The Exdemonator

I know it's not yet time for my monthly post, but in honor of Halloween--my favorite holiday as a kid, a one-night chance to be somebody else--I give you my version of a horror story.

By Michael Oren

Everybody has their demons, myself included, but they usually don’t dwell in toilets. That was a tough one. Lingering just beneath the bowl, waiting, craving that moment when its half-asleep prey reached behind to flush. Then, with a whoosh and a gurgle, it swept up and sank its fangs first into the nether quarters, next into flanks, and yanked downward. All the shrieking in the world wouldn’t help, not with the plashing and the bathroom door shut tight. Around and around, the victim circled, swifter as first stomach and shoulders vanished and finally the head, whirling like a top.

Then there was nothing, not even a pajama string to show where a human being once sat. Only a devilish belch.

Or the little lucifer who took over your GPS. The one who waited for a blinding rainstorm to affect a seductive woman’s voice, barely a whisper, telling you to ignore the highway’s end. Who assured you that the “Bridge Out” sign was just for show and that you were free to step on the gas. “Faster. Faster!” she’d urge you even as your car pitched off the cliff and launched into blackness. Who laughed, dashboard flashing, as you plunged into the canyon below.

Everyone has their demons. Mine—I call him Vic—steals single socks and cufflinks and occasionally trips me going upstairs. They are worse behaved at night, of course, mushrooming inside our heads. Most are merely mischievous and only dangerous if obsessively indulged. Most are not murderers. Yet, every now and then, in a bathroom or on a backwoods road, a spirit appears who kills. For no more reason than a hurricane or tornado, simply for the doing of it, it destroys. It rips, shreds, and eviscerates.

That was certainly the case at the Sagamossette Mall, just off Interstate 30. High-end department stores interspersed with patisseries, perfumeries, and salons—the usual suburban fare—and a flow of choice-benumbed shoppers. One of whom, a mother of an eight-year-old girl, was that morning eaten by the escalator. Ground up and mangled, swallowed and then expectorated in crimson cascades. All while her daughter, too frightened to alight in the first place, remained at the bottom muttering, “Mommy? Mommy…” To their credit, over the pandemonium of screams, the mall owners managed to call me.

For that is my specialty, demon-banishing. It’s different from casting out ghosts, the majority of which enjoy a haunt or two and get their kicks from scaring. Any priest or a psychoanalyst can exorcise them, simply by spooking them more. But demons are another story. Demons embed themselves not in closets or basements, but in blenders and other appliances. They can invest themselves in gondolas, hurling them forty feet below, or the fuel lines of combustible outdoor grills. Ghosts go for “boo” and demons for the jugular. For organs and bone structures, too. Apart from dust prints, ghosts leave no mess. A demon’s path is blood-splattered.

My own path should have been boring. Accountant, podiatrist, a salesman of Japanese cars—any would have suited me fine. Fate, though, had alternative plans. It began with my neighbor’s microwave, your standard countertop capable not only melting Swiss cheese but the eyeglasses of anybody peering inside. The eyes behind them as well. I just happened to be home and heard the family’s cries. Instantly, I put down my Toyota manual and ran over to help. It was too late for the parents, but I could definitively save the kids who were still set on popcorn. That is when I discovered my talent. My knack. No more spreadsheets, feet, or all-terrain vehicles for me. At that instant, I became the Exdemonator.            

And even that was an accident. Shamans have their incantations, their rattles and bark from Brazilian trees. Healers put their faith in God and witches cast their spells. Me, I’ve got Spritzenpickle. Never heard of it? Nor should you have, unless, like me, you frequented a certain dive set behind a high-tech campus and serving its geeks.  Its specialty was exotic—some would say toxic—sauces.  Sauces made of Alaskan moss and Outer Mongolian lichen, of peat and kelp and dairy products long past their expiration dates. Sauces for those who refused to eat anything that once had four legs but didn’t blink at six, who abstained from eggs for ethical reasons but smacked their lips at larvae. I tried them all and even relished some, but none of them compared to Spritzenpickle. Horseradish, Worcestershire, a dash of mustard and lint together with other ingredients I never bothered or preferred not to learn. I didn’t have to. I adored the stuff, slathered it on my hotdogs and tuna fish sandwiches, on pasta and chicken cacciatore. Not surprisingly, then, when confronting the microwave demon, I teased it with a dish of my own: an enchilada casserole positively dripping with Spritzenpickle.  

