The Devils of D-Day Read online

  ‘You’d better come through,’ he said worriedly, and ushered us into his sitting-room.

  ‘My wife is out tonight, organising a beetle-drive for the women’s institute, and that’s probably just as well.’

  The sitting-room smelled of pipe-smoke and logs. There was a wide open hearth, in front of which toasted a marmalade cat and three shabby armchairs. One wall of the room was lined with books like With Net And Specimen Jar In Lahore and The Way Of Christ Vol. IX, and on the chimney-breast was a muddy oil painting of the Sussex Downs at Fulking. The Reverend Taylor said: ‘Sit down, please, sit down. Perhaps I can get my woman to make you a cup of coffee. Or there’s whisky, if you prefer.’

  ‘A whisky would be wonderful,’ I told him. ‘We came all the way over from France this morning.’

  The vicar went to an antique sideboard and took out three ill-matched glasses. He filled each with neat Vat 69, and brought them over to the fireside with trembling hands. He swallowed his where he stood, wiped his mouth with a crumpled handkerchief, and said: ‘Cheers.’

  Madeleine said: ‘We’re looking for your help, Mr Taylor. We know something about the devil, but not much. Ever since the war, it’s had a terrible effect on our village.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said the Reverend Taylor. ‘I told them this business would come to a bad end. I told them a hundred times. But oh no, they never listened. You do your part, they said, and we’ll take care of ours.’

  ‘Who were they?’ I asked him.

  The Reverend Taylor looked at me in surprise. ‘My dear fellow, I couldn’t possibly tell you that. Quite out of the question. I was bound by the Official Secrets Act, and unless I hear to the contrary, I still am.’

  ‘Mr Taylor,’ I told him, ‘I don’t like to sound offensive, but this young lady and I are both in serious danger because of that tank, and I’m afraid the Official Secrets Act is going to have to go where the monkey put his nuts.’

  There was a silence. A log in the crackling fire shifted and dropped, and a shower of sparks flew up the chimney.

  The Reverend Taylor said: ‘I’m afraid I’ve never really understood that expression.’

  Madeleine leaned forward intently. ‘Mr Taylor,’ she said, ‘you have to help us. The devil is threatening to kill us both, unless we help it to find its brethren.’

  ‘It’s name is Elmek,’ I said quietly. ‘The devil of sharp knives and cuts. If we don’t bring all thirteen devils together again, it has promised us the worst death that anyone could think of.’

  The vicar sat back in his chair. His eyes went from Madeleine to me and back again.

  Then he said: ‘You know about it, don’t you? You know about it already.’

  ‘Only some of it. Just a few fragments of information we managed to get together in France, and some good guesswork by Father Anton.’

  ‘Father Anton!’ said the Reverend Taylor, brightening. ‘I had no idea that he was still alive! I’m amazed! How is he? He was so kind to me during the war, you know. A real gentleman of the cloth.’

  ‘Father Anton died last night, Mr Taylor. He was killed when Elmek got loose.’

  The Reverend Taylor dropped his gaze. ‘Oh,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  I said: ‘Mr Taylor, more people are going to get hurt unless you can tell us about these devils. Father Anton said they were probably the thirteen devils that terrorised Rouen in 1045. They were exorcised by Cornelius Prelati, and sewn into sacks, but that was all he could discover.’

  The Reverend Taylor sadly blew his nose. ‘He was a clever man, Father Anton. Yes, he was absolutely right. They were the thirteen devils of Rouen. Les ireizn diables de Rouen.’

  ‘But how did they get into American tanks?’ asked Madeleine. ‘I don’t understand it at all.’

  The vicar shrugged. ‘I understood very little of it myself. It all happened a long time ago, when I was a very enthusiastic young vicar, and I had just been appointed to my first church in Sussex.’

  ‘Can you tell us about it?’ I asked. ‘We’ll keep it to ourselves, you know, if you’re really worried about the Official Secrets Act.’

  The Reverend Taylor looked up at me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose there’s no harm, since you already know so much about it. Would you care for some more whisky?

  No? Well, I’ll have one.’

