The Devils of D-Day Page 8

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was to sleep in a high green-painted iron bed in a small room on the uppermost floor. Father Anton lent me a voluminous white nightshirt, white bed-socks, and a copy of L’lnvocation des Anges, leather-bound and smelling of dust, to read by the light of my shaky bedside lamp.

  We said goodnight on the second floor, where Father Anton himself slept, and then I creaked up through the gloomy house to the long narrow corridor where my own room was. Antoinette had left the light on upstairs, despite Father Anton’s usual frugality, and I was grateful for it. I beetled along that corridor as if the ten evil Sephiroth were panting down my neck, closed my door and locked it.

  The room was plain, but it wasn’t bad. Apart from the bed, there was a cheap pine dresser with a mirror, and one of those vast French wardrobes in which to hang my crumpled coat and shirt. There was a washbasin in one corner, and a circular window with a view over the snowy rooftops of Pont D’Ouilly. I washed with hard kitchen soap, rinsed my mouth out with water, and then pulled on Father Anton’s nightshirt. I looked like Stan Laurel in one of those movies where Laurel and Hardy have to spend the night in a haunted house.

  The springs complained noisily when I climbed into bed. I sat upright for a while, listening to the sounds of the house and the night outside; and then I opened the book that Father Anton had lent me, and started to read.

  My French was so halting that it took me half an hour to read the first page, and that was a lengthy apology from the author, Henri St Ermin, for his platitudinous style and his lack of talent with a pen. I couldn’t have agreed with him more. I skipped the text and looked at the engravings instead.

  I began to understand what Father Anton had meant when he said that angels were terrible. There were drawings of angels that were nothing but intense sources of light with spreading wings. There were angels like fierce, proud beasts. And there were angels who were unseen, but who came at night like violent storms, and laid waste to the houses of the wicked. It was plain from the captions under each of the pictures that you had to invoke the right angel for the right temporal task, otherwise you might find yourself, metaphorically speaking, plugging a flashlight bulb into a nuclear power station. One caption warned of ‘the angel which comes in a cloak of clouds, in which are the faces of those who have sinned and repented their sins’.

  Outside in the snow, the church clock struck two, and I closed my less-than-reassuring midnight reader, switched off my light, and settled down to get some sleep. In the dark, the house seemed even noisier than it had with the lights on.

  Something scurried and flurried up in the attic above me, and the joists and timbers creaked and groaned and complained to each other like arthritic old women in a doctor’s waiting-room.

  I slept for maybe ten minutes; and woke to hear my watch ticking on the bedside table. The house was quieter now, and I fell asleep again, although this time I began to dream. I dreamed I was opening doors in a gloomy building, and behind each door there was something fearful. I could hardly bear to place my hand on the doorknobs and turn them, but I had a terrible compulsion to find out what was there. Through the tenth or the eleventh door, there was a narrow corridor, and at the end of the corridor someone was standing. Someone small, like a child, with its back to me. I began to work my way slowly and glutinously down the corridor to see who it was, and all the time I knew that it was someone frightening, but all the time I was compelled to find out, compelled to go on.

  As I came close, the small figure turned towards me, and for one moment I saw a face that grinned like a goat, with hideous yellow eyes. I was so scared that I woke up, and I was sitting upright in bed with my nightshirt tangled around my legs, sweating and chilled, and this time the church clock was just pealing three.

  I switched on my bedside light and swung out of bed. I listened, but the house seemed reasonably quiet. Maybe the day’s events were just making me edgy. I tiptoed across to the door, and pressed my ear against the wood panelling; but all I could hear was the faint sad moan of the draught that perpetually blew around the house, rattling window sashes and setting chandeliers tinkling, and the usual creaks of floorboards and hinges.

  The house was like an old ship at sea, rolling and heaving through a black silent ocean where no fish swam.

  A voice whispered: ‘Monsieur.’

