A Dark Request
Brimstone, what an odd name for a small city residing within the midwestern state of Minnesota. If one were to ask a local why it is named as such they would likely answer that on the hottest summer days and on the coldest winter nights this place feels a little like hell. Sounds a bit overdramatic to the average outsider, but for any local that statement has become a much more literal in recent events. Like any small city Brimstone had its essentials. It had several schools, a police station, a large grocery store, plenty of shops, six different churches, a museum, a research lab, a popular bar called Dante’s, a few restraurants, a local TV news station, and home to one of the largest shopping malls in the country. Now something else has claimed Brimstone as its home. Something darker and twisted. Or at least that is what the Bible and Brimstone’s churchfolk would claim. Right along the quiet neighborhood on Milton Ave was the Gravely house. It was a big red house with two floors, an attic, a basement, four bedrooms, and a large backyard. An odd bunch, that’s what the folks of Brimstone would describe the Gravely family. They seemed like any ordinary family to a mundane eye. A mother and her two daughters. Mrs. Gravely was a local celebrity inside Brimstone. An anchorwoman for the local news, along with being a co-host for their very own morning talk show, What’s Hot in Brimstone. There was also the eldest of the Gravely daughters who was ten years of age, Rosemary, or Rosie as she is called by her friends and family. The youngest Gravely was named Regan, about five years and starting kindergarten.
And then there was him.
No it is not Mr. Gravely, who was a good man. A music teacher and an awe inspiring rock musician who he and his band, Dain Bramage, would perform for local gigs, in hopes of one day performing for larger crowds and concerts. Sadly, those hopes ended the day Mr. Gravely was killed in a car accident several months ago. It was a tragic loss for the community, especially for the Gravely girls. Time passed and the family healed. Then about two months ago he came into their lives. Everyone in Brimstone knows what was now dwelling within the Gravely house. Or perhaps a more accurate term rather than what but who. If an outsider, perhaps the same outsider that asked about Brimstone, then asked who or what lived inside the Gravely house everyone would say that a devil came to that very house. And a devil is about to be summoned once more.
Little Regan Gravely rushed to her sister’s room as fast as she could. A large bag dragged along the floor as she hauled it with her small arms. She opened the door as the older sibling made the final preparations around the ominous red-painted pentagram that lay in the center of the bedroom.
“Did you bring it?” Rosemary asked.
“Right here,” Regan peeped, dropping the bag by the bedside. “Will this work?”
“There’s the only way to find out,” Rosemary confirmed. “All we have to do now is say the incantation.”
Rosemary pulled out an ancient book from a lockbox. It was a large book with a demonic skull on its cover, resembling an abominable corpse in the midst of decay. The eldest Gravely skimmed through each heavy page, which felt like peeling through layers upon layers of skin, but from what is hard to say. Or perhaps the answer is too obvious and yet terrifying to give. Much of its text was foreign to this mortal child, written in a daemoniac language. Penned in blood from unfotunate souls that were sacrificed and scribed by an unholy priest who pledged their blasphemous services to dark creatures of a forgotten abyss.
At last, she found the page and read its dark inscription aloud. “Arise, oh Emperor of Darkness, the fallen son. Spill the blood and blacken the sun.”
A cold air filled the room with each word she spoke. The lights flickered until darkness consumed the room. Rosemary had to pause amid her unholy incantation. She knew it was working. She then continued, “I call upon you from your deathly rest, for you to perform a dark request.” The earth and house then shook. The windows threw open, followed by a violent gust swung. Regan wrapped herself tightly around her older sister as the chaos ensued in their once safe home. She was scared, her older sister could tell. So was Rosemary, but she was so close. She could feel it. She hugged her little sister, showing that it was going to be all right. All she needed was to read the last of the scripture. The ritual cannot stop. They had to be brave for what would come next.
“Rise from the blackest pit you dwell!” She read louder. “Rise, Devil! Rise! I summon you, Dark Lord of Hell!”
