The Invocation of Evil Things

When the written word comes alive

Fictional stories always seem to come to life somehow. Every “story” seems to end up being real, at one time or another. You may not be alive when it takes place, but you may be the reason it takes place. You may have written it!

Have you ever read or seen movies of say, deadly viruses taking over the world? Such as the movie Contagion, written by Scott Z. Burns, which came out in 2011. How about The Stand, a Stephen King novel in 1978? When Covid-19 hit, did you wonder how they could have written an exact manuscript about it, years before it became a reality? Did we imagine, create, and write into existence, Covid-19?

Do we conjure up evil men, demons, and monsters, just by writing about them? Is there a Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy, walking around out there, in real life? Probably. Because a writer imagined them and brought them to life with writing.

What we call the “afterlife”, may just be our sequel. Part Two, Act Two, Scene Two, or Chapter Two, in our life saga. You and I may just be a miniseries! We may just be waiting for more episodes of our lives to be written. Our lives may just be a silly soap opera, with sucky writers. Are our lives just characters, settings, plots, conflicts, and resolutions, to some authors story somewhere?

All these questions occurred to me last evening, after finishing my novel, at midnight. I carried my empty wine glass, after having filled it several times earlier, to the kitchen sink. I heard a rough scratching sound, in another room. I walked into the dim living room, lit only by the moonlight, coming from the skylight.

Thick, gold velvet curtains hid my sliding glass doors, where the noise was coming from. I stared at the curtains, listening intently. “What’s behind door number two?” The game show host, in my head, asked jovially. I don’t want to know, I answered.

The harsh, grinding noise, continued, on the outside glass, in an unnervingly deliberate pattern, scratch…scratch…scratch. The hair on my neck stood up, and my bare feet were frozen to the white carpet. I was alone and my house sits deep in the woods, on sixty private acres. Not a neighbor in sight! My dead cell phone was on my dresser, way up on the third floor. I knew I should have charged it!

There was no way a human could get through the private security gate with the electric fence, and then, hurdle over the tall privacy fence, around the backyard. It had to be an animal of some sort.

The deep pressure of the scratching told me that there were some nasty claws, of some sort, on the other side of that glass. Large ones. Was it a bear? Could he break the glass? I was terrified and I felt warm pee dribbling down my leg.

Forcing my feet to pedal my shaking legs toward the glass doors, I parted the curtains a tad, with a trembling finger. The green pool lights cast an eerie glow, across the pool and the back concrete patio.

I moved my eyes slowly to the left side of the curtain and the other side of the glass door. What I saw before me chilled me instantly to my core, and I almost passed out.

A bonified demon, with yellow wolf eyes and skin, an otherworldly shade of red, stood just on the other side of the glass. He was grinning a wide, sinister grin, with gold teeth as serrated as a sharks. My bladder fully emptied itself, promptly and completely.

“Open up, Jenny!” he growled in a menacing tone, through those razor-sharp teeth. He knows my name? Now I saw that it was his hideous claws, which were making the hair-raising scrape on the glass. He continued, to my dismay, scratch…scratch…scratch. Tauntingly slow. I suddenly wished for that bear. I'd even accept an angry grizzly, right now!

I glanced downwards, to see if the safety bar was in position, at the bottom of the sliding door. Like that would help because that would make it demon proof! I felt that thing, what they call, the fight or flee mode. I chose flee, but slowly. My heart was pounding, and I started to back up, grabbing the fireplace poker as I went. “No, go away!” I heard myself cry out, with trembling vocal cords.

“Now, now, we both know you brought me here. Why not let me in?” he snorted wetly, through a runny pig nose, and then, cocked his hideous horned head, to the side. He looked like what I would assume, a deformed, red reindeer and a pig with a stomped face, might possibly birth out, if they ever had unholy relations in Hell.

“What do you mean, I brought you here?” I asked, with a shrill voice, waving the fireplace poker, as if I actually knew how to defend myself.

“Chapter Twelve, page two, sentence eighteen,” was all the demon said, with his hollow, ungodly, gravelly voice. He had all the charm of a cement truck. My mind was in full tilt boogie at this point, and the ominous and steady scratch…scratch…scratch, was so very horrifyingly distracting.

My eyes did not know how to take in this putrid thing. I suddenly had ninja eyes, darting all over and without my consent. And those claws…What damage could those huge, slice and dice claws actually do? I didn’t want to find out, that is for sure! What was he talking about? “What do you mean, Chapter Twelve? Go away damn you!” I yelled, tightening my sweaty grip on the poker. God, I sounded weak and vulnerable! I’m dead!

“Invocation of evil things, remember?” the demon crooned, in a sickeningly sweet voice. A three foot long, leech like tongue, suddenly flung itself out of his mouth, toward the glass door. The tip of the tongue landed with a splat of goo and attached itself to the glass, like a slimy slug. Squeaking, it slid itself up and down the glass, like a disgusting squeegee. Ugh, I thought, there’s not enough Windex in the freaking world!

