The Devils of D-Day (11 page)

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 reptiles.

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?’