As the eldest sister finished the incantation, black fire sprouted from the pentagram’s heart like a fiery geyser, engulfing the room with black, sulfuric smoke. Rosemary and Regan clung to each other like helpless birds caught in the winds of a savage hurricane. The dark storm finally halted and the two sisters peaked their eyes out, glimpsing at what no mortal, little less children, should ever bare witness. A large pair of eyes staring back at them from the abyss they conjured, gleaming through the shadows like a hungry predator. They were the blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. “You have summoned me, mortals,” the shadowy beast bellowed. “I have heard your call. You call for my services. What are you willing give? What is your dark request?”
Courage filled Rosemary’s soul as she stood against the devil. She then raised the bag before the Beast and furiously declared. “Mom said stop hiding in your office and take out the trash already.”
The smoke cleared the bedroom in a bright flash. Out of the fading abyss was the devil’s human form, a tall slenderish, pale-skinned man dressed in a bloody red suite. He had large amounts of black hair on his head that curved into a style that resembled devil horns. On his chin was a black pointed, goat-like goatee, nestled below his mouth full of perfected teeth and sharpened canines. His scarlet colored eyes shined in the now brightly lit room. “I beg your pardon,” the Devil said in his natural form, with no smoke and mirrors to disguise himself or deepen his voice.
“The garbage,” Rosemary repeated. “Mom wants you to take it out.”
“Can it wait? I’m kinda in an important meeting with a client.”
“No you’re not.” Regan said.
“Yes I am.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
“Prove it then.”
“You two can’t prove I’m not.”
“Today is Sunday.” the eldest Gravely daughter spoke up.
“And you don’t work on Sundays.” the youngest then chimed in. “You said so yourself.”
“Technically, yes. But as the ruler of Hell I am also technically working twenty-four-seven. That means twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since you’re still learning how to tell time. So any day of the week there’s some lowly soul that needs to be punished and tortured for their sins, or one of my many demon underlings require some need to know info on how to properly torture a damned soul, or some moronic mortal is looking for an easy way to get through their limited lives that they’re willing to sell their souls to me.”
“She said now, Lu.”
Lu, yes, as in Lucifer, the Devil himself. A once proud angel of the Heavens who fell from grace, betraying his own brethren during the Heaven-Hell War, transformed into the demonic ruler of the dark realm, the Inferno, or as it is more commonly called by its other name, Hell. What mortals did not realize was that he was actually the seventh demon to hold that title—Devil being a title to describe the king of Hell by the demons. Mrs. Gravely met him two months ago and they wedded not long after.
“Come on. Can’t it wait until after dinner? It’s spaghetti night!” the Dark Lord begged. “How about I pay you both ten dollars to take out the garbage for me and say that I did it?”
“Make it twenty dollars,” Rosemary demanded.
“What? That’s insane.”
“Regan, if you’d please.”
The younger Gravely inhaled deeply and let out a loud, “MOOOOOOM!”
The Devil froze. He has dealt with and dealt out many horrors. But confronting his tempered queen, that was a horror he was unprepared for. “Alright, you win.” Lu conceded. “Twenty dollars for the both of ya.”
He surrendered a pair of twenties to his two stepdaughters. The duo gleefully accepted the bribe and walked off with the garbage bag. “Where did you two learn to bargain like that?”
“From you.” They both said. And then they were gone.
The Devil smiled. Conned by a couple of human children. He has lived for thousands of years, mastering his silver tongue, only to bested by a species of creation still in their infancy. He then pulled a cigarette from his suite pocket and stuck it between his lips. His fingers snapped, flicking a small flame above his index finger. The flame was about to kiss the tip of his cigarette when he heard the voice of his eldest stepdaughter. “Mom says you’re not supposed to smoke inside the house.”
This was going to take some getting used to, living by their rules. Yet he accepted it, after he touched the flame to his cigarette.