LAUGHTER
& THE DEVIL
By
Nemo Arator
When I was twelve years old it became my ambition
to summon the Devil. I
don’t remember what I intended to achieve by this, but there was clearly some
flaw in my methods, for the Lord of Darkness did never appear to me, no deal
was ever made, and eventually I came to accept that anything I wished to
achieve would have to be through my own effort, by the sheer force of will.
After a while my boyhood obsession with diabolism gave way to more typical
adolescent interests, such as heavy metal, horror movies, horror novels, porn,
drugs. First, I tried to be a musician, then I became a writer. Years passed,
life went on.
Then something odd happened to me about twelve
years later, the autumn I
was 24, something that happened at Sarak that I didn’t remember until after
completing the novel. I remember waking one cold gray morning to find our motel
room deserted: both Chow and Monty were gone. Since I didn’t know where they
went or when they’d be back, I inexplicably decided to indulge myself the
luxury of smoking a fat joint and taking a long hot shower, which I then did.
While I stood there languishing in the comforting
downpour, wallowing in
that half-asleep half-awake sauna-like haze, I started mumbling incoherently to
myself. Nothing unusual, but then I heard the sound of my own voice perfectly
recite the words to a blasphemous little prayer invoking the Devil, something I
read during one of my preteen researches, which I completely forgotten in the
dozen years since. With a detached sort of amazement, I marveled how easily and
unbidden it came to my lips, how perfectly I remembered it after such a long
time – retrieved from the void so whole and complete, an unprompted spontaneous
outpour. It wasn’t until after completing the invocation that I suddenly
realized it might have been a dangerous thing to have done while being so deep
in such a suggestible state.
But it was too late: the moment after faltering
out the last halting
syllables I felt the gong sound... a call had been made, and heard... and now
it was being answered. There was no fan in the bathroom, but there was a window
right outside the bathroom door, which I had opened partway and left the door
ajar so that steam wouldn’t excessively accumulate in here while I showered.
But it did anyway, and in the moments after completing the satanic somniloquy I
felt a tendril of cold worm its way in from outside, piercing through all that
sauna-like haze of steam and touch me and I quaked. For with the cold, I felt
the growing sense of presence, of something coming toward me, something distant
nearing, huge and aetherial, like some great shaggy beast woken from its
slumber by my summons and now it was coming for me, I could feel its growing,
nearing, inexorable approach.
Quickly I recanted, jerking around in terror and
shouted, “Jesus Christ
the son of God was raised back from the dead! He did rise up! Get thee behind
me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan!”
Immediately I felt the rising cold pause and then
begin to rapidly
subside. I started shaking in relief. So near that it was, I was almost totally
overwhelmed by the awesome power of its immanence – a few seconds more and I
probably wouldn’t have even been capable of speech. It was almost right here
– but now it was fading so fast it was gone.
I rushed to the window just in time to catch the
barest glimpse of something
huge lumbering away, the barest fragment of a glimpse. I had my head pressed
against the screen and I could see the area behind the restaurant littered with
detritus; beyond that was the empty street, a row of trees, some parked cars, a
dumpster; there was nothing. And then I heard a voice in my head echoing – a
dejected mocking, but there was something so horribly sinister in it that I
needed no further confirmation I barely evaded something unspeakable.
I don’t remember what happened after that.
Maybe I fainted. Chow must have
returned with Monty and then we went to the restaurant and continued working.
Things inevitably carried on from there. Somehow, I completely forgot the whole
thing immediately thenafter – it was just too unreal. I almost met the Evil
One, invited It right into my company, luckily, I revoked at the last second.
What else could I do but go on with my life and try to tread more carefully? I
forgot about it, but in my notes of later that day I found mention of an
incident that happened two years earlier, when I was 22 and spent a week early
that summer smoking crack with a junkie named Calen Mallow.
We had gone to this apartment he knew about, hoping
to score another
couple meager chunks of ready-rock, which we went then smoke in a gibbled
frenzy of melting cubes and fire on through the afternoon; in the evenings we
snorted codeine and smoked hash by knife-tip in an attempt to blot the painful
yearning that accompanies coming-down. We stood outside that building for some
time waiting, smoking cigarettes in the shade of the huge oak tree in front
until someone either came in or went out and Calen ran over and grabbed the
door before it shut and I went in with him and down the stairs to the basement.
