Demons

When I was young, no older than eight or nine, I would covertly enter my stepfather's basement workshop to marvel at the miniature kingdom he had built. The display was set up over the pool table my real father had used, now little more than a platform to support stream-fed caverns and mountain chambers, the subterranean strongholds within. Gothic towers linked by arched bridges rose up and stretched under the domes of hollowed rock, which may have been plaster or papier-mâché, but had been expertly painted to look like natural stone. My stepfather was a talented hobbyist, there is no denying that. But he was an absolute terror, the most vile of human beings.

The stairs leading down into the basement creaked, each step so loud that the floorboards seemed to conspire against me, shrieking their alarm as I made my forbidden entry. My stepfather was at work during the day, though he had a habit of coming home at the most sudden and unusual of times—for lunch, for a beer, for the comfort and use of our household toilet which he strongly preferred to the one at the petrol station where he worked. He’d march through the doors, calling out for my mother, who was invariably tied up at work, enslaved by the endless demands of a doctor employed at a busy hospital. When my stepfather’s call went unanswered, he then called for me, his tone festering in the air, mean and full of venom. If he caught me down in the basement, if I had left the door open, or if he determined (accurately or otherwise) that his models had been tampered with in any way, I was sternly dealt with—lashed with his belt, right across the back of my thighs. It wasn’t the pain, but the anxiety of being caught, the fear of my stepfather’s wrath that plagued me.

And yet, the basement called to me, beckoned me down into its dingy crypt. Such were its marvels, I could not stay away.

The tiny figures of men that scattered across the castle yard, and those in the village that spread from its black base like the hem of a funeral dress, were inhuman and disfigured—demonic. Goblins, trolls, ogres, and ghouls, each one bearing fangs, scales, and scowls. The archers that occupied the castle turrets had horns like a bull; the gate sentries, black wings and fiery red eyes. The warped citizens manning the gateway to Hell were fascinating for a child not quite ten, but they were also frightening—yet not so much as their creator, the curator of horrors.

The basement, with its many wonders and grotesqueries, came with a price, with plenty of pain if I were discovered within. Despite the beatings and horrible names that my stepfather beset upon me, I could not stay away. The allure of its magic, of its profound absurdity, was too much for my youthful curiosity to resist. And so, with relish, I’d take the risk. I’d visit the cavernous kingdom of demons.

* * *

Among the meandering annals of my childhood memory, there is a particular episode that I have tried to forget and failed not to revisit over and over in my mind. My stepfather had come home, abrupt and unannounced, as he often did in those days. Probably for a beer or to use the toilet for what he referred to as “taking a load off fanny.” I was down in the basement, a castle sentry flat across my palm as I studied its long tail and fangs, the spikes ranging down its spine. I froze, petrified by the sounds of heavy footsteps above me, my stepfather calling out for my mother, cordial and sweet—then for me, caustic and cruel.

If you’re down in the basement, Boy—so help me, God—I’ll tan your hide!

In times like those my stepfather had seemed like a monster, scarier than anything in the movies; far more real, in any event, than any of the ones I had seen. I didn’t wait to test the truth of his words, to see, if indeed, he would “tan my hide,” which I didn’t doubt. I pocketed the disfigured sentry, a ghoulish, lizard-like figure, and lowered myself to the floor, crawling under the canvas sheets that had been draped over the pool table to protect it from the caverns and castle fortress it supported.

Under the pool table, under the roots of a mountain and below the deepest dungeon of the darkest castle, I willed my trembling to a minimum and held my breath. Hugging my knees, I lay quiet in the semi-dark of my moldy cocoon, listening as my stepdad descended the steps, one pronounced thud after the next. His boots upon the wood sounded like hooves striking stone, his slow breathing that of a beast. Encased in the gloom of my shroud, I sifted through myth and fable, dwelling on the Minotaur, its mammoth bulk and prodigious might. I tried to recall the hero who slayed it, but his name was lost to me.

“You there, Son?” The way he said it—Son—as if it were the foulest of words, an admonition on its own.

I edged away from the direction of his approach, the sound of his voice, and scurried away to the far corner underneath the pool table. But my efforts to avoid the man were thwarted, my presence given away by the sound of the miniature sentry falling from my pocket, the muted tink of pewter on concrete.

I winced. I waited. But not for long.

A rough hand swept away the canvas and grabbed me by my denim shorts. I kicked, and heard the vibrant curses that came after the impact, the oaths promising pain. Again, his hand came crawling like a spider, grasping like the jaws of a beartrap. I kicked and cried and scrambled. My fingers found a groove in the concrete flooring, a discoloration in the shape of a square, then hinges, old and dust-laden, rotten with rust. Desperate, I kicked out again at the hands that clawed at me. I pried at the crumbling edge of the square, found a fingerhold where I might hold on against the might of my stepfather. I felt my fingernails peeling back against the strain of being pulled away, but before they tore completely free from my flesh, the square beneath me opened outward, its ancient hinges creaking to life. In front of me, in place of the heavy lid I had worked free, a dim red light emitted from the bowels of some dreaded, deep unknown.

* * *

The sound of my stepfather’s rage dwindled as I navigated a downward crawlspace into an eventual wider cavern. The torch-lit tunnels didn’t make any sense to me. Where am I? I thought. What are these rock hewn sconces shaped like armored fists, like dragon mouths, like tortured gargoyles? Is this shallow stream running under my house? And where does it lead to?

