Dorothy, the Demon and I
FICTION: Night-walking to an appointment with ELIZA in the Underworld. Terror lurks. Choice becomes destiny. Freedom has a price.
ALL OF THIS TERROR began on the evening before Dorothy’s thirty-fifth birthday. She and I walked home from Dios Del Pueblo, a yellowing cigar-lounge where we had been drinking the health of Castro – drawing heavily on the Barba Gigante stogies customary at any celebration east of Hispaniola.
Around eleven, we hit the sea-front road, sleepy gossip drifted between us, the unseen sea to one side, and the quietened town to the other. Such tranquility: old friends, light conversation, a little salt in the air… a picture of contentment. But the calm happiness was not to last.
The next seconds were as chaotic and alarming as a typhoon. We each felt a rush of shock and fear as the night air was splintered by the tremendous arrival of the Rolling Demon. He… it?… burst from the Underworld, crashed up through the stones, concrete and earth, and with a growl that would make any creature shrink from the fight, he blocked our path. Our dying cigar-butts tumbled to the gutter.
Snorting, dribbling, the Rolling Demon scattered broken paving aside and moved at a pouncing speed on its eight or nine feet, the hooves clattering as each limb stamped the ground to propel itself towards us. For every yard that we staggered back, he leapt five more forwards under the flickering streetlights.
We froze, in confusion and mounting fear, as Hell’s hungry minion encircled us like a stinking lasso. He raced around us, his orbit scoring a fiery ring in the pavement – just wide enough to enclose the two of us.
Six circuits, and he had cleaved open a portal to the pit below, with nothing beneath our feet but the void.
And so we fell, like cartoon anvils.
Down, down, and yet down. The light in this endless shaft was meagre. Just the red glow of the embers in the walls allowed us to see the Demon falling below, its flecks of bloody drool hitting our faces as we plummeted.
Dorothy gathered her wits. “The rope! Grab the rope!”
As my arms flailed, I felt the sudden burn of a woven hemp rope between us. Dorothy had already seized it, and her distinctive form was slowing, silhouetted above me. I reached for the rope, and winced as the sudden friction bit into my palms. My speed relented.
As we dropped, the nature of the rope changed. With no section knotted to another, the rope was a living umbilicus, transforming as we slid down like Hell’s firemen. From woven hawser, it became a steely, oily cable, and then softened into something more organic, wet, uneven, and repulsive in my grip. It began to throb inside itself, and eventually transformed into a dripping, frayed set of gory entrails as we slowed to a halt and, much to our surprise, stepped off at the bottom – as easily as hopping off the back of a London bus.
We could hear the Rolling Demon’s footfalls diminishing in the distance, stopping as he slurped from occasional puddles. All that surrounded us was the gloom, our heavy breath, and the gentle hissing of molten rocks against damp walls. Our little town’s subterranean bleakness was alarming, indeed.
I was about to speak when we heard a single hand-clap, and a multitude of lights sputtered to life all around us. A spectrum of colours came from many directions, but each so very dim and inconstant that it was difficult to focus on any one thing in this weird space.
Before us, in a turning tunnel of light that seemed to have no source, stood another creature.
Surely, she was a spirit – and mesmerisingly beautiful. Her skin was mirror-like, reflecting our astonished faces in her cheeks. Around the eyes, such blackness. Soot and earth about her ears, gently peppering grime onto her archaic dress. This was all buttons, padded layers and frills, with a hem revealing bone-thin, blasted-white legs ending in what looked like a pair of roughly-cobbled riding-boots – one of which still with its rusty spur attached.
She proudly announced her name, speaking quickly, giddily, and with the sudden loudness of capital letters.
I AM ELIZA OF 1726!
I WILL BE YOUR GUEST TODAY YOU WILL BE MY GUEST!
GHOST! GUEST! GHOST! GUEST! GHOST! HA! BOO!
