Demon

The Demon

The Demon in a host body.
biological information

Species	Demon (Cat as host body)
Gender	Male
physical attributes
Eye Color	Gold (in host body)
Hair Color	Raven (in host body)
relatives

"I think her soul is pretty. Truly, purely beautiful..."

―The Black Cat describing Ellen

The Demon ( 悪魔, Akuma), more commonly known as the Black Cat (黒猫, Kuro neko), is the tritagonist as well as the subsequent villain of The Witch's House and Diary of Ellen.

He appears as an unnamed talking cat that Ellen speaks with in order to save the game. If the game is completed without saves, you get an extra dialogue with the black cat alongside other changes to Ellen's room. The no-save run itself does not change anything story-wise, but it does explain more backstory. It officially reveals that the cat was actually a demon whom Ellen had a contract with, from which her powers originated.

Personality[]

The Black Cat seems perpetually neutral about the abnormal situation in which the player participates. Sometimes he even cracks jokes, mentioning that he's following the player "for laughs." This is perhaps because he knows the player will win no matter what.

Although he seems quite cruel, he mentions how it was mean of you to kill the white flower, though this may be mere ironic jest. He also genuinely worries about the player sometimes, telling them it wasn't a smart idea to come into the house. As a demon, he is true to his contract and will protect it no matter what, which may make him quite reliable.

He also mentions his liking for a cat's body, which he uses as his form on earth since demons do not have true forms.

"Cats are just so elegant. I quite like a black cat's body."

"It'll be a pity when you're gone. Pretty cat bodies like these ain't just lyin' around."

The Black Cat

Appearance[]

In his host body, the demon takes the appearance of a black cat with golden eyes. In that form, Ellen describes his voice to be like a young boy.

In his true form, he is a ghostly purple haze.

History[]

Origin[]

Born at least several centuries before the events of the series in a colder region of Europe, he lived a rather unassuming life alongside his mother before they were murdered by an unknown assailant. The turmoil and rage he felt upon death granted his soul rebirth as a demon. It wasn't long before the demon met The Crow, where it taught him the laws of his existence and other general rule of thumb. The Demon spent an unknown amount of time analyzing and eating people before meeting his first Witch. It remains unspecified how long he stayed with his first contractor before meeting Ellen.

The Diary of Ellen[]

Meeting Ellen[]

It was another day for Ellen staring out of her window when she saw a black cat 'hunting for mice'. This particular cat only died a short time later, coincidentally right in full view of Ellen's window; prompting her to sneak out of the house and give the cat a proper burial. Unbeknownst to Ellen however, was that her mother happen to have returned home early that day. At her wits end, Ellen's mother ultimately never came home one evening. This left her father as a husk and caused him to completely shut himself in his room, commonly smoking pipe. Sometime later while Ellen was preparing to change her bandages, a shift in the room over causes her to investigate the noise. It turns out to be her mother, though in suspiciously expensive clothing and shoes she'd never seen before. Ellen comes to the conclusion that she's about to be abandoned once more, and with her already growing hatred for her mother, violently stabs her to death.

Presumably from the destruction and clutter, Ellen's father bursts into the room and upon the sight of his spouse, rushes to her now blood-soaked corpse. Still having not gazed at Ellen once, she sputters into a outburst and stabs him too. Ellen begins to have an paroxysm of mania over her circumstances when a poorly timed gust of wind from outside blows a lit pipe onto an article of clothing, igniting it. With the house now drenched in flames, she has no choice but to flee onto the streets, finally collapsing over trash in a random back alley. While contemplating what to do, a talking black cat suddenly greets her. The black cat thanks her for feeding him; he was just at death's door from starvation. As gratitude for her parents souls, the cat presents Ellen with two options: be bound with him by contract or stay to die in the slums. Without much consideration, Ellen is convinced by him to choose the former.

Awakening[]

Ellen and the black cat make their way to a spot deep within a forest, somewhere along the way Ellen loses consciousness. While unconscious, the black cat uses a spell to summon a magical mansion with special properties. He changes her clothes and leaves her to bed to eventually wake up. Once she does, he tells to her that he's made her a witch, however, purposely remains rather vague in his explanations to Ellen as to what it means to be a witch while giving her a tour of her new house.

Eventually Ellen requests something that piques the cat's interests, "...I want a friend." The black cat acknowledges it, albeit with more sinister intentions. He tells her- "it's simple, all she has to do is 'lure one' to her." The cat teaches Ellen the basics of using the house's magic to warp the geometry of the forest to her will, and soon enough, a young boy is in her garden. As they familiarize themselves with each other, the black cat begins to appear less and less, until he suddenly becomes completely absent from the house. Awhile later in the night while Ellen sleeps, a massive crow swoops down and begins conversing with the black cat about Ellen's development, pestering him on when Ellen will finalize her contract. After the crow leaves, the black cat mutters that it better be soon.

