March 4, 2026

Laughter & The Devil
​by Nemo Arator

A haunting literary horror story about childhood obsession, forgotten rituals, and the terrifying consequences of curiosity.

When I was twelve years old, it became my ambition to summon the Devil. I don’t remember what I intended to achieve by this, but my methods were clearly flawed, for the Lord of Darkness did never appear to me, no deal was ever made, and eventually I came to accept that anything I wished to achieve would have to be through my own effort, by the sheer force of will. After a while, my boyhood obsession with diabolism gave way to more typical adolescent interests, such as heavy metal, horror movies, horror novels, porn, drugs. First, I tried to be a musician, then I became a writer. Years passed, life went on.

Then something odd happened to me about twelve years later, the autumn I was twenty-four, something that happened at Sarak that I didn’t remember until after completing the novel. I remember waking one cold gray morning to find our motel room deserted: both Chow and Monty were gone. Since I didn’t know where they went or when they’d be back, I inexplicably decided to indulge myself the luxury of smoking a fat joint and taking a long hot shower, which I then did.

While I stood there, languishing in the comforting downpour, wallowing in that half-asleep half-awake sauna-like haze, I started mumbling incoherently to myself. Nothing unusual, but then I heard the sound of my own voice perfectly recite the words to a blasphemous little prayer invoking the Devil, something I read during one of my preteen researches, which I had completely forgotten in the dozen years since. With a detached sort of amazement, I marveled how easily and unbidden it came to my lips, how perfectly I remembered it after such a long time – retrieved from the void so whole and complete, an unprompted spontaneous outpour.

It wasn’t until after completing the invocation that I suddenly realized it might have been a dangerous thing to have done while being so deep in such a suggestible state. But it was too late: the moment after faltering out the last halting syllables, I felt the gong sound... a call had been made… and heard... and now it was being answered.

The bathroom didn’t have a fan, but there was a window right outside the bathroom door, which I had opened partway and left the door ajar so that steam wouldn’t excessively accumulate in here while I showered. But it did anyway, and in the moments after completing the satanic somniloquy, I felt a tendril of cold worm its way in from outside, piercing through all that sauna-like haze of steam and touch me and I quaked.
For with the cold, I felt the growing sense of presence, of something coming toward me, something distant nearing, huge and aetherial, like some great shaggy beast woken from its slumber by my summons and now it was coming for me, I could feel its growing, nearing, inexorable approach.

Quickly, I recanted, jerking around in terror, and shouted, “Jesus Christ, the son of God, was raised back from the dead! He did rise up! Get thee behind me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan!”

Immediately, I felt the rising cold pause and then begin to rapidly subside. I started shaking in relief. So near that it was, I was almost totally overwhelmed by the awesome power of its immanence. A few seconds more and I probably wouldn’t have even been capable of speech. It was almost right here – but now it was fading so fast it was gone.

I rushed to the window just in time to catch the barest glimpse of something: the fleeting shape of some lumbering enormity. I had my head pressed against the screen and I could see the area behind the restaurant, littered with detritus; beyond that, the empty street, a row of trees, some parked cars, a dumpster; there was nothing. And then I heard a voice echoing in my head – a dejected mocking, but something so horribly sinister in it that I needed no further confirmation I barely evaded something unspeakable.

I don’t remember what happened after that. Maybe I fainted. Chow must have returned with Monty and then we went to the restaurant and continued working. Things inevitably carried on from there. Somehow, I completely forgot the whole thing immediately afterwards – it was just too unreal. I almost met the Evil One, invited It right into my company; luckily, I revoked at the last second. What else could I do but go on with my life and try to tread more carefully?

I forgot about it, but in my notes of later that day, I found mention of an incident that happened two years earlier, when I was twenty-two and spent most of a week early that summer smoking crack with a junkie named Calen Mallow.

We had gone to this apartment he knew about, hoping to score another couple meager chunks of ready-rock, which we would then smoke in a gibbled frenzy of melting cubes and fire on through the afternoon; in the evenings, we snorted codeine and smoked hash by knife-tip in an attempt to blot the painful yearning that accompanies coming-down. We stood outside that building for some time waiting, smoking cigarettes in the shade of a huge oak tree until someone either came in or went out, and Calen ran over and grabbed the door before it shut, and I went in with him and down the stairs to the basement.

Outside the suite, Calen had first knocked on the door, and then started pounding on it, pounding and yelling in that horrible voice of his, and this went on and on until it was intolerable, and then finally he tried the knob and the door opened. Then he went into the suite and told me to come inside and close the door and not stand in the hallway and draw so much attention. So, I went in and closed the door, feeling vaguely disgusted to touch the handle.

I remember entering that apartment and thinking this place is a filthy rotten fuck-hole. It was like some degenerate’s hovel inside. Everything was soiled and broken. The furniture was smashed, the sink was full of dirty dishes, garbage was piled everywhere. The place stank, the sour reeking pungence of putrefaction. The walls were smeared with some dried brown substance. I could hear flies buzzing, and in the canted light, I saw forks and knives jammed in the ceiling. The entire place seemed intrinsically stained somehow. I felt a strange electric chill; I felt it immediately upon entering, but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t realize it then, not until after that morning at Sarak, but when I went into that apartment, I could feel, but did not know, that the Devil was here.

And that was all. I stood there motionless, just a few feet inside the door, while Calen looked around the kitchen and living room, then disappeared down the hallway. I heard the sound of a door creak open as he looked into that single room, then I heard it creak closed, and he returned.

I remember he had an expression on his face, or rather, the lack of expression, a sort of perfect blankness hardened in place, his eyes frightened pinpricks. And I knew he saw something in there. And I knew that I’d never know what it was, not only because I’d never ask, but also because he wouldn’t tell me. But I knew that it shook him, whatever it was. And being a junkie, which was the merest of the depravities he engaged in, if it was enough to shake him, then it must have been something.

“Who lives here?” I asked.

“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s go.”

So we left, and the rest of it played out from there.

The summer after Sarak, I decided to go camping one weekend and drop some acid and see what happened. I had a specific place in mind for the occasion, a certain point along the old telegraph trail whereat there’s an old church and cemetery that seemed like the perfect spot to get zonkered on psychedelic drugs and revel in the desolate splendor of the scene and whatever visions might come to me there. It’s a fair way from the beaten track and hardly anyone knows about it, so I thought I’d be safe.

I am not sure if I’d even taken the acid yet or precisely what happened after I arrived. My memory of it begins when the spasm of my knee jerked me back awake – I was sprawled out in the grass, the joint of the limb pressed into the ground as if I’d been crawling and had caught myself mid-crawl, a sleep crawl, like an injured slug flubbing along. And I could hear the most horrible sound, the most disgusting and pathetic sound I ever heard, it made me want to vomit; and I could feel my throat vibrating with that sound, and then I realized it was coming from my own mouth, and then I collapsed.

When I looked around, I saw that I was surrounded by old grave-markers, pillow-stones and uprights, all weathered and rounded with age. I could see my tent over by the trees at the edge of the burial ground, the open doorway of it black and drifting out with a dense gray smoke. For some reason, I was fearful of going anywhere near it. The air was leaden with a weighted stillness. I looked around, wondering if someone had found me alone out here and was playing some sort of horrible prank. But it didn’t seem to be, for there wasn’t a soul in sight.

When I looked back at my tent, I saw the Devil standing outside of it – a tall dark shape, a massive shadow, a cold eminence. I felt all the hairs on my body rise up and I couldn’t even move I was suddenly so terrified. Now truly I did feel like a worm on a hook, helpless against its fate, which was doom. The Devil stared down at me and I felt its gaze pierce through like a blast of frigid air – it could see everything, all the lust, anger, envy, and deceit, the whole self-made web I was mired in – I shriveled beneath the scrutiny of that infernal gaze, and its approval. In one hand, the Devil held a vicious-looking scepter-staff; in the other hand, it held a burlap knapsack, a twitching, kicking bag.

“Got someone’s soul,” the Devil said, a voice like grinding slate. “Another fool willing to give it all for their heart’s desire. But they got what they wanted, now I get what’s mine. Come inside, I want to show you something.”

The Devil gestured for me to come into the tent with it, and suddenly, I felt my body somehow rise to its feet and stagger-stumble over there like a clumsy puppet being dragged by its strings. I shambled across the threshold into the tent and the entrance flap fell closed behind me. Inside the tent, it had become a huge cavernous space, its interior expanded to unknown reaches; neither walls nor ceiling were detectable in the darkness.
The only light came from the fire flickering within the stone barbeque that was just a few feet inside the doorway. A big round frying pan sat upon the grill, loaded with all sorts of choice cuts and various organs: spleen, kidney, liver, brain, all nested in together and sizzling up into the air the sweet succulent aroma of cooking meat and spices.

