The Devils of D-Day Page 13
My hand suddenly began to feel sticky on the telephone receiver. I was bleeding again, from cuts all over my hands, and the blood was running down my sleeve.
Madeleine said: ‘Oh Dan, tell him to hurry. Elmek will kill you!’
I whispered, ‘Okay, okay—the cuts aren’t bad. He’s just trying to needle me.’
Mr Sparks said: ‘Are you there? Are you still there?’ ‘Yes, Mr Sparks, sorry. Listen, I need to know where the twelve remaining sacks were taken. You left one behind in Normandy. Where are the rest? Were they shipped to the States? Or were they left in England?’
There was another silence. Then Mr Sparks said: ‘Well … I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you that.’
‘Mr Sparks, please. It’s a matter of life or death. That devil you left behind in Normandy has got out of its tank. We have to find the rest of them.’
‘Well, Mr McCook, we called them ANPs, which was short for Assisting Non-Military Personnel. We certainly never knew them as, well, devils. They were ANPs.’
‘All right, Mr Sparks. ANPs. But where were they taken? Are they hidden in the States?’
‘No, they aren’t,’ said Mr Sparks, reluctantly. ‘They were shipped back to England, and put into cold storage, militarily speaking. I believe that General Eisenhower wanted them taken back to the States, but the problems of carrying them over and keeping them under lock and key were too tricky right then. We knew very little about them, and so we left them where they were.’
‘And where was that?’
‘Well, we wanted to take them back to St Thaddeus, where they originally came from. But we’d made a deal with the Bishop that we would take them off his hands.
So we transported them to London, and they were sealed up in a house that belonged to the British War Office.’
‘You mean they’re still there? Now?’
‘As far as I know. I’ve never heard any news to the contrary.’
The blood was beginning to dry on the back of my hand. Madeleine was staring at me anxiously, and through the door I could see the Reverend Taylor, pouring himself another Scotch. I can’t say that I blamed him.
I said hoarsely: ‘Mr Sparks, do you know where the house is? Even roughly?’
‘Why sure. Eighteen Huntington Place, just off the Cromwell Road.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. I had to go there four or five times.’
I leaned back against the brown flowers of the Reverend Taylor’s wallpaper, and closed my eyes.
‘Mr Sparks,’ I said, ‘I don’t know how to thank you.
‘Don’t bother. I shouldn’t be telling you anyway.’
‘If we get out of this alive,’ I told him, ‘I’ll pay you a personal visit and bring you a bottle of brandy.’
There was a long pause. I could hear another faint voice on a crossed line. Then ex-Colonel Sparks said: ‘What do you mean—if you come out of this alive?’
I didn’t know what to answer. I just set down the telephone receiver and said to Madeleine: ‘He knew where they were. We’re going to have to drive to London.’
The Reverend Taylor came out to the hall and his face was even more flushed than ever. ‘Are you sure you won’t have another drink?’ he asked us. ‘Or how about some sandwiches? My woman’s going home in a moment, but she could rustle up some tongue sandwiches.’
‘Really,’ I said, ‘that’s very kind of you, but we have to go right away.’
The vicar looked at me nervously. ‘Did Colonel Sparks know where they were? Did he tell you?’
I nodded. ‘He knew where they were sealed away after the war. Whether they’re still there or not is another matter. But we’re going to have to go to find out.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said the Reverend Taylor, ‘this is all very distressing. I told them it would come to a bad end.’
Madeleine said: ‘It wasn’t your fault, Mr Taylor. You weren’t to know.’
‘But I feel dreadfully responsible,’ he told us worriedly. ‘I feel as if it was my negligence that killed poor Father An ton.’
‘Well, maybe you can make up for it,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe you can give us some idea of how to protect ourselves against these thirteen devils and against Adramelech.’