Outside the suite Calen had first knocked on the
door and then started
pounding on it, pounding and yelling in that horrible voice of his and this
went on and on until it was intolerable and then finally, he tried the knob and
it turned and the door opened. Then he went into the suite and told me to come
inside and close the door and not stand in the hallway and draw so much
attention, so I went in and closed the door, feeling vaguely disgusted to touch
the handle.
I remember entering that apartment and thinking
this place looks like a
barren dismal fuckhole. Inside it was like some degenerate’s hovel: everything
was filthy and broken, the furniture was smashed, the sink was full of dirty
dishes, there was garbage everywhere, the place stank of sour and rot. I heard
flies buzzing, the walls were smeared with some dried brown substance, and in
the canted light I saw forks and knives jammed in the ceiling. Everything
seemed intrinsically stained somehow and in that place, I felt a strange
electric chill, I felt it immediately upon entering but I didn’t know what it
was. I didn’t realize it then, not until after that morning at Sarak, but when
I went into that apartment, I could feel but did not know that the Devil was
also here.
And that was all. I stood there motionless just
a few feet inside the door
while Calen looked around the kitchen and living room then disappeared down the
hall. I heard the sound of a door creak open as he looked into that single
room, then I heard it creak closed and he returned. And there was an expression
on his face, or rather the lack of an expression, a sort of perfect blankness
hardened in place, his eyes frighted pinpricks. And I knew he saw something in
there, and I knew that I’d never know what it was, not only because I’d never ask,
but because he wouldn’t tell me. But also I knew that it shook him, whatever it
was. And being a junkie, which was the merest of the depravities he engaged in,
if it was enough to shake him then it must have been something.
“Who lives here?” I asked.
“Nevermind,” he said. “Let’s
go.”
So we left, and the rest of it played out from
there.
The summer after Sarak I decided to go camping
one weekend and drop some
acid and see what happened. There was a place I had in mind for the occasion, a
certain point along the old telegraph trail whereat there’s an old church and
cemetery that seemed like the perfect place to go get zonkered on psychedelic
drugs and revel in the desolate splendor of the scene and whatever visions
might come to me there. It’s a fair way from the beaten track and hardly anyone
knows about it so I thought I’d be safe.
I am not sure if I’d even taken the acid
yet or precisely what happened
after I arrived. My memory of it begins when the spasm of my knee jerked me
back awake – I was sprawled out in the grass, the joint of the limb pressed
into the ground as if I’d been crawling and had caught myself mid-crawl, a
sleep crawl, like an injured slug flubbing along. And I could hear the most
horrible sound, the most disgusting and pathetic sound I’d ever heard, it made
me want to vomit; and I could feel my throat vibrating with that sound, and
then I realized it was coming from my own mouth, and then I collapsed.
When I looked around, I saw that I was surrounded
by old grave-markers,
pillow-stones and uprights, all weathered and rounded with age. I could see my
tent over by the trees at the edge of the burial ground, the open doorway of it
black and drifting out with a dense gray smoke. For some reason I was fearful
of going anywhere near it. The air was leaden with a weighted stillness. I
looked around wondering if someone had found me alone out here and was playing
some sort of horrible prank. But it didn’t seem to be, for there wasn’t a soul
in sight.
When I looked back at my tent, I saw the Devil
was standing outside of it
– a tall dark shape, a massive shadow, a cold eminence. I felt all the hairs on
my body rise up and I couldn’t even move I was suddenly so terrified. Now truly
I did feel like a worm on a hook, helpless against its fate, which was doom.
The Devil stared down at me and I felt its gaze pierce through like a blast of
frigid air – it could see everything, all the lust, anger, envy and deceit, the
whole self-made web I was mired in – I shriveled beneath the scrutiny of that
infernal gaze, and its approval. In one hand the Devil held a vicious-looking
scepter-staff, and in the other hand it held a burlap knapsack, a twitching,
kicking bag.
“Got someone’s soul,” the Devil
said, a voice like grinding slate.
“Another fool willing to give it all for their heart’s desire. But they got
what they wanted, now I get what’s mine. Come inside, I want to show you
something.”
