The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  She recalled the statuette sitting on her nightstand and smiled to herself. A secret was always a good thing to ward off feelings of worthlessness, of abjection. Secrets empowered.

  Then she realized. Secrets did empower, but in their case they empowered him. Because his secret, in this particularly sad scenario, was her.

  ***

  Holy shit.

  Okay, how can I put this into words? How do I describe last night?

  I was laying here, falling asleep and staring at the unicorn. Thinking about the music I’d hear in my dreams and the night I dug it out of the dirt, near the trees.

  I heard a loud… I don’t know…scratching sound, and the room got very, very dark. Like I was underwater, like my whole room was sinking in a submarine, diving into some dark abyss. My ears plugged up and the air got hot… and then, a minute later, my ears popped and I could sort of see again. Everything was fine. Normal. Except when I looked around my room, I saw him.

  I turned on the lamp by my bed, ready to scream.

  He stood by the window, and he was big. Massive. He was, I don’t know, seven feet tall or something. Hairy and wearing weird clothes, sort of like a robe but it only covered his middle, not his arms or head or feet. But they weren’t feet. They were hooves, like on a horse, or a goat... but way bigger. Hard and nasty-looking.

  This giant man with horse feet... was just standing there, staring at me like a big creepy shadow. But here’s the thing—he wasn’t creepy, or scary, not at all.

  He was nice.

  I liked him right away, even though I was obviously startled at first.

  At least it wasn’t Father.

  So he stood there, watching me, and I didn’t move because I was too freaked out, and then he smiled, and he had big white teeth, and he said…

  “Hello, princess.”

  She didn’t respond, didn’t know what to say. The beast of a man had just appeared out of the shadows, standing between her bed and the window. In her fright and surprise, Esther looked first to the bedroom door, as if expecting to see it open, Father standing there, arms folded, watching and smiling.

  But the door was closed. The house quiet.

  “Hi…” she managed.

  The man laughed. A big, deep, wide-open laugh that she was sure Father would hear.

  “Ssshhh!” she said, sitting up urgently, stealing another look to the door.

  The man covered his mouth, dark eyes wide, as if sorry. Or amused. He took the hand away, crouched so he could be more level with Esther.

  “Pardons, my dearest. Don’t want to wake your dad, do we? No, not that.”

  Esther shook her head, and the man pounded one hoof against the floor reflexively. He stepped closer to her bed, out from the shadows.

  He had long, bushy black hair. His face was stretched and narrow, but strong-boned. His mouth protruded, the giant teeth pushing against fat lips. His eyes were smooth black stone that glinted like diamonds when they caught a stray sliver of light. His hooves were tapered black pots, scarred by use. His draped woolen robe couldn’t conceal the geometric shapes of his protruding, spherical belly, his massive square chest. His naked arms were thick as trees and roped with taut muscle. His hands were twice the length of a normal man’s, and they curled in on themselves like eagle talons, the dark nails of each finger honed to a point. She knew they weren’t hands but claws, each one big enough to wrap easily around her head, powerful enough to squeeze until the skull snapped.

  She could feel the heat of him. Wispy black smoke drifted off his skin.

  And yet, she liked him. Liked him immediately, and was not afraid. She studied him, overtly sly. A look she had perfected with her mother, one that always got a laugh.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Whatever you wish it to be,” he said, his voice rumbling, head dipped in a bow. “I have many, and care for none of them.”

  He said this in such a manner as to make Esther giggle and smack her palm to her forehead in the slapstick fashion of television sitcoms. “Oh gosh. You are frustrating!”

  He bowed more deeply, and she laughed again. “A name, if you please. For I will soon vanish without one.”

  She thought about it, searched her mind for things that made her laugh, or smile, that made her think of the way things used to be. “Hobbes!” she commanded, pointing a finger at his black eyes for emphasis.

  He nodded, as if not unexpected, and took a small step back into shadow. “May I stay, princess? I’ll sit on the floor over here, like a good dog, and you and I can speak to one another, speak of things that we could not say to anyone else in the world. Would you like that?”

