Dead of Winter (22 page)

“
Ego agnosco ostium damno tui animus, ellebarim, ellebarim, ellebarim
.”

The Jesuit pulled out a cross.
Is that you, Gustave?
A week after the exorcism, Father
Xavier had learned that Gustave Meraux had killed the warden and escaped from the asylum. The demon had tricked him, playing dead. The Cannery Cannibal was once again on the loose.

The man in the tribal mask descended the staircase. Father Xavier followed, but several people crisscrossed in front of him. He leaned over the railing, peering down into the lobby. The man in top hat and cape knocked a bellhop aside and hurried out the front door.

Father Xavier dashed down the stairs and outside. A horse carriage sped by as he looked in both directions of the dark street. The mysterious man had vanished.

Did I just imagine that was Gustave?
The priest stood there, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach.
That settles it. No more indulging for the rest of the journey.
As Father Xavier turned to head back into the hotel, a strange marking caught his eye. On a window covered in frost, the mysterious man had scratched a word—
ellebarim
.

79

Tom and Anika sat in rocking chairs, looking out the window at the cemetery. A thought occurred to him that Anika’s husband was buried out there. “If I may ask, how long ago did your husband pass?”

She kept her gaze on a stick of wood she was whittling. Bark and woodchips flew to the floor. After a long silence, Tom said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s been two winters,” she said. “Only he’s not buried here. He’s out there.” She pointed over her shoulder with the knife, indicating the forest. Tom waited for more, but there was no story that followed. He didn’t pry. He couldn’t imagine what her life had been like till now, growing up in the Ontario wilderness, marrying a man who worked for Fort Pendleton as a clerk. Now she was a widow living alone in a remote fort village where the men were either barbarian trappers or high society rakes like Avery Pendleton. Tom wondered if Anika’s affair with the fort master was her choice. Again, he didn’t pry.
He watched her whittle, the deftness of her small hands as the antler-handled knife shaved flakes off the wood.

“Who taught you to whittle?”

“My uncle Swiftbear.” Anika’s face seemed to light up. “He said that whittling is a way to get the bad spirits out. They go into the wood, shape-shift, and become manitous. Protective spirits.”

“I saw the ones you did on the shelf. You must have a lot of protective spirits.”

“Not near enough.” The blade dug in, carving notches and smooth curves to form wings. With each feather she etched, the animal seemed to take on life. Tom became mesmerized by her craft and could see why Chris had taken an interest in it. The end of the stick quickly shaped into an owl head. She held it up to him.

“That’s a mighty fine piece,” Tom said.

“Here.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a second knife and a stick. “Try your hand at it.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“What else are you going to spend your time doing?” She smiled.

“Okay, I’ll give it a go.” He accepted the knife and stick and started slicing off the bark.

“Wait.” She grabbed his wrist. “First ask yourself what you would like to give away so that it no longer burdens you. Then ask the wood what spirit it would like to become.”

Tom thought a moment and immediately felt a heavy pain in his chest. “My grief for my son.”

Anika’s eyes glazed over. “Then give it to the wood. The spirits will do the rest.”

He started whittling with long, angry strokes. It felt good. Damn good. Like lightning was shooting out of his hands. A very crude spirit began to take form in the wood. And it looked like nothing from the animal kingdom.

80

Later that night, Andre tossed and turned in his bed. Women were haunting his dreams again. This time they rose from the floor around his bed like ghosts, one after the other, caressing him with phantom fingers. He woke in a knot of damp sheets. His skin was clammy. He climbed out of bed and washed his face with cold water from the bowl. Wide awake now, he put on his robe, and reached for his journal on the nightstand. He wrote at a ferocious pace.

Forgive me, oh Lord, for I am a horrible sinner, not fit to be a priest. I can’t control the evil between my legs. No matter how much I flagellate myself, nothing seems to stop my desires. At tonight’s party, my loins burned for those high society ladies. I had lustful thoughts and animal urges. Am I no better than the red-skinned heathens? Is there nothing that can tame the beast within me? I beg for mercy and strength to remain chaste, oh Lord.

