Or, slightly more spoilery title: Demon in the Attic.

This was originally a bit of college writing that started out as an exercise exploring perspective--we started out writing in first person, then switched to third, then second. From there, I spent the rest of the quarter workshopping and revising it to this version. I had a lot of people say they wanted to see more, or watch it as a TV serial, that kind of thing. I never did get part 2 finished, I couldn't quite get it to work.
Let me know what you think, your comments and critique are always welcome! I hope you enjoy!

This and many other stories and things can be found on my DeviantArt gallery! Go check that out for more of my works!
Pasting below, hopefully it will work, DeviantArt formatting is weird.

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The beam of my headlamp played over stacks of stuff, as if I were in the storeroom for a curio shop, the type with things in jars of formaldehyde and mummified bodies for sale. There hadn’t been any mummies yet, but there had been boxes of suspicious-looking bones. “Dammit, Dad, you just had to leave me to sort through all this, didn’t you?” I muttered, punching a box of detritus. The resulting cloud of dust stung my eyes—at least, I could pretend that was the cause of my tears, as I took another breath of stale attic air filtered through a bandanna. Better attic air than the smell of Dad’s corpse, rotting in his bed—a gallon of bleach and three bottles of deodorizing spray hadn’t been enough to completely get rid of that stench, even after two weeks with the windows open.
I had my sights set on the attic window; if I could move enough junk, and get the curtains out of the way, it might be light enough to sort through Dad’s collection, keeping his paintings and selling off or throwing out the creepy stuff.
Moving to the window, I stumbled and tripped over something. At first, I thought that it was a bent table leg or similar; then I regained my balance and saw that it was an actual leg. Two of them, arms, a body—SOMEBODY!
I jumped back, hitting a wall of junk so hard it knocked headlamp askew, the beam jerking wildly. My hand flashed out, coming back with a stout metal candlestick from the heap. With my heart and stomach fighting to get out of my mouth first, I’d take anything that would help fend off this Thing. It wasn’t a person, not exactly. Humanoid, but not human, and it wasn’t moving—a weird manikin?
I forced myself away from panic, straightening my headlamp with one hand, the other clamped on my weapon as I looked over this latest find. The Thing’s skin was dark red and black, textured like short fur. The legs ended in cloven hooves, sharp ones. It was naked, and starved in appearance—emaciated waist, ribs like rows of blades pressing the skin outwards, shrunken curves that hinted at a feminine form. If it had been a bit more detailed, I might have written it off in disgust as a lovedoll from a very strange fetish shop. But that didn’t fit; the body had no openings in the right places for that, not even a belly button.
My headlight beam found the Thing’s face, which tapered into a slight muzzle like a monkey or cat. It had four horns, two curved like a ram’s, two straight like a gazelle’s. The eyes lay closed as though this Thing had gotten comfy and taken a nap in its moth-eaten armchair. I froze, watching to see if the nostrils would flare or the chest rise and fall with breath; it didn’t, though I watched until spots popped in front of my eyes, and remembered to breathe for myself.
“What the hell are you?” I muttered, which was when the Thing’s eyes opened, red lids pulling back to show two oddly beautiful eyes on the otherworldly face. They looked like flowers, each with five pale violet petals set against a black background; there was no pupil at the center of those floral irises.
This was no glassy doll stare either; the eyes focused right on me.
There was no thought, just action; the candlestick was already cocked and ready to go, it was gone and swung before my brain could get in a second opinion. WHACK! The blow knocked the Thing clear out of its chair, to tumble into the junk heap. I was off like a pinball, yelling as I ricocheted off stacks of stuff in a hectic dash for the door. I caromed down the hallway, crashing into my room before my eyes had even fully adjusted to the light. I tossed the candlestick aside, trading up for the compound hunting bow from my closet and six field tip arrows. I spun around, bow drawn, expecting the Thing to be in the doorway and ready to pounce. It wasn’t; the sound of sobbing punctured the bubble of fight-or-flight that had crowded out other thoughts.