  I stood slowly away from the door, my mouth salt with shock. I was sure that the voice had come from outside—right outside. It was a dry, sexless voice, the voice of an old woman, or a strange eunuch. I backed off, reaching behind me for the reassurance of my bed, when the voice again said: ‘Monsieur.’

  I called hoarsely, ‘Who’s there? Is that you, father?’

  ‘Of course,’ answered the voice. ‘Who else?’

  ‘What do you want? It’s late.’

  ‘This is my house. I shall walk where I please.’

  I bit my lip uncertainly. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I don’t think that you are Father Anton.’

  Who else could I be?’

  ‘I don’t know. Beelzebub?’

  The voice cackled. ‘Perhaps you ought to open the door and find out.’

  I waited, with my heart taking great irregular gallops under my ribs, and my pulse banging away in sympathy.

  I heard a shuffling noise outside and then the voice said: ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open up, monsieur. I have something to show you.’

  ‘I don’t really want to, thanks. Listen, I’m in bed. I’ll talk in the morning.’

  ‘Are you afraid, monsieur?”

  I didn’t answer that one. Whatever or whoever it was outside, I didn’t want them to know just how frightened I was. I looked around the room for some kind of a weapon, and in the end I picked up a cheap alloy candlestick from the washstand. It wasn’t very heavy, but it made me feel better.

  The voice said: ‘The girl is beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘Madeleine.’

  ‘Can’t we talk about it tomorrow? I’m tired. And anyway, I’d like to know who you are.’

  The voice laughed. ‘I told you. I am Father Anton.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You don’t believe that priests enjoy sex as much as anyone else? You don’t believe that I can look at Madeleine and think of her body? She gets me boiling, monsieur!

  Oh, yes, she gets me rampant as a goat in the rutting season! Now, don’t you feel that way, too?’

  I was shaking with nerves. I took one awkward step towards the door, deliberately stamping my bare foot as loudly as I could on the floorboards, and I shouted: ‘Go away! Just get out of here! I don’t want to listen!’

  There was a pause. A breezy silence. I thought for a moment that the thing might have gone. But then it said, in a treacly, self-satisfied tone, ‘I’ve scared you, haven’t I? I’ve really scared you!’

  ‘You haven’t scared me at all. You’re just disturbing my night’s rest.’

  I felt a vague wind blowing across my room from the direction of the door, and I was certain that I could detect that sour, sickening odour of the demon. Perhaps it was just my imagination. Perhaps I was having a dream. But there I was, defenceless in my nightshirt and my goddamned ridiculous bedsocks, clutching a lightweight candlestick and hoping that whatever whispered behind that door was going to stay behind it, or better still, leave me alone.

  ‘ We must talk, monsieur,’ said the voice.

  ‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about.’

  ‘But of course we do. We must talk about the girl. Don’t you want to talk about the girl? Wouldn’t you like to sit down far an hour or two, like mm of the world, and talk about her bubs, perhaps, or the inner folds of her sex?’

  ‘Get out of here! I don’t want to listen!’

  ‘But of course you do. You’re fascinated. You’re fearful, but fascinated. We could talk about the many ways in which girls can have intercourse with animals and rep
tiles.

  The pain of it, and the sheer delight! After all, we must have her for the grand gathering, mustn’t we? We couldn’t do without her.”

  I retreated, trembling, back towards the bed. Whatever stood outside my door, its lewd words seemed to crawl all over me like lice. I groped for, and found, the book of angels which lay on my bedside table; and I also picked up, out of plain old-fashioned superstitious terror, the ring of hair which Eloise had given me for protection against devils and demons.

  I raised the book of angels and said tightly: ‘I command you to go away. If you don’t go away, I’ll invoke an angel to drive you away. No matter how dangerous it is, I’ll do it.’

  The voice chuckled. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Invoke an angel! How can you possibly believe in angels?”

  ‘The same way I’m beginning to believe in devils.’

  ‘You think I’m a devil? Well, I’ll prove you wrong! Just open the door and I’ll show you.’