Eliza approached us, with the most alluring dance, barely touching the floor. We could not look away, and it was only the tight grip that Dorothy clawed through my shirt to my chest that kept us both standing.
As she neared, Eliza’s aroma grew strong: an agreeable mix of woodsmoke, scorched peppermint and burning toast.
She approached Dorothy, almost nose to nose, with the countenance of one who has a devilish idea and a bullying disposition.
YOUR LAST DANCEY-DANCE BEFORE I AM ROBBED-AWAY BY ANOTHER!
We were rooted to the spot as if hammered into the ground with mallets. Any stays in our minds that tethered will to action were beginning to snap, as we both felt compelled to dance with this devil. But the pitiful twitching of our arms and bobbing heads failed to please her.
Eliza’s words tumbled over each other.
OH WE CANNOT STOP! I AM ELIZA FROM 1726, I WILL TUG AT YOUR HAIR, I WILL GRIP YOUR FINGERTIPS, YOU WILL KNOW I AM HERE BY THE TOASTY-WOOD-MINT, BY YOUR DRINK SPILLING I SHALL SPILL IT SPILL IT, BY THE DIRTY GOSSIP ABOUT YOU SO HORRIFYING IT IS, AND AT NIGHT I WILL LIE ON YOUR PILLOW AND WHISPER THAT THE DRUMMER IS STILL HERE FOR US, TOM-TOM-TOM, AND THAT THE DUKE OF VIENNA IS IN THE BATHING CHAMBER TO FIX US UP WITH CAMPHOROUS PILLS.
This strange speech was joyously told, yet sinister. Eliza clearly did not wish us well, and her mood became darker and more mysterious, as if possessed by a malevolent lunatic.
She gazed directly into my face and waited for a moment, as her fearful breathing misted against my suddenly cold eyeballs. Dissatisfied – YOU?… NO! – with a snort, Eliza turned to Dorothy.
On the wall behind her, an image of the moon appeared chiselled into the rock. We did not yet know it, but Eliza’s next riddles would mean that our terrible plight was about to reach up and out into the world above. Eliza spoke directly to Dorothy, as if I was not there.
FOR FREEDOM TWELVE-MOONS, OUR TONGUES SHALL MEET, TORMENTED ECSTASY, FISH ON A LINE.
On the last word, Eliza broke into a wide smile and ran her tongue along her teeth, revealing that each one grew down and became pin-sharp as she licked it, with her jaw forming a locking trap that only she could release. She stuck out her long, pinkly-pretty tongue and gently laid a blob of spit on the tip of Dorothy’s nose, and then with the speed of a house-cat pulled in her tongue and snapped closed her rat-trap teeth.
Eliza twirled a ballerina’s circle and the steely fangs were gone.
FOR FREEDOM SIXTY-MOONS, HOLD THESE GLOWING EMBERS IN YOUR HAND, FROM CLOCK TWO TO CLOCK THREE, WITH EAR-HOLES OPEN TO YOUR SCREAMS.
And at this, Eliza wagged her forefinger at Dorothy, each tick and tock releasing a red hot coal floating in the air, ten in all, and close enough to us that we drew back from the searing heat.
FOR FOREVER-MOON FREEDOM, MY CLUTCH SHALL BE SWIFT, MY GRIP STRONG, THE ROPES TO YOUR HAIR, MY RED-RAW FINGER-KNIVES DANCING YOUR DREAD FEARS.
Eliza raised her hand, revealing long nails as fine-edged as razor blades. As she moved them close to Dorothy’s cheek – brushing near but not touching – blood trickled with a sting from fresh cuts. Eliza’s voice, although now a whisper, entered Dorothy’s conscience with the clarity of dripped lemon-juice. FINGER TIPS! MY SHUDDERING STRING-GRIPPERS. HELLO MARIONETTE! ELIZA IS A-HAUNTING YOU-HOO, THREAD-BOUND DOROTHY! SLUMPED IN FEAR-FOG, MEMORY A CAVE OF HOLES. I TUG YOUR TEETH, SLEEPY-NO-SLEEPS, YOU BE ME I BE YOU YOU BE ME!