The demon watched it, laughing, as if the tongue were there to entertain him. It seemed to be doing its own thing. Like my bladder. Although I was shaking and sickened with the unfathomable sight, I was experiencing a Deja vu. There was something oddly familiar about this scene before me. I knew this horrific hot mess of a sight.

In fact, I knew this demon all too well. I backed up slowly, while the demon, with yellow marbles for eyeballs, was distracted by his lovely dancing, leech of a tongue. As I reached the doorway to the kitchen, he took a double-take toward me with his eyes, realizing what I was doing. “NO! Come back!” he bellowed, frantically.

I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, to my computer room. Falling into my desk chair, I hurriedly opened my laptop, knocking several things off the desk in the process. I powered it on and as usual, cussed it out for three minutes waiting for it to come on. A little harsher than usual, as per occasion. I pounded the desk, “…come on you mother fucker! Son of a…”

It came up and I poked in my password, missing a stupid key. My fingers were trembling. Shit! I finally got in. The whole time the demon is wailing, then begging, then angrily shouting. He sounded like my ex. Wait, was he, my ex?

In fact, I heard many evil voices coming out of him. Lots of ex’s, I thought wryly, as I scrolled quickly through the folders. I knew (from the movies) that a demon cannot enter unless you invite him. That is when I heard the sliding glass doors shatter. Oops, my bad! My smirk disappeared. Obviously, I was wrong. Oh, shit!

My fingers were flying over the keyboard. Where was my manuscript? Why can’t I ever find anything on this computer when I need it? Like when a disgruntled demon is after me? I heard a noise at the bottom of the stairs. I was sweating and hyperventilating. C’mon, c’mon, where is it! There were clickity clack noises on the staircase wall. It sounded more like a giant crab meandering up the stairs.

I pictured that long tongue squirming in midair, looking for something to latch onto. Probably dripping slime and pus, all over my beautiful white carpet. And whatever else drops off that nasty thing. There it is! Now we are cooking! My book folder, Yess.

I click on it and the title page pops up.

Invocation of Evil Things by Jenny Martin.

I’m thinking how I will have to rip up the gross, now stained, carpet. A voice in my head says, “Ah, yes, Jenny, the expensive white carpet that you bought, with all the money from your many horror novels. The books that you have created so many of these demons and monsters in. Now, where are they all? You unleashed them out into the world! You can’t erase all your evil creations, Jenny!”

The noisy demon was on the first landing, just a few steps away, down the hall. I could hear low, menacing chuckling, just beyond the door. Then, loud plaster crackling, and wretched gouging sounds, all along the hallway. Obviously, at least one of those dew claws was having its way, with my beautiful Sherwin Williams Greige paint!

I was also listening to all the different hissing voices out there, from the relentless evil one. How many demons are inside of this guy anyway? Yep, that sounded like “we are legion” to me! How Rude. They could have all RSVP’d, cause what if I didn’t have enough food at this party? (My psychiatrist says I use humor to divert my true feelings)

Here we go! Chapter One, ok, scroll…scroll... scroll. I was thinking that if my plan here didn’t work, I could just exorcize this dirty bastard demon myself. Scroll…scroll…scroll. Aren’t we all experts on exorcizing demons nowadays, anyway? Thanks to the on-the-job training, of the scary movies? Hell, all you need is a big cross, holy water, a rosary, and a book of weird words to chant. You know the drill, “Somebody compels you!… yadda, yadda… Yo, come out of there demon!”…then, some obnoxious green projectile vomiting…Uh, well, I’m not so good with vomit, so that won’t work…hmmm... where’s Chapter Twelve! …scroll…scroll.

Ok, here we are, Chapter Twelve! I frantically scrolled to the second page, Yess, second page! Thar she blows! That stupid sentence eighteen.

Bang! The door flew in on its hinges, and a piece of sharp wood from the doorframe whizzed past my head, spearing the wall. Here’s Johnny!

I looked up, just as the outstretched snail tongue, of the pissed demon, was only inches from my face! Legion was spewing ridiculous insults from the shark toothed mouth…Oh, fuck me now! I was screaming in my head. I highlighted sentence eighteen with a quaking finger.

A bonified Demon, with yellow wolf eyes and skin, an otherworldly shade of red, stood…

My finger hovered above the delete key, “Oh, no you don’t! Fuck you!” I spat, my smirk growing back. I savagely pushed the delete key. Boom! The demon disappeared into thin air, before my very eyes! It worked!

I closed my eyes, slumped back in my chair, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I sat there shaking, my forehead beaded with fear sweat.

My fingers calmly returned to the keyboard, and with a slight smile, I typed a new sentence eighteen.

The angry grizzly bear had its claws on the glass and …

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