First Blood (27 page)

The wooden doors leading off the hallway were solid. Vauvert opened one that looked like it led to the middle of the house and closed it carefully behind him. That way, he would hear if someone opened it.

He found himself in the living room, which was vast. The flashlight could illuminate only a small part at a time. Gripping his Smith & Wesson with his right hand, Vauvert moved even more cautiously. He saw china cabinets with broken glass windows that reflected the light everywhere and pieces of furniture that gave off myriad shadows. Shadows and flashes of light. Here, too, the wallpaper was coming unglued. Tree branches had been piled on the grimy floor. When he tried to sidestep them, he ran into a stool and swore. Then he lit up the table and saw the remains of a meal of bread and cheese. A wooden chair was pulled up to the table. Three other chairs were against the wall, but they all seemed broken, as if someone had had a go at them.

“Loisel,” he called out. “Show yourself.”

He swept his flashlight from right to left, advancing in the shadows. He passed a grandfather clock that reached to the ceiling, and he found himself at the bottom of a staircase. There was snow on the steps. He pointed the light at the upper floor, looking for the spot where the roof had caved in. Seeing nothing but darkness, he hoped he would not have to go up there.

Behind the staircase, there was an arch that opened onto another door.

Vauvert turned off his flashlight. There was a sliver of light coming from behind the partially opened door. Someone was in that room.

“I know you are there,” he said, turning his light back on and pointing his gun, just in case. “Police. I’m going to open the door and come in. Do you hear me?”

There was no answer.

He pushed the door open with his foot, his gun directed in front of him.

“Don’t shoot,” Loisel finally said.

“Loisel! What the hell?”

The man was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall. In front of him was a single lit candle. Vauvert had a moment of discomfort. The man looked like the man in the pictures, but like he was already dead.
Decomposing.
His face, which had been handsome and angular, now looked gray, gritty, and caked with dirt. His blond hair was plastered against his skull. Loisel squinted in the beam of the flashlight, and then Vauvert took in the strangest part.
His eyes were all red.
It was as if all the veins in his eyes had ruptured. There was no white left. Hunched over there, shivering, he was a frightening sight.

“What happened to you?”

Loisel smiled, and cracks appeared in the thick layer of grime on his face. Vauvert realized that his face was covered with ashes. Apparently, the man had smeared them on himself, even on his beard, which had grown considerably in two weeks.

“You are not who I was expecting,” Loisel whispered. “Get out of my house.”

His voice was nothing but a whistle. It looked like he had not slept for days. Vauvert realized that he was wearing nothing more than trousers and a suit jacket over a shirt that must have been pristine at one time but was now stiff with filth. No wonder he was trembling. It was freezing in here. He wondered how the man had been able to survive like this for two weeks without any electricity or heat.

“Mr. Loisel, I am a police officer. I have come to help you. Hell, you are in a bad state.”

“Do not come near me. I will defend myself if you approach.”

Vauvert hesitated.

“I know that you are afraid. I also know that you are in danger. I am here to help you. Everyone has been looking for you for the past two weeks.”

“You cannot help me.”

Large, dark drops were forming in the corners of the man’s eyes. Vauvert realized with some anxiety that he was shedding tears of blood.

“Your eyes.”

Loisel wiped his eyes, spreading the blood on his cheeks.

“Usually saints are the ones who cry blood,” he mumbled. “Or rather, it is the martyrs. I always wondered if I would become a martyr.”

His smile was cold.

“You cannot save me, because I am already dead, like the others. I am dead, and I know it.”

What do you mean you can’t reach him? Try again. Right away. It’s serious.

Seriously? Nobody knows where he is?

“What others are you talking about?” Vauvert asked, paralyzed with fear. He did not dare to approach this ash-covered man.

Loisel coughed and spit blood, splattering the candle. The flame sputtered.

“He will find us all, one by one. It is the price of our sin. It is none of your business. Leave.”

“I can’t do that,” Vauvert said. “You know I can’t. I have to bring you back with me. You need help.”

Loisel’s red eyes went from Vauvert’s flashlight to his gun.

“You will regret it,” he said with fire in his voice.