With her other hand, she reached down and gripped Dorothy’s hips, pulling her sharply closer. COME HERE, HERE, MY HELL-PEEPER, MY GOOSEBERRY! Dorothy could feel her hair being pulled a little, hot air on the back of her neck, an inner alarm clanging, as if touched by a hidden spirit in a silent, empty room.
This last threat amplified our dire apprehension. It spoke to our most fundamental dreads. The fragility of our consciousness. Senses becoming unreliable. The creeping unease that Dorothy could be totally controlled by this demonic force.
As our shock became mixed with a desolate bleakness, Eliza – with mock deference – stepped back and clasped her hands, standing tall, as if in prayer. Our minds raced with this new reality, where each of her challenges would affect our freedom. The penalties of each challenge were clear.
The first choice – OUR TONGUES SHALL MEET – was a deep kiss of agony.
The second – GLOWING EMBERS – an hour of burning to match the Hell of myth.
And the greatest of challenges – RED-RAW KNIVES – meant enduring the permanent attention of Eliza’s bloody fingertips, gripping the strings, a demonic puppeteer, haunting Dorothy’s every moment.
Dorothy collapsed to her knees and I, to my shame, drew away – my thoughts clamouring in panic.
I was given no time to redeem myself. As Dorothy contemplated her pitiful situation, the Rolling Demon, that Great President of Hell, returned and pulled me backwards from the tableau, a kneeling Dorothy receding into the darkness like the end of a dream. Whatever was to come next, Eliza had not cast me in the scene.
The Demon dragged me at high speed, through a tunnel like something scraped roughly by a giant mole, until I burst spluttering back onto the surface. The chasm closed behind me, as gentle rain washed slime from my skin. I panted, alone, among the disregarded gravestones of the town’s cemetery.
There is a rare feeling in a man when you know you are about to cry: emotion overwhelms the barriers inside you. My entire chest was vibrating, trauma taking its course. But the tears would not come.
I WAS NEVER ABLE to learn which fate Dorothy chose that night. I used to ask, but the look on her face – the sudden tremor in her limbs and the dry wheeze that replaced her voice – made it clear that she had witnessed vileness beyond horror, that she had known perfect dread. So I pretended to be a gentleman and did not ask again.
But then, a discovery!
In a subsequent night of hypnotic regression-therapy in Berlin, we both learned what Eliza meant by FREEDOM TWELVE-MOONS, FREEDOM SIXTY-MOONS and FOREVER-MOON FREEDOM.
It was months. Months of peace from Hell’s attentions.
I know Dorothy’s chosen trial could not have been TWELVE MOONS, because a single year has long passed. She could not have chosen the kiss.
FOREVER-MOON FREEDOM would be a blessing on us both, a freedom. But Eliza’s demands – the unmapped and unending haunting of her razor-blade fingernails, holding the haunted strings that would control Dorothy’s every waking and sleeping hour – would test the strongest of women.
So if she could not bear that torture, then Dorothy must have braved the burning coals, screamed her pain into Eliza’s impish face, and our peace would be FREEDOM SIXTY-MOONS. Sixty full moons. Five years since that thirty-fifth birthday. Five years since that 28th January. Five years until this very day.
I have nightmares.
That I am gripping a sinew, wet with gore.
That I can smell burning toast, woodsmoke, and scorched peppermint.
That the Rolling Demon is on his way again.
Sent by Eliza, up through the stones. Through the earth.
Through the foundations, through the floorboards of this room.
And here, to claim us all.
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Illustrations generated by me via Firefly, except “Buer the Rolling Demon”, illustrated by Louis Breton from Dictionnaire Infernal – a dazzling Victorian home of grisly, impish devils.