  She nodded, smiling.

  “Wonderful,” he said, eyes sparkling, chunky white teeth a slice in the dark. “Where shall we begin?”

  She shrugged, said nothing. He pretended to ponder the issue, then gasped and lifted one long, needle-tipped finger, his face brightening as if struck with a most brilliant thought.

  “Tell me, princess,” he said, and she heard the murmuring intrada of violins whisper from beneath her bed. “What does thee know of Hell?”

  ***

  They were in the kitchen, argument full steam.

  He arrived home late and drunk and there was no food in the house. While he was away, she’d made herself a dinner of shredded wheat without milk, tried to lose herself in whatever was on television so she wouldn’t have to think about how sad she’d become. There was a great, constant weight on her shoulders, a tiredness she was not mature enough to identify as the early stages of deep, clinical depression. It wrapped around her, a cursed hauberk that sucked the joy from her, bogged down her spirit.

  When he finally came through the door, Esther was seated at the kitchen table, finishing a family mural assignment that was to be a combination of pictures, drawings and text on a sheet of yellow poster board given to the students by Mrs. Holmes, her sixth-grade teacher. She’d been gluing a picture of her and her mother taken one day in their backyard, Esther sitting in a small red wagon, arms around her kneeling mother’s neck, both smiling. Beneath the photo she’d written a paragraph about how much she missed her mother, and what her favorite things about her were. The funny voices she used when telling me a story at bedtime. How she would comb my hair with her favorite brush, made from silver. When we went shopping on my birthday and I could try on whatever I wanted. Her smile.

  “I will call the police, you fucker!” she screamed, pushing his thin-fingered hands away from her. “Don’t touch me!” She swung her fist at him, hit him wildly in the hip. Her father jumped back, his face shocked and slackened by alcohol. She could smell the whisky on his skin.

  “How dare you cuss at me!” he roared, then tripped over his own feet and almost fell, grasping the edge of the kitchen counter. He started to cry. “I just wanted to hold you, princess. I love you.”

  “If you come near me I’ll kill you!” she screamed.

  She fled to her bedroom, slammed the door. Her heart hammered. She was gasping, could feel the sobs in her throat, but refused to cry.

  “Push that dresser in front so he can’t get in.”

  Esther spun and saw Hobbes laying on her bed, hooves crossed, long fingers interlaced behind his shaggy head. His black eyes were wide and filled with stars. There was a quarter-sized hole in the center of his forehead she had not previously noticed.

  “Jeez, thanks,” she said, and tried to push the heavy dresser across the carpeting.

  “Stand back,” he said, and he whistled, or made a face as if to whistle, but a swinging lick of horn came out instead, like a jazz trumpeter tuning up for a midnight performance.

  Lithe figures made of smoke slipped from the hole in his forehead, danced across the floor to the dresser. She smelled the sour of sulfur and the dresser jerked free from her fingers and slammed against the door with such force that small chips of wood flew into the air, the peach-colored wall which spread outward from the doorframe dented where the edge had str
uck. “There,” he said, and the devils slipped back into his head, as if inhaled.

  There was an immediate pounding at the door. Her father in the hallway screaming now, screaming that he was going to punish her, punish her for what she said. For disrespecting him. The screams were muffled, as if his face was pressed flat against the other side. The handle rattled, fists slammed into the wood.

  “I’m coming in there,” he said, and it did not sound like her father, but like someone else. Like a stranger in their home. “I’m going to come in there and take care of some business. You hear me! I’m gonna take care of business tonight!”

  Esther ran across the room to the window, meaning to escape into the dark. She pulled up on the handle, but the window would not budge.

  “Help me!” she screamed, crying now, releasing her fear and misery. Hobbes sat up slowly, razor-tipped fingers punching effortlessly through her blankets, into the mattress. The hole on his forehead cycled open wider, the size of a silver dollar.

  “You don’t want my help, princess. If I helped you, it would be to take you away from here. From all this. Into Hell.”

