The Devils of D-Day Read online

  Madeleine came up and took my arm. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked softly.

  ‘What if it tries to break free?’

  ‘We must take it to the cellar at once,’ said Father Anton. ‘I can confine it there by the power of the crucifix and the power invested in me by Our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, at the first opportunity, we must take the skeleton to pieces and scatter those pieces according to the Sepher Ha Zohar, which is the most important book of the Kabbalah.’

  We returned to the black sack, and this time all three of us took hold of it, and we walked with it as quickly as we could to the carved oak door of the cellar, way down at the end of the hall. Once we were there, Father Anton took out the largest of his keys, and put it into the lock.

  Inside the door, it smelled of limestone and must. Father Anton switched on the light, and said, ‘Be careful of the stairs. They’re very old and uneven.’

  Like the cellars of most French houses of any size, Father Anton’s was enormous, and divided into several rooms. I could see wine racks through one half-open door, and inside another, garden tools and pieces of medieval masonry. But Father Anton directed us down to the very farthest recesses of the cellar, to a heavy door studded with black iron nails, and opened it up with another elaborate key.

  This room was totally dark inside, and airless. There were no windows, and the room was empty but for a few broken flowerpots and a rusted mangle. It was floored with dusty clay tiles, and whitewashed with lime. Father Anton switched on the single bare bulb and said: ‘Lay the sack down here. This room was originally used for storing valuables and furniture. The lock is very strong.’

  We set the black bag down in the centre of the room, and stood back from it with considerable relief. Father Anton reached inside his coat and took out his worn brown spectacle case.

  ‘First of all, we have to find out what kind of a demon this is,’ he said. ‘Then we can do our best to dismiss it. Mr McCook—you’ll find a garden sickle in the next room.

  Perhaps you’d be kind enough to bring it in.’

  I went to fetch the sickle while Father Anton stalked impatiently around the flaccid, lumpy bag, staring at it closely through his gold-rimmed spectacles, and coughing from time to time in the cold air of the cellar.

  There were five sickles of varying sizes, so being a native of Mississippi I chose the largest. I took it back to Father Anton, and he smiled, and said, ‘Will you cut it open?

  Or shall I?’

  I looked across at Madeleine. She was tired and tense, but she obviously wanted to know what horrors were contained inside this sack just as much as I did. She nodded, and I said, ‘Okay- I’ll do it.’

  I leaned over the sack and pushed the point of the sickle into the ancient fabric. It went in easily, and when I tugged, the bag ripped softly open with a dusty, purring sound, as fibre parted from fibre after centuries of waiting for unimaginable reasons in places that could only be guessed at.

  The bag was full of dust and bones. I stood back, and stared at the bones with a kind of horrified curiosity, because they weren’t the bones of any human or beast that you’d recognise. There were narrow ribs, curved thighbones, long claw-like metatarsals. They were dull brown and porous, and they looked as if they were six or seven hundred years old, or even more. I’d once dug up the skeleton of a Red Indian at my father’s place at Louin, in Jasper County, and that had the same dry look about it.

  It wasn’t the bones of the body that frightened me so much; though they were grotesque enough in themselves. It was the skull. It had its jawbone missing, but it was a curious beaklike skull, with slanting eye-sockets, and a row of small nib-like teeth. There were rudimentary horns at the back of the head, and if it hadn’t have been for the reptilian upper jaw, I would have said it was the skull of a goat.

  Madeleine took my hand, and squeezed it hard. ‘What is it?’ she said, in a voice unsteady with fear. ‘Dan -what is it?’

  Father Anton took off his spectacles, and closed them with a quiet click. He looked at us, and his eyes were red from tiredness and cold, but his face was alive with human compassion and religious fortitude. He had been a priest for seventy years, twice as long as either of us had been alive, and even though he was elderly, he had seen in those seventy years enough miracles and enough demonic fears to give him strength where we had very little.

  He said, ‘It is just as I suspected.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘You suspected something? You mean, you guessed what this was beforehand?’