The Devil walked over to the stove pyre and gripped the pan by its handle and flung the entirety of its contents into the shadows before him. He had hardly set the pan back upon the grill when a hideous pig-dog suddenly burst from the shadows behind us and charged after them, grunting and squealing, a revolting bullet-blur across the visible space and then disappear back into the shadows. A brief silence as it located the cast-off bits, then I could hear the noisy gristle gobble slop tear of grinding teeth gnawing meat.
The Devil had meanwhile upended the sack and dumped out a pale two-headed serpent onto the frying pan. The snake coiled and uncoiled immediately upon landing, then it flipped over and did this again, and again. We watched it squirm, trying not to burn, but it was futile, and soon the air filled with the noxious smell of burning reptile. I watched this, mesmerized by the helpless creature’s writhing flop, my stomach churning, unable to look away. It never tried to escape; the snake knew this was its fate. Soon, I saw charred holes scorched in its side, and before long, the albino serpent was reduced to a blackened, twitching, blistered piece of anatomy.

And then the Devil stepped forward and started hacking and slashing at it with a meat cleaver, chopping the serpent into pieces. Each severed section had its own autonomy, and writhed in agony anew, coiling and uncoiling. Its vile blood sizzled as it spilled, and it was so putrid that I gagged. I crouched down lest I keel over, my head was spinning, and I started sweating and shivering. I could hear the Devil’s voice speaking. It seemed to be explaining the terms and conditions, how this all came to pass, but it was vague and indistinct, I didn’t understand any of the actual details.

“Come with me,” the Devil said. We left the tent and went across the cemetery into the trees encircling the grounds. We proceeded into the bush a short distance before arriving at a small house that was hidden out there. (For a long time, I never knew this house was real, but six years later, at a funeral, someone told me there really is such a structure on that site, and when I went back, I saw that it was so.)

The lights were on inside, but the windows were covered by cataracts of frost, so that it was impossible to see through. I saw a fat black raven alight upon the leafless branch of a dead tree as we arrived, but it made not a sound, not even as we mounted the front steps and went to the door. The Devil knocked three times, and we waited briefly before someone came to answer.

The door opened and the Devil strode into the house and I followed. Inside, the main room was a haze of lingering smoke from incense and recently extinguished candles. Beneath the smoke, I could smell flowers, their pleasant reek abundantly provided by the many bunches and bouquets I saw clustered at the front of the room.

All the furniture had been moved to one side and the central space filled with rows of chairs facing the floral display. It was the north wall, and a quartet of green wreaths with colored ribbons hung from a metal stand behind a table that was covered with candles. A few somber people in black clothes shuffled about; they had the air of being the last few present after some social event was finished up and put away with.

Then I noticed those two women from the carnival were here. They were sitting together on a couch by the wall, and when I saw them, I started walking over. Their faces were blank as they watched me approach; neither appeared to recognize me. They both moved to the furthest end of the couch away from me without saying anything. I wasn’t sure if they did this to put distance between us or to make room for me to sit down – their faces were unreadable. I looked around and saw the Devil was nowhere in sight, so I sat in the space they had made and asked them what happened here.

“You don’t know?” said the brunette, leaning back into the blond, her pupils contracting. “You’re too late. You’re not even here right now.”

Then she turned and whispered something to the blond, and they both started laughing. I heard laughter over my shoulder as well, and when I turned back to look, I saw the ringmaster standing there, bellowing guffaws right at me. And then I heard laughter break out in exploding pockets all over the room, until finally it sounded like everybody was laughing. And the air was filled with the sound of laughter, flowing from everyone’s mouth except my own.

And then for some reason, I started laughing too – uneasily at first, but it grew and bloomed. Laughing with sick relief, but I had no idea why.

I looked around: there was nobody else here. I was alone in that abandoned house in the woods. And those piles of dust on the floor were surely a hundred years old.

                                                               💀💀💀

Nemo Arator is a writer from Saskatchewan. He studied Journalism at the University of Regina and worked at various odd jobs while writing his first book. He seeks gnosis through dreams, intoxication, and objective chance. This story is from his unpublished picaresque novel TO WHAT END.