Demons In The Elevator

This week they came to perform an exorcism on our elevator.  

It probably wasn’t a classic exorcism, with a Vatican trained practitioner. Eighteen months ago the elevator stopped working. One day it moaned and shook, shuddering to a pained stop on the third floor, and then stopped lifting, it would still lower, but it wouldn’t elevate. Once it got to the basement it stayed there. 

Twelve months ago, several men came. “We’re from Cartledge/Bobbins elevator service.” They said when I let them in. They were short and solid, serious, saturnine, dour and grimly determined. There were deep wrinkles around their eyes, and you could tell it wasn’t from smiling. Their fingers were short and beefy and could have been made of rebar. You could imagine those fingers crushing a cement brick, the fine gray powder sifting to the floor. 

A relentless, intense aura surrounded them, a power that didn’t come from hours in the gym, pressing and lifting and honing a physique. It was a strength that came from physical labor. It was the power needed to wrestle machinery and equipment into submission. 

These were men who worked on their cars or pickups not because the cars, or pickups needed repaired but because it was a hobby. It gave them pleasure.

Over the course of five days, they tore out the mechanism, a hydraulic pump and a series of long, shiny metal cylinders that would rise and lift when fluid flowed into the chamber below. An odd combination of chemistry, engineering, and magic. Everything was replaced with new machinery. We were upwardly mobile again.

Trouble started a few days later. There was an odd bounce at the 2^nd floor, almost like it jumped a couple of inches to the side. It made a sickening thud, the same sound you hear when you drop a whole roasted turkey on the kitchen floor. At odd intervals it would make the same old shudder, and shake, a ghostly moan rose from the depths, and it would need repaired. They would come and fix, and fuss and check, and then leave, and it would be stable, for a while.

Nobody could escape the conclusion that something more permanent was necessary.

The bell rang, and I answered the door. 

“We’re from Cartledge/Bobbins elevator service.” I took them down to the basement. There were three of them. Their hair varied from close cropped to shaved. They wore heavy duty boots, and sturdy, close fit canvas trousers. They had an air of increased gravity; you could feel the intensity of their purpose. They were there to do a job, and nothing was going to stand in the way.

“I wouldn’t plan on using it for a while.” One of them said, he seemed to be in charge. He looked to be slightly older. Though, it was impossible to gauge the age of these men, they could have been chiseled from rock, or molded from clay, and fired in a furnace until they were hardened and indestructible. Prometheus would have been proud.

 “If you need anything let me know. My name’s Tim.”

They all turned to look at me. Their faces were blank, and their eyes were bright, pointed and alert. At first, I thought they didn’t understand what I said. I realized they were thinking, running through various scenarios, trying to imagine a situation where they might need something from me. They couldn’t. Neither could I.

“OK, thank you,” the leader said.

For two days there was a low, hissing sound, odd flashes of light coming through the gaps around the closed elevator doors. Occasionally, a loud bang would echo through the building. Sulfur and whiffs of smoke, a fetid, foul sense of decay, older than mankind and darker than night, and an occasional curse, would climb the empty shaft, and leak out onto the solitary confines of the mostly empty building.

Throughout the day history stumbled across the warehouse. I turned on all the lights, everywhere, the minute I got to work. The shadows were alive, and I wanted them as far away as possible. Weird things happened. Or almost happened.

Images would flash across walls, and there was a heaviness that seemed to dim the light, like a cloud covers the sun. A brief tear, and a slight chill, and then it was gone. 

“Did you see that?” Jimmy asked. 

“I hope not.” Was the only answer.

One of our co-workers went to use the restroom on the first floor, and never came back. And then there were two. Nobody wants to go look for him. A graven image was burned into the wood of the first floor, right next to the fire exit, in the stairwell by the elevator shaft.

At the end of the second day the men came up to the third floor, and said the elevator was “fixed.” The assumed leader had a piece of gauze taped to his head, slightly above the temple, almost straight above his left eye. 

They looked weary and seemed to be slightly smaller than they were 29 hours before when they turned to look at me in the basement.

It was disconcerting when they used the stairs. I watched as they carried buckets and bags of tools back to their vans. It was slow, and methodical, stooped and pained, their feet shuffled, dragging slightly. Each step seemed to be more work than the one before, leaving little trails in the dust that seemed to settle on every surface over the previous day. I decided not to offer any help next time they came.