  He nodded. ‘It was after we spoke, after we talked about the thirteen tanks. I spent an hour or so looking through the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and I came across a small reference to les treize diables de Rouen. There is very little there, very little information. But it appears from what Jean Wier says that in I045 the city of Rouen was terrorised by thirteen devils which brought fire, pestilence, sorrow, and disaster.

  They were the thirteen acolytes of Adramelech, who was the eighth demon in the hierarchy of the evil Sephiroth, and the grand Chancellor of Hell.’

  I reached inside my coat for my stale Lucky Strikes. I said, ‘Is it that unusual to find devils in teams of thirteen?’

  ‘Well, quite.’

  ‘But what were thirteen eleventh-century devils doing in thirteen American tanks in the Second World War? It doesn’t make any sense.’

  Father Anton shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Mr McCook. Perhaps if we knew the answer to that, we would know the answer to everything.’

  Madeleine asked: ‘What happened to the devils of Rouen? Does the book say?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They were imprisoned in a dungeon by a powerful spell imposed on them by the medieval exorcist Cornelius Prelati. The book is in medieval French, so it’s a little difficult to decipher exactly how, or for how long. But it mentioned the word coude, which I thought at first meant that the devils were imprisoned very close together, rubbing shoulders. However, when I saw this sack I realised that there could be some connection. The French word coudre, as you may know, monsieur, means “to sew up.” ‘

  Madeleine whispered, ‘The devils were sewn in bags. Just like this one.’

  Father Anton said nothing, but raised his hands as if to say , c’est possible.

  We stood around the bones for a long time in silence. Then Madeleine said: ‘Well, what’s to be done?’

  Father Anton sucked at his ill-fitting dentures. ‘We must spread the bones across the countryside, as the Kabbalah recommends. But of course we cannot do it tonight. In any event, I shall have to call every one of the church authorities involved, and ask for permission to bury the bones in such a way.’

  ‘That’s going to take forever,’ I told him.

  Father Anton nodded. ‘I know. But I’m afraid that it’s necessary. I cannot simply bury the bones of a creature like this on sacred ground without the knowledge of the church.’

  Madeleine took my hand. Very naturally, very easily, and very affectionately. She said, ‘Dan, perhaps you ought to stay with Father Anton tonight. I don’t like to leave him alone with this thing.’

  Father Anton smiled. ‘It is kind of you to feel such concern. But you really needn’t worry.’

  ‘No, no,’ I told him. ‘I’d like to. That’s if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not. We can have a game of chess together after dinner.’

  I said to Madeleine, ‘I’ll run you home.’

  Father Anton switched off the light in the room where the demon’s remains lay scattered. For a moment we paused at the door, looking back into the pitch darkness. I could have sworn I felt a light breeze, sour with the same odour that had pervaded the tank, coursing out of the room. Of course, it was impossible. The room had no windows. But all the same, there was this strange, unsettling sensation, as if you were awakened in the night by the breath from some creature’s nostrils on your cheek.

  Father Anton closed the heavy door and locked it. Then he stood before it, and crossed himself, and spoke a pray
er I’d never heard in my whole life.

  ‘O devil,’ he whispered, ‘thou who hast touched no food, drunk no water, tasted not the sprinkled flour nor known the sacred wine, remain within I command thee. O

  gate, do not open that the demon within may pass; O lock hold thyself firm; O

  threshold stay untrod. For the day of the Lord is at hand, when the dead shall rise and outnumber the living, in His name’s sake, amen.’

  The old priest crossed himself again, and so did Madeleine. I wished right then that I’d had that kind of religion, too- the kind of religion that gave me words and actions to guard me against the devils of the night.

  ‘Come,’ said Father Anton. ‘Perhaps you’d like a calvados before you take Mademoiselle Passerelle home.’

  ‘I think I could use it,’ I told him, and we went upstairs, with only one backward glance at the door that held back the bones of the demon.