Andre’s constant tingling had been the main reason he left the party early. The whole night every woman excited him to no end. So many bare shoulders and low-cut dresses exposing cleavage. A visual feast of feminine flesh. The air was filled with such intoxicating perfume, Andre felt as if he had stumbled into the Garden of Eden, and Eve was there in many forms offering forbidden fruits. Against Father Xavier’s warnings, Andre had returned to his room and relieved himself in sin. Afterward, he flogged his thighs, crying out in shame, “I am not fit to be a priest!”

Now, sitting on his bed with his back against the headboard, he drew on the lessons of his mentor for strength. Andre wrote more calmly in his journal:

Father Xavier said that once the Devil knows your weaknesses, he uses them to lure you to the valley of darkness. It is those who venture too far away from God that open themselves for possession. Daily meditation and prayers are the pathways of the righteous. To remain on the side of the Light, it is an exorcist’s spiritual duty to meditate twice daily and constantly pray for forgiveness and strength.

Andre put his journal back on the nightstand. Remembering the meditation Father Xavier taught him, Andre sat cross-legged on his bed and closed his eyes.
Just silence the voices.
He envisioned himself on a grassy bank beside a lake. The waters were choppy, the wind blowing. He imagined the bright sun calming the wind until the lake went placid.
Concentrate on the stillness. Allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper into the water.

There was a soft tap at the door. Andre opened his eyes and listened.

There it was again. The faintest tapping. He pressed his ear to the door. “Father Xavier, is that you?”

A French woman’s voice whispered, “Andre… it’s me,
mon amour
.”

“And me,” giggled a second woman.

He peered through the keyhole, but the hallway was pitch dark. He inhaled the scent of floral perfume.

Fingernails clicked on the door. “Let us in,
amour
. We want to see you.”

“
Oui, oui
.”

Andre closed his eyes.
Please, don’t.

Through the door, he heard giggles. Together they said, “You know you want to.”

His nether regions stirred with an insatiable desire. His hand, as if having a will of its own, put the key back into the hole and unlocked it. He turned the knob, opened the door an inch, and then backed quickly toward his bed.

The door opened slowly. In the hallway stood two young women in fur coats. Twins. Andre remembered the two belles who wore identical gold masks at the party and fought over him for a dance. Now he gazed into the faces of two goddesses with smooth skin and cat-like amber eyes.

“Dear Lord, help me.” He stepped back.

The two women stepped across the threshold. The door closed behind them.

“Mon homme…”
The twins smiled as they sauntered toward Andre.

“We never got that dance.”

81

Evil hides behind many faces.

The phrase came to Father Xavier in his sleep. The words echoed through his head in a raspy, whispering voice, waking him in a clammy sweat. Lying in the darkness of his room, he thought maybe he'd heard the voice again, echoing from the hallway.

Ego agnosco ostium damno tui animus, ellebarim, ellebarim, ellebarim…

It was the same mantra Gustave had chanted during his exorcism.

Father Xavier climbed out of bed. Carrying a candle in one hand and crucifix in the other, he padded barefoot across the room and listened at the door. The man’s voice whispered,
Damno tui animus ellebarimmmmmmmmm…

Father Xavier opened the door, but no one was there. He stepped out into the dark hallway. One end was lit by moonlight that shone through a window. The opposite end tapered off into a void that seemed as deep and as dark as the tunnels beneath Laroque Asylum. He sensed a presence hiding there in that chasm, watching him with a malevolence so cold it sprouted gooseflesh up the priest’s arms. He thought he saw the outline of a white and red mask press against the moonlight. If the shape had been there at all, it had retreated quickly, merging back with the darkness.

The wood creaked. A cold breeze blew through the hall, snuffing out his candle. Father Xavier stepped back into his room. If Gustave’s demon had made its way into the hotel, then a dark hallway was not the proper battleground. He locked the door and doused it with holy water. He then grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a fresh line at the base of the threshold. He whispered a prayer and gesticulated. He sat on his bed and took a much-needed deep breath.

“You can’t let the Beast scare you,” he told himself.