  She ran to him, threw her arms around his massive frame, her small hands only making it as far as his biceps. The heat of his skin so hot, almost burning, the smoke coming off him covering her like oil. He did not move.

  “He’s going to come in here, and he’s going to get me.” She stared into his deep black eyes, wide and round as a mad stallion. “You don’t understand what he’ll do to me.”

  Hobbes looked at her, nodded. When he closed his eyes, a tear, black as ink, slid down his roughened cheek. “Listen to the music, princess.”

  ***

  Hell.

  He took me there. I don’t know how, but he did. Shit… it’s hard to describe.

  First off, it was way worse than you’d imagine. Very dark and cold and Hobbes wasn’t even Hobbes when we got there. He didn’t look much like a human anymore. His head was that of a huge black horse, or a unicorn, but it was NASTY. The horn was long as I am, it stuck out forever! And it was drippy and twisted, moving up and down like it was covered in little skinny snakes. He’d pretty much doubled in size, and even though he still had his normal body, it was bigger. WAY bigger. All covered in thick hair and he had a tail and when he walked everything shook, like tiny earthquakes.

  And—yes, I know how this sounds—that’s when Satan arrived. But he wasn’t like I’d been taught. He was beautiful and radiant. And sweet. All smiles and power. He glowed like a giant angel. He must have been ten feet tall, because he was even bigger than Hobbes.

  This is when it got crazy. Satan (or Lucifer, he said, call him Lucifer), wanted me to stay. He didn’t want me to come back. Which, frankly, I wasn’t all that upset about. Come back to what? Father? A shitty house in the woods with no friends and no relatives and nothing but a horrible man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself? Who is supposed to LOVE ME GOD DAMN IT.

  Then Hobbes got mad, and they argued. Lucifer said he would let me return if Hobbes performed for him.

  And he did. It was unreal.

  The most incredible thing I’d ever heard. He unleashed a thousand creatures inside a deep, massive bowl in the ice, and I sat with Lucifer and they performed this insane symphony. It was like what I hear in my dreams, but a million times louder, a million times better. It was beautiful, and scary. Melodic, but violent with bursts of sound and wide swinging melodies. Sometimes I cried, and a few times I laughed, but I loved every second.

  Lucifer told me that the world I was from was being destroyed by the music. He said giant waves were destroying cities, hurricanes were flattening towns, and millions of people were dying. I nodded. I didn’t care. Not really. I hoped my house was flattened by a giant tree, or hit by lightning, or blown apart in a tornado, like the one in my dream, and that Father was cut to ribbons and destroyed.

  I think Lucifer knew I was thinking this because he laughed, but I didn’t mind, because Hobbes was beautiful, and brilliant, and all those creatures—they looked like humans, and animals, and other things I’d never seen (some were horrible and ugly, and some were so gorgeous you couldn’t even look at them)—were playing for HIM, and I could hardly breathe until it was finished.

  At the end Lucifer stood, an audience of one, and clapped. Hobbes bowed his great unicorn head, and then everything was gone, and it was only me and Hobbes left. A lake of fire burned in the distance, but I stood on black ice and shivered.

  “When are we going back?”

  “I’m not, princess. Just you.”

  He kneeled. His giant head and spiraling horn towered above her. He looked down, white teeth reaching, thick gray tongue bobbing inside his mouth as he spoke. “Listen to me. I will tell you something not everyone knows. It is very hard to kill a unicorn. Almost impossible. Do you understand?”

  Esther nodded, not understanding but desperately wanting to. She waited, eyes on his, attentive.

  “Only a virgin can kill a unicorn,” he said, licking at his teeth and huffing out a great warm breath. He shook his mane and continued. “And when all the virgins become whores, nothing remains which can destroy the beast. Do you see?”

  Esther knew she was still a virgin, despite her father’s nighttime visits. And she swore, right there, to remain that way forever.

  And then she cried. Sobbed at her despair, her loss. All her mournful life crashed in on her, suffocated her in what could have been. Her feet were numb from standing on the black ice of Hell, and the massive unicorn looked down at her sadly, the flames from the lake of eternal damnation dancing in his mournful eyes, reflective as windows at midnight.

