Chapter Text
They say God makes problems
Just to see what you can stand
Before you do as the Devil pleases
And give up the thing you love
—Pitseleh by Elliott Smith
*
“Alright, Esther.” Katherine speaks into the walkie-talkie clutched in her hand. “We ready for this?”
Her daughter’s voice crackles through the speaker. “All good on this end, Mom!”
“Okay, counting down: Three, two, one—”
On Esther’s end of the radio, a vacuum whirls to life. There’s a brief pause, and then the entire hotel rumbles, as if struck by a sudden earthquake. Furniture wobbles; paintings rattle against the walls. A second later, Katherine hears a crash in the upstairs hall.
“All clear, Mom!” Esther shouts through the radio. “Jessica’s distracted! Go, go, go!”
Katherine springs into action. While the hotel’s resident tentacle monster is occupied, she turns on a vacuum of her own. In less than a minute, the carpet in the downstairs lounge is successfully cleaned—or at least, as clean as she can make it before Jessica catches on.
“Whew. Wow, okay—I think that worked!” She gets back on the walkie, breathless. “Thanks, Esther. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
“No problem, Mom,” Esther replies. The commotion upstairs has already begun to quiet, Jessica retreating once more into the vents. “Hey, while I got you: is Ben’s cake still in the fridge?”
Katherine frowns at the radio. “Why?”
“No reason! It’s just that Abaddon doesn’t really get the whole birthday candles thing—”
“Esther, don’t you touch that cake!”
“Who said I was gonna touch it?”
Katherine rolls her eyes. It’s hard enough trying to get everything ready for Ben’s birthday party without Esther going rogue. Still, if she limits her mischief to stealing a few bites of cake, Katherine will consider it a victory.
Just then, her brother Nathan appears through the wall. Hands on his hips, a smile on his face, one would never guess that he is, in fact, deceased.
“Wow, Kathy! It looks great in here.”
He looks around the lounge, nodding in approval. The whole place has been decorated like a 1920’s speakeasy—not the haunted kind, like the one in the basement, but the Party City kind, with art deco banners and cheap plastic pearls. Great Gatsby posters cover up the hotel’s more uncanny paintings; bottles of sparkling cider stand in for champagne.
“Thanks.” Katherine pushes the vacuum out of sight, tucking it behind the couch. “It’s not much, but—do you think Ben will like it?”
Nathan raises a brow. “It’s not Ben you have to worry about.”
Right. Of course. Somehow, she keeps forgetting: None of this is for her son. It’s for Annabelle.
That’s probably where Ben is right now—upstairs in his room, trying on outfits for his girlfriend. The whole 1920’s theme was her idea. As a ghost, Annabelle can’t leave the hotel property, or even change the outfit she died in. As much as she wanted to meet Ben’s friends, she was worried about standing out, her clothes at least a century out of date. So they agreed: flapper dresses and pinstripe suits for everyone. Annabelle will fit right in.
Well, so long as no one touches her. Or brings up the Great Depression. Or mentions anything past 1928, really.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Nathan says, though the look on his face suggests otherwise.
He leaves her to it, vanishing through the wall. Katherine sighs. She isn’t quite sure when this became her life, distracting tentacle monsters every time she uses a vacuum, or planning parties around her son’s undead girlfriend. There was a time not so long ago where all of this would have been unthinkable. But now, less than a year after moving in, it all seems painfully routine.
She goes to the kitchen, only to find Esther head-and-shoulders deep in the refrigerator. Katherine plants a hand on her hip. “Esther, what did I say about the cake?”
“Huh? I mean—nothing!” Esther hastily licks her fingers, kicking the fridge shut with her foot. “I wasn’t doing anything!”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was just explaining birthday candles to Abaddon,” Esther says. “He doesn’t really get the whole ‘cake on fire’ thing. Right, Abaddon?”
She turns, looking to Abaddon for support. The boy is sitting in the sink, staring out the window. His thoughts, clearly elsewhere.
He’s very still, for a child—or at least, a demon currently inhabiting one. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Katherine isn’t even sure that he’s breathing. It’s unsettling, in the way that Abaddon is always unsettling; with his dark-rimmed eyes and greying skin, he looks more like a corpse than a living boy.
“Abaddon!” Esther says urgently, like when an actor misses his cue. The demon blinks.
“Hm? Oh, yes.” The demon rouses from his thoughts. “Must we set the cake aflame?”
Katherine quirks a brow. “I wouldn’t think that’d be a problem for you.”
“It isn’t,” Abaddon insists. “But it seems a waste.”
“Dude, that’s what I keep trying to tell you,” Esther says. “We don’t set the cake on fire, we set the candles on top of the cake on fire. We still get to eat it.”
Katherine moves around the kitchen, gathering snacks for the party. Abaddon crawls out of the sink and joins Esther at the table, where they begin opening bags of chips and dumping them into bowls. They do this under the guise of “helping,” but really, they’re just trying to sneak a few handfuls for themselves.
“We have lots of traditions,” Esther explains. “There’s the party, the birthday song, the candles, the cake—and presents!”
Abaddon perks up. “Presents?”
“Yeah, but not for us. For Ben. It’s his birthday.” Esther sighs at the unfairness of it all. “Anyway, once all that is over, Mom measures our height. She has this whole thing—wait, I’ll show you!”
She darts off towards the pantry, emerging a moment later with a measuring stick. It’s quite long—six feet, in fact—and unwieldy in Esther’s hands. The tip wobbles as she swings it around.
“Whoa, hey, careful with that!” Katherine says. “It’s older than you are.”
She takes the stick away, holding it steady. Esther points to the black lines along the edge, each marked with a name and date.
“See?” She points to Esther – Age 9. “That’s how tall I was when I was your age.”
Abaddon glares. “I am several thousand years older than you.”
“Yeah, try telling that to the DMV,” Esther teases. She squints at the markings. “Ben’s always been a little taller than me, but I thiiink nine-year-old me was taller than you.”
Esther sizes Abaddon up, holding her hand level with his forehead. Then—an idea strikes. “Mom, can we add Abaddon to the height chart?”
The question takes Katherine by surprise. “What? Why?”
“So we’ll always remember how tall he is!”
Katherine shakes her head. “That’s not how it works. First of all, Abaddon doesn’t grow. And second, I’m pretty sure demons don’t have birthdays.”
“We do not,” Abaddon confirms.
“See? There you go.”
Katherine leans the measuring stick against the wall, fingertips brushing over her children’s names. The latest mark is near her shoulders, while the oldest is all the way down at her knees. Ben – Age 1, it says. The ink, a little faded, now brown where it once was black.
The idea of adding Abaddon bothers her more than it should—more than she’s willing to examine. This old wooden stick is one of the only things left from her previous life, before everything fell apart. Before her divorce. Her brother’s death. Before she knew that ghosts and demons were real, and surprise, the hotel is full of them, so good luck with that. Is it so wrong that she wants to keep it preserved, untouched by the supernatural? Just a normal height chart for a normal human mother?
“Dude, you don’t have a birthday?” Esther’s brows are drawn in concern. “What about the day you came to Earth?”
Abaddon makes a strange face, equal parts confused and offended. “That’s not the same thing.”
“But it’s the day you became human.”
At this, he outright scowls. “I am not human. I am an immortal evil bound to the body of a human boy.”
“Same difference,” Esther says, though it’s really not, and it’s naïve of her to say so. Abaddon’s irritation is palpable. “Oh, I know! We could celebrate your birthday on Halloween. Or Thanksgiving! Get it? Because you always dress like a pilgrim.”
“Thank you, Esther.” Katherine pinches the bridge of her nose. “Why don’t you go check on your uncle? He should be in the conference room.”
With all of the other ghosts, hopefully. She asked Nathan to lure them there with the promise of scented candles and unlimited TV. If that doesn’t distract them for the length of a party, nothing will.
“Okay, fine. But we’re not done!” Esther says. “Don’t worry, we’re gonna figure this out!”
She hurries off, leaving Abaddon at the table. If he’s grateful for her dedication, it doesn’t show on his face.
To be fair to Esther, Katherine’s pretty sure that she doesn’t know much about Abaddon’s past. He was reluctant to share the story with Katherine, and even then, he only gave a few details. He said that he was once a demon prince, until he came to Earth and possessed a young boy. That boy’s father turned out to be a priest—one who wasn’t too thrilled that a demon had taken up residence inside his son. So he tied Abaddon up and tried to exorcise him. Harshly.
There was fire. A metal brand. Hot iron pressed to bare skin. Katherine doesn’t know much, but she knows that it ended with the priest dead, and Abaddon permanently bound to the child’s body. Definitely not the kind of thing you’d want to celebrate with balloons and cake.
“Esther’s stubborn,” Katherine says, gathering up the chips and pretzels. “But easily distracted. Once she finds something else to fixate on, she’ll leave you alone.”
Abaddon says nothing, his gaze turned once more to the window—and again, Katherine feels a sense of unease. She can never guess what Abaddon is thinking. Or who he’s plotting to kill.
She just hopes it isn’t anyone she knows.
*
For the rest of the evening, Katherine focuses on the party, and giving everyone the most normal, least traumatic experience possible.
The birthday boy makes a grand entrance, descending the lobby stairs with Annabelle on his arm. He looks very dapper in his pinstripe suit, a little brimmed hat tilted across his brow. He poses at the foot of the stairs, as if expecting applause.
Katherine grins, snapping a picture on her phone. Ben’s always been like this—a performer, with a flair for the dramatic. If he can’t enter a room in a puff of smoke, he’d rather not be seen at all. He either blends in or stands out, and nothing in-between.
“Hey guys!” Ben says, beaming at the handful of middle-schoolers who actually showed up. “This is Annabelle, my very real and not made up girlfriend!”
Of course he has to specify that.
One of the kids steps forward. “Wow, Annabelle! Your dress is amazing. Is it vintage?”
“What, this?” Annabelle frowns at her own attire. “My mom picked it out. I’ve always hated it.”
The girl blinks with surprise. “Oh… That sucks?” She turns to Ben. “I really like your—”
“But at least it shows off my ankles,” Annabelle continues. “Everyone says that’s my best feature. Besides my hair. And my eyes. My elbows are pretty good, too. Right, Ben?”
Ben flusters. “Oh—yeah, of course! You look great, Belle-belle.”
Across the room, Katherine forces herself not to grimace. She knows it’s just teen drama, but still, it’s frustrating to see her son with someone who obviously doesn’t care about his feelings. In truth, she’s pretty sure that Annabelle is only interested in Ben because he’s a Conduit, capable of bridging the physical and spiritual worlds. What that means, exactly, Katherine doesn’t really know—except that it allows him to make out with his girlfriend in truly unspeakable ways.
The party is mostly okay. Katherine tries to give them space, but she catches the highlights. There’s pizza and a movie, board games and snacks. There’s music, too, but most of the kids are too shy to dance. Annabelle tries to show them how to do an old-fashioned Charleston, to predictable results: some of the kids pull out their phones to record her awkward flailing, but luckily, she doesn’t seem to understand that she’s being teased.
Nathan comes down when it’s time for cake, but oddly, Esther and Abaddon are nowhere to be seen. Katherine calls up the stairs. “Esther? Abaddon? It’s time to set the cake on fire!”
“It’s time to what?” Nathan says.
Katherine calls again. “Esther? Abaddon?”
No response.
“They’re probably just having fun,” Nathan says uncertainly. Katherine frowns at the silence.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.”
She sets aside her concerns for now, leading Nathan to the lounge. All fourteen candles on the cake are lit, earning an appreciative gasp from the teens.
Everyone sings. Nathan bellows the words in traditional embarrassing-uncle fashion, which Annabelle tries to upstage by singing in high falsetto. Katherine plays the enthusiastic mother, recording the whole thing on her phone.
And even though wishes are forbidden inside the hotel, when Ben blows out his candles, he smiles like they aren’t.
Katherine beams. For the first time in a long time, she feels good. Normal, even. Completely, wonderfully average.
It’s late by the time the guests leave, cars rumbling out of the hotel parking lot. All the same, Ben stands patiently in the kitchen, allowing himself to be measured.
“Alright, just hold still…” Katherine lines up the measuring stick, making sure it’s even with the floor. At times like this, she’s glad that she never used the wall of her old apartment to measure her kids’ heights—not only would she have lost her security deposit when they moved, but she would have lost all these markings, too.
Ben smiles as she draws a new line, a full three inches above his last one. Beneath it, she writes, Ben – Age 14.
“Thanks for the party, Mom,” he says.
“Oh, Ben, of course.” Katherine pulls him close, placing a kiss on top of his head. “Did you have fun?”
“You know, I really did!” Ben says, sounding pleasantly surprised, as though he’d expected something to go horribly wrong. After a pause, he bites his lip. “Hey, Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Dad call today?”
Katherine’s smile wavers. “No, sweetie. I’m sorry. But hey—we can call him tomorrow if you want.”
Ben shakes his head, still smiling, as sweet and understanding as ever. “Nah, it’s okay. He’s probably busy. I’ll catch him next time he checks in.”
Whenever that may be.
As Ben heads up to bed, Katherine lingers in the kitchen, alone with a half-eaten birthday cake and a sink full of dirty dishes. It suddenly occurs to her just how tired she is, and how quiet the hotel has gotten. Sighing deeply, she sits down at the table and pulls out her phone.
She doesn’t call her ex-husband, though she would love to give him a piece of her mind. Instead, she taps on a file in her photo app, helpfully labeled BIRTHDAYS.
She scrolls through fourteen years of birthday parties, of screaming kids and cake-smeared faces. Of Esther, tearing open her presents. Of Ben, beaming under paper hats. Ron—her ex—is there in some of them, but conspicuously absent in most.
That was his thing—Ron was always away, always chasing the next adventure, the next surefire way to get rich. Katherine loved it when she was in college; loved that he was so fearless, so reckless, so everything she was too afraid to be. But as his wife? The mother of his children? It just made her tired.
She scrolls to the bottom of the album, to Ben’s very first birthday. He was born in a grocery store, of all things—he came nearly a month early, which was a huge surprise to everyone involved. Katherine most of all.
She remembers how scared she was, going into labor right there in Aisle Five. Ron wasn’t with her, which was probably for the best, considering how useless he was when Esther came around. She remembers shaking, clutching the paramedic’s hand, everything hot and sticky and wet. She didn’t think she could do it. She wasn’t ready to be a mom.
And then—there he was. Ben Freeling. They gave him to her while he was still raw, the umbilical cord uncut. He was so small, so fresh and new, his body covered in viscera. Katherine cradled him anyway, right over her heartbeat. He wailed, and she wept, both of them soaked in blood and tears and sweat.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Katherine smiles at the photo in her palm. One of the paramedics took it for her after they’d cleaned up a little: Katherine, her face red and hair slicked back, and Ben, wrapped in a stranger’s jacket.
She’s done her best since then. She’s tried—really tried—to give her children a good life. But sometimes, looking back at that grocery store, and all the choices that led her there—sometimes, Katherine feels like they were doomed from the start.
With a sigh, Katherine puts down the phone. It’s only then that she notices Abaddon standing in the doorway.
“Holy shit!” she shouts, genuinely startled by his appearance. The table rattles from the force of her surprise. “Damnit, Abaddon! What have I said about lurking in doorways at night?”
Her fear melts away quickly, frustration moving in to take its place. As Abaddon stumbles into the room, Katherine notices a rip in his jacket, the material stained with blood.
“You’re bleeding on the tile,” she says flatly. Like ghosts in the attic and monsters in the walls, a dismembered Abaddon is nothing new.
But what is new is how hard he’s breathing, and how he braces himself against the table. He’s dirty all over, his knees caked in mud, as though he went running through the forest and fell more than once.
Katherine surges to her feet. “Abaddon?”
He says nothing; it’s all he can do just to breathe. She grasps him by the shoulders. “Abaddon, what’s wrong?”
She tries to meet his eye, but Abaddon won’t look at her. He must be in a state of shock. Katherine’s never seen him like this, so disheveled, so—so frightened. Her heart picks up speed.
Abaddon swallows, his whole body shaking. He clutches the wound on his chest, a clean slash across the center, straight through blood and bone. At last, he meets Katherine’s eye.
“He has Esther,” the demon says.
*