching the paramedics wheel Max Winston’s body out the doors. There is no need to say anything to each other. Instead, she leans against the doorway of the rec room and listens to Millie play the piano. A decent crowd has formed. They watch her with almost pained faces—not pained because of the music, which is beautiful, but pained because they are inevitably reminded of their youth, and of all the things that were possible back before the lights started to go out and the foundation began to crumble.

  We are all houses on the brink of collapse.

  When Millie finishes, there is a round of polite applause. Sweetums chirps from her shoulder, pivoting its tiny head from side to side.

  “That was ‘Armando’s Rhumba’ by Chick Corea,” Millie says. “I used to play that number at the Town and Country.”

  “It was lovely, Millie,” says Nurse Skarda. She is smiling, but the smile does not touch her eyes. Most likely she is thinking about Max Winston. Then her gaze rises, and she sees all the drawings that paper the walls of the rec room—countless crayon drawings that, upon close inspection, are disturbing in that they all seem to be of the same character. As if there had been some art class where we had all been instructed to draw the same picture. “Those are very interesting,” she says in a low voice, moving toward one wall and examining a drawing, then another, and another. She turns and faces the crowd gathered around the piano, but they have all begun to disperse—Millie included—and no one is paying the beautiful young nurse any attention. Except me.

  When Nurse Skarda leaves, and the rest of the residents depart for the cafeteria for coffee and their medications, I execute one last loop around the circumference of the rec room. When I finish, I find there are three more dead flies on the windowsill, a dead spider curled into a ball on a couch cushion, and another dead cockroach near the piano bench.

  2

  A heart attack brought down old Max Winston, or so we are told. Ms. Joyce is duplicitous, but I get the sense she believes this, which means it’s probably the truth. We’ve waited three days to hear what caused Max’s death and now it seems somewhat anti-climactic. Yet given what has been happening in Sunshine House lately, I can tell that the more self-aware residents are happy to hear it was something as mundane as a heart attack. There has been talk of stranger, darker things, so this comes as a relief.

  Max Winston’s son and daughter-in-law, who are both in their fifties and clutch at each other like two children tossed about in turbulent waters, arrive at Sunshine House to collect Max’s belongings. They leave forty minutes later after scouring Max’s tiny room then meeting with Ms. Joyce in her office, carrying a cardboard box with the words Frito-Lay on the side. The box contains every bit of Max Winston’s life, far as I can tell. And from the looks of it, there’s still some room inside.

  Because visitors come to Sunshine House with the frequency of a solar eclipse, the Winston children—who are not children—attract the attention of those few residents who have come to be known as the Leeches. The Leeches do not care who comes through the glass double-doors of this retirement home; they only care that there is a warm body upon which to adhere. They strike up conversations, distribute hugs or pats on the back, and on occasion attempt to slip out the front doors with these strangers. Even Ms. Joyce’s ill-tempered cat will, on occasion, attempt an escape when strangers hold the doors open for too long. Today, as the Winston children depart with Max Winston’s belongings in a Frito-Lay box, Clara Holbrooke tries to accompany them to the parking lot, but Ms. Joyce is there at the ready to intercept her. Jerry Ulrich, shaking despite his death grip on his walker, just gazes at the Winston couple as they hurry to their car, a glister of spittle unspooling from one corner of his mouth. The entire lobby smells instantly of urine.

  Since Ms. Joyce is otherwise preoccupied, I go down the hall and enter room 2A.

  The bed has been stripped of its sheets and the collection of photographs that sat in little brass frames on the table beside Max’s bed is gone. The closet door is open, but nothing but empty hangers dangle from the crossbar. I look down and see a discolored spot on the floor where Max kept a handsome pair of dress shoes he never wore.

  He had been the first person to corroborate my story about the intruder. The first one to draw pictures of the strange character who haunts these halls, yet somehow remains unseen by Ms. Joyce, Nurse Skarda, and the rest of the staff. It’s as if something in our old eyes and old brains allows us to see through the flimsy veil of life and glimpse whatever resides in the darkness of the other side.

  With some difficulty—I am, after all, eighty-two years old—I get down on my hands and knees and peer under the bed. Dark shapes under there. I stare at them until my eyes acclimate t
o the darkness beneath the box spring.

  Three dead mice, two dead roaches, and the pencil-thin corpse of a tiny black snake.

  As I exit the room, I hear a man’s strident voice repeating a word or a sound or something that is, at first, unintelligible. It is the sheer volume, the urgency of that voice, which causes me to follow it.

  I go down the corridor toward the back part of the house. The noise gets louder. There are others who have been alerted by it, those curious rubberneckers, raccoons gazing out peepholes. Those vacant houses on the brink of collapse.

  The cafeteria is to the right, but that is not where the cries are coming from. The man is shouting off to the left, in the room that has come to be known as the Golf Course due to the harsh green carpeting that, despite age and wear, has maintained its perfect emerald-green hue. There are some bookshelves in here, but the text on the pages is too small and so the volumes remain largely untouched by the Sunshine House residents.

  I step into the room.

  Mr. Frost is leaning far back in his wheelchair, a look of abject terror stretching his face to terrible proportions. His eyes remind me of flashbulbs from an old camera. He is staring at a partially open closet door while crying out, over and over again, “Ronove! Ronove! Ronove!”

  I rush to his side and attempt to console him. “It’s all right, Mr. Frost. Please calm down.”

  “Ronove! Ronove!”

  I recognize the name now, of course, and I cannot help but cast my gaze toward that sliver of darkness where the closet door stands just a few inches open. I convince myself that I see movement from within—that someone or something is in there—and I feel my entire body stiffen. With Max Winston’s death still so fresh in all our minds, I begin to think of the worst…

  I leave Mr. Frost’s side and approach the closet. Is there movement inside? The door is only open three inches… yet that swirling darkness can hide just about anything, anything…