Michael Czyzniejewski ~ Demons

Mom was sell­ing her house, the house we’d grown up in, me and my five sib­lings. Dad had recent­ly passed; prop­er­ty tax­es were going up. At that point, it was just Mom and my broth­er, Kent, and too much space. My sis­ters remind­ed her that the house held a lot of mem­o­ries, and Dad had just died there.

“Exactly,” Mom said.

She’d hired a real­tor. He gave her a list of repairs she’d have to make: Paint the walls white. Replace some knob and tube. Seal a crack in the fire­place. And get rid of the water-stained drop ceil­ing in the basement.

“Get rid of?” I said.

“Yeah. And replace. Kent’ll help me tear it out.”

Shit.

When I was a kid, I used that drop ceil­ing to hide things. The pan­el above the bar, two from the wall, was my spot. I’d hide toys I stole from my broth­ers; cig­a­rettes I stole from Father Gene; and a top-notch col­lec­tion of porn.

The porn was still up there. And unless I went to get it, my mom was going to find it.

~

If it was just a Playboy, I wouldn’t have cared. Boys look at Playboys. They hide them from their moms. Their moms find them. There’s an awk­ward con­fronta­tion. Everyone moves on. Even if it was a Penthouse, I could’ve let it go. I could’ve blamed it on a broth­er. Better yet, Dad.

I wasn’t a pedo or any­thing like that. But—and not to go into detail—I had tastes that could be con­sid­ered … eclec­tic. Like, some was the type where the mod­els, the naked women, were preg­nant. Sometimes the mod­els were ani­mat­ed. And in one very spe­cif­ic instance, both. It was the kind of shit your mom could find, when you’re 28 and already divorced, and think to her­self, What was wrong with Cyrus? Is it still wrong with him?

I drove nine hours to avoid this scenario.

I called Mom on the way and she said she’d make up my old bed. I hoped she was kid­ding. This big house had four bed­rooms and Kent was still sleep­ing in our child­hood room. Me shar­ing that room that night, sleep­ing above him on our bunkbed like I was 8 and he was a senior in high school? That couldn’t have been what she meant.

Turned out, that’s exact­ly what she’d meant. I stuck my head in the door and yep, my sheets with the sail­boats and anchors cov­ered the top bunk.

And Kent. Kent sit­ting at his desk, at the foot of the bunk, on his computer.

“Long time, no see, Cyrus. You going to jack off up there all night?”

“Good to see you, too.”

Mom had Shake ‘n Bake ready and we ate in front of the TV. One of the couch­es was already gone. None of the fam­i­ly pic­tures were on the walls, and the water­col­ors my sis­ter Flo had paint­ed were stacked in the corner.

“Can’t believe you drove all the way here just to help,” Mom said.

“Go ahead and believe it.”

“Wanna paint,” she said, “or take down that drop ceiling?”

“Paint, for sure.” I hat­ed paint­ing but want­ed to guar­an­tee I had time to get down­stairs, that I wouldn’t wake up and find Mom already down there, get­ting start­ed on the ceil­ing, dis­cov­er­ing my shame.

“Mallory and Martin are com­ing tomor­row,” Mom said.

Mallory and Martin were the twins.

“Maybe Flo and Simon. It’ll be a fam­i­ly reunion.”

“The whole gang,” I said, and set my clock.

~

I nev­er fell asleep. Kent sat at this desk and gamed all night, yelling into his head­phones for peo­ple to run here and shoot that. I asked why he couldn’t play in the den and he asked why I couldn’t sleep on the couch.

I snuck down­stairs at five to retrieve the porn. It was still dark and Kent was final­ly asleep. I made it with­out any­one see­ing or fol­low­ing me.

The ceil­ing pan­el above the bar, two from the wall, was stuck in the alu­minum frame, as if some­one had glued it in place. I pushed hard­er and hard­er until my fin­ger­tips went through the fiber­glass. I even­tu­al­ly forced the pan­el off and reached around inside. I found my stash. It was all in a big shop­ping bag from JC Penny, wrapped up tight­ly in case the pipes leaked, which they had. I looked up the stairs before open­ing the bag and found every­thing as I’d left it, ten years ear­li­er. I want­ed to vis­it with those old friends a bit but didn’t dare: The last thing I need­ed was perus­ing some filth only to look up to see and Mom stand­ing in front of me, dressed in her paint­ing clothes, con­fused, dis­gust­ed, and dis­ap­point­ed. I hid every­thing under my shirt and ran out to my car.

