[ WP ] You 've summoned a demon to assist you with your nefarious deeds . A hole opens in the floor , revealing your new helper . `` Tell me your name , '' you command . An hour later , it 's still not done making the incomprehensible sounds of its name .

A plain, battered black notebook sits on the floor, next to a carefully drawn, complicated diagram of stars, crosses, and symbols of a long-dead language. Above it hovers a grubby teenage boy covered in blood. Not his, of course. Sheep's, from the ewe he stole and slaughtered from Abel's flock, in which he's coated his father's old golden pocketwatch in, and placed at the center of the white chalk star. *A catalyst to call forth the shadows, * father had jotted down to the diagram. Through all his research, they had determined gold, the most arcane and noble of all the elements, would bring what they would need. 
 
 For the first time in months, Nick lets himself smile. This was his father's life's work, and now, the proud son is about to fulfill the brilliant father's dying wish. Nobody had understood this work. Not his mother, who had left when she had discovered what her husband really did in his study. Not Father Benedict, who had cursed and condemned them, and tried, as hard as his tiny little brain would allow, to shut down their study, to shut the door on all the knowledge their work would have brought, just so he could have a little shred of hope for his *eternal soul*. Not the people of Windermere as they smashed down the door of their house and crushed the skull of the `` the wicked sorceror.'' 
 
 They had downed Adam Miller. They did n't think about the boy hiding in the closet. 
 
 For nigh on four months now, Nick had bided his time. He let the village folk think they had smashed his brains out along with his father and now they would *know* the knowledge they had tried to stamp out with his father. 
 
 The smile grew wider as he finished the diagram and placed his bloody palms and screamed out the incantation. 
 
 First, he sees a flash of blue light, and all the blood from his hands and clothes siphon off, going towards the golden pocketwatch. And then there is a hand, black and gnarled, clawing its way through the dusty wood panels to wrap each spindle-like finger around the gold catalyst, and with a mighty crack and splinter, bursts a great, terrifying demon with bloody eyes, wings like a bat's, and a human face that would have been handsome had there had not been ink-like liquid pouring out its nostrils, its mouth, its ears, out of every orifice. 
 
 Nick feels his heart pounding, beating faster than it ever had before, both in exhilaration and terror at what he brought out of the ground. *I have done it, Father. Our diagram worked. And in your honour, I shall be the recipient of the great and terrible knowledge we sought with our lives. * 
 
 Out of his excitement, he nearly forgets to greet the beast. Cursing himself, he scrambles to remember what was written in the book about protocol with demons - after all, the emissaries of hell were as cruel as they were knowledgeable, and speak out of line with them, and he would be reduced to nothing but a pile of ash. 
 
 `` O, great malignance from the fiery circles!'' he calls to the demon. `` I am your summoner.'' There is a lump in his throat now, the fear starting to overcome his initial excitement. *Calm, calm, dammit -* `` T-tell me your name!'' 
 
 He barely has time to chide himself for sounding like a fool schoolboy before the demon opens his mouth - *so, so many fangs*, he thinks for a split second - and shrieks. 
 
 There is no rhyme or reason to the sounds it is making, more like the guttural growl of a feral animal. It is terrible and incomprehensible and it burns into his mind. Is this how the words of the ancient language are said? 
 
 He does not know for how long it goes for, only that there is blood coming out his ears now too, first red, then ink-dark. Sometime in between the summoning and the darkness he sinks to the ground, and then there are claws tangling up his legs and dragging him, somehow melting past the floor, and then he is weightless, in a black pit of nothing, still with those terrible noises filling his ears. 
 
 Before the shadows fills his mind he thinks, *perhaps there are some things the human mind was not made to know. * 
 
 -- -- 
 
 This ended up a lot more serious than the prompt suggested. Not very happy with this, but I think I'm pretty rusty with writing. Need to get back into the groove.
