The Devils of D-Day (18 page)

There was a long pause. I could hear another faint voice on
a crossed line. Then ex-Colonel Sparks said: ‘What do you mean – if you come
out of this alive?’

I didn’t know what to answer. I just set down the telephone
receiver and said to Madeleine: ‘He knew where they were. We’re going to have
to drive to London.’

The Reverend Taylor came out to the hall and his face was
even more flushed than ever. ‘Are you sure you won’t have another drink?’ he
asked us.
‘Or how about some sandwiches?
My woman’s
going home in a moment, but she could rustle up some tongue sandwiches.’

‘Really,’ I said, ‘that’s very kind of you, but we have to
go right away.’

The vicar looked at me nervously. ‘Did Colonel Sparks know
where they were? Did he tell you?’

I nodded. ‘He knew where they were sealed away after the
war. Whether they’re still there or not is another matter. But we’re going to
have to go to find out.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said the Reverend Taylor, ‘this is all very
distressing. I told them it would come to a bad end.’

Madeleine said: ‘It wasn’t your fault,
Mr
Taylor. You weren’t to know.’

‘But I feel dreadfully responsible,’ he told us worriedly.
‘I feel as if it was my negligence that killed poor Father
An
ton.’

‘Well, maybe you can make up for it,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe
you can give us some idea of how to protect ourselves against these thirteen
devils and against
Adramelech
.’

The Reverend Taylor’s face fell. ‘My dear fellow, I hardly
know what to say. It was only because we had such a great number of priests
during the war that we were able to keep the devils under control. But as for
Adramelech
himself – well, I’m afraid I don’t know what to
tell you.
Adramelech
is one of the greatest and most
terrible of the evil
Sephiroth
. Perhaps only one of
the divine
Sephiroth
would be able to help you, and
according to what is written about them, the divine
Sephiroth
are almost as unmanageable as the evil ones.
Adramelech’s
counterpart among God’s ranks is
Hod
, the seraph of
majesty and glory; but whether
Hod
could possibly be
summoned to help you – well, I really couldn’t say. It’s all so infernally
mythical.’

I lit a fresh cigarette. This time, my fingers stayed
intact. Perhaps
Elmek
had
realised
that we had the information that we’d come for, and that he’d soon be rejoining
his malevolent brethren.

I said: ‘Do you really believe in all this?
In
Adramelech
and
Hod
?
And all these devils. I never knew the Protestant church held with devils.’

The Reverend Taylor stuck his hands in his pockets and
looked a little abashed.

‘You will rarely find a Protestant cleric who admits to the
actual physical existence of devils,’ he said. ‘But every Anglican priest is
told in strict confidence of the evidence that exists to support them. I
couldn’t possibly divulge what the books say, but I assure you that the
evidence I have personally seen for the existence of the divine and the evil
Sephiroth
is more than overwhelming. There are demons and
devils,
Mr
McCook, just as there are angels.’

Just then, I felt a low-frequency vibration tremble through
the house. It was like a sinister train passing, a train that blew a deep dark
whistle. I looked up at the ceiling, and I saw a hairline crack that ran all
the way from one plaster
moulding
to the other.

The Reverend Taylor looked up, too. ‘What on earth’s that?’
he blinked. ‘Did you feel it?’

‘Yes. I tell it,’ said Madeleine. ‘Maybe it was a supersonic
plane passing.’

The Reverend Taylor frowned. ‘I don’t think Concorde flies
this way, my dear. But I suppose it could...’

There was another rumble, louder this time. The floors shook
and a fiery log dropped out of the grate and into the hearth. The Reverend
Taylor hurriedly unhooked the tