The Demon in the Basket

By L. G. Merrick
Illustrated by Steve Morris

Hello! I am happy to announce this story also appears in an anthology titled Satan Rides Your Daughter (fun title), available where fine books are sold (not really, just amazon). The publication deal was that I had to wait a year before reprinting it anyplace — and the year is now up. So here it is, have it at! (There might be slightly different edits to the Satan Rides version, but they are 98% identical.)

1.

When Warren Ledlow was four, his father returned from Afghanistan and, in one of Warren’s earliest memories, burned the uniform in the back yard. 

His father also brought home souvenirs that he seemed to regret. A colorful kite went straight to the basement. A hand-carved tobacco pipe on a display stand went to a prominent shelf — where a row of true-crime paperbacks soon got placed in front of it. An embroidered vest, Warren recalled, his father donned once, during an afternoon of merry drinking. At dinnertime it was ruined forever in a prolonged helpless roll on the floor in overturned spaghetti. But the souvenir that most stood out to Warren was a wicker basket.

It was big enough for him to sit inside, but he never did.

It was barrel-shaped, with a wicker cap. It was woven from sticks once varnished a dark glossy red, now worn mostly to a dull, dried blood color, and furthermore, the weave was tired, no longer tight, so here and there thin crevices opened onto the interior. Exactly how old the basket was, who could say. What about it had spoken to his father — went unexplained. The basket sat empty in a corner of the living room.

Occasionally, while playing with Fisher-Price trucks on the scratchy green rug in that room, Warren felt unsettled. As if being watched. He would not look at the basket then. If the feeling persisted, he left the room. He would not go back to those toys the rest of the day.

When he was six, his father disappeared. 

It happened slowly. Some nights Warren awoke to incoherent yelling from the living room, to the crash of hurled furniture. Some mornings his mother moved as if with sore ribs. His father became unemployed, then sold the car, then the police stopped by a few times, then he sold the TV — and then he was gone. It felt sudden.

Warren’s mother said, “Your father is on vacation in the mountains, to get fresh air.” 

Weeks later, accompanying his mother on errands, he spotted his father in the A&P parking lot. Passed out beside the dumpster. 

Shortly after that, Warren was playing with trucks on the rug when again the feeling of being watched crept over him. This time, angered by it, to his surprise, he turned to face the basket. And through the weave, he saw the silhouette of a boy, about his own size. 

His anger melted. Maybe here was a potential friend. Warren wanted a friend. So he edged closer. He waved. He inched closer still, and reached for the lid. But before his hand touched it, he halted. Through a crevice, he saw the boy’s eyes, staring at him. 

Their intensity did not portend friendship.

The eyes were strange, too, with irises as black as the pupils, and whites not white but the gray of dishwater. And spotted, as if mildewed. The colors seemed so unlike eye colors that Warren suddenly relaxed, deciding they were not eyes, and not ominous, but some other, ordinary thing. His mother had put a pillow in the basket. With two buttons on it. 

When the eyes blinked, Warren ran. 

2.

Warren was alone in the house eating a peach that his mother had sliced up. He was watching cartoons. She had run down the street to Ms. Turnbull’s house for an emergency meeting. Ms. Turnbull was his babysitter sometimes. “Emergency meeting” was what they called it with a laugh when they opened a bottle of white wine. His mom said she’d be back real soon and he should stay on the couch. 

Okay.

Except he was eating the peach. And its pit was on the plate. And he popped that in his mouth too.

He knew you couldn’t eat pits. A peach tree would grow in your stomach. But he devised a game. He lay flat on the couch and spit the pit — pwoof! — straight up, then caught it in his mouth when it came down. That was the game, anyway, but it turned out to be hard. Every time the pit flew up at a slight angle, so it didn’t fall straight back into his mouth. He had to jerk left or arch his back to try for it — and he missed every time.

Until he didn’t. That time, the pit went right in, didn’t even graze lip or tooth — but he didn’t have time to feel proud of himself. The pit fell straight to the back of his throat and bounced downward, and stuck.

Startled, he sat up. He could feel it, like knuckles inside his throat.

He could not breathe. He got up and jumped in place, hoping to make it fall all the way down, but — no, it stuck, and his lungs burned.  

He lay down and writhed. He crawled, he beat his chest. He couldn’t make noise. He knew tears streamed across his face from the strain, but even they were silent.

He staggered for the front door. Ms. Turnbull lived five houses down and suddenly that seemed to be miles. It felt like someone big, an adult, was standing on his chest with a foot on each lung. Gray sparkles irised toward the center of his vision, swallowing the world.

Then it occurred to him that he was not alone. 

The boy in the basket could help.

The boy would know what to do. It was a burst of luck to have this basket in the house. He felt as if he had been choking for months. He fell against it and shoved the lid off.

It was not a boy, crouched in the basket.

I’ll help you, it croaked. 

The words did not carry through the air but resonated in the center of Warren’s brain as if originating there, though its toadish lips moved to form the words. 

It added, On one condition.

Anything!

I will save your life so you can live a number of years and then, when that number is up exactly, I will take you to Hell. Do we have a deal?

The world looked no wider than a keyhole now. All Warren could see was the long tendrilled warts that sprouted instead of hair from the creature’s scalp. He was terrified of it, but he said Deal!

It drew closer. How many more years would you like to live?

In his head Warren screamed a number that seemed enormous. 

Twenty! 

3.

For the next nineteen years, Warren Ledlow lived a normal life. He played sports poorly and video games all right, he could have gotten better grades in high school, he learned to drive a car, he worked part-time at a knife factory, he managed to get serious with two different girls, one for five months and one for eleven, he got high sometimes, he thought about becoming a dog trainer, or a bounty hunter or a millionaire, sporadically he took classes at the county college, he couldn’t quite get money together for continued studies, or for a great car or better apartment — but he got through. He was okay.

And I’m alive, he thought. Which was not originally in the cards.

He told the first girlfriend that he would be dead if not for a helpful ghost.

“It had long, skinny arms. It reached into my mouth, right down my throat, and pulled out the pit. And it said I’d live twenty more years, borrowed time.”

He had hoped that finally telling the story would make it feel fun, like a joke. In truth, death weighed on him, it felt close, and had for nineteen years. Its finality. Its unknowns. He supposed death was okay if it happened after a very big number, like eighty. And if there was a Heaven. But nothing was certain — except death, which waited. 

The girlfriend didn’t laugh. She said, “You sound disturbed,” and it changed how she looked at him. So he didn’t tell the second girlfriend.

As for the thing in the basket, after the day he choked, he never saw another sign of it. So some days he was able to convince himself he had hallucinated. Not enough oxygen to the brain. The pit simply popped out. He wasn’t going to die when he was twenty-six.

He had night sweats, though, that twentieth year. He wished he knew the date he’d choked. If he’d choked on January 15 and was still alive on January 16 — well, a weight would lift. 

How heavy a weight? Immeasurable. Carrying this burden was the way he lived, had lived ever since. He couldn’t wait to turn twenty-seven. Then he would be out from under death, for the first time since eating a peach watching cartoons. He would wake up as a completely different person. He couldn’t even imagine who. A happy person. He couldn’t imagine being happy.

It was a sticky night in July, the year he was twenty-six, when he was visiting his mother and she left him alone for a minute. With the basket. 

“I need a beer!” she called. “You want one?”

“Sure!” he said.

Then he heard the dusty croak. It was unmistakable, even after decades, right in the center of his head.

It said, Two days left.

He spun to face the corner. Gray eyes stared from a gap in the weave, and he fled the room like a child.

4.

At the end of the visit, at the door, he asked his mother, in a voice pitched embarrassingly high, “Hey, I’d like a souvenir of Dad. Maybe I could take that old basket with me?”

She chewed on her thumb.

“Let me think it over.”

“Sure. I’ll come back tomorrow for it.”

He wanted to burn the basket.

“It’s a fifty-mile drive,” she said. “You’re not doing that two days in a row.”

“I don’t mind seeing my own mother twice.”

“I have lunch plans. And book club. Listen, forget the basket. It’s all I have to remember him by.”

“There’s a pipe. A kite.”

“I, uh, went through a thing where I sort of curated my memories of him. I only kept the basket. He belongs in the corner.”

Warren needed to destroy the basket. He said, “I’ll just borrow it.”

She frowned. “You’re sweating. Are you on someth— are you sick?”

“Just give me the goddamn basket.”

“I think you should lie down.”

“Okay, no. Sorry. I’ll go. Sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.”

5.

At home he got into bed telling himself he hadn’t heard any voice, he’d had a stress attack. Demons were not real, obviously. As a kid, a very stupid kid, he’d let this dumb idea into his head and it had taken over his whole life — and it wasn’t real. He wanted to go back in time and smack that kid.

As he fell asleep, he even convinced himself today’s panic attack was good news. The voice said two days, so all he needed to do was survive three days, and he’d become that whole new person.

In the morning, though, he woke with a fully restored terror of mortality. So he drove to his mother’s house and hid in a bush. 

When her car pulled out, he moved fast. He broke a window to get in, he turned over furniture, he poured her Jack Daniels and beer down the sink. He wanted to make it look like kids (he did take a swig of the Jack; he needed that) and he grabbed the wicker basket. Strangely, still kept empty — and he walked around the house dumping items into it. A thermos, a framed photo of his grandmother, a handful of pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, volume N-O of an antique encyclopedia. He used to steal like this when he was fourteen, break into houses around town and grab random items — nothing worth anything — to entertain himself by wondering how long before someone noticed each was missing. A lipstick? A fork? A clock? A harmless prank.

At home he put a sheet on the living room floor and cut the basket into pieces with a hacksaw. Whenever the pile of pieces got big enough, he fed them into the fireplace. It was a gas fireplace trimmed in cheap pink tile. The red wicker turned the blue flame purple, crackled, sent up white sparks. The apartment filled with the smell of wood burning — and occasionally surprising odors, as if he were cooking with exotic spices. The scent of spell ingredients, he decided with a laugh, that had been used to trap a demon in the basket. 

I’m setting you free, buddy. Now you can go home. So we’re even.

Occasionally the odor was horrendous. A garbage reek. Sour milk. An outhouse. When the putrid stench of a rotting corpse rolled out of the fireplace, Warren ran to the kitchen gagging, and stuck his face under cold water.

When the last of the basket turned into purple flame, he felt safe.

His mother phoned. Upset. The police had just left.

“You were robbed?”

Probably kids, she said. “They drank up my liquor, but you know what? The only missing things? One book from the old encyclopedia and a photo of my mom.”  She started to cry. “My favorite photo.”

“Maybe — maybe it’ll turn up,” he said. “What are kids going to do with that?”

“She’s gone forever. She’s just — gone.”

Warren’s grandmother had died years ago. He was surprised to hear emotion come so quickly to his mother. He had not taken her for . . . sentimental.

6.

A smell woke him. 

Sulfuric, like rotten eggs. He jumped from bed, but the fire alarms were silent. He turned on the lights. No smoke. He turned them back off. It was 3 a.m. 

He stood puzzled in the living room. The smell, strong enough to wake him, already was fading. He crossed to open a window to let out the last—

He froze. 

Something had moved in the fireplace. 

He wanted to believe it was an animal that had come down the chimney, but he knew better. Even before he saw the gray eyes. 

They peered out of a face blackened to charcoal. 

The creature blinked and flakes of burnt flesh drifted off its eyelids, into the room.

It said, One day left.

He fought his instinct to cower. 

He asked, Tomorrow? What time?

Today, at 4:34 p.m.

Warren said, I want to change our deal.

He felt an unexpected thrill, saying that, because — suddenly — he realized this was not only the moment he’d been dreading all these years. It was also the moment he’d been prepping for. He had imagined hundreds of times, maybe a thousand, exactly how he would negotiate if he ever “really did” meet a demon. All he had to do was get the thing to talk, and this time — this time, he would prove a formidable opponent.

The stiff metal curtain clanked as the demon unfolded from its crouch to step onto the pink hearth tiles. Soot wafted off it. Slight and charred and not three feet tall, it regarded Warren neutrally.

A deal is a deal.

I was six. It isn’t fair.

Nothing’s fair. Too bad. Although . . . Its flat lips stretched wider, perhaps a smile, until the burnt flesh cracked. Let’s see what you do with your last day.

7.

Warren spent the next two hours driving aimlessly, sick with anxiety. Eventually he decided he needed to be around people. People would distract him from reality.

He drove to the only thing open at 5 a.m. Adult Playtown on Route 41. It was a double-wide with a gravel parking lot, always a couple of cars. He’d been twice before, poked around the magazines and left, feeling weird. 

This time he ended up in back, in a booth, watching a girl through Plexiglas. But not even this distracted him completely. Fear and despair mixed into his lust. It hit him that being in love had been his favorite thing and he hadn’t got nearly enough of it.

“Any way we can get closer,” he asked, sliding a twenty into a slot

A few minutes later he was on a couch in a room still farther back and she was pressing her boobs to his face. She looked bored but he had an anguished urge to throw her down and take her and pretend she wasn’t. Go out with a bang, he thought.

He supposed he didn’t need to save his money, if he was going to die in eleven hours. He said, “I saw an ATM in front. How far can we go if I get a hundred dollars?”

She said, “Two hundred.”

Back in his car an hour later, he called in sick to work.

Raleigh’s Grill would open at 6:30. He got there early and through a window watched waitresses tie on aprons, the cook fire up the griddle. He tried to savor his rapidly fading post-girl calm. At 6:32 he was sitting at the counter ordering black coffee, waffles, bacon, sausage, a cheeseburger, and chocolate pie.

As he ate, he used his phone to post on Facebook that he realized he had a lot to be thankful for, and was glad about his time on Earth. He did this because he wanted everyone to remember him as a man who lived life to the fullest.

Except then he realized he did not know how he was going to be killed. If the demon made it look like a suicide, then this would read like a suicide note. He didn’t want to be thought of as a suicide. He wanted people to say there was no way Warren Ledlow killed himself, no matter how it looked. So he deleted the message and posted some funny memes instead.

He went to Murphy’s Bar and pointed to the top row of whiskeys, the ones he could never afford.

“Pour me the most expensive one.”

“Special occasion, War?”

The shot — a tiny shot — cost twenty-five dollars, but at least he found out what he’d been missing. It tasted like someone had dunked their cigarette in it. He chased it with a couple of Buds.

When he stepped back outside, the sky looked like rain. Maybe he’d be struck by lightning.

Around the side of Murphy’s, a man in rags accosted him, stinking of piss, with a suppurating cyst on his neck.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man said, “anything you could—”

“What’s your name?” Warren said immediately, taking out his wallet. “I’m Warren.”

“Bob,” the man said. It sounded like a lie.

“Hi Bob. You got someplace to go if it storms?”

“I do.”

That might also have been a lie, but Warren decided to respect the man’s privacy and handed him two twenties. “Bob” did a double-take.

“These are the wrong — you meant two singles—”

“Buddy, those’re yours.”

He felt good about it, driving away.

Suddenly he thought, Oh! — the demon is going to hand me a peach. That’s how. I take a bite, I choke. 

But if we can talk first . . . As he drove, he played through a whole imagined dialog, in which he was ruthless, clever, sardonic, and this boy-sized godlike bastard came to respect him.

It occurred to him that he should go to church, if Hell was coming up at 4:34. He hadn’t been inside a church, except to attend a wedding, in — nine years? But it was Monday. Churches were closed. 

Buzzed from Murphy’s, he went to the movies. As a kid, he loved going to movies buzzed. Well — he’d done it only a couple of times, but those had come to represent to him all that was decent in eighth grade (against all that was shit, which was the rest of it). So he watched a movie, and alone in the theater he felt half good, half sorry for himself.

When the movie let out it was 4:14. Twenty minutes left. It was raining, but not dramatically. No thunder, no lightning. The universe seemed to be gearing up to barely mark his exit. He thought he might go sit in a park to await — whatever.

Then, with a start, he remembered that the photo of his grandmother was in his apartment. 

He had to get there. Had to. If he died, his mother would come over to go through his belongings. She’d find that photo, she’d know he was the one who broke in — he was the one who stole it. He thought of her crying and he couldn’t bear it.

He raced home and burst in the door panting, glanced at the clock — 4:31. Three minutes! He had to get the photo out of here. The proof that he was a bad son. He should have died back then, that’s what she’d think, should have choked on the peach pit. And yeah, he thought, if I did she would have been better off, lived a better life, not stuck with a stupid kid. 

He dashed down the hall, down the stairs to the garage where the dumpsters were, he didn’t think he was going to make it, didn’t want to die with the evidence right in his hands, so he tossed the photo — it twirled through the air — and it landed atop the piled plastic bags and broken desk lamps and cracked flowerpots and loose banana peels. He saw it land in the dumpster, and only then did he stop running and double over, hands on his knees. He thought Oh, god, it’s going to be a heart attack. He wanted to get back upstairs and die on his carpet. 

Don’t go anywhere, said the voice. We’ll do this right here.

Slender fingers wrapped over the top of the dumpster and the creature pulled itself up from the trash. Its flesh was gray again, not charcoaled, but horrifically scarred by the burns.

I watched you all day, and I have a new deal to offer.

Relief washed through Warren like a flash flood.

Yes! Let’s talk!

Allow me to ask you some questions. First, how much more life would you like?

Warren grinned as he fought to catch his breath. This was it. His moment. 

Two thousand years — and I don’t grow old.

Ah! Two thousand, and you stay young. And healthy?

Yes!

And then you go to Hell.

No. Heaven has to be an option.

Sorry. I won’t renegotiate that part.

Okay, so if I have to go to Hell — he had gamed out this angle too — make it a million years. He could not imagine anything still existing in a million years. Even Hell. And I don’t age!

You have to age. It’s a law. But I can slow it. You will age one day per year. Would that suit you?

It sounded good. He said, Yes!

So what’s our deal, Warren Ledlow? Tell me, so I know there are no mistakes.

I live one million more years — human Earth years. It was important to stipulate, lest the demon try switching to dog years or years on Mercury. During that time, I only age one human Earth day per year. And no cheating by putting me in a coma, or framing me for a crime so I get a life sentence. I’m healthy as can be, free in the world, making my own choices. Then I go to Hell — if Hell still exists.

The thing sank into the dumpster until only its hands showed, gripping the edge. Warren got the impression it felt cornered.

I’ll have to ask for one condition in return. But you have to agree to it before you hear it.

No way.

So I take you to Hell right now.

Okay — okay. Will your secret condition interfere with my conditions?

Not at all. The demon pulled itself up enough to peer over the lip. It actually gives you more choice in your fate. And it will be easy for you to do. As easy as taking out the trash. Do we have a deal?

He thought a long time about what detail he might have missed. At last he said, Deal.

The thing chuckled.

It said, The condition is this. Starting now, to add each year to your life, you must murder someone. If you want to live your full million years, then murder a million people, one a year. If you get tired of life before the million is up, simply live a year without a murder, and I’ll come and take you.

I don’t want to be a killer.

Then don’t be one. You’ve got a year from today to decide if you really don’t want to be a killer. Oh, and Warren? One last favor I’ll do for you.

Angry, he said, I don’t want your favor.

You do. I’m going to let you take a peek at Hell. What you see will help you make your decision each year.

Warren backed away and turned to run but he fell. The creature had tripped him, somehow — and now he was looking at a crack in the cement of the garage floor an inch from his face and suddenly the crack was an orifice like an anus gaping wider to show him a nearly lightless landscape sprouting hair like dense tall grass that whipped and lashed to and fro in biting wind, that tangled and knotted, while struggling deep down in it were forsaken souls and over the plain crawled enormous spiders searching for them, and now Warren was tangled in the hair and here came a spider, chittering, chittering, its body bigger than a car, Warren could not be still because he was terrified, the way a child is terrified, he thrashed to get free but failed, and the hair whipping above parted and exposed him and when the spider loomed into view over him, it had his father’s face and it shrieked laughter and it vomited into his face, a boiling green sludge of poison some of which he couldn’t help but swallow.

A second later Warren was ralphing painfully on the garage floor, splashing his hands, but otherwise safe. 

Safe, he thought, thank God that wasn’t real.

Oh, that was real, said the voice from the dumpster.

8.

Warren Ledlow lucked out with his first victim. He was ten months into the year, stress mounting every day about what he had to accomplish. Then he witnessed a man collapse in a parking lot, and ran to help. Right away he could see the man was having a stroke, the cataclysmic kind no one recovers from, probably. Seized by a sense of wild luck, Warren covered the man’s mouth and pinched his nose.

For weeks he expected to feel sorry, but it never happened. He had helped that guy.

He decided he could use the next year’s murder to improve the world. In the news there was a dirty cop named Popov, recently acquitted. Guy planted evidence, got kids put away. Kids with disadvantages. Warren cased his home. The man lived alone, divorced, and Warren got into his fridge and poisoned the orange juice. 

It surprised him how good that murder felt. Righteous. He’d had run-ins with cops as a kid. He hated to think what Popov would have planted on him. He started to think he could do this forever, if he picked the right people. People who deserved to go down.

His third victim was nearly eighty, so already what did it matter, and he knew she was a bad person not from the news, but from his own life. She’d been his third-grade teacher. All the kids were supposed to write a report on a historic figure. He chose George Washington. At the time, his mother was seeing a real loud guy who — well, a real louse. The day all the other children handed in their reports, Mrs. Genitoro demanded he explain why he didn’t. No, Warren, I can’t hear you, Warren, maybe you better stand up and explain, that’s right, stand up and explain to me and all the other children, Warren, who all did their reports, what makes you so special that you didn’t have to bother.

He meant to smother her with a pillow, but when he saw her sleeping peacefully, every syllable of that speech crowded into his head as if he’d heard it yesterday and so instead, he put his hands around her skinny, corded neck and shook her awake, and choked her dead while looking her in the eye and saying “Remember me?” over and over.

For his fourth year, he murdered a boss who had fired him from a part-time job when he was trying to pay for college. He had not been stealing, or not as much as he stood accused of. The guy had yelled in front of about fifty customers and all his coworkers, “I gave you a shot and you robbed me, you worthless turd,” and the only comeback Warren had mustered was, “Zero evidence, old man.” That memory had stung him with shame every time it surfaced. He stabbed that boss through the lungs, five, six, maybe nine perforations, and while the guy still had light in his eyes, Warren lifted his wallet. He said, “I know you remember me.”

Warren was not as clean a killer as he thought. But he never was caught because the thing from the basket secretly performed many favors for him. Erasing fingerprints, picking up fibers, smudging the lens of a security cam. It was fun keeping Warren in business. The demon began to like Warren, and spoke with him more often.

Warren, of course, did not forget his vision of Hell. It spurred him to attend church, to volunteer at a soup kitchen, to apply himself at his job. He bought a gigantic pickup truck and used it to drive around handing out care packages, which he assembled himself, to the homeless. 

However, the demon was not bothered by his good deeds, as a deal is a deal, and frustration at their uselessness may even have contributed to the increasing cruelty of Warren’s kills. One day the demon emerged from the truck’s glove compartment to discuss the situation pleasantly.

I see you have become friends with Father Babbo at your church.

Yes. He’s a wise man.

And you told him about me.

That’s right. He’s going to help me break the deal.

No. He doesn’t believe you. Also, you didn’t tell him you’re a murderer.

Warren’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. I will.

I see. And then he’ll forgive you, because you bought this truck to pass out blankets?

He’ll tell me how to break the deal. He’s a holy man.

Warren, holy men are often a disappointment. Let me ask you a question.

Frustration cinched in Warren’s chest. Your questions always go badly for me.

This question will not obligate you.

So ask. You’re going to anyway.

If Babbo could send you to Heaven, but you had to go right this instant . . . knowing you could live a million years instead . . . would you go?

Warren paused before answering. The demon laughed.

There’s my answer! 

Warren frowned. You’re a moron, he said angrily. If Father Babbo could get me out of the deal right now, then in a thousand years there’ll be some other priest who can get me out, or in half a million years! Why should I throw away all that life?

You’re right, said the demon, I am chastened. 

He withdrew into the glove compartment.

Warren cursed and jammed down the gas and plowed through a mailbox and a rosebush and a dog and wanted to jump something. Fury overwhelmed him. He had never been so crazed with rage, up to that point in his life.

It was about forty years later that he killed Father Babbo. 

The homicide detective assigned to the case had seen a lot of awful shit in his time on the force, but when he walked into the home for retired priests and beheld that atrocity, he lost his lunch and the last dangling shred of his faith. 

Meanwhile Warren, as always after a murder, was in a great mood. All burdens had lifted, stress melted, the deal felt fair. In a few weeks, he knew, tension would return, and begin to ratchet steadily back upward. He would again feel every betrayal he suffered, every failure of the world, and yes, every year he felt these more acutely. But for now, he was the person he’d always hoped to be. He was happy. 

The end