Infinite Blue Heaven - A King and A Queen (37 page)

“You don’t believe me.”

“Whatever it is I need the truth.” She screamed the word ‘truth’ with a vehemence I had never heard before in her, and with that she was weeping. I had nothing left I could add so I walked over to comfort her but she pushed me away.

We began to drift apart from this time on. Edward helped to bind us together but we were never close after this. The last time we visited England together was to visit my parents and my grandfather’s grave. We had missed the funeral because my parents hadn’t told us. I assumed at the time it had to be because they thought we had too many other things on our minds. Now I really wanted to see his grave.

Antonia’s fiancé was a curious addition to the family for me, and we had to spend some time getting to know him, before finally visiting grandfather’s grave.

My parents looked nervously at each other when I asked where he was buried.

“Yes. We could take you there but you will be disappointed son.” There was that frailty about my father as he spoke to me.

“Oh, why? Did you keep the money for yourself and give him a cardboard box?” I said laughing.

“No.” My father smiled weakly. “But it will not be as you expect. It’s a lovely spot though.”

I felt a little angry now and confused. I had liked the old man a lot and knowing there was a rift between him and my father, I began to suspect the worst.

“It’s not what you’re probably thinking son. There was a supplementary part to the Will – something we couldn’t show you. Your grandfather requested just an urn and stone tablet.”

“You mean you burned him? But he always said he never wanted to be cremated.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“But I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?” My father was sometimes infuriatingly incapable of giving a straight answer, especially when he was uncomfortable with something.

“Best we take you there,” he said. My Mother nodded and smiled. I think she would have hugged me had not Rose been there.

The tablet was small, flat and of polished black granite, and lay under the shade of a hazelnut tree on the edge of the old graveyard. It had my grandfather’s name and then said simply. ‘My spirit away to my family home, my body too. If you feel sad looking at me, then smile again for I look not at you.’

My anger left me immediately. I understood somehow, that my grandfather was not here, and I also understood that there was a secret, which I would learn eventually.

To satisfy Rose I attended sessions with a therapist for two years with no progress. Either I was not insane or else he could not find what was wrong with me. I never told him that I was sure I wasn’t mad or even damaged. I began to look more closely at my grandfather’s book and my own research so far into the occult powers in Southern Europe. At least the book offered me the glimmer of a possibility that I might understand what had happened to Annie.

It was the description of flying snakes at the end of the book which had caught my attention. I was desperate, and my memory of the creature’s appearance could fit the description in the book. Understanding this became a passion for me, gradually overwhelming all other daily thoughts.

What I couldn’t initially understand was the description in the book of all these ‘snake like’ things as Wargs. In my experience – in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and many other classical works Wargs were described as moving on four legs and looking like very large dogs – in other words, wolf-like. I researched the etymology of the word ‘Warg’ and finally found an entry that offered an explanation.

“The Old English word ‘wearg’.

Mary Gerstein, in an article, has attempted to equate the Germanic word ‘warg’ with ‘werwolf, but many experts now reject this. Warg and Wearg can be traced back to a root that may have meant ‘strangler’.”

As soon as I saw the word ‘strangler’, I thought of ‘constrictor’ and the family of snakes called ‘constrictors’. Perhaps an eyewitness in Medieval Europe had described the serpents as constrictors or stranglers and the writer, not having seen what they were writing of, described them as Wargs. But then this didn’t make sense either. The only thing that
did
make sense was that the writer knew the true meaning of the word warg and that the text was copied from a much older text, perhaps from as far back as the Dark Ages. The writer’s name was Edgar de Boulon and I had tried many times to find out more about him with no success. I didn’t even know if he knew my family or not although my grandfather had claimed he had.

The headline on page three of Le Monde newspaper instantly caught my eye. “Young woman’s mangled body found in back street of Lyon”. I read on. “The young woman, dressed in evening attire and now identified as Seline Godin was found on the night of Friday 11 July in the Rue Calas, a quiet street in Lyon. Police would like to speak to anybody in that vicinity around 11.40 pm. An intense police search is under way to catch the killer and although there is little evidence to go on the body is described as being crushed, ‘as if by a giant fist’.”

Spluttering into my coffee, I swung my legs off the table and reread the article slowly. When I finished, I picked up the telephone and dialed our home number.

“Darling. Have you seen the article in Le Monde today?”

“No. What article?”

“I am coming home. Wait there!”

I slammed the phone down, grabbed the car-keys, and paper, and drove home as fast as I could.

“God, you look a mess!” She leaned close to me. “And you stink. Look at this.” She pulled at my shirt front. “You lost a button.”

I showed her the newspaper.

“Um hm. Yes it is interesting. You know what I think?” she said after quickly scanning the article.

“What?”

“Well I hardly like to say, really?”

”Go on?”

“Well it
could
be the same murderer. Perhaps he is back.” She looked nervously at me for my reaction. Obviously I knew she was thinking of a human murderer, but I didn’t care. For now it was enough to have caught her interest.

The newspaper was dated Friday 14 July 1975 and Edward had become engaged to a nice girl in London some years ago. Rose – or the dragon, as I now called her, and I, had drifted apart and I had spent more and more time at the office, often staying late to read my occult books and getting very drunk, mainly on Ouzo, for which I had a taste. We were moving towards divorce and we both knew it. Since the day Annie had died, our marriage had been a train heading for the buffers. Nothing we could do or say seemed to make things any better. My one slim hope of redemption, and thus of saving the marriage had been somehow to prove that I really had seen that night what I had described to her, but the very pursuit of this truth seemed to her further proof of my madness.

