Gardenia

The family left Gardenia around five in the morning. They quietly packed their things and left, stopping only to clean the fridge, because they felt strongly that a dirty fridge would speak poorly of them and their abrupt departure. When they left, the fridge was clean, and there was still blood all over the walls.

The blood did not belong to anyone in the family. It had started pouring down from the ceiling, and the family decided that was the final straw. It was one thing when specters appeared at the top of the stairs with two heads and horns. It was another when knives were flying across the kitchen narrowly missing the head of the family’s youngest, who was only two. It was startling when the family dog suddenly grew to five times its size and ate the family’s Sedan. All of that was unfortunate, but the family had gotten Gardenia for a steal. They were apprised that it had a…colorful past. They were a bit put off by it, but then they saw the guest bathrooms, and the very thought of having guests, let alone guest bathrooms, was simply too good to pass up. It took blood coming down the walls three weeks later for them to vacate.

Once they were gone, the Bloody Devil manifested out of the television and made itself a sandwich. It was proud of the family. When they had first moved in, it hadn’t expected them to last more than a few days. It figured the first time the lights flickered, and the cicadas swarmed the toilet, they’d be out the door. That was the thing about some families. You never quite knew how much they were willing to put up with for a house with a fireplace and good insulation. The Bloody Devil ran its clawed paw along the wall and licked up a smidge of blood.

“This batch was too spicy,” it said to itself, “I should have used less red pepper.”

That night, as the Bloody Devil was falling asleep in the guest bathroom tub, it heard a sound. When it opened its fifth eye, it saw what looked like a little girl standing in the doorway of the bathroom. For a second, the Bloody Devil thought the little girl was one of the daughters from the family that had fled that morning, but when it blinked, the girl was gone. Just to be safe, the Bloody Devil turned off all the lights in the house so it could scan the darkness for any signs of living energy. When nothing turned up, it chalked the whole experience up to a bad dream. It returned to its bath, but when it did, it found that the shower had been turned on and steam had filled the room.

There, on the mirror, was a message written in what appeared to be a human hand.

“We’re back.”

From that day forward, the Bloody Devil, who had haunted Gardenia since the day it was built on top of a collapsed pagan temple, never knew a moment’s peace.

Children’s toys would materialize in the living room. Toys with sharp edges and wheels that the Bloody Devil would step on, yowling as it fell backwards into the fireplace. Dirty dishes were somehow always in the sink, despite the Bloody Devil only eating off Ouija boards. At night, as it tried to sleep, it could hear the sound of a man and a woman in the next room.

“I’m telling you, we don’t have the money to stay an extra night.”

“We’d have the money if you took that job my father offered you.”

“We’ve been over this, Natalie, I am not taking a handout from your father.”

“So I guess you have to tell the kids why we’re leaving Orlando early then.”

The conversation didn’t scare the Bloody Devil as much as it made it very, very anxious. Were Natalie and the man going to stay together? They sounded so unhappy. Were they going to break up? Why was he hearing this when they weren’t even here?

That wasn’t the only time it heard voices.

“You are not going out dressed like that, young lady!”

“Jesse’s mother lets her go out like this.”

“That’s why Jesse’s going to end up in a documentary someday.”

“What does that even mean?!?!”

The Bloody Devil would hide behind the couch whenever these arguments were going on. It couldn’t locate the source of the voices no matter how hard it tried, but it also couldn’t bear to just sit on his throne made of vole skulls and pretend it didn’t hear the conflicts. They were always so domestic. It preferred higher stakes, life and death, passion and terror. Hearing a mother and daughter go at it because the daughter put on too much eyeliner made the Bloody Devil want to rip off one of its two heads. The one with the ears.

After a century of living in and haunting Gardenia, it was the Taco Night that made the Bloody Devil abandon the house. It wasn’t expecting any trouble what with it being a Tuesday and what with Taco Night always being something the family seemed to look forward to, based on what the Bloody Devil could surmise going off only voices and the satisfied sounds of chewing while a mysterious odor of sour cream and pico filled the air. It made the Bloody Devil hungry, but it couldn’t eat anything, because there didn’t appear to be any food there. It was torturous being exposed to such lovely aromas without being able to feast. It tried to placate itself by gnawing on the leg bone of a unicorn, but it just wasn’t the same.

The Taco Night started out fine--as best the Bloody Devil could tell. Plates were laid out, soft shells were placed next to hard shells, and the Dad made a corny joke about tortillas as he always did. Groans followed. Then some clanking of silverware, and the sound of mastication. The Bloody Devil bit down on what little bit of meat was left on its unicorn leg, but it fantasized about what the ground beef must taste like when covered with shredded cheese and lettuce.

That was when one of the daughters announced that she wouldn’t be attending her own high school graduation.

The Bloody Devil had no idea why the teenager chose this instance to make such an announcement when everybody seemed to be having such a nice time, but, as far as the Bloody Devil could tell, this was just something teenagers did. They found themselves in a pleasant moment and felt a compelling urge to ruin it.

Right away, there was a fracas. The mother informed her daughter that she absolutely would be going to graduation, because she and her husband did not work and save to send their daughter to a fancy private school only so that she could skip the grand finale. The daughter then pointed out that the mother doesn’t work so, really, it’s just the father who should decide if the daughter has to go to graduation. There was a pause while, the Bloody Devil imagined, the mother waited on the father to back her up, but then the father just said “I didn’t go to my graduation either” and then the mother exploded on the father, which led to the teenage daughter shouting in defense of her father, while the youngest child cried, and one or two middle children began to loudly sing some song about gravy and a turkey’s neck for no discernible reason other than maybe trying to diffuse the tension or quell their own anxiety.

At one point, it sounded as though someone--probably the mother--went around picking up the various plates full of soft shells and hard shells and pico, and began smashing them on the floor. This led to more noise, and somebody ran out the front door, slamming it behind them. The sound of the door slamming was like a shot going off inside the Bloody Devil. It had to leave. It had no choice. It couldn’t live like this. Maybe it should have stuck around for the children. After all, the Bloody Devil might have been made from the nightmares of demons and the spirit of Lucifer, but it was at least civilized enough to know that children need a stabilizing force in their lives, and maybe the Bloody Devil could provide them for them--but how?

No, it was no use. Sticking around wasn’t a good idea for anyone.

The Bloody Devil left Gardenia around five in the morning the very next day.

Shortly after it departed, the family returned back to the home. They had taken a ouija board from the fridge before they left. (The Bloody Devil was always leaving its dirty ouija boards in the fridge.) They soon discovered that the board was a kind of portal into the house, and when they saw the Bloody Devil growing comfortable in their home, it made them angry. Not angry enough to do anything about it, of course. A Bloody Devil was still a Bloody Devil. They had no intention of going back, but soon, living in the rental home they occupied after leaving Gardenia started to feel suffocating. They began to argue. The eldest daughter began to act out. The middle children took to writing scary messages in steam in the small bathroom they all shared just to scare their youngest sibling. Toys were left everywhere. It all built up to a Taco Night that was, without question, one of the worst nights in the family’s history.

It wasn’t until the next morning when one of the middle children brought the ouija board to her mother as she was tossing another dirty dish in the sink. She pointed out that the Bloody Devil appeared to have left Gardenia. Natalie, the mother, moved the board all around so she could see each part of the house, and sure enough, there was no sign of the Bloody Devil anymore.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose that means we can go back.”

As for the Bloody Devil, he never went back to Gardenia, but that’s probably for the best. It doesn’t mean he loves the family any less, but that’s mostly because he never loved them in the first place.