“I’m s-sorry, Mistress Shaleel…” The voice was like a cracked flute—feminine, soft, but hoarse from disuse. There was a slight, untraceable accent to it.
I stepped out into the hall, bow still drawn. The sobs were coming from the attic; the Thing was just inside the doorway, but hadn’t come out. “What did you call me? How do you know my name?” I asked, nerves as tight as my bowstring as I moved down the hall.
“Mistress…I was summoned to serve Matthias Etuin Shaleel…”
My dad. My hand tightened on my bow; the Thing continued speaking: “N-now that he is dead, my contract has passed to Taliky Asera Shaleel—You.”
I stepped forward, bow at full draw, my back against the wall opposite the attic door. The Thing was there, kneeling on the dusty attic floor with its long tail curled nervously into its hands. “Who are you? And what?” I demanded, framing the creature’s face in the hoop and pins of my bow sight.
Its eyes widened, and it scrambled back with a cry of fear “Paraphernalia! My name’s Paraphernalia, I’m…” The creature choked on its words for a moment, and then curled up into a ball and put its hands over its horned head. “A demon…”
“As in, a for real, from Hell, demon? You had better have a good reason for me not to send you back home,” I said, biting into each word so that my voice wouldn’t shake.
“NO!” The demon screamed. “Hell isn’t home! I was an angel, Lucifer deceived me—all of us! We didn’t realize he meant to fight the Almighty…And then we got damned to Hell for it!” The demon looked up at me, and I saw tears running down its—her—cheeks, leaving trails in the dusty fur. “When I was summoned, it was my only way out of that place…Please, Mistress, I will serve you until you dismiss me, or perish—just please, don’t send me back to Hell!”
“…If you ever call me ‘mistress’ again, you’re gone,” I said. I was still more than tempted to let the arrow fly; here I was, a Christian woman, looking at an actual demon. The only thing holding me back was her childlike demeanor, and that she was just so pitiable in the way she cowered. “You know my name, use that,” I finished.
She nodded, slowly leaning forwards onto her knees and wringing her tail like a child clinging to a security blanket. “Y-your father told me…said your mother picked it out before she died, she liked it because it rhymed with ‘sky’…”
“Okay, we need to talk about that, and I need a drink,” I said, stepping away from the door a bit. “Come on—unless there’s some reason you can’t leave the attic?” I felt a weird twinge at the back of my head as I said it, but that faded quickly and I moved on. The demon stood up, still kneading her tail between her fingers. She was about my height, 5’8” or so—well, that was if you measured to the top of her head, the straight pair of horns added another foot and a half. They brushed the doorframe as she ducked through. We made our way downstairs, with the demon in front. I followed, relaxing the bow from full draw, though I kept the arrow nocked.
“Have a seat,” I said, indicating the stools at the bar-style counter of the kitchen. The demon complied, but not before I felt another of those twinges, like a guitar string vibrating against the inside of my skull.
“I can mix a variety of liquors…” She offered, settling onto the stool and letting her legs swing a bit. Her hooves tapped the linoleum floor in passing.
“Then I’d have a hangover on top of my current headache. I meant a drink of tea,” I replied, setting my bow on the counter. I still didn’t trust the demon, but I had a supply of kitchen knives on hand if I needed them for defense. As an afterthought, I added “And maybe food for you? You look starved.”
“I don’t need to eat or drink,” the demon said. “I could fill out, if you prefer?”
“Fill out?” I asked, and put my hand to the back of my head as I felt another twinge.
She nodded, drawing in a breath. It sounded like dumping a few pounds of Jell-O and raw steak into a trash bag as her guts regrew and squelched into place. “Better?” She asked, stroking a hand over her now fuller belly.
