The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  “Of course,” Miss Carreau cut him short. “We must always,” she said, hissing out the s, “put children first.” She tilted her head, pursed her lips.

  Father coughed, retreating a step and tugging Isabella, whose hand he held, back with him.

  “They call home each week?” Mother said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the hall. Her voice, usually so confident and polished when dealing with the public, warbled and broke. “The students?”

  “Each and every week,” Miss Carreau said. “The headmistress insists parents be kept abreast of their child’s… progress. It’s a requirement of enrollment.” She paused. “Much more enjoyable now that it’s possible to video chat. Make sure—” her gaze fixed the boy to the bench “—to let your mother get a peek at your knees, Mr. Beck.”

  The boy nodded. “Yes, Miss Carreau.”

  A group of girls, some younger than Isabella, some as pale as the boy—a few even tinged blue—passed by, their scuffed Mary Jane shoes tapping the hall’s stone floors as they proceeded in single file behind a skeletal woman whose dour expression pointed toward the door through which Emma and her family had entered.

  Despite the influx of students, there was no chatter or laughter. The tapping of the girls’ soles remained the only sound as they followed on one another’s heels, their eyes downturned, their lips sealed. There was a heavy sense of something wrong that Emma couldn’t quite put into words.

  “You’ll be joining Ms. Preta’s girls,” Miss Carreau said, addressing Isabella, with a nod toward the thin woman at the head of the procession. Isabella froze, her mouth quivering. Emma expected her sister to begin to wail, but their mother reached out and snatched her away from their dad, to whom she had been clinging. She gave Isabella a firm shake and then released her, leaving her standing alone, shocked out of the incipient tantrum.

  “See,” Father said, stepping forward and clasping Isabella’s shoulder. “There are kids here your age. You’ll make friends in no time.” The youngest girls at the end of the line looked painfully small. Emma focused on her father’s eyes. He was lying. To make himself feel better, painting a happy picture for Isabella to assuage his own guilt.

  “Yes,” Miss Carreau said, “we’re unusual in that aspect. Most of the finer boarding schools are designed to accept older students, grades nine through twelve. Karkhous Academy accepts live-in students as young as pre-school.”

  Her eyes slid from Isabella to Emma then up to their mother. “Treacherous biology often saddles extraordinary people with the most ordinary of offspring. One does try so hard to cultivate a fondness for them, but a clear mind recognizes them for what they are—obstacles. Barriers that stand between oneself and reaching one’s true potential. The Karkhous Academy specializes in freeing up those who are called to greater things than wiping runny noses by allowing parents such as yourselves to…” she paused, seeming to look for the right word and finally settling on “consign,” which she said with approval, “their offspring to the care of the academy.”

  Emma gasped, the breath catching in her chest as she waited with a pounding heart for her parents to object to the woman’s harsh words. No protest came.

  A ragged exhale tore out of her.

  “We’re not quite sure what to do with you yet,” Miss Carreau said, turning her attention toward Emma. “Your age should place you in second, but your grades and standardized test scores imply you’re capable of working well above your grade level.”

  “She’s a bright girl,” Father said. Emma was thrilled to hear the pride in his voice. A wave of relief washed over her. He may not have spoken up like she’d wanted him to, but he thought of her and Isabella as special, not as burdens. He would set things right. She began to feel the knot in her stomach unwind when it struck her that any pride he felt was not for her, but for how she reflected well on him. The thought came as if it had been planted in her mind. A chilling glint in Miss Carreau’s eye sharpened this impression.

  “Loves art,” he continued. “She has a real sense of color. Don’t you, Em?”

  “Yes, well…” Miss Carreau’s tone made it clear she had no interest in Emma’s answer. The administrator eyed Emma as if she had come across a spider and was debating whether to go through the trouble of releasing it outdoors or to crush it beneath her heel. “At Karkhous Academy we’ve learned that precociousness often lends itself to delinquency. The brightest are often the worst troublemakers.”

  “She won’t be any trouble,” Father said.

  Miss Carreau hummed a reply.

