“What do you know of demons?”
The Enchantress sat at the hearth, incense smoke tracing spirals in the air. I stood behind her, silent, struggling to answer the words she had muttered. I had stood there in silence for longer than I realized, and her words rung through me like a bell.
“Nothing,” I said. She looked into the embers, the remnants of the fire that had burned bright when I had first arrived, and laughed.
“I figured as much,” she answered, lighting another stick of incense. “No one who comes to ask knows them as much as I. Those who know them as much as I do,” she trailed off. “Well, they’re too afraid to ask. Why’d you come here?”
I looked around the room. Tapestries laced with knots and sigils in the form of beasts and wicker men stared at me from every wall. The shelves were all laden with idols and trinkets, all turned toward the place where I stood, empty eyes fixed upon me. I shook my head, wondering myself why I’d come. “I was curious,” I said. She was still. “People say this house is haunted.”
“It is.”
“With what? There are rumors all through the town of this place. People are scared, but they don’t do anything about it. There has to be a reason.”
“There is.” She still watched the embers die, and it struck me that I hadn’t seen her face since I came. She hadn’t moved.
I shivered. It was like time had gone into a trance. I didn’t know how long I’d stood there, watching her light her candles, humming an off-key tune.
“This place is haunted,” she said. The sound startled me. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s not haunted with the spirits of the dead, though.” She laughed. “No, even the dead don’t want anything to do with what’s in this house.”
“What, then? What are they so afraid of? I came here for answers, and all I’ve heard are riddles. All I’ve seen here are tricks.”
“Tricks aren’t what scare the people away,” she answered, coldly. “The tricks bring people in. It’s the other things that scare the dead away. The tricks are just to appease them.”
She lit another candle, throwing a clump of herbs into the fire. Acrid smoke filled the room, and I felt as though a thousand eyes were on my back. I turned around, and saw only the trinkets I’d seen before.
“Demons?” I asked, my chest hollow. I couldn’t tell how long it had been since I last spoke. “Is that what’s in this house?”
“You are learning, then.” The woman snuffed a candle, then drew a circle on the hearth. A hasty hand etched a symbol inside it, upon which she promptly placed a pile of ashes. Colored candles with colored flames placed around the circle’s edge, she began to hum again, and I began to feel faint.
“No one’s disappeared here.” My voice sounded distant. “Nothing bad has ever happened here, and yet no one talks about it. It’s a question everyone in town has had for years, but no one will even speak it.”
“Sometimes,” she said, scrawling symbols into the ash, and then scratching them out. Scrawling, scratching, scrawling, and scratching. “It’s the things no one sees that are the most dangerous. Sometimes there are forces at work beyond the human perception that affect a man’s soul and make it at ease or on edge. It’s those forces that inhabit this house, and they have been alone here for time uncounted.” She placed a bowl on the ashes, covering the intricate symbol she had spent so long creating, and filled it with black water. The room reeked of death, and I took a step back. The candles had halfway disappeared by the time I realized it, and again, I wondered how long I’d been standing there. “Sometimes, they live to terrorize. Other times, they wish to be left alone, and will do anything to keep it that way.”
I tried to form a response, but I found myself mesmerized by the embers. When I looked at them, I could see patterns appearing and vanishing—faces, creatures, images. It was stunningly beautiful, yet somehow unsettling. “Other times yet,” I heard her say. “They act innocuous, but have their own dark agendas. Demons are beings of perception, you see. They can be observed however they want to be—that’s how so many things go unnoticed here. They can veil their appearance from you…” She waved her hand over the tallest of the candles. It went out. “Or they can show themselves full-force.” The candle exploded into green flames. “Whether the plot is simple or complex, those affected will never know it happened.”
Terrified, I tried to turn and run, but I was transfixed by whatever magic she had created, pinned where I stood like an insect on a board. I tried to speak, but my mouth went numb. It felt as though my teeth were rotting in my skull. The woman moved aside, and I saw the black water, churning, roiling, and then completely still. I saw my reflection on its surface, but it wasn’t as I remembered it. I had withered, body crumbling around me. It was then that I saw around me—there were others in the room—other people, all standing around me, as motionless as I was, oblivious to the march of time.
I saw the enchantress’ face. It was contorted into a hideous smile, her eyes black orbs in her skull, her skin pale and lifeless. She erupted into a column of black flame before me, hand reaching out toward me, paralyzed, to touch me. A lone, wiry finger touched me between the eyes, and I watched my body leave me, animated by some evil magic. I saw it, young, eyes black like hers, leave through the door I’d entered through, and humming the same off-key tune the woman had been humming. And I stood there, I suspect, as a soul, stripped from its body, powerless to move or fight the demon’s hold, knowing it, like everyone else in the town, would never speak of what had happened. All around me were translucent souls, fixed in place like my own, watching with helpless anger. A few sobbed.
Then, the moment the door slammed behind my body, the woman returned to her previous state. She sat before the fire, lighting her candles as though nothing had ever happened at all.