I drove across town. I need­ed some­place I could dump it and not been seen. I found a Dollar General in the shit­ty part of town with a Dumpster in the back. I opened the bag and took a look-through, imme­di­ate­ly remem­ber­ing all the faces, all the pos­es, all the every­thing, even the shit­ty arti­cles. For a brief moment, I had the notion to jerk off, right there, for old time’s sake, every­thing spread out like a shrine, but the only thing worse than Mom find­ing this stuff was Mom hav­ing to bail me out of jail because some cop hap­pened upon me abus­ing myself in a park­ing lot. I also con­sid­ered keep­ing one of the mags as a keep­sake but shook that off: It was time to move on; if Mom could sell her house, I could ditch my porn. I shoved every­thing back into the bag, tied the han­dles togeth­er with sev­er­al granny knots, and tossed the whole thing into the trash.

~

I still had to deal with the ceil­ing pan­el with my fin­ger­holes in it. I planned on swap­ping it for one across the base­ment, one in the cor­ner. Mom might won­der what had hap­pened, but I’d be long gone and she’d nev­er see holes in a ran­dom ceil­ing pan­el and think, Cyrus had an unhealthy porn addic­tion.

When I got down­stairs, my broth­er Simon was stand­ing on a fold­ing chair, reach­ing up into the ceil­ing above the minifridge.

“What are you doing here, Simon?”

Simon, star­tled, fell from the chair, onto the hard tile floor. Falling with him was a plas­tic bag from Sears, hit­ting him in the head.

“Cyrus! Nothing! Why?”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Nothing.”

“Then show me.”

Simon pulled the bag away, but I grabbed it from him.

I looked inside. “Jesus, Simon.”

Drug para­pher­na­lia. A big-ass bong. A small­er bong. Pipes. A one-hit­ter. A cig­ar box full of rolling papers and roach clips. And a bag­gie of some old, stank-ass weed.

“Mom said they were rip­ping the ceil­ing out and I didn’t want her find­ing this.”

Simon, for some rea­son, had writ­ten his name, in fan­cy goth­ic script, on the cig­ar box.

“Simon’s Stash?” I said.

“Not my bright­est moment.”

I tucked the Sears bag under my shirt, JC Penny-style.

“Let’s go. I know a place we can dump this.”

~

Simon and I returned to find Mallory’s Suburu parked on the street. She was down­stairs, stand­ing on the same chair Simon had fall­en off of, next to the dart­board in the far cor­ner. She had her head up in the drop ceil­ing and was peek­ing around with a flashlight.

“You’ve got to be kid­ding me.”

Mallory looked at me, star­tled. She did not fall.

“Cyrus. I was just ….”

“What do you have up there?”

Mallory stared back

“We just ditched my drug shit,” Simon said. “You can tell us.”

Mallory reached up and pulled down a bag, this one from Kohl’s. Inside was an ancient sup­ply of snacks, most­ly Twinkies, a few Ho Hos, and an array of Little Debbies. They were all per­fect­ly intact.

Mallory had had an eat­ing dis­or­der in high school.

“Mom said she was ….”

“Yeah,” I said. “The ceil­ing. Come on. Let’s go for a ride.”

~

When the three of us came back and found Martin kneel­ing on top of the bar, his entire upper half lodged in the ceil­ing, we, at least I, shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Let me guess: Fireworks?”

Martin jumped down to the floor, hid­ing some­thing behind his back, look­ing shocked to see me, Cyrus, and Mallory stand­ing in front of him. It was still bare­ly six and most­ly dark out.

“Sort of,” Martin said. From behind his back, he pro­duced an assault rifle, hold­ing it out for us to inspect. It was not in a shop­ping bag

“Is that thing loaded?” Simon asked.

“An unloaded gun is a paper­weight,” Martin said.

Mallory want­ed to know why Martin had an assault rifle, why he kept it in our par­ents’ basement.

“You assume this is my only assault rifle.”

Nobody asked Martin any­more questions.

I didn’t fig­ure Martin would want to ditch his big gun in the Family Dollar Dumpster. I hid it under my shirt while we made our way out­side to Martin’s Jeep. He opened the back and lift­ed what appeared to be a dum­my lin­er. Underneath were sev­er­al more guns, rifles and pis­tols, and sev­er­al box­es of ammo. He also had grenades.

“Don’t get rear-end­ed,” I said.

Martin’s face changed, indi­cat­ing he’d maybe not thought of this before.

Just as Martin was clos­ing up his portable weapons empo­ri­um, Flo emerged from the back yard. I didn’t rec­og­nize her at first: She was sweaty, cov­ered in dirt, and bran­dish­ing a shovel.

“Flo?” Mallory said.

Flo dropped the shov­el and exhaled an uncom­fort­able laugh. “What are you guys all doing here?”