“I’m going to say ‘yes’,” I answered with a grimace, filling my
mug from the tap to distract myself from the burst of nausea. I threw in the teabag, and put it in the microwave to heat. “My dad summoned you?” I asked, turning my whole attention to the demon. She nodded, her eyes sinking towards the floor as she fidgeted. “How? And why?” I asked, peeling away the bandanna from my face. I smelled like dust and rat crap, and the demon was worse, attic stench and a hint of something burnt.
“He was a wizard,” she said. “And he wanted me to take the place of a woman, he spent years trying to teach me how to look and act like her…Apparently, I wasn’t very good at it. When he saw that it was going nowhere, he let me stay in the attic, and never came back for me.”
Okay, wizards were apparently as real as demons, and Dad had been one. Add that to the list of things he never mentioned. “Who did he want you to replace?” I asked, even though I had a sneaking suspicion I knew.
The demon’s face wrinkled and squished, putty worked by invisible hands. Her skin changed color to a soft tan, her cheeks filled out a little; when she opened her eyes, they were human, the same hazel color as mine. It was a face I recognized from family photos, the occasional old home movie. My eye twitched, and I felt a shiver pass back and forth along my spine and limbs. “That’s my mother…” I said in a choked whisper.
Mom’s death in childbirth had been what turned Dad into a permanent recluse, of course he’d want to try and…recreate her. I wanted to run out of the kitchen, or hit something, or dig up Dad’s grave and demand some answers out of him. Instead, I pulled my tea out of the microwave with a shaking hand, mixed in some juice and ice, and then drank down two still-scalding mouthfuls like a frat boy with cheap beer. The demon’s face had reverted to normal, and she was watching me with worry in her black and purple eyes.
“I’m not gonna shoot the messenger,” I said, taking an ice cube out of my glass and sucking on it to ease the burn in my mouth. “I’d yell at Dad about this, but he never talked much even before he died in his sleep.”
“He loved you a lot…” The demon said. “He was always talking about you.”
“He…?” I laughed, bitterly. “What did he know about me? I hardly ever saw him, he was like a painting on the wall when he came out of hiding! My grandparents had to raise me, teach me to speak and stuff, because dad didn’t say a word until I was seven!” I slammed my mug on the counter, grabbed my bow, and stormed out to the backyard. Once there, I drew back the string, but didn’t fire—my arms were shaking too much, even if I could see the targets through tears that felt as hot as near-boiling tea. The string slipped from my fingers, and the arrow flew, thumping into the tight woven Kevlar netting I used for a backstop.
The tentative tap of hooves behind me announced the demon’s presence. I loosed two more arrows, nothing but net. I nocked a fourth before turning around. “What?!” I demanded, wiping my eyes on my shoulders.
“Your dad…gave me something for you,” the demon said slowly. “I’ll give it to you when you think you’re calmed down and ready, I just thought you should know.”
“Give,” I said, lowering my bow. It took me four tries before I managed a deep breath without it snagging on pent up emotion halfway through. I figured I might as well rip all the bandages off my old wounds, let the frustration bleed out, and then work from there. “I won’t hit you—but don’t get between me and the punching bag.” The back of my head vibrated again. “Rrgh, what is that twinge?!”
“The magical link,” the demon said. “Every time you give me an order, the enchantments resonate between us.” She paused. “Are you sure you want his last message for you?”
“Again, I thought that I’d already heard that and dealt with it when the lawyer went over the Last Will and all—‘the estate is yours, do whatever you want with what’s in the attic. If there’s any paraphernalia you want to keep’…” I stopped talking as I realized what I’d said. “That was an audio message, so I didn’t think…He meant you, didn’t he?”
She nodded, reaching up to one of her horns. She flexed, and there was a crunch and crack as the bone bent and split open. Before I could even ask what the hell she was doing, she had pulled out a small silvery capsule from inside her broken horn, and held it out to me—a USB stick, labeled in sharpie with my name.
“Holy—! Are you okay? I mean, what…?” My hand shook as I took the little device; my eyes were on Paraphernalia’s horn. As I watched, the bony material softened like clay, and she pushed it back together. A moment later, it was mended again. “Was that seriously the best place you could think of to keep something safe?” I asked.
“His idea, actually,” she replied, rubbing her horn to smooth its surface. “It seemed like a good one, very secure—fireproof, too. Hopefully, you didn’t damage that little thing when you hit me earlier.”
“Sorry,” I said, letting out a sigh. “I freaked out, overreacted.” I bit my lip for a moment before adding, “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
She nodded. “My horn deflected most of it, and this body can’t feel much pain.”
“Well…good. Sorry again,” I said, and headed back inside, my fingers clenching around the metal and plastic of the flashdrive. “I’m going to go have a look at this in private—can I trust you to stay out of trouble, Para?”
She gave a strange twitch at that. “What did you just call me?” She asked, tipping her head to the side in confusion.
“Sorry, Paraphernalia, I was just shortening it and that’s what came out.”
“No, I don’t mind the nickname, it just…It didn’t resonate the enchantments. No compulsion to listen, like when you use my name.”
“We’ll talk more about those enchantments later,” I said, retrieving my mug and drinking some of the tea that had now mellowed out in temperature. “I wouldn’t think you’d want some magical compulsion messing with your brain or whatever…”
She shrugged. “It’s not that bad, really. And, given the choice, I’d much rather stay here and serve than go back to Hell.” She shivered, her tail curling up into her hands.
I bit my lip and headed for the downstairs office. I paused in the door. “…Did my dad go to Hell for summoning you, or mucking about with magic?”
“I don’t think so,” Para said. “From what I could tell, he was a good Christian man. Even if summoning me counted as sinful, he had six years to ask forgiveness.”
“Okay. Thanks, that…means a lot,” I said. She nodded and walked away. I closed the door of the office and took a seat at the computer. “Let’s see what you’ve got to say, Dad,” I muttered, plugging the USB stick in. There were only two files, one with my name, and one marked for Paraphernalia. I was tempted to see what Dad had left for her, but decided she had as much right to her privacy as me to mine.
A video opened on screen, showing my dad sitting in the same chair I was now occupying. His cheekbones pressed against the skin, and he kept having to brush his graying hair out of eyes as glossy black as obsidian. “Taliky, my beautiful daughter…you look more like your mother every day,” he said, and I had to turn up the volume to hear it. “I’m so proud of you, seeing you grow into the wonderful person you are. That’s why it’s been getting harder and harder for me to talk to you, to tell you about my deepest shame about how I…I killed your mother.”
Dad paused a moment, which gave me the time I needed to process what he had just said. I slammed both of my fists on the desk, making the laptop bounce up. “YOU DID WHAT?! You scaly pore breathing son of a…!”
“Not directly—not murder…may as well have been,” the recording continued, largely unperturbed by my outburst. “It was my suggestion that we not look into the womb with ultrasound. Whether you were a boy, or girl, or twins, I wanted it to be a surprise…Your mother agreed. She never got the tests that would have…have warned the doctors…” He was crying now, struggling to get the words out. “Giving birth ruptured several large blood vessels in her womb. Her vitals dropped so fast that by the time the doctors
realized…It was too late, they couldn’t bring her back.”
My whole body had gone numb. I slumped back into my chair, and the office was silent for a moment, broken only by my dad’s heaving sobs. “Dad…” I said, so soft it hurt.
“It’s haunted me every day since…I look at you, laughing, playing…It could have been the three of us, your mother and I could have had 50, maybe even 60 years of marriage…And because of me, that can never happen, I destroyed my wife after only six years of marriage, and you never even got the chance to meet her, your mother…because of me, all me…How could I ever ask your forgiveness for that?”
“I…” My mouth was dry. Dad was apologizing over and over, his face buried in his hands and slender fingers digging into the sides of his head. “Dad, I got over mom being dead a long time ago, and I would have turned out just fine with one parent, if you had ever been there…” I said, as he reached out and turned off the camera in the recording.