After the episode earlier that night with the man in the red-and-white African mask, Father Xavier couldn’t help feeling the dark forces now had an edge on him. He thought about the exorcism he’d performed on Gustave. Father Xavier had felt the Beast probing his brain, seeking some kind of weakness. The Jesuit had learned in his exorcist training to lock up his mind like a vault. Normally he was a master at it. But there was a moment during Gustave’s ritual that Father Xavier became unhinged. In that moment of weakness had the Beast penetrated the vault?

Ego agnosco ostium damno tui animus, ellebarim, ellebarim, ellebarim
.

Why did that mantra agitate him like an over-starched priest’s collar, constricting his throat?

And what did it mean?

Using the chalk, he wrote the phrase on the wall beside his bed.

Recognizing the words in Latin, he read them out loud, “I know the doorway to condemn your soul,
ellebarim, ellebarim, ellebarim
.”

The last word,
ellebarim
, was neither Latin nor French nor Aramaic. Nothing that he’d ever seen in studying demonology. Father Xavier chalked it on the wall again, this time by itself.

Think, think, what does
ellebarim
mean?

The doorway to condemn my soul.
What doorway did the dark forces find?

He studied the word closely, but his mind couldn’t get a handle on it. Then he turned around and saw the word reflecting in the dresser mirror. His flesh went cold.

“Mirabelle.”

82

Inside Andre’s room, the oil lamps flickered. All but one extinguished, casting the two fur-cloaked women in silhouette. They petted one another’s coats, purring. “You like what you see, Andre?”

“Very much so,” he whispered. He was too enchanted to care how they knew his name. As they approached, each rounding one side of the bed, Andre’s heart beat so wildly he feared it would burst. “I-I vowed to remain chaste.”

The sister to his left pursed her pouty lips. “Ah,
mon amour
, why would you deny us?”

“When we both want you so badly,” said the twin on his right. She stroked his ankle with feathery fingers.

Andre swallowed.

They danced together at the foot of his bed. The curves of their breasts protruded as the gaps of their coats widened. Fur slid down smooth skin, baring luscious shoulders. The coats fell to the floor. The twin sisters stood before him, curvaceous and supple, the dark doorways between their legs beckoning him to enter. Moaning, one woman ventured her hand downward, long fingers sifting through the dark nest. Her twin turned her back to him, dancing slow and sensual, hands reaching into the bun of her pinned-up hair and pulling it loose. Her long hair cascaded down her back. Above her buttocks was an odd marking. A tattoo of a red spiral seemed to spin.

Andre’s body filled with so much lust he feared he might burst. Never in his life had he felt so much fire beneath his skin, so much craving to devour a woman’s body, to sink so fully into her flesh. And here he had two identical beauties, offering themselves like fine delicacies.

“Are you ready for us?”

“
Oui
,” he breathed, lying back on the bed. “I am ready for you.”

No, fight it, Andre,
begged the voice that was his.
Remember your vows.

At the end of the bed, they crawled toward him like stalking jaguars. Their hands pawed up his legs, rubbing the bulge in his robe.

Don’t let them.

Their amber eyes glowed brighter, as if catching the light of the moon. Their strokes intensified.

Dear God, help me.

One sister climbed onto his pelvis, pressing her weight down on his aching member. Her moisture soaked the fabric of his robe. She began to rock.

Angels in heaven...

As she arched her back, moaning, her sister opened Andre’s robe and kissed his chest.

Fill me with Spirit.

He felt his chest swell with power. He chanted, “I am a man of God. I vow to remain chaste. Lead me not into temptation. Deliver me from—”

“You have already sinned,
mon amour
,” said a voice from his past. The faces of the twin sisters shifted into his cousins, eighteen-year-old girls who had become dockside prostitutes. Their amber eyes glowed with yellow fire. “You gave up your chastity long ago.”

“No, you stole it!” He reached up and grabbed the crucifix off the wall. “God release me of all past sins.” He pressed the cross to the chest of the nearest sister. The flesh above her breasts smoked, and she burst into flame. Her sister screamed. Her eyes rolled back white. Her hair flapped wildly.