Vauvert instinctively raised his gun.

“This is no joke, Loisel. Do you understand?”

“He will know if I call them again,” the man said. “But you don’t leave me a choice, do you?”

Vauvert did not understand what Loisel was saying. He saw another tear of blood roll down the man’s cheek. The guy looked crazy—and dangerous.

Vauvert had a sense of foreboding.

He jumped back just as a plank from the ceiling gave way.

Debris came down with a roar. Vauvert raised his arms to protect his head. The plaster, bricks, and wood stopped falling, but the room was now drowned in thick dust. The flashlight lit up nothing but a thick curtain of suspended particles.

“Loisel,” he cried out.

Loisel had not moved. He sat amid the swirling dust.

“You felt it,” he said, sounding surprised.

“What?”

“That is why you found me. You also feel it.”

Feel what? Vauvert did not know what this man was talking about. What he felt was the familiar prickling—like tiny pins—on the back of his neck, which was getting more intense.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re a medium, you dumbass,” Loisel spit out.

The giant did not know how to respond.

He saw Loisel get up. His body was covered in a layer of dust. He ran a hand through his beard. There was a gleam in his eye. Then, suddenly, he moved to the side. Vauvert had trouble keeping the light on him.

“What are you doing? Don’t move so fast.”

The man disappeared behind an overturned table.

“Don’t move again,” Vauvert shouted.

“If you dreamed about a power that was greater than you, a power that went beyond the flesh, and you suddenly realized that this power existed, what would you do?”

Vauvert did not answer. He tried to locate the man with his flashlight.

“It’s a power that transforms you,” he heard Loisel saying. “It is more appealing than any kind of drug. It shows you the universe as it is.”

Vauvert found him on the far side of the room, his back against the wall. His reddened eyes were focused on him.

“But every time you use it, you lose a little of your light.”

“Loisel, calm down.”

“It’s too late.”

And then Loisel began to murmur. Incomprehensible words flowed softly from his lips.

“
Anochi ha yehidi betehom metzulot hahoshech, lifnei leidati mitehom hahoshech anochi ba, midamamat hasheina harishonit. Anochi hu hadover betoch hahoshech, avir hazohar betoch hahoshech she hahoshech eino mechilo klal.”

Vauvert remembered what had happened with Madeleine Reich. She had also chanted in some foreign language. Panic ran through him.

“Stop that right now!”

The man continued his litany.

“Hakshev li ve-asseh shekol hanefashot ykaanu li, shekol nefesh barakia oubaavir, al haaretz oumitachta, al adama mutzaka oubamaim, memaarbolot haavir oumehaesh hapeziza, ve-kol kessem ve-shot shel hael hayehid ve-hacholesh al hakol ykaanu li.”

Vauvert felt it coming a fraction of a second before it happened.

He took a step back when the heavy wooden door slammed closed, blocking his way.

“Loisel.”

He threw his shoulder at the door. The door resisted.

All around him, Vauvert felt a vibration, a rippling. Loisel’s voice carried all the way to him, as if his murmur were an invisible snake slithering through the air.

“Loisel, no!” he yelled, rushing the door again and using all his weight.

This time, the door gave.

Vauvert pointed his gun at Loisel, who now stood in the middle of the room. He had raised his right hand, his index and middle finger straight, the others folded, like a parody of Christ. His other hand was pointed down. He continued chanting.

“
Oukeshelefanai bohek hapentagram, anochi hatechiya ve-hahaim.”

“Stop that right now!”

“
Kol asher maamin bi, gam met ishieh, ki anochi poretz hanetiv ve-moshiya betoch hahoshech.”

The undulations were stronger. The air became tangible, expanding. Then it literally ripped open and from the very texture of that air came things that grabbed his arms and legs. He felt like a veil was moving over his face, a mask to suffocate him.

Not again. Not one more time.

He pulled the trigger.

The shot was deafening.

The bullet struck Loisel, pulverizing his shoulder bone, and the impact threw the man to the floor.

Vauvert saw that he was already losing a lot of blood and in pain.

Loisel continued to chant.