  After drinks and cakes, I drove Madeleine home through the streets of Pont D’Ouilly to her father’s farm. The snow had eased up, and now the Orne Valley was silent and cold and the hills surrounding the river were as white as furniture covered in dust-sheets. There was a pale moon rising, weaker than last night, and the snow-grey fields were patterned with the footprints of birds and stoats.

  I stopped the car at the gate. Madeleine buttoned up her coat and said, ‘You won’t come in?’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow. I promised Father Anton a game of chess. I think he’s deserved it.’

  She nodded, and reached out for my hand. ‘I don’t know how to thank either of you.

  It’s like a great weight that’s been taken off my family’s shoulders.’

  I rubbed my eyes. I was feeling the strain of what we had done this afternoon, both mentally and physically. My arms were aching from all that chiselling and hammering, and my mind was still a little tender from those claustrophobic moments inside the tank. I said, ‘Thank me tomorrow, when I can work out why the hell I wanted to do it in the first place.’

  She smiled. ‘I thought Americans were just naturally helpful.’

  ‘More like naturally nosey!’

  She leaned across the car, which wasn’t difficult, because the 2CV’s so tiny that you’re sitting pressed together like canned frankfurters in any case. Her lips touched my cheek, and then we kissed, and I suddenly discovered that Norman farm girls have a really good flavour that almost makes demon-hunting worthwhile.

  I said quietly, ‘I thought French people kissed each other on the cheeks.’

  She looked at me closely, and said: ‘That’s only when they’re handing out medals.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing now?’

  She didn’t answer for a long time, but then she said: ‘Peut-etre, monsieur. Qui sait?’

  She opened her door and climbed out into the snow. She stayed where she was for a while, looking up and down the white and silent road, and then she leaned into the car and said, ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure. Why don’t you come up to Father Anton’s sometime during the morning? I guess we have a lot of phoning to do. Calling up all those priests and getting rid of all those bones.’

  Her breath smoked in the reflected light from the Citroen’s headlights. She said,

  ‘Sleep well, Dan. And, again—thank you.’

  Then she shut the car door, and walked through the snow-topped gate-posts into her father’s farmyard. I watched her for a while, but she didn’t turn round, so I backed up the car and drove off towards Pont D’Ouilly, with only a quick sideways glance at the hulk of the Sherman tank which now rested in the hedge like the black discarded chrysalis of some monstrous insect.

  The library, with its rows of leather books and its dismal portraits, was chillingly cold; so while we played chess after dinner, Father Anton allowed us the extravagance of two large elm logs on the fire, and we sat with glasses of Napoleon brandy beside the flickering flames, talking and playing slow, elaborate games until almost midnight.

  ‘You play quite well,’ observed Father Anton, after checkmating my king for the third straight time. ‘You’re out of practice, though, and you’re too impatient. Before you move, think—and then think again.’

  ‘I’m trying to. I guess I have other things on my mind.’

  ‘Like our demon? You mustn’t.’

  ‘It’s kind of hard to forget.’

  Father Anton took a pinch of snuff and poked it ceremoniously up his left nostril. ‘The devil thrives on fear, my friend. The more you fear him, the fiercer he becomes. You must think of what we have downstairs in the cellar as nothing more than a heap of stray bones, such as any hound might have buried in the cabbage-patch.’

  ‘Well, I’ll try.’

  Father Anton moved his pawn to rook six, and then sat back in his studded leather armchair. While I frowned at the chessboard and tried to work my way out of a situation that, on the face of it, looked like a fourth checkmate in three moves, he sipped his brandy ruminatively, and said, ‘Does it surprise you that demons actually lived? That they had flesh, and bones?’

  I looked up. He was staring at the fire, and the flames reflected from his spectacles.

  I said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose it does. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I’d seen it for myself.’

  Father Anton shrugged. ‘It seems strange to me, you know, that in an age as pragmatic as ours, an age so bent on seeking evidence and demonstration, that the tangible manifestations of religion, like demons and devils, should be scoffed at.’

  ‘Come on! Not many people have ever seen a demon.’

