A Demon in the Basement

“They’s a demon down in the basement,” the child said. He stood on bowed legs, wearing nothing but a diaper, his big round belly thrust out at them accusingly. In one hand he held a bottle to his mouth, and with the other, the child pointed back to the steps leading down into the darkness.

“What’d that baby just say?” David asked. He lowered the cup of coffee from his lips and placed his phone down on the table.

“Said they’s a demon down yonder,” Sandra answered without looking up from her paper. It had been a long day. Her voice was tired and strained, its twangy syllables even more drawn out than usual.

“First of all, who let the baby crawl down them steps?” asked the child’s mother in a loud voice. “Don’t ya’ll know how easy it would be for him to fall and break his little neck?”

“Lord’s looking after him,” Sandra said. She’d pronounced him like eem. It grew quiet again, save for the occasional rustling of Sandra’s newspaper or a creak from the wooden chair David sat in. The smell of burnt coffee and stale biscuits hung there in the living room. The sky outside was beginning to darken.

“They’s a demon in the basement,” the child repeated.

“How’d you get down yonder, anyways?” the child’s mother asked him. “And who was it that opened the basement door for ya, huh?”

The child said nothing. He simply remained standing there, casually sucking on the bottle and shifting his weight from one leg to the other on fat, wobbly knees. His large blue eyes avoided his mother’s gaze, choosing instead to examine no spot in particular on the ceiling. His wispy blonde hair was unruly, like thin little strands of cotton candy someone had painted across the top of his head; it gave him the look of something wild. The child was a year or so too old for diapers, but his mother couldn’t have any more children and so she’d decided to keep him a baby as long as possible. The child turned to look back over his shoulder. A door had slammed down at the bottom of the steps. He tilted his head and listened to the thumping of feet as they made their way up into the light.

“Hey ya’ll – they’s a demon down there in the basement,” a second child said. This one was older and a girl, probably eleven or twelve years old. She emerged from the shadows breathless, wearing denim overalls with a plain white t-shirt underneath. The girl had short brown hair that was braided into pigtails. She wore a constant look of confusion on her face that gave her aunts and uncles the impression that she was stupid.

“Yeah, we heard,” Sandra said and yawned. She reached over and turned on the lamp beside her. “Ah, that’s better,” she said to herself.

“Did you let him follow you down them steps where he could break his neck or Lord only knows what?” the child’s mother asked the girl. “Anything happens to him and it’s your fault, ya hear? Think before you go off doing stuff.” As she scolded the young girl, it became clear that her heart just wasn’t into it. Her heart hadn’t been into much of anything and she often found herself wondering what the point of all of it was. Doing responsible mother things like yelling at the kids only seemed to make her more tired than she’d already been. The child’s mother was still young enough to remember back when she was a kid, what that was like. She hadn’t forgotten how it felt to be yelled at all the time. She looked over to where her own mother was snoring quietly on the couch, her head slumped forward, her wrinkled mouth hanging wide open. She thought about what a strict household it had been, the one she grew up in. How much good had that done? One brother dead from a meth overdose, another in jail, her getting pregnant at way too young of an age, and with a married older man, no less, who’d denied the whole thing because he stood to lose too much. Yeah, lot a good that upbringing done us. The child’s mother leaned back in her chair and rested her eyes.

The young girl scanned the faces of her relatives. One by one, her hopeful eyes searched them for an acknowledgement, a response. Around and around she went, each time coming up empty. It was a sleepy listlessness that had fallen over her aunts and uncles there in the living room and kitchen.

“Why don’t ya’ll run along and play now?” David said. He was slumped in a chair by the dining room table, his short legs splayed out stiffly in front of him, eyes barely open.

The girl tried to take the child into her arms but he refused with a strong shake of his head and so she let him follow her back down the stairs, taking her time as she went, allowing him to catch up with her as he carefully slid backward down each step on his belly. When he finally made it to the bottom, the girl cracked open the basement door and peered upward toward the top of the steps. A gust of cold air met them. They slipped quietly through the cracked door and sought out the demon to let him know that nobody upstairs was all that interested.