  “Emma’s a good kid. You’ll see, she’s…”

  “Matthew,” Mother cut him off, turning his given name into a threat. He fell silent.

  A sudden flash of interest sparked in Mother’s eyes. She turned to the boy. “Beck?” she said. “Are you Chelsea Beck’s son?”

  The boy looked to Miss Carreau before answering. She nodded permission.

  “Yes,” he said, though his response held no conviction.

  “Chelsea Beck,” Mother said, with the same reverence of the “amen” Emma’s grandfather had used to end his prayers. Her face beamed. She turned toward Father, though her enthusiasm seemed to flag as her eyes grazed Isabella, whose face tightened up with fear.

  But even as her mother’s fervor dimmed, her father’s face flushed with excitement. He stepped around Isabella, not sparing her a glance, and drew nearer to the boy, towering over him. The boy pressed back into the bench.

  “You’re fans, I take it?” Miss Carreau said.

  “Well, of course,” Mother replied, her glow renewed, gushing.

  “She’s my hero. She basically swept the awards last season.”

  “In a year, two max, it’ll be you taking home those trophies,” Father said. He was Mother’s number one fan, always encouraging her, telling her that she was exceptional. Like when she landed the role in that regional commercial. And when she lost the part in the web series. But somehow Emma sensed a new certainty in his words, which went beyond his usual reassurances.

  Mother’s gaze softened as she turned to him, displaying such warmth, such love. She never looked at Emma or her sister in that way. Even when she said she loved them, the look in her eyes seemed practiced, like she’d repeated the words before a mirror a thousand times. “It will be us,” she said, addressing Father, but not including, Emma sensed, Isabella or herself.

  Father’s face melted into a goofy smile.

  “It doesn’t pay to be too starstruck here at the academy,” Miss Carreau said. “Every child here is someone’s child. Actors, business moguls, rock stars, politicians—especially politicians,” she added, as if correcting herself. “I thought we were well on track to having the sons of another president as alumni, but of course you’ve heard about the incident involving Senator Porter. Dreadful business.”

  “I knew him,” Mother said, either desperate for attention or trying to establish her worthiness to be here in the great hall—maybe a bit of both. “Senator Porter.”

  Miss Carreau paused and raised her eyebrows, an invitation to continue.

  “Well, not really knew, I guess,” Mother said, backtracking now that she felt the heat of the spotlight. “But I met him. Back when I was in school. I worked part-time for a caterer. It was his birthday. Somehow he learned it was mine, too. He sent over a glass of champagne. Insisted the whole room toast me.”

  “Imagine that,” Miss Carreau said. “You share the same birthday, and now your girls are taking his children’s place at the academy. Seems like kismet to me. Or is it karma? I always confuse those two.” Her eyes narrowed into those of a satisfied cat, a tight smile ascending her lips.

  “Taking their place?” Father said.

  “Well, yes,” Miss Carreau replied. “Their short-sighted guardians have elected to pull them out of school. But their choice was to your benefit. That’s how we happen to have openings so late in the term. Two students out, two in.”

  “But was that for the be
st? Even more change? Seems like it would be better to let them remain…”

  “He was a lovely man,” Mother said, though Emma sensed she spoke more to quiet Father than out of actual sentiment.

  Miss Carreau smirked. “A lovely man who murdered his wife, then…” She put a finger to her temple and mimicked pulling a pistol’s trigger. She shrugged. “Lovely man, indeed.”

  Emma felt her stomach drop as the scene flashed through her mind, her imagination casting her parents as the senator and his wife.

  Miss Carreau’s glance brushed over Emma, a knowing twinkle in her eyes, before she shifted her focus to Emma’s father. “You should consider going into politics, Mr. Wiley. You have the look for it, that requisite pedestrian comeliness, and a jaw square enough to level out any lies.”

  “Thank you,” he said, casting a confused, embarrassed look at Mother, “but I’m afraid I don’t have political aspirations.”

  “No?” Carreau shrugged. “Pity. Well, keep the idea in your back pocket. As your wife’s star rises, you’ll find doors opening to you, laurel crowns waiting to tumble into your upturned palms. Of course, all honors come at a price. Mr. Beck,” she said in a commanding voice that made the boy sit up straight. “Remove your shoes and socks.”