  Father Anton turned his head and looked at me seriously. ‘Haven’t they? They’d be surprised. Demons and devils have evolved like the rest of us, and it’s remarkable how many of them still hide on the face of the earth.’

  ‘Does the same go for angels?’ I asked him. ‘I mean—do we have anyone on our side?’

  Father Anton shook his head. ‘Angels never existed as actual creatures. The name

  “angel” describes a state of divine energy that is terrible in the classic sense of the word. I know that angels are the messengers of God; and that they often protect us from harm and from the temptations of Satan. But I know enough about them to say that, in this life, I would prefer not to meet one. They are fearsome to say the least.’

  ‘Can they be summoned, like demons?’

  ‘Not in the same way. But if you’re interested, I have a book on my shelves on the invocation of angels. It was a great favourite of the Reverend Taylor when he was here during the war, surprisingly. Perhaps his involvement with your country’s demons alarmed him sufficiently to seek some assistance from the cohorts of God.’

  We fell silent for a few minutes while I made my next move on the board. Outside the tall windows, the snow began to fall again, thick and silent, piling softly on to northern France until it looked like the moon. An easterly wind was blowing across Poland and Germany and Belgium, bringing low clouds and an endless winter of grey cold.

  Father Anton inspected the chessboard. ‘Ce n’est pas mal, ca,’ he said, nodding his head in approval. But then his bony, liver-spotted hand moved his queen across towards my king, and he said: ‘Malheureusement, c’est eche et mat. ‘

  With one move, he had stymied my king; and all I could do was lift my hands in surrender. ‘I guess I had to learn the hard way. Never play chess with nonagenarians.’

  He smiled. ‘We must play some more, if you’re staying in the Suisse Normande.

  You’re a worthy opponent.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘But I’m afraid that baseball’s more my style.’

  We finished our brandy as the carved mahogany clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve. The logs in the grate sparked and dropped, and all around us was the silence of a dark clerical mansion in the heart of a small wintry village in the shouldering hills of Normandy. Father Anton spoke. ‘This is a brave thing you have done today. You must realise that. I know that Madeleine
is appreciative, but I am, too. I’m very sad that, for all these years, there hasn’t been a man among us with sufficient courage to do what you did, and open the tank up.’

  ‘You know what they say,’ I told him. ‘Ignorance is bliss. If I’d known as much as you do about devils and demons, I probably wouldn’t have gone near it.’

  ‘Nonetheless, monsieur, I am grateful. And I want you to wear this tonight, my crucifix, as a protection.’

  He lifted the large silver cross from around his neck and passed it over. It was weighty, and embossed with the figure of Christ. I held it in my hand for a moment, and then I offered it back to him. ‘I can’t wear this. This is yours. You need protection as much as I do.’

  Father Anton smiled. ‘No, monsieur. I have my wits and my training to protect me, and above all I have my God.’

  ‘You don’t think that it—well, might attack us?’

  The old priest shrugged. ‘You can never tell with devils. I don’t yet know which devil this is, although we’ve guessed it might be one of the thirteen demons of Rouen. It might be powerful, it might be weak. It might be treacherous or wrathful. Until we have done the seven tests on it, we shall not be able to find out.’

  ‘The seven tests?’

  ‘Seven ancient tests which identify whether a devil of hell or of earth; whether it spreads its evil by pestilence or by fire; whether it is high in the ranks of the evil Sephiroth, or whether it is nothing more than a servile thing that creeps upon the face of the earth.’

  I rose from my chair and walked across the room. Outside, the snow tumbled and twisted through the night, and the front of Father Anton’s house was like a pale execution yard, untrod, unmarked with blood:

  ‘Are you frightened?’ Father Anton said, in a husky voice.

  I paused for a moment to think. Then I said: ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then kneel here, monsieur, if you will; and I shall say a prayer for you.’

  I turned round. He was sitting by the dying fire with a look of real concern on his face. I said gently: ‘No thank you, father. Tonight I think I’ll trust to luck.’