He is sitting cross-legged on the bed, his hands at either side, palms up, and meditating.

He has chosen an ordinary roadside hotel. It is the kind of place that he likes, because he can let go and wait.

He is calm, breathing through the nose.

Slower and slower.

He is chanting. It is almost impossible to hear, but it creates a continuous vibration.

In front of him, the television is not working. The screen is a giant, motionless, and silent blue rectangle.

He is looking at the screen and getting lost in the electric blue. When he stares at it a long time—when he is attentive enough to look at it just the right way—he manages to penetrate the light and cross through to see what is hidden in the world behind the world. Like right now. At this very moment, he perceives shapes and images that are not really there but could be. Most often, they are images of shadows and light rising from the past. And sometimes the future.

It is generally difficult to differentiate the two. But that is part of the game.

The images are becoming clearer.

The blue becomes black. And white. Shadow and light. Night and snow. Things growing underground, there, where they were put years ago.

As his heart slows, he feels a veil shiver on his skin. The veil slides off him. The veil that covered the world slips away from everything around him.

And he feels him.

Brutally.

This is the one he is looking for.

He can’t believe it. That idiot was doing it. Loisel was using the words right now. He is moving stars in the sky and causing a tremor in the heart of the earth. Even here, sitting on this bed in this hotel room, he can feel the black sun opening. The eye opening in the innermost depths of darkness. That is the oath they had taken. One is not enough.

Slowly—very slowly—a smile creeps onto his lips.

His heart changes course, little by little. It starts beating faster, then faster and faster, in pace with the words Loisel is speaking.

His smile reveals teeth that had been filed to sharp points.

He opens his lips, and a dribble of blood seeps onto his chin, while his heart pounds out of control.

“Stop that!” Vauvert howled, as the air snaked around him. “For God’s sake, STOP!”

Loisel’s intense chanting was making every fiber of his body shake. The door slammed, opened, and banged shut, faster and faster. Unnerved, the inspector backed into the passageway and entered the living room. He could not see where he was going and stumbled into the broken chairs.

“Go to hell,” he cried out, fumbling for a way out.

Loisel’s incantation still reached him and stretched beyond. Every syllable he uttered traveled through the air, vibrating the inanimate matter more and more violently.

A crack appeared in the ceiling. Plaster fell, covering Vauvert in dusty debris. He did not know where to direct his flashlight to avoid the obstacles.

He was sure of one thing. He had to get out of there. Right away.

He froze, though, when he heard an inhuman scream.

It was more of a roar. It did not come from the room Loisel was in. It was coming from outside the house.

There was a powerful banging on the front door. Another followed. The door shook, as if it were being hit with a sledgehammer.

Vauvert paused, trying to illuminate the shadows and the blinding dust. What was outside the house? Whatever it was, it was full of rage.
And it was trying to get in.

The banging intensified.

Vauvert was stuck between Loisel behind him and the thing hitting the door in front of him.

The wood cracked.

“What the...”

He squatted, leaning forward in a defensive position. Some creature—some creature with hooves, Vauvert realized—was trying to break down the door. In the beam of light Vauvert projected onto the opposite wall, he saw that the entire hallway was trembling.

There was more roaring.

The monster was not alone.

“Loisel, please,” he called out, looking behind him.

What he saw terrified him even more. Through the door that kept opening and closing, slamming shut to the point of cracking, he glimpsed Loisel. The man looked like a mummy of ashes and dust. His right shoulder was in shreds, red, with the bone protruding. Yet he was smiling. In the alternating light and shadow, Vauvert saw blood flowing from his mouth, forming bubbles while he continued to chant.

At the end of the hallway in the other direction, the front door could no longer resist the banging. It shattered under powerful kicks.

Huge creatures rushed into the hallway. They were enormous and were pushing at each other as they overturned the furniture.

It was the horses.

Vauvert could see them only indistinctly in the thin beam of the flashlight. But with their muscular torsos and wild manes, they looked much bigger than he was. How many were there? He made out two, then a third. Almost on top of each other, they were galloping through the hallway, making a horrible high-pitched whinnying, and kicking the walls with their hooves.