  I kept the book held high. ‘I’m not going to. If you want to talk, talk in the morning. But right now I want you to go. I don’t care if you’re Father Anton or not. Just go—'

  There was a long, dull silence. Then I heard a clicking noise. I couldn’t think what it was to begin with, but then I looked again at the door and saw, to my utmost dread, that the key was slowly revolving in the lock. One by one, the lock levers opened; and then the brass bolt at the top of the door slid back as if it was being tugged by a magnet.

  My throat constricted. I hefted the candlestick and raised it behind me to hit whatever was out there as hard as I possibly could.

  The doorknob turned. The door opened, and that soft sour draught began to course through my bedroom again. Then, untouched, the door swung wide by itself.

  Outside, in the corridor, it was totally dark. The house stirred and shifted. I waited and waited, my candlestick raised over my head, but nothing happened. Nobody appeared. Nobody spoke.

  I said, ‘Are you there?’

  There was no reply. I swallowed, and my swallow seemed like the loudest sound in the world.

  I took one step forward towards the doorway. Maybe it was waiting for me to come after it. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t disappoint it. After all, a demon was only a demon, wasn’t it? It was only some croaky voice in the night. Only some whisper in a derelict tank. Nothing more than a scattered heap of bones that Father Anton had sealed in his cellar.

  I reached the doorway. The best thing to do would be to jump right out across the corridor. Then, if anything was hiding beside the door, ready to claw out at me, I could turn round and hit it first.

  I said, loudly and unsteadily, ‘Arc you there? Answer me! If you’re so damned smart, answer!’

  There was nothing. It was so quiet in that moment that I could hear my watch ticking on the bedside table. I cleared my throat.

  I tensed the candlestick in my hand, crouched down a little, and then I threw myself out of the open doorway, across the painted boards of the corridor, and scrambled around so that I was ready with my arm raised and my muscles tightened for action.

  There was nothing. The corridor was empty. I felt a shiver that was both fear and relief, intermingled.

  Perhaps the best thing to do now would be to go down and check that Father Anton was all right. After all, that whispery voice had claimed to be him, and if it was opening doors all over the house, it could have opened his, too. I pulled up my bedsocks, which were falling down round my ankles, and walked back along the dark corridor as far as the head of the stairs. On the landing below, an old French wall clock was tiredly counting away the small cold hours of the night, and a cardinal with a face about as happy as a hundred-year-old horse was looking gloomily out of an ancient oil painting.

  I started to go down the stairs. My nightshirt made a soft sweeping sound on the boards, and I paused once to listen for any unusual noises. The wall clock suddenly whirred and struck the half hour, and I froze. But when the chimes had died away, there was silence again. I walked across the landing, and headed down the corridor where Father Anton’s bedroom was.

  It was very dark along that corridor. Somehow the atmosphere was different, as if someone else had recently walked down here, disturbing the chilly air. I went as softly as I could, but my own breathing seemed almost deafening, and every floorboard had a creak or a squeak of its own.

  I was halfway down the corridor when I saw something down at the far end. I stopped, and strained my eyes. It was difficult to make out what it was in the shadows, but it looked like a child. It was standing with its back to me, apparently gazing out of the small leaded window at the snow-covered yard. I didn’t move. The child could have been an illusion—nothing more than an odd composition of light and dark. But from thirty feet away it appeared remarkably real, and I could almost imagine it turning around and JOT one moment in my nightmare I had seen a face that grinned like a goat with hideous yellow eyes.

  I took one very cautious step forward. I said: ‘You!’ but my voice only came out as a whisper.

  The small figure remained still. It was solitary and sad, in a way, like a ghost over whose earthly body no prayers had ever been spoken. It continued to look out over the yard, not moving, not turning, not speaking.

  I took one more step nearer, then another. I said: ‘Is that you?’

  One moment the figure seemed real and tangible, but then as I came even closer, the hooded head became a shadow from the top of the casement, and the small body melted into a triangle of dim light from the snow outside, and I stepped quickly up to the window and saw that there was nobody and nothing there at all.