The Reverend Taylor’s face fell. ‘My dear fellow, I hardly know what to say. It was only because we had such a great number of priests during the war that we were able to keep the devils under control. But as for Adramelech himself—well, I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you. Adramelech is one of the greatest and most terrible of the evil Sephiroth. Perhaps only one of the divine Sephiroth would be able to help you, and according to what is written about them, the divine Sephiroth are almost as unmanageable as the evil ones. Adramelech’s counterpart among God’s ranks is Hod, the seraph of majesty and glory; but whether Hod could possibly be summoned to help you—well, I really couldn’t say. It’s all so infernally mythical.’
I lit a fresh cigarette. This time, my fingers stayed intact. Perhaps Elmek had realised that we had the information that we’d come for, and that he’d soon be rejoining his malevolent brethren.
I said: ‘Do you really believe in all this? In Adramelech and Hod? And all these devils. I never knew the Protestant church held with devils.’
The Reverend Taylor stuck his hands in his pockets and looked a little abashed.
‘You will rarely find a Protestant cleric who admits to the actual physical existence of devils,’ he said. ‘But every Anglican priest is told in strict confidence of the evidence that exists to support them. I couldn’t possibly divulge what the books say, but I assure you that the evidence I have personally seen for the existence of the divine and the evil Sephiroth is more than overwhelming. There are demons and devils, Mr McCook, just as there are angels.’
Just then, I felt a low-frequency vibration tremble through the house. It was like a sinister train passing, a train that blew a deep dark whistle. I looked up at the ceiling, and I saw a hairline crack that ran all the way from one plaster moulding to the other.
The Reverend Taylor looked up, too. ‘What on earth’s that?’ he blinked. ‘Did you feel it?’
‘Yes. I tell it,’ said Madeleine. ‘Maybe it was a supersonic plane passing.’
The Reverend Taylor frowned. ‘I don’t think Concorde flies this way, my dear. But I suppose it could—'
There was another rumble, louder this time. The floors shook and a fiery log dropped out of the grate and into the hearth. The Reverend Taylor hurriedly unhooked the tongs from the firedog, and stacked the log back on the fire.
I said: ‘It’s Elmek. I’m sure of it. He’s restless. Come on, Madeleine, I think we ought to get out of here before anything worse happens.’
The Reverend Taylor raised his hand. ‘You mustn’t leave on any account. I was just as responsible for what happened as anybody. And perhaps I can help.’
He went across to his bookshelves, and spent three or four minutes searching for what he wanted. He tugged it out at last—a small book as thin as a New Testament, with black leather covers and a frayed silk bookmark. Holding the book long sightedly at arm’s length, he licked his thumb and leafed through six or seven pages.
Madeleine and I waited impatiently, while the clock struck nine.
‘Ah, here it is. The invocation of angels.’
‘I have a French book about that in my luggage,’ I told him. ‘L’Invocation des Anges by Henri St Ermin. The trouble is, I can hardly understand a word of it.’
Again, the house trembled. A china donkey with a dried-up cactus in its pannier was shaken off its shelf, and shattered on the floor. Two or three books dropped out, and the windows vibrated in their frames with a sound that set my teeth on edge.
‘L’Invocation des Anges is just what you need,’ said the Reverend Taylor, a little breathless. ‘But this book will help you identify each of the twelve other devils in turn and call an appropriate angel to dismiss it. Did Father Anton mention the seven tests to
you?’
‘You mean the seven tests of a devil’s identity? Yes, he did.’
The Reverend Taylor nodded gravely. ‘A brilliant man, Father Anton. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that he’s gone. Well, he was absolutely right. When you find the devils you must identify each in turn, and use your book L’Invocation des Angts to send them away. They are French devils, you see, and French dismissals will have a greater effect on them.’
Madeleine said: ‘If we dismiss them, will that prevent them from summoning Adramelech?’
The Reverend Taylor looked at her seriously. ‘One hopes so, my dear. But of course devils are devils, and one can never quite predict how they are going to behave, or what tricks they are going to use. Take this terrible beast Elmek, for example—'
The curtains covering the windows suddenly flapped, as if they were being blown by a wind that we couldn’t even feel. I turned towards the window in fright, and I was sure that for one second I glimpsed, in the darkness outside, the evil slanting eyes of the demon of knives. Above us, the lights went dim and sickly, until we could hardly see each other, and a sour smell of decay flowed through the room.