  We waited in silence while the vicar poured himself another drink. Then he came over and sat by the fire, and stared into the red-hot caverns of logs and branches, a man remembering hell.

  ‘What you have to know about this part of Sussex,’ he said, ‘was that it bore the brunt of the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066. All this valley was occupied, and Lewes became the seat of William de Warrenne, who was one of William the Conqueror’s most trusted officers. The castle at Lewes was built by de Warrenne, and on the southern slopes of the town an immense Priory was constructed, one of the largest ecclesiastical buildings ever erected in England. In its time, it was even greater than Canterbury Cathedral.’

  The Reverend Taylor swallowed half a glass of whisky, and patted his lips with the back of his sleeve.

  ‘Of course, when Henry VIII broke with Rome, the Priory was dissolved, and most of its stones were pilfered by local people to build houses. But the Priory kept some of its secrets for many centuries afterwards. It was only when Victorian railway engineers came to excavate the site where the Priory had stood, to build a line to Brighton, that they came across several remarkable things.’

  I looked up at the clock on the Reverend Taylor’s mantelpiece. Eight o’clock. I wondered how long Elmek would stay patient in his medieval trunk. Madeleine touched my hand, and I knew she was thinking the same thing. **

  The Reverend Taylor said: ‘First of all, they found the tomb of William de Warrenne’s wife, Gundrada, whose burial place was unknown until then. This discovery was well-publicised. But there was another find, which wasn’t publicised at all. As they dug deeper, they found a sealed vault, chiselled deep into the chalk, and this contained thirteen ancient sacks of bones! Madeleine whispered: ‘The thirteen devils.’ ‘Precisely,’ the vicar nodded. The thirteen devils, the disciples of Adramelech.

  And according to words engraved on the lid of the vault, they had been brought across the Channel from Rouen by William de Warrenne as devils of war, concealed in strange suits of armour. He had unleashed them at Senlac, the field on which the Battle of Hastings was fought, and they had flown on Harold and his English soldiers with such ferocity that the battle was won in a matter of hours.’

  The Reverend Taylor turned to me, his ruddy face made redder by the heat from the fire.

  ‘I expect you know the story that William’s archers fired their arrows into the air, so that they landed amongst the English. Well, they were not arrows, but devils; and the thing that tore out Harold’s eyes was a beast from hell.’

  I took out a cigarette, my first for a whole day, and lit it. I asked the Reverend Taylor:

  ‘That was nine hundred years ago, wasn’t it? How did you get involved?’

  He looked up. ‘My oldest church records showed that William de Warrenne had somehow struck a bargain with the devils. If the devils helped the Normans conquer England, he would give them his wife Gundrada as a sacrifice to Adramelech. That’s why the devils came to Lewes, and that’s why Gundrada died when she did. But there were powerful French exorcists at the Priory, and they managed to quell the evil spirits, and sew them up again in sacks. It was only when the railway engineers opened up the vault that they saw the light of day once more.’

  ‘What happened to them then?’ The Reverend Taylor finished his whisky. ‘They were taken to what are now the vaults of St Thaddeus, by night, and sealed away by seven Roman Catholic priests.

  This, apparently, was what it took to keep them from breaking out.’

  I whispered: ‘Father Anton tried to seal the devil away on his own. My God, if only we’d found this out earlier.’

  ‘A single pr
iest would not have sufficient power,’ said the Reverend Taylor. ‘It had to be seven, and they had to invoke seraphim to help them. The thirteen devils of Adramelech were not to be played with.’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Madeleine. ‘How did the Americans find out about them?’

  ‘I was never really sure, my dear,’ answered the vicar. ‘I found out the story myself, and I wrote a short article about it in my parish magazine, in I938. I can’t imagine that my little publication ever reached as far as Washington, but some very mysterious American gentlemen got in touch with me in I943, and asked me a great many questions about the devils and the vaults and what could be done to control them.’

  ‘And you told them?’ I asked.

  ‘I told them all I knew, which wasn’t very much. I didn’t think about it for a while, but in January, 1944, I received a letter from Bishop Angmering, saying that Allied forces had a patriotic interest in the devils of Rouen, and that I was to give them every co-operation possible.’

  The Reverend Taylor was obviously disturbed by his memories. He got up from his chair, and began to walk up and down the worn carpet of his sitting-room, his hands clasped firmly behind his back.

  ‘They came one day with Roman Catholic priests, and they took the thirteen sacks away. I didn’t know where they were taking them, but I begged them to be careful. I said the devils were not to be meddled with, but they said that they were quite aware of that, and that was why they wanted them.’

  He sat down again, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.

  ‘The next I knew, I was ordered to go to Southampton, and report to an American colonel called Sparks. He was a very brusque man, I remember. Very crisp. He said that my devils were to be used by the American forces for a secret mission. A special division. They had been brought back to life by the conjurations of the Kabbalah, and they had been promised great rewards if they fought on the side of the Allies against the Hun. I never found out what these great rewards were, but I suspect now that they may have involved … well, human sacrifices. I asked one of the American officers, but all he ever did was smile, and tell me that what they were doing was for western liberty and freedom.’

  ‘So you went across to France with this division?’ I asked the Reverend Taylor.

  ‘I did, although I was kept in the rear most of the time. Since it was impracticable to take seven Roman Catholic priests along with us, it was my duty to make sure the devils stayed in their tanks, and I did this with silver crosses that had been blessed by seven priests, and with incantations from the holy exorcism. I was only required once, as you know, when one of the tanks broke a track, and they found it impossible to move.’

  Madeleine slowly shook her head. ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you, Mr Taylor, that the devil you left in that tank would bring misery to all who lived near it?’

  The Reverend Taylor frowned. ‘I sealed it away and they told me the tank would last for ever.’

  ‘But, out of all the thirteen devils, this was the only devil who hadn’t been rewarded, right?’ I asked him. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So it was bound to be troublesome, and dissatisfied?’ ‘Well, yes.’

  I sat back, and wearily ran my fingers through my hair. ‘What you did, Mr Taylor, left a thirty-year plague on that community. Milk went sour, eggs went rotten, and now the devil’s got out, and two people have died. Three, if you count this young lady’s mother.’

  The vicar licked his lips in embarrassment. He said, in a low voice: ‘Is there anything I can do to help? Anything to protect you, or assist you?’

  ‘You can tell us where the other twelve devils are.’

  The Reverend Taylor blinked at me. ‘The other twelve? But I haven’t the faintest idea. They took them away after the war, and I never found out what happened to them. I suppose they sealed them away, once they had had their rewards, and took them off to America.’

  ‘America? You have to be kidding! We have a devil out there who’s—'

  The Reverend Taylor’s eyes bulged. ‘You have it out there? You have Elmek outside my house?’

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t really meant to tell him straight away. But I said, in the most controlled voice I could muster: ‘I have him locked in a lead trunk, in the back of my car. He forced us to bring him to England, on pain of death by cutting or slicing or whatever it is he does. He wants to join his brethren.’

  The vicar was so flustered that he got out of his chair, and then sat down again straight away. ‘My dear man,’ he said, breathlessly, ‘do you have any notion how dangerous that creature is?’

  ‘I saw it kill Father Anton’s housekeeper, and I saw what it did to Father Anton.’

  ‘My God,’ said the Reverend Taylor, ‘that was why the Americans wanted them.

  They’re devils of war -devils of violence. Thirteen devils in army tanks were as vicious and terrible as three divisions of ordinary troops. They swept through the hills of the Suisse Normande in a matter of days. The Germans just couldn’t stop them. I wasn’t right up at the front line, so I never saw what they did first hand, but I heard dreadful stories from some of the German prisoners-of-war. Some of the Hun were dying of leprosy and beriberi. Tropical diseases, in northern France! Some were blazing like torches. And others were drowning in their own blood, without any apparent signs of external injury. It was a terrible business, and I was glad when Patton stopped it.’

  ‘Why did he stop it?’ asked Madeleine.

  The Reverend Taylor pulled a face. ‘Once he’d broken through Normandy, I think he felt it would be more discreet, with regard to future war trials, if his tanks didn’t leave behind them the bodies of men who had died in unnatural and unholy ways.’

  I took a deep drag on my cigarette. ‘What I can’t understand is why the church was so ready to go along with it. These devils are enemies of the church, aren’t they?’

  ‘People’s standards are different in time of war,’ said the vicar. ‘I believe that the Bishop felt he was doing the right thing. And after all, the Americans did agree to take the devils away after it was all over, and dispose of them. We were all glad of that.’

  I sighed, tiredly. ‘But you’ve no idea where they were taken, or who took them?’

  The vicar said: ‘I know that Colonel Sparks took care of them once they were shipped back to England. But where he took them, or how, I was never told. It was an extremely hush-hush operation. If any inkling had leaked out—well, there would have been a terrible flap.’

  Madeleine asked: ‘They were brought back to England? They weren’t shipped direct to America from France?’

  ‘No, they weren’t. The last time I saw them myself was at Southampton, when they were unloading them from ships. The usual dockers were told to keep well away.’

  ‘So what makes you think they took them off to America? Couldn’t they still be here?’

  The Reverend Taylor scratched his head. ‘I suppose so. There’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, you’d have to talk to Colonel Sparks himself. He always sends me a Christmas card, every year, although we never met after the war. I have his address somewhere.’

  Madeleine and I exchanged anxious glances as the Reverend Taylor went across to his desk and started sorting through stacks of untidy papers in search of the American colonel’s greetings cards. It was now eight-twenty, and I began to have a fearful, restless feeling that Elmek wasn’t going to give us much more time. The Reverend Taylor said: ‘I was sure they were here, you know. I never throw anything away.’

  I took out another cigarette, and I was just about to lift it to my lips when Madeleine said: ‘Dan—look. Your hand.’

  I couldn’t think what she was talking about at first, but then I looked down at the cigarette I was holding and saw that it was soaked pink with blood. I had a small deep cut on the end of my finger.

  ‘It’s Elmek,’ said Madeleine, in a tight, desperate voice. ‘Oh God, Dan, he’s warning
us.’

  Tugging out my handkerchief, I bound up the end of my finger as best I could, but it didn’t take long before the thin cotton was drenched. I said: ‘Mr Taylor—I’d really appreciate it if you hurried.’

  ‘Sorry—did you say something?’ asked the vicar, looking up from his papers.

  ‘Please hurry. I think Elmek’s getting impatient.’

  The Reverend Taylor shuffled through some more papers, and then he said: ‘Ah -

  here we are! This is last year’s card, so I expect he’s still living there.’

  He passed over the Christmas card, and Madeleine opened it up. Almost immediately, uncannily, my finger stopped bleeding, and the wound closed up. I was left with a crimson handkerchief and no visible scar at all.

  The Reverend Taylor said: ‘My dear chap, have you cut yourself?’

  The transatlantic line to Silver Spring, Maryland, was crackling and faint. It was just after lunch in the States, and Mr Sparks, onetime colonel, was out mowing his lawn.

  His cleaning lad dithered and fussed, but eventually agreed to get him on the line. I was glad I wasn’t paying the Reverend Taylor’s telephone bill that quarter. At last, a sharp voice said: ‘Hello? Who is this?’ Madeleine watched me as I answered: Tm sorry to trouble you, sir. My name’s Dan McCook, and I’m standing right now in the home of the Reverend Woodfall Taylor.’

  ‘Oh, really? Well, that’s a surprise! I haven’t seen Mr Taylor since I945. Is he well?

  You’re not calling to tell me he’s passed away, are you?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. Mr Taylor’s in fine shape. But I am ringing about that little business you and he were involved in on D-Day.’ There was a crackly silence. ‘Can you hear me okay?’ I asked him. ‘Sure, I hear you. What do you know about that?’

  ‘Well, sir, I guess I know almost everything.’ ‘I sec. It’s a Pentagon secret, I hope you realise.’ ‘Yes, sir, I do. But right now we need some help.’ ‘Help? What kind of help?’