  I looked round, but I knew it was useless. I was so crowded with fears and superstitions that I was seeing things that weren’t even there. I walked back to Father Anton’s bedroom door, waited for a moment, and then softly knocked.

  ‘Father Anton? It’s Dan McCook.’

  There was no answer, so I waited for a while and then rapped again.

  ‘Father Anton? Are you awake?’

  There was still no answer. I gently tried the door. It wasn’t locked, and so I pushed it open and peered into the darkness of his bedroom. It smelled of mothballs and some mentholated rub that he obviously put on his chest at night. On one side was a tall mahogany wardrobe, and on the other was a chest-of-drawers, above which hung a large ebony crucifix with an ivory figure of Christ hanging on it. Father Anton’s oak bed was set against the far wall, and I could just make out his pale hand lying on the coverlet, and his white hair on the pillow.

  I crept across the worn rug on the floor, and stood a few feet away from him. He had his back turned to me, but he looked all right. I was beginning to think that I was suffering from nightmares and delusions and not enough sleep. I whispered: ‘Father Anton?’

  He didn’t stir, didn’t turn around, but a voice said: ‘Yes?’

  My grip tightened on my candlestick. It sounded like Father Anton, but on the other hand it didn’t. It had some of that dry, sardonic quality that I had heard in the voice upstairs. I came a little nearer the bed, and tried to lean over so that I could see Father Anton’s face.

  ‘Father Anton? Is that you?’

  There was a second’s pause. Then Father Anton rose up in his bed as if he was being pulled upright on strings, and he turned to face me with his eyes glassy and his white hair dishevelled. He said, in that same unnatural voice: ‘What is it? Why did you wake me?’

  I felt there was something curiously and frighteningly wrong. It was the way he was sitting there in his white nightshirt, as if he was unsupported by gravity or anything at all. And it was his peculiar manner, partly calm and partly hostile. There was nothing of the rambling old priest about him. He seemed strangely self-possessed, and his eyes seemed to be observing me as if there was someone else behind them, staring through.

  I took a few steps back. ‘I think I must have made a mistake,’ I said. ‘Just a nightmare, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re fright
ened,’ he said. ‘I can tell that you’re frightened. Now, why?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I told him. ‘I guess I just didn’t get enough sleep. I’ll go right back upstairs now, and I’ll—'

  ‘You needn’t go. Don’t you want to talk? It’s very lonesome at this time of night, don’t you agree?’

  Father Anton’s face was rigidly white, and his jaw seemed to move up and down when he spoke with the same mechanical movements of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Talking to him right then was like listening to a badly dubbed movie.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘But I’d really rather go. Thanks all the same.’

  Father Anton raised a hand. ‘You mustn’t go.’ He turned his head stiffly and looked towards the door. It swung on its hinges, and silently closed, all by itself.

  I lifted my candlestick.

  ‘Now then,’ admonished Father Anton. ‘There’s no need to be belligerent. We can be friends, you know. We can help each other.’

  I said, quietly: ‘You’re not Father Anton at all.’

  Father Anton abruptly laughed, throwing his head back in a way that terrified me. ‘Of course I’m Father Anton. Who do I look like?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you’re not Father Anton. Now just stay there because I’m getting right out of here and you’re not going to stop me.’

  Father Anton said: ‘Why should I want to stop you? You’re a good man and true. You helped me out, so now I’m going to help you.’

  I was shivering like a man with pneumonia. I kept the candlestick raised over my head, and I stepped back towards the door. ‘Just stay away,’ I warned him.

  Father Anton gave an awkward, empty shrug. ‘You mustn’t misunderstand me, monsieur.’

  ‘I understand you all right. I don’t know what you are, or what you’re trying to do, but keep away.’

  The old priest’s eyes glittered. ‘If we don’t find the other twelve, you know, we could be in terrible trouble.’