Much to his delight, one day on a sunny afternoon, Ellen is convinced by the young boy to venture outside with him, and tries taking a step beyond the boundaries of the manor, only to plummet to the ground as her illness returns as fast as she thought it went. She tries to play down her predicament but the boy runs off screaming. The black cat uses this moment of vulnerability and swiftly appears before Ellen, and in an almost condescending tone reminds her that he told her she is not to go outside ever. Ellen confusedly states that she thought she was cured, but is quickly shot down by the black cat. He explains that she will only remain healthy within the confines of the house; if she is to ever leave it's perimeter, she returns to nothing more than a terminally ill child. He suddenly adds on that she's made, "another one run," something that catches Ellen completely off guard and makes her shiver. The black cat reveals Ellen's real position: she will remain immortal while her curse worsens within her forever. Registering the reality that she's possibly subjected herself to under the contract with the black cat, she staggers to her feet and glares at the him with hatred. He only makes a snarky comment, completely unfazed. The cat begins to gaslight Ellen, exclaiming that all he did was give her warmth, knowledge, and friends, and that she shouldn't hate him for that, that she needed to know how miserable she truly was.

Ellen reaches a breaking point and without realizing it, summons the same knife she killed her parents with to her fingers. The black cat again provokes another reaction by criticizing (fallaciously or not) the way that she deals with her problems. Ellen screams and sinks the knife directly into the cats torso, but he's completely unperturbed and knocks her to the floor. He sinks his paw into her cheek and she screams in pain. The black cat begins coercing Ellen into revealing her deepest desires from the heart, he uses the tragedies of her parents and now the boy against her, to ingrain the idea that she cannot and will not ever be loved unless she escapes her sickness. When she finally breaks and begins uncontrollably crying, he uses his magic to read into her heart and sinisterly smiles. "Why don't I teach you the magic to cure what ails you?" He says. The black cat restores Ellen's body to a pseudo-healthy state. He tells her that all she has to do is simply feed him more souls, and eventually she'll be awarded a cure. Ellen, now blindly convinced of her "unlovability" is quick to agree to the terms.

The boy returns the following day and apologizes for running off yesterday, absentmindedly noting that he thought she was a monster. The word monster pierces Ellen but she disregards it and calls the whole thing silly. She leads him on into a room and tells the boy that she'll be back with sweets. After Ellen leaves the door suddenly locks on the boy and the room goes dark. The voice of a very young girl calls out to Ellen; it asks her if she's allowed to eat the boy. Ellen dismisses it and allows the house to do what it wishes. The walls of the room suddenly cave inward and the boy is violently crushed. Ellen enters the room a few moments later, but the what would be the remains of the child are nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, a large cloud of purple haze materializes in front of Ellen. The black cat, rather the demon, welcomes Ellen as his new witch, finalizing their contract.

Cute Little Bottle[]

It's not long before Ellen has already become adept at luring stray individuals into her home, and killing them, gruesome or not; their souls only being utilized as legal tender between herself and other demons. One of these demons is a being who specializes in medicines, physiology, and other forms of magic/science which hold relevance to the health of an organism, and assumes the form of an uncharacteristically large corvid. The black cat inquires on Ellen's disdain for the crow, though the conversation abruptly ends when it shifts to a question about his own witch.

Time and time passes, Ellen eventually asks the demon how much longer she must kill for, and is informed that she is nowhere near the end. Another day Ellen is postulating about the source of her newfound name, "witch". Reading her thoughts, the demon reminds her that she's been letting captives escape on purpose. Her new definition for the term "friend" has been morphed into none more than someone to die for her benefit. During her time as a witch, Ellen would continue to have many similar conversations in her head. One is notably a soft denial about her pleasure in killing people. Hearing this, the black cat can't help himself but to devilishly grin. Ellen notices this and questions what he could be smiling about, either unaware of his habit of peeping into her mind or simply making a sarcastic rhetoric.

The Witch's House (Game)[]

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The Black Cat's Monologue[]

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Powers and abilities[]

Just as all demons differ in their preference for animal hosts, they also differ in the power they specialize in.

Master Illusionist: The Black Cat specializes in spells that focus on deception and instilling fear into his targets, something that is clearly reflected in the traps lurking within the Witch's House. He himself claims that he prefers such spells because he finds that souls of humans who die in agony "are tastier that way". The spell for the House and the effect it has on Ellen's outer physique might arguably be included in that category of spells.

Temporal and spatial manipulation: The Demon is able to reject and negate any kind of event that has happened to a target. This ability is seen both in the game (if the player chooses to save on the Black Cat) and novella, where he returns an injured or 'killed' Ellen to her former healthier state, no matter what has happened to her. A famous in-game example is found in the Correct Mouth Pathway, where a set of spikes is placed near the door to the fourth floor. The spikes are purposely placed out of the player's path, making them very easy to avoid. However, if the player willingly chooses to have Ellen walk over them, she will be impaled to death, triggering the 'Game Over' screen. If the player loads the game using the exact same file and come back to that same room, the set of spikes will be smeared in blood, hinting that 'Viola' did indeed 'die' and was somehow brought back to life. There are other instances showing this scenario as well

Teleportation: The Demon is capable of teleporting himself and his target to different locations.
Immortality: The Demon has seemingly no life span so long as he is nourished
Possession: Has the ability to possess inherently any corpse. Using this ability, his favorite body to possess is that of a black cat.
Super Human Strength and Influence: After revealing himself to Ellen, she stated that she felt the Earth shake and cry under his weight.
Time Dilation: Most notably shown when The Demon completely removed the time between Ellen and Viola's meet before the body switch.