That was when a slideshow started up on the screen. Pictures of me, dozens of them, played out as a collage alongside video clips and paintings. Me learning to walk, to talk, growing up. Dad had grouped the images by subject—archery, hiking, biking, my birthdays, and more. A lot of them were taken from far away, in the background; all those times I thought Dad had been hiding away from the world and me, he had been there, lovingly recording my life. My tears poured hot and fast, splashing onto the desk. I folded my shaking hands, as though in prayer, and felt the salty rain on them. I spoke softly, hoping the words would carry to Heaven, or wherever Dad had ended up. “Dad…I forgive you. You were there, I just wish…just wish I had seen you more, I wish you hadn’t felt you needed to hide from me…”
The slideshow ended with my dad’s final message, in the ornate and curling brushwork of a painter: I love you so much.

Para was waiting in the kitchen, stirring a mug of tea. She jumped up, hooves clattering, as I came in. “Sorry! I, I just wanted a small drink—the tea smelled nice,” she said in a rush. “And I retrieved your arrows while I was at it…” She added, gesturing over to my bow; the arrows I’d shot were back in the mounted quiver.
“Thanks. Dad had a message for you too, if you want to see it,” I said, tipping my head in the direction of the office. “I don’t know how familiar you are with computers…”
“I can manage,” she said, trotting off with her steaming mug in hand. “Um, are you coming?”
“Do you want me to? I figured you deserve your privacy.”
She looked down into her mug, swirling its contents so she would have an excuse for not looking at me. “It…it’s almost as if you like me…” She murmured.
“Still working on that, but for the moment, I’ve decided not to be a total jerk if I can help it,” I said, and managed a faint smile, which Para returned before closing the office door.
While she looked at whatever message Dad had left her, I went up and took a shower to get the attic funk out of my skin, and wash away the tear stains. Half an hour later, Para came out of the office with damp stains in her facial fur, and I suggested she wash up.
When she was dried off and smelled like raspberries rather than attic funk, I showed her to one of the spare bedrooms. It had seldom seen use, but at least it was better than the attic in terms of air quality and lighting.
“I don’t need to sleep,” Para reminded me, one hand absently stroking over the blanket that the bed was made up with.
“Maybe not, but you should still have a space to yourself. There’s bookshelves, a computer if you want to use it…And the bathroom’s through that way, for when the tea makes it through your system…” I cleared my throat. “So…yeah.”
“You didn’t have to do this for me, you know,” Para mumbled, moving over to the desk chair, and negotiating her tail into a comfortable spot with the backrest as she sat down.
“In the vein of ‘not being a jerk’, I’m not going to consign you to the attic if you don’t want to be up there—and if you do want to be up there, I guess that’s your choice.”
“I-I’ll stay here. It’s…nice.”
“Alright,” I said with a yawn. “It’s been a long day, I’m gonna go sack out. See you in the mornin’, I guess.”
She nodded. “Yes, and…thank you.”

I saw Dad, moving across the wall like a living painting, among all the other pictures of me and Mom. There was only the one picture of Dad among all the others, the one that moved. He was running away from me, and I followed, calling after him. He turned a corner, and when I rounded it, I saw him dancing with Mom. It was the happiest I had ever seen him, there in his tux, her in her wedding gown.
As I watched, mom faded away, even though dad tried to hold onto her. She was gone. Dad turned to another woman, with Mom’s face framed by horns. She too slipped away. Dad looked over at me, and his sadness broke my heart too. Before I could say anything, or move over to him, Mom came back, wearing a dress that shone with light and woven gold. Dad looked up at her, cried out in joy as he lifted her up in an embrace and swung her around.
Mom and Dad glided over to me, embracing me in arms as warm as a perfect shower, and then they were gone, or at least I couldn’t see them anymore.