It gestured for me to enter the tent with it and
suddenly somehow, I felt
my body rise to its feet and stagger-stumble over there like a clumsy puppet
being dragged by it strings. I shambled across the threshold and into the tent
and the entrance flap fell closed behind me. Inside the tent had become a huge,
cavernous space, its interior expanded to unknown reaches, neither walls nor
ceiling were detectable in the darkness. The only light came from the fire
flickering inside the stone pile stove that was just a few feet inside the
doorway. A huge grill was laid over the mouth of the well, and upon it sat a
big round frying pan loaded with all sorts of choice cuts and various organs:
spleen, kidney, liver, brain, all nested in together and sizzling up into the
air the sweet succulent aroma of cooking meat and spices.
The Devil walked over to the stove pyre and gripped
the pan by its handle
and flung the entirety of its contents into the shadows before him. He had
hardly set it back upon the grill when a hideous pig-dog suddenly burst from
the shadows behind us and charged after them, grunting and squealing, a hideous
bullet-blur of shape across the visible space and then it disappeared back into
the shadows. There was a moment of silence as it located the cast-off bits and
then I could hear the noisy gristle gobble slop tear of grinding teeth gnawing
meat.
The Devil had meanwhile upended the sack and dumped
out a pale two-headed
serpent onto the frying pan. The snake coiled and uncoiled immediately upon
landing, then it flipped over and did this again, and again. We watched it
squirm, trying not to burn, but it was futile, and soon the air filled with the
noxious smell of burning reptile. I watched this, mesmerized by the helpless
creature’s writhing flop, my stomach churning, unable to look away. It never
tried to escape; the snake knew this was its fate. Soon I saw charred holes
scorched in its side and before long the albino serpent was reduced to a
blackened, twitching, blistered piece of anatomy.
And then the Devil stepped forward and started
hacking and slashing at it
with a giant meat cleaver, chopping the serpent into pieces, and each severed
portion had its own autonomy and writhed in agony anew, coiling and uncoiling,
its vile blood sizzling as it spilled, and it was so putrid that I gagged. I
crouched down lest I keel over, my head was spinning, and I started sweating
and shivering. I could hear the Devil’s voice speaking. It seemed to be
explaining the terms and conditions, how this all came to pass, but it was
vague and indistinct, I didn’t understand any of the actual details.
“Come with me,” the Devil said. We
went out from the tent and across the
cemetery and into the trees encircling the grounds. We proceeded into the woods
a short ways before arriving at a small house that was hidden out there. (For a
long time, I never knew that this house was real, but six years later at a
funeral someone told me that there really is such a structure on that site, and
when I went back I saw that it was so.) The lights were on inside, but the
windows had a cataract film of frost glazing them so that it was impossible to
see through. I saw a fat black raven alight upon the leafless branch of a dead
birch tree as we arrived, but it made not a sound, not even as we mounted the
front steps and went to the door. The Devil knocked three times and we waited
briefly before someone came to answer.
The door opened and the Devil strode into the
house, and I followed.
Inside the main room was a haze of lingering smoke from incense and recently
extinguished candles. Beneath that I could smell flowers, their pleasant reek
abundantly provided by the many bunches and bouquets I saw clustered at the
front of the room. All the furniture had been moved to either side and the
central space filled with rows of chairs facing that flowered wall. It was the
north wall, and there was green wreath with white ribbons that hung from a
metal stand behind a table covered with candles. A few somber looking people in
black clothes still shuffled about; they had the air of being the last few
present after some social event was finished up and put away with.
Then I noticed that those two women from the carnival
were here. They were
sitting together on a couch by the wall and when I noticed them, I started
walking over. Their faces were blank as they watched me approach; there was no
sign of recognition. And when I got there, they both moved down to the furthest
end of the couch away from me without saying anything. I wasn’t sure if this
was to put distance between us or to make room for me to sit – their faces were
unreadable. I looked around and saw the Devil was nowhere in sight, so I sat in
the space they had made and asked them what happened here.
“You don’t know?” said the brunette,
leaning back into the blond, her
pupils contracting. “You’re too late. You’re not even here right now.”
Then she turned and whispered something to the
blond and they both started
laughing. I heard laughter over my shoulder as well and when I turned back to look,
I saw the ringmaster standing there, bellowing guffaws right at me. And then I
heard laughter break out in exploding pockets all over the room until finally
it sounded like everybody was laughing. And the air was filled with the sound
of laughter, flowing from everyone’s mouth except my own.
And then for some reason I started laughing too
– uneasily at first, but
it grew and bloomed. Laughing with sick relief, but I had no idea why: there
was nobody else here. I was alone in that abandoned house in the woods. And
those piles of dust on the floor were surely a hundred years old.