  Though it didn’t seem possible, the boy’s face lost more color. “Please, Miss Carreau…”

  “Mr. Beck,” she responded sternly.

  The boy bent and untied his right shoe first, slipping it off and letting it fall to the floor. He looked up, his mouth pleading silently. Miss Carreau responded with an impatient nod toward his other foot. He undid the second shoe, setting this one on the seat beside him.

  “Socks,” Miss Carreau said.

  He took his time tugging these off, then, once removed, held them between his hands, wringing them as fat tears formed.

  Emma felt a flash of heat rise to her cheeks. Her stomach churned. The boy’s right foot had lost its pinky toe. The two smaller toes were missing from the left.

  Isabella cried out and rushed forward to bury her face against Father’s leg. He impatiently patted her, staring at the boy’s disfigured feet with something like disgust. And maybe… interest. Emma bit her tongue, determined not to react.

  “Lost them last year to frostbite, didn’t you, Mr. Beck? Walking around for hours in the winter garden, he was. Shoeless.”

  The boy’s eyes fell to the floor, ashamed.

  “How many awards did your mother win last year?” Miss Carreau asked.

  “Three,” Mother answered for him, breathless.

  Miss Carreau reached wide to open the office door for Emma’s family to enter, and Emma swung back, trying to avoid the sharp, green scent that wafted off the woman. “Do come in and make yourself comfortable. Headmistress Bardalea will see you as soon as possible. She is, after all, a busy woman. Her title is headmistress, but she wears a dozen different hats around here, maybe even twelve and a half.”

  Emma reluctantly stepped over the threshold. The room before her was spacious, with polished mahogany panel walls and two large French-paned windows. On the wall opposite the door they’d entered was a second door, painted an incongruous gunmetal gray.

  Emma took a few steps farther. Miss Carreau motioned toward a loveseat and two chairs on one side of the room, then perched behind the desk opposite the furniture.

  “Yes, we understand. Thank you,” Father said, scooping up Isabella and depositing her on the loveseat. He sat next to her, then patted the space beside him for Emma to join. She ignored him and crossed to the window, the individual panes letting in the day’s dim light, though rattling in their attempt to hold back the buffeting wind.

  “The winter,” Miss Carreau’s voice drifted to her, “has a way of hanging on here. Some days it seems it might last forever.”

  Her dad had taken her and Isabella up to Big Bear last year, so Isabella could touch snow for the first time. But until now, winter was something you went to; it wasn’t something that happened to you. It certainly wasn’t something that bit off pieces of you.

  Emma peered through the shaking window panes. In the distance, tall pines formed a seemingly impenetrable curtain, cutting off the academy from the outer world. She strained her eyes to follow a double set of footprints cutting across the otherwise undisturbed field toward the tree line. The prints appeared too small and too close together to have been made by adult feet. She scanned the unbroken snow, searching for the marks left by the return trip, but found none.

  “They’ll grow accustomed to it.” Emma turned at the sound of her mother’s voice. She had come up behind without Emma realizing it. She, too, appeared to be considering the footprints in the snow. “A little hardship builds character,” Mother continued, quoting Grandfather, even though she’d scoffed when he addressed those same words to her.

  A light flickered on Miss Carreau’s desk. She lifted the receiver of something Emma recognized from old movies as a telephone, and pressed a button. “Yes, he is, but your two-fifteen is here… already.” She fell silent, her eyes gleaming as they scanned Emma’s parents, then came to rest on Emma. “Yes. Better than punctual. One might even say keen.” She nodded, presumably in response to a question, as if the nonverbal gesture could be sensed over the phone. “Of course. I’ll send them right in.”

  Miss Carreau returned the part of the phone she’d held to her ear to its base. “Headmistress will see you now.” She rose, waving her upturned palm as a signal that Emma’s father and Isabella should do the same. She crossed to the door behind her desk and eased it open.