The Reverend Taylor shivered. Then he raised his hand and drew the sign of the cross in the air, and called: ‘Devil, begone! I adjure thee, O vile spirit, to go out! God the Father, in His name, leave our presence! God the Son, in His name, make thy departure! God the Holy Ghost, in His name, quit this place! Tremble and flee, O
impious one, for it is—'
There was a howl so loud that I jumped in terror. It sounded as if a fearsome beast was actually devouring the whole room. The curtains lifted and flapped again, and a whole row of books toppled like dominoes and splayed across the carpet. Madeleine clutched my arm in fear, and the Reverend Taylor raised both his hands to protect himself from the rushing sound of demonic hate.
‘It is God who commands thee!’ shouted the Reverend Taylor. ‘It is I who command thee!’
The windows burst in a cloud of tumbling, spraying, razor-sharp glass. Fragments flew across the room and hit the Reverend Taylor in a glittering explosion that sliced into his upraised hands, ripped the ecclesiastical cloth from his arms and chest, and slashed his face and hands right down to the raw nerves. Before he collapsed, I saw the whiteness of his forearm bones, laid bare amidst the chopped meat of his flesh.
Miraculously, or devilishly, the glass passed Madeleine and me and left us almost unscratched. We watched in horror as the Reverend Taylor sank to the floor, ripped into bloody pieces, and Madeleine pressed her face into my shoulder, gagging with horror.
The last fragments of glass tinkled on to the floor, and a freezing wind blew in through the window. Holding Madeleine close, I said: ‘Elmek.’
There was no answer.
‘Elmek!’ I said, louder.
Outside, in the darkness, there was a dry, laughing sound. It could have been laughing or it could have been the swish of the trees as the wind moaned through their leafless branches.
The door of the sitting-room opened and I froze in fright. But then a red-faced woman in a turquoise overcoat and a turban hat peered around the door and said: ‘What a commotion! Is everything all right? I thought I heard glass.’
The Sussex Constabulary kept us at Lewes Police Station for almost three hours.
Most of the time, we sat on hard wooden seats in a green-painted corridor and read the same crime-prevention posters over and over. An unsmiling superintendent with a clipped black moustache and shoes that were polished beyond human reason asked us questions and examined our passports, but we knew from the start that the Reverend Taylor’s hideous death could only look like an accident. A freak accident, of course. But an accident all the same.
Elmek, in his lead-and-copper trunk, was not going to be delayed or thwarted, especially by the procedures of the British police.
At five minutes to midnight, the superintendent came out of his office and handed us our passports.
‘Does this mean we can go?’ I asked him.
‘For the moment, sir. But we’d like a forwarding address. You may have to give evidence at the inquest.’
‘Well, okay. The Hilton Hotel.’
The superintendent took out a silver propelling-pencil and wrote that down. ‘All right, sir. Thanks for your help. We’re advising your embassy of what’s happened, just as a matter of courtesy.’
‘That’s all right by me.’
The superintendent tucked away his pencil and regarded us for a moment with eyes that looked as if they’d been pickled in bleach. I knew that he didn’t really understand how the Reverend Taylor’s window had blown in with such devastating force, or how Madeleine and I had escaped with nothing but superficial cuts. But there was no sign of explosives, no sign of weapons, no motive, and no possibility that we could have cut him to shreds ourselves with thousands of fragments of glass. I had already heard one constable muttering to his sergeant about ‘peculiar vacuums’ and ‘thousand-to-one chances’, and I guessed that they were going to put the Reverend Taylor’s death down to some wild peculiarity of the English weather.
‘You won’t be leaving the country, sir?’ asked the superintendent. ‘Not for a few days, anyway?’
‘No, no. We’ll stick around.’
‘Very well, sir. That’ll be all for now, sir. I’ll bid you goodnight.’