I didn’t stay, and back at the office, I rifled through piles of documents looking for just one particular one with a telephone number on it. In the years between the death of Annie and now, I had joined several occult societies. We had been through the 60s and it was much easier to show an interest in such things. One such society I had joined – the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a revival of the Knights Hospitallers, had only in 1963 gained general acceptance as a serious society, and through their newsletter I had started up a correspondence with a Henry de Silva.

Henry lived in France – in Lyon in fact, but had been born in England and served in the Army in World War II. Shortly after his wife had died of cancer he had moved to Lyon to pursue his passion for genealogy. He believed his ancestors to have been Huguenots although I always thought his family name sounded more Spanish, which would make them unlikely Protestant refugees. However he was a genial fellow and his knowledge of Medieval France and the Occult was impressive. I was sure I could recall seeing his telephone number on one of his letters and I wanted to call him straight away. After turning half the office upside down I found it.

“Henry?”

“Yes?”

I explained who I was.

”Have you seen that article in Le Monde? About the girl who was found dead in Lyon? You must have heard of it?”

“Yes. Of course. How could I not. It’s been all over the papers. Strange isn’t it?”

“Strange? Well no. I didn’t think so. Its sounds just like what happened to Annie!”

“Ah yes. I thought you would say that. You shouldn’t get too excited dear boy but I admit, it has potential.”

“Listen. Can we possibly get together some time? I really need your confidence and I have a lot of stuff to show you.”

“Well certainly. I would love to have you.”

“When is good for you?”

“Well anytime. My social calendar is hardly full you know.”

“Tomorrow? Midday?”

“Um. Yes I think so. I will have to get my cleaner to brush the house down a bit.”

He gave me directions and the following morning I stuffed all the books and documents I needed into my white Citroën DS and drove the 200 km down to Lyon.

I parked in the only space available, a few blocks down from a narrow four-story town house in the inner suburbs, painted in a pale shade of pink, with sky-blue awnings over the tall and narrow windows. I pulled on the antiquated bell-pull outside the paneled front door and a voice echoed in the narrow street from above. “Push the door when you hear the buzz! Come up to the second floor.”

On the second floor landing Henry was waiting for me, leaning on a silver-topped walking stick and wearing a cream-coloured suit.

His pointed white beard jerked up and down as he welcomed me. “Come in! Come in dear boy.”

He followed me in to his flat but I noticed he moved very slowly and seemed in some discomfort. He was even breathless before he lowered himself onto a Windsor back chair next to a lovely oak dining table against the wall by the window.

“Angina dear boy. Too much good-living in the Army.”

I chuckled politely. “Where were you based?”

”India until the War. Then a spell in Burma.”

He didn’t look at me as he spoke. I knew the fighting in Burma had been some of the most intense in the War. I also knew typhoid and malaria were rife.

“So good to meet you at least dear boy. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t stand. Sherry? Or something else?” His brown eyes danced and glinted behind a delicate pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez glasses as he spoke.

There was a small silver platter with a cut-glass sherry decanter in the centre and three clean glasses upturned next to it.

“Sherry is fine.”

He reached painfully over the table and poured a glass for me.

“Now what wonders have you brought me to look at?”

The first thing I showed him was the book by Edgar de Boulon. I had inserted white cards to mark pages of interest and he read slowly, affirming what he read with quiet ‘um hms’ while I slowly slipped the sherry. It felt very pleasant with a nice cool breeze whispering though the window in the early summer heat. I watched his face closely as he read the section about flying snakes and how they were supposed to constrict space. His eyes looked up at me just once for an instance. He finished reading and sat back in his chair. I knew him well enough from his letters to know that he formed opinions slowly, and gave them seldom, so I didn’t expect an immediate response. He still seemed to be waiting.

“That last passage interests me the most. I erm.. Do you think I could possibly trouble you for another glass of sherry? Dutch courage!” I said grinning inanely at him.

“Of course dear boy. Help yourself!”

“Erm. You know I was with Annie when she was... murdered? Well I told The Gendarmes that I had not got a good look at the killer but actually I did. My wife thinks I am insane but what I saw most resembled a.. snake.” I hadn’t told Henry the details about what I had seen – about the snake, before. A bead of sweat started rolling down my forehead. I knew I could lose a friend now, or gain an ally, if he believed me. “Annie’s body was squeezed... crushed as if by a giant fist or perhaps a large constrictor snake. “ I immediately felt the absurdity of what I was saying and felt powerless to back up my description.

“Tell me more about what you saw!” I looked up and Henry was leaning towards me, eagerly waiting to hear more.

I smiled, grateful and relieved at last to find a willing ear. “Well it was huge! It towered over us but you know.. I couldn’t see anything clearly. It was as if it were in a dream. Everything shimmered. In fact the air had seemed to be like water when it appeared.”

“Yes. That would be so.”

“What?”

“Don’t mind me. We will discuss it later. Just tell me all you can about what you saw.”

“Well Obviously once I could feel it take a hold of Annie I wasn’t so interested in what it was. I just wanted to hold on to her but it was immensely strong. It was like pulling against a pick-up truck. There was no way I could stop it.”

“But it was a snake you say? How did it take hold?”

“Yes sorry. Annie was behind me – against a wall but it seemed to have some kind of appendage – arms maybe. In fact in moments I felt it was more like a man than a snake. If it had eyes I could not look at them. It also seemed to be burning somehow, and I thought I could smell the stench of burning flesh. I am sure it must have made a sound like a scream or roar but I was shouting too and Annie was screaming so I cannot clearly remember that. I could not tell you about colours or even if it had wings. It was dark. That is about it really.”