  Isabella grasped Father’s arm, her tiny fingers turning white in their urgency, and buried her head in his shoulder. “Time to act like a big girl,” he said, sweeping her into his arms. Mother gave him a look, and he set Isabella on her feet. Emma stood her ground, forcing each of her parents to meet her eyes, silently urging them to acknowledge their betrayal. Father flinched. Blinked. Looked away. Mother reached out, but her hand stopped inches away and dropped to her side. Emma slipped past them and led the way into the headmistress’s office.

  She stopped dead in the doorway, surprised by the office’s interior. Miss Carreau’s office was large and bright, but even though the headmistress’s space measured at least twice as large as her secretary’s, the room was windowless. Its sole source of light was a single rectangular fluorescent fixture that buzzed far off-center overhead; the effect was a gradient descent into shadow, bathing the far end in darkness.

  The walls near her showed mint green in the dim light. The gray metal desk that sat at the exact midpoint of the room resembled a battleship, like the ones in the black and white movies their father loved and Mother detested. An empty armchair, of the same gray metal, sat behind the desk, with two more identical seats positioned on the visitor’s side.

  The office was unoccupied.

  A rough shove forced Emma over the doorsill, though she wasn’t sure if the compelling hand belonged to the secretary or her mother. The momentum carried her across the office, almost up to the desk.

  She heard the door clack shut behind them and glanced back to discover Miss Carreau had left them on their own.

  She turned back to examine the items strewn over the desk. A phone similar to the one Miss Carreau had used to speak with the headmistress sat like a castaway in a sea of dusty curios. Some looked as ancient as the relics Emma had seen in the antiquities wing on her class field trip to the museum last spring. Others were cheap trinkets bearing the names of faraway places. Emma reached out and picked up a snow globe that held a miniature building, round with three levels. She rubbed the globe’s face on her jacket sleeve, then turned it to read a plastic ribbon engraved with the words “Temple of Heaven” on one line, and “Beijing” below.

  “Emma,” her mother said, “put that down.”

  “It bears a reasonable likeness to the actual temple,” a voice came from the far side of the room. Headmistress Bardalea stood hidden in the deepest shadow, her back pressed
so close to the wall that it appeared as if she’d just passed through it to greet them. Emma jolted and fumbled the globe, catching it between shaking hands.

  The woman was pale, even paler than the children under her care, her complexion picking up the cool green of the surrounding walls. Her hair, glistening dark like licorice, hung in thick, long, curled tresses. She wore a black dress—a sad, matte version of the formal gowns actresses on red carpets wore in the glossy magazines Mother bought to read during her long baths, the four hours of “me time” she took every Sunday afternoon while Emma’s dad took her and Isabella to the Tar Pits or the park on La Cienega. Its hem dragged on the floor, hiding the woman’s feet, blending into the deep shadow. Around her neck hung a necklace, a thick torsade of freshwater pearls.

  Headmistress Bardalea seemed to glide across the room, her movement smooth, silent, and predatory. Emma struggled to identify the odor that preceded her, deciding it was like the earthy scent of her grandfather’s fresh grave mixed with the spicy aroma of baking gingerbread. She noticed that her father slid Isabella forward, positioning her between Bardalea and himself.

  “Just a bit of gimcrack,” she said as her hand darted out and grasped the souvenir, “but not without sentimental value.” Her fingers brushed Emma’s flesh, and Emma immediately snatched back her hand. On that trip to Big Bear, she had forgotten her mittens, but she’d still pelted her father with a snowball. This woman’s touch felt colder than the snow bank she’d plunged her bare hand into. Emma shivered. The woman lifted the globe and examined it. “I’ve been there, you know. I’ve been to all these places.” She waved her hand over her desk. “And many more.” She returned the globe to its place, but picked up a miniature blue and white ceramic horse and offered it to Emma, who accepted the bit of glazed clay without taking her eyes off the administrator.

  “That came from Chile.” The headmistress glanced at Isabella. “I used to have to travel. All the time, it seemed. Until I came to the academy.” She held out her hand with its too long fingers and too sharp nails. Rather than hand it to her, Emma dropped the trinket into the woman’s open palm, careful to avoid contact with her flesh.