We left the police station and walked across the road to the sloping car park. The Citroen, silent and dark, was the only car there. We climbed into it warily, and sat back in the rigid little seats. Madeleine yawned, and pulled her ringers through her dark blonde hair. I glanced back at the devil’s chest, and said: ‘If Elmek’s going to let us, I think it’s time we had some rest. I didn’t sleep last night, and I don’t suppose we’re going to get ourselves a lot of relaxation tomorrow.’
There was no answer from the dull medieval box. Either the devil was sleeping itself (although I didn’t know if devils slept or not) or else it was silently granting me permission to rest. I started up the car, and we went in search of somewhere to stay.
We spent half an hour driving around the streets of Lewes in the dark before Madeleine spotted a bed-and-breakfast sign on the outskirts of town, on a gateway just opposite the forbidding flint walls of Lewes prison. Set back from the road in a driveway of laurel bushes was a red-brick Victorian mansion, and someone was watching a black-and-white television in the front downstairs room. I turned the Citroen into the driveway, parked it, and went to the front door to knock.
I was answered, after a long and frosty wait, by a small hunched old woman in a pink candlewick dressing-gown and paper curlers. She said: ‘It’s very late, you know. Did you want a room?’
I tried my best not to look like a dishevelled madman or an escaped convict from across the road. ‘If that’s possible. We’ve come from France today and we’re pretty well bushed.’
‘Well, I can’t charge you the full rate. You’ve missed three hours’ sleep already.’
I looked at her in disbelief for a moment, and all I could say was: ‘That’s okay. That’s wonderful. But I’ll pay the full rate if you want me to.’
I called Madeleine, and the old woman let us into the house. She took us up a cold flight of stairs to a landing laid with green-and-cream linoleum, where a painting of ducks by Peter Scott hung under a frayed and dusty lampshade. She unlocked a door for us, and showed us into a typically freezing British bedroom, with a high double bed of cream-painted iron, a cheap varnished wardrobe, a cracked sink and a gas fire with half of its fireclay missing.
‘We’ll take it,’ I said wearily, and I sat down on the bed and took off my shoes before she could even answer. The mattress felt as if it was crowded with unravelled fencing wire, but right then it was heaven. The old lady left us alone together, and we undressed, washed in Arctic water, and fell into bed. I don’t remember falling asleep, but it must have been pretty quick, because I didn’t even have time to put my arm around Madeleine’s naked back.
I held my breath, and tried to suppress the pump-pump-pump of my heart. The room was very dark, suffocatingly dark, and even though I strained my eyes, I couldn’t see if there was anything there. I lifted myself up on one elbow, and the bedsprings creaked and complained like a tired orchestra.
There was silence. I whispered, though I didn’t want to: ‘Elmek?’
No reply. Madeleine stirred in her sleep, and turned over.
I whispered again: ‘Elmek?’
There was another scuffle, then a rustling sound They seemed to come from down behind the foot of the bed. I sat up, my skin electric with fear, and I tried to see what was hiding there in the darkness.
Again, there was silence. But I was sure I heard a faint scratching and rustling on the worn linoleum, and I was sure that a darker shadow shifted and moved in the gloom.
I kept absolutely still. I could feel that Madeleine was awake now. She reached across the bed and squeezed my hand, too frightened to speak. But I bent my head towards her and said softly: ‘Don’t panic. It’s in here somewhere, but don’t panic.’
She nodded, and swallowed. In the hush of the night, we waited for the devil to stir again, our hands tightly clenched together, our breath held back into shallow gasps.
Suddenly, Madeleine said: ‘Dan. The window. Dan!”
I turned towards the window. I flinched in shock. There was someone silhouetted against the curtains, a tall figure of clotted shadows, unmoving and quiet. I took one look, and then my hand went scrambling in search of my bedside lamp, but I tangled my fingers in the flex by mistake, and the lamp tipped over and crashed on to the floor.
In the terrible silence that followed, a woman’s voice said: ”Are you rested?”