Wherever I was, I couldn’t return the way I had come. Behind me, the crawlspace angled upward at an impossible angle. It was slick with slime, untraversable in reverse. And besides, I wouldn’t have gone back even if I could have. Not until my stepfather returned to work, until Mother came home from the hospital to protect me.

There was nowhere to go but forward.

I stumbled along a pebbled stream, its water as cold as a corpse but its surface alive with the reflection of fire that lit my way. My shoes were soaking wet, squelching and squirting with each step I took. But my discomfort in the cold was set aside for my absolute wonder at my uncanny surroundings, and a very real, underlying fear that I wasn’t dreaming, that it was all real, that I may, in fact, have been at the edge of some monster’s den, a demon’s lair, the entrance hall to Hell itself.

And indeed, I think I had been wandering down an entrance hall, because as suddenly as one of my stepfather’s impromptu visits home from work, the tight walls around me opened outward into a wide dome, expansive and gloomy, festooned with stalagmites reaching toward its vaulting ceiling. Within this dark, cavernous space, Gothic towers and castle walls loomed to unseen heights. Here and there were mounds of guano, the bats responsible for them hanging way up in the shadows.

There were several figures scattered outside a bleak and formidable stronghold, strange silhouettes with spears and swords. They looked like men, soldiers or guards, but they bore strange shapes that were not quite human, some far too large, others bent, twisted, or poised on all fours. It was hard to decipher their off-kilter characteristics in the gloom, but something about them seemed clear enough to me at the time: they were unsavory to the core, to be avoided at all costs.

Avoiding them is precisely what I failed to achieve. One of the bats swooped down nearby where I stood, which was enough to spook anyone, but I was particularly startled to discover the animal was roughly the size of a Labrador retriever, its leathern wings wider than a man is tall. The bat’s open mouth showcased a razor grin as it shrieked, and, without any hope of holding in my fear, I also shrieked, long and loud and anything but inconspicuous. My plea for help echoed across the cavernous space larger than any Cathedral made by human hands. A deafening silence followed, a handful of seconds at most, before the low beating of drums came from inside the castle. As its gate began to rise, the sound of ravenous wailing poured out from within.

Against the torchlight from the brands the armed troopers wielded, I saw with clarity their demonic faces. These soldiers were not men, but monsters. As wicked and twisted as my stepfather’s figures, each one was more frightening than the next. They converged on me from all sides, from everywhere at once, some of them seeming to rise out from the very ground. I screamed at their approach, their salivating sneers, which aroused the attention of hooded archers with muzzled snouts and canine fangs. High up on the castle walls, they gazed down at me across the parapets and notched their flaming arrows.

In futility, I swatted at the hands that reached for me, some that were large enough to grip me around my waist. I kicked out and begged for mercy, but there was none to be found among these demons. Delighted by their menace, they laughed as they pinned me up against the rock of their sordid cavern. At odds with their monstrous strength, I was powerless against whatever torture they had planned for me. With tears in my eyes, I resigned to my fate.

I winced after the first blow against the back of my thighs, and when the second blow came, I cried out, unable to mask my agony. After the third, I couldn’t hold on any longer. What little light there was in that dark space around me went out. Everything went completely black.

* * *

In an odd, dream-like state akin to fever, I balanced on the edge of consciousness, vaguely aware of being carried off by rough, strong hands. I was aware of the dim vision of a muzzle and fangs hovering above me, the bestial horror that whisked me away. I dozed, lulled by the rhythm of the monster’s heavy steps, too bewildered and exhausted to acknowledge my fear. Along the way, wherever I was being taken, islands of torchlight broke the darkness at intervals with their weak, marmalade light. Then, after an uphill struggle, the creature who bore me laid me down harshly. I pretended to sleep until its footsteps dwindled into silence.

The harsh lights and daylight from the basement window blinded me before my eyes transitioned to their brightness. The back of my legs and buttocks hurt like the devil, a signature trademark of my stepfather’s lashings. I was alive, it seemed. In pain, yet uninjured. More than anything, I was confused, for beneath where I lay, the concrete floor was smooth and undisturbed, no evidence of rusty hinges, the discolored square, or an aperture that opened downward to Hell.

As I lay there in the basement, bewildered by it all, I became acutely aware of a discomfort poking into my ribs. I shifted, reached under my side, and held onto a tiny figurine, the demonic sentry to one of my stepfather’s model castles. I studied its fangs, its red, menacing eyes, which seemed to glare at me, daring me to doubt the ordeal I had somehow managed to survive.

When my bravery caught up with me, I crawled out from beneath the pool table, wincing at the terrible pain that my legs felt each time they brushed up against the fabric of my shorts, the surface of the concrete as I shimmied out from my hovel. I stood, staring out over the doomed landscape of models and plaster, the castles and their hideous guards. Never again did I allow my curiosity to take root. Never again did I enter the basement, too fearful of an encore to the Hell I had witnessed.

It was all so very long ago, but the fear is fresh within me, even now. I still bear the scars of that memory, my strange lapse in sanity, or stranger still, an actual day trip to Hell. I was only a child, no older than eight or nine. Yet even now, decades later, each night when I close my eyes as I lie down to sleep, I return to that dreadful cavern to relive my calamity. In the segue between wakefulness and dream, I am taken away to unforeseen landscapes, a Hadean grotto where I see them staring me down: all those many demons.