Little did I anticipate that of all the world’s brews and potions, my condiment would do the trick. No sooner did I press the start button when the machine began to shudder, lights flashing red and ochre, and the children ran out howling. Neither they nor their eyeless parents saw what exuded next, excreted, and oozed. A noxious ball of wings and scales, talons and fangs, not in any reassemble order, barreled out of the oven, squealing. It paused right above my head, as if to exact some vengeance. But all I had to do was hold up that casserole and the microwave demon evaporated.

It didn’t take long for my reputation to spread. Soon I was receiving calls from as far away as Minneapolis, urgent requests from housewives afraid of their refrigerators, landscapers terrorized by their lawnmowers, dentists traumatized by their drills. I even became a celebrity, within a certain rarefied circle, and a hit with the ladies—me, balding, plump, and nearsighted, with features likelier to spark laughter than fear. They didn’t care, just as long as I showed up with my Spiderman backpack and inside it a Tupperware container of you-know-what, ready to be Spritzenpickled on evil.

But the escalator demon posed an especially dastardly challenge. How was I to introduce the sauce? Through what aperture, which pipe? While the owners and assorted security personnel watched from behind a lingerie display, I approached the flesh-encrusted stairs. They rose, serrated teeth bared, off the floor and expanded maw-like. It seemed to be egging me on, daring me to climb. And what choice did I have? Trembling—yes, me—I mounted.

Once, as a child, I, too, had been frightened of escalators. The thought of being snagged and dragged under, chewed up and liquefied, horrified me and exasperated my father, who in any case was half-disposed to abandon me. Yet here I stood, container in hand, ascending. From somewhere below, I swore a could hear a chuckle, and a hideous green light, visible through my trifocals, escaped. The entire stairway shook. Desperately, I clutched the handrail, my Hushpuppies sliding on gore.

The steps, meanwhile, reached their zenith and then sinisterly began to contract. Only seconds remained. Already I felt the claws hooking into my pants cuffs, a hellish breath wafting up my legs. I waited until the last possible moment, almost at the top. And then, just as my shoelaces were snatched, I opened the container and poured.    

A roar. A screech. The jolting intensified—barely, I held on—as the escalator raced up first then down and the handrail threatened to unravel. My shoes broke free again but between them yawned a fiery hole. Down it went more Spritzenpickle and up came the stench of fried demon. Sparks and fumes and pestilence. And then, nothing. Just the usual snot-colored miasma, the claws and wings roiling off into the Macy’s men’s section. The escalator seemed to sigh and then, as if exhausted, sag.

appeared to rise from the mannequins, the cheers of children whose dread of escalators had finally been justified. Minutes passed before I could collect myself, close the container, and retrieve my backpack. Before I could exit the mall and gaze up at the sky with its airplanes and helicopters, the street swarming with cars and the sidewalks with e-bikes. All were demon-free, I breathed, miraculously.

But also temporarily, perhaps. For they, too, could be suddenly seized. Hijacked and controlled. When it comes to gadgets, possession is never, as it is in the law, three-quarters, but total. That was the case of the computer I learned about the instant I walked in my door. A desktop that sizzled the brains of anyone who gazed at its screen for more than five hours and giggled at the smoke twirling from their ears. Barely had I the chance to remove my corduroy jacket when my phone started buzzing and the now-familiar entreaty came through: “Help us, please, Exdemonator!”