I woke to a deep rumble, and an insistent beeping from two different points in the house—the power was out, and the battery backups on the computers had come on to compensate. I could cheerfully have slept through the storm, if I didn’t have to deal with the battery backup chorus. I fumbled with my phone, wincing at the bright screen. It took a moment for my brain to assign any meaning to the numbers “6:12”. Why don’t power failures ever happen at reasonable hours? I thought, dragging myself out of the warm sanctuary of my bed, grabbing a headlamp and a pair of fleece pants.
Grumbling, I turned off the upstairs backup, and then went downstairs to deal with the one that powered the office and guest room computers. It was placed so that I wouldn’t have to intrude on the guest room…which didn’t seem to be a problem, since the door was open and Para wasn’t inside. I wondered briefly if she was scared of the storm, the way the house shook with the thunder. Would she be hiding somewhere like a kitten, cowering at the sound of nature’s vast roar? Probably not, amusing as the thought was.
“Paraphernalia?” I felt the now-familiar twinge in the back of my mind, and groaned—I hadn’t meant to send a magical summons to her, wherever she was. It just didn’t feel right to have that sort of control over someone, demon or otherwise. I heard the front door open, and the tap of hooves in the entryway came in along with the pelting of the rain outside.
“Sorry! Do you need me right now, or should I dry off?” Para called.
“Didn’t mean to summon you, I was just wondering where you were! My bad,” I replied, moving to the entry hall. Para was there, utterly soaked and dripping. “Um…are you okay? I hope I didn’t say anything that sounded like an order to stand in the rain…”
“I’m fine,” Para said, drying herself with a ragged towel she had set by the door. “And no, it wasn’t anything you said…” She started wringing her tail through the towel, it looked like she had caught a snake in the folds of cloth. “It’s just, the rain was…nice? Cold, but pleasant…It’s been a long time since I felt anything like that.”
“You don’t have to stop enjoying the rain on my account then—sorry for interrupting you,” I said. “Want to enjoy it together for a bit? Your choice—I know you just got dry.”
She blinked, considering for a moment. “Alright. I can always dry off again…”
“We have raincoats and stuff, if you want them,” I said, grabbing
mine and pointing out the spares in the closet. Para politely declined.
Stepping out the front door, I was beset by wind-blown droplets that were mounting a siege on the house. The yard was cast in a dark green light, punctuated by camera bulb flashes of blue lightning. Para followed me out, closing the door once her tail was clear of it. “…Dad and I used to come out here to watch storms all the time,” I said, words almost lost to the endless barrage of raindrops on the ground and porch roof. I wiped the porch swing clean of rain and windblown debris, but it was still damp enough that the seat of my pants soaked through. “You don’t have to join me, you know,” I said, looking up at Para. “What were you doing before I interrupted?”
“I was…” Para’s eyes darted to the side, and her tail curled up into her waiting hands—her equivalent of a blush. “…Dancing…” She said, taking her turn to nearly be drowned out by the storm’s endless drumming.
I blinked; that wasn’t something I had expected from a demon, but then again, the whole demon and magic thing was new to me. “I can go back inside, if you’re embarrassed about me watching,” I said.
“No, I just…I’m not used to people taking the time to be nice to me,” Para said, shifting awkwardly from hoof to hoof. She started to say something else, her eyes wavering, never quite making direct contact with my gaze. Pushing past that, she stepped off the porch and into the downpour, turning her face up like a satellite dish tracking something far away. For a moment, she just stood there, and then she began to dance, little by little, as some unheard beat suffused her soul like water soaking through fur. In moments, she was almost flying, hooves kicking high as she spun and leapt, splashing down and then following the spray of water back up.
I sat back in the swing to watch her dance, and kicked off to get the old wooden bench moving. I had always sat in the middle, Dad on one side, and a space on the other that was never filled, but always reserved. Now there were two seats reserved. A few drops of water slid down my cheeks, drops the storm hadn’t put there.