  ***

  A week passed. She did not see Hobbes, and her father made no late-night visits. She went through the motions of school, of being a normal girl. She cleaned the house on the weekend, and her father spent the day working on a nearby farm, making extra cash and, shockingly, staying out of bars. They didn’t say much to each other, but it wasn’t as strained as it was pregnant with possibilities. Potential future dangers.

  Esther remained guarded. She was sad her new friend had disappeared. All that remained of him was the six-inch statuette hunkered on her nightstand, long spiraled horn puncturing the air, thrusting skyward.

  The dreams also had ceased. She almost never heard the music anymore. She wondered if her visit to Hell had stolen that right away from her, if the symphony played for Lucifer had burned out the lingering tendrils of the song in her mind, left her devoid of beauty—be it raging or melancholic—and filled her instead with the tuneless every day, with the repetitive, identical note-plucks of normality.

  The devil would have told her, had she asked, that only suffering is eternal, and bliss is almost always short-lived.

  ***

  Father’s drunk again. He’s in the kitchen hollering for me, but there’s no WAY I’m going out there. I’ve got the dresser in front of the door and if I have to I’ll go out the window. I checked to make sure it wasn’t stuck like last time and left it open a couple inches just to be sure.

  And what else? Hobbes came back! He’s laying at the foot of my bed as I write this. I can’t tell if he’s really asleep or just faking, but he’s all curled up in a big hairy ball. I have to keep my knees tucked up just to fit on my own bed because he’s huge. I hadn’t seen him for a week, but when I heard Father’s car pull up and him get out cussing, I knew he was drunk and ran for my room, and there was Hobbes, snoring and curled up like a pet dog instead of a demon bigger than two men.

  Oh shit. Father. He’s at the door. Banging again. Damn it…

  I kick Hobbes but he’s not waking up. Father’s yelling some crazy… he sounds out of control! DAMN IT! I hate this. I’m scared.

  Hobbes better wake up. The dresser’s not holding this time. I’m going out the window. I’ve got to run for it.

  The door burst open another foot, the dresser pushed against the resisting carpet as her father shouldered his weight into it aga
in. She tucked her notebook back under her pillow and stared, petrified, at his pale, sweaty face, his arm reaching through, slapping the dresser.

  “You think you can hide from me?” he said. “You’re my daughter, Esther, and you will do what I say or I will punish you!” His voice rose into a slurred squeal. “You hear me, princess? I’m coming in there and you and I… well, we’re going to have a little talk.”

  He shouldered into the door, began to squeeze through the opening. Esther cried out, shook the giant sleeping at the foot of her bed.

  “Hobbes!” she screamed. “Hobbes, wake up!”

  Eyelids popped open, onyx shining. “I’m awake, princess.”

  “Then do something!” she yelled.

  Her father was almost through, his belt seemingly caught on the metal door handle. She leapt for the window, turned back as Hobbes stood, rolled off the bed, his hooves clumping to the floor, and stretched. His fingertips scraped the ceiling. He looked down at Esther, gave a toothy smile. “Not much I can do, princess. My boss won’t let you leave a second time, and I can’t hurt him without hurting you.” He shrugged, his face cragged, muscles writhing. “Such is my power.”

  “Please!” she screamed, backing for the window.

  Her father pushed through the half-open door and into her room. He circled around the bed toward her. “Beg all you want, but I’m done playing games with you,” he said, his mouth a twisted snarl. “Shit, I don’t even think you’re my daughter. Your mom used to cheat, did you know that? She had lovers, who knows how many! And when she died, I was glad.”

  Esther shook her head, weeping, hands up in a useless warding gesture. “Please stop.”

  “I was hap-hap-happy!” her father said, then giggled like a madman. “And you? You’re probably one of ‘their’ babies, someone else’s little girl that I gotta take care of, gotta feed and all that shit.”

  “Daddy…”