Me and the oth­ers looked at each oth­er. Martin said, “We could ask you the same question.”

~

Mallory and Flo stood watch while Simon, Martin, and I got the body out of the ceil­ing, up the stairs, and out to the hole Flo had dug. The body was wrapped like a mum­my in bags from Kmart, blue like their spe­cials; it did not smell great. We didn’t know who this corpse was and didn’t think it was our busi­ness to ask: We all had secrets.

Once the body was in the hole and cov­ered, we agreed to go to the gar­den cen­ter when it opened for some peren­ni­als, some­thing bushy, to fill the spot.

“Can it be day lilies?” Flo asked. “Donovan loved day lilies.”

“Who’s Donovan?” Simon asked.

We all looked at him until he hung his head. “Oh.”

~

The five of us patched togeth­er break­fast from the dwin­dling gro­ceries. Kent woke around eight, sur­prised to see us in the kitchen. It was the first time we’d all been togeth­er since Dad’s funeral.

“I’ll take some of that,” Kent said. “I just got­ta run down­stairs for a minute. Be right back.”

We ate and shared mem­o­ries from grow­ing up, from the house. Everything made us think of Dad. Of he and Mom togeth­er. Even the things we want­ed to for­get. And how she was sell­ing the house, and we’d nev­er be togeth­er in it again after that day. We picked at our eggs, melan­choly abound.

“If only the walls could talk,” I said.

“Hey, what’s tak­ing Kent so long?” Flo said. “Did he get lost down there?”

We all went down­stairs to check on him.

We found Kent kneel­ing on floor, right in the cen­ter of the base­ment. Etched around him, appar­ent­ly in blood, was a pen­ta­gram, sur­round­ed by a cir­cle. Kent was star­ing up into the drop ceil­ing. Up in that space was some kind of swirling vor­tex, fire and black­ness and hor­rid moan­ing, twist­ing around like a tor­na­do in a vac­u­um. Kent seemed to be in a daze. He was naked.

“Holy shit,” Flo said.

Just then, out flew some sort of small, winged lizard crea­ture, but with human fea­tures: eyes with iris­es and pupils and brows, a neat­ly coiffed hair­cut with a well man­i­cured goa­tee. It swooped out of the night­mar­ish hole, dove down to Kent, and clawed his cheek with its creepy hand before fly­ing back up into its fiery domain.

Simon and Martin rushed for­ward and grabbed Kent by the shoul­ders, tried pulling him out of the pen­ta­gram. Flo and I picked up the dis­placed ceil­ing pan­el and worked to wedge it back into place, like push­ing against a full-blast fire­hose. Several more of the crea­tures dipped in and out, hiss­ing at us, smack­ing at us, one of them bit­ing Kent’s leg. Mallory just stood there and screamed, which was the worst: She was going to wake Mom.

As soon as Flo and I forced the ceil­ing pan­el back in place, the hell­ish fire hole was gone, all the mon­sters trapped on the oth­er side. My three broth­ers fell back­ward into a pile, blood coat­ing them all. Mallory final­ly calmed down.

Everyone’s eyes fell on Kent.

“What?” he said. “Like you guys don’t have demons.”

~

We cleaned up in the util­i­ty sink—hole-digging and demon-wrestling gets you filthy. Kent got dressed. We went upstairs to fin­ish break­fast, not say­ing a word about what we’d seen. Mom came out of her bed­room after nine. Her eyes got wide when she saw us.

“All six of my chil­dren, here at one time. Did I die and nobody told me?”

Mom did a lap around the table, shoul­der-hug­ging and kiss­ing us on the tops of our heads. Simon pulled the step stool out of the pantry and I sat on that, giv­ing Mom my chair.

“Breakfast, too! Not only did I die, but I went to heaven!”

We ate, all of us rav­en­ous, telling sto­ries, every­one relay­ing their best mem­o­ry from the house. Lots of bar­be­cues and Christmases and babies born. Mallory snuck off to the bath­room to clean and ban­dage the bite on Kent’s leg. The claw marks on his face she left. When Mom asked what’d hap­pened, Kent described an intense night of gaming.

Mom relaxed into her chair and sipped cof­fee. She didn’t share any sto­ries but lis­tened to ours and laughed and even cried when we list­ed the pletho­ra of pets buried in the yard (Donovan was next to Rusty, the Irish set­ter they’d put down the pre­vi­ous sum­mer). She exam­ined us all, con­tent-seem­ing. I won­dered what might hap­pen next, then Mom spoke up:

“How about you say we paint these walls, paint them all good and white?”

~

Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four col­lec­tions of sto­ries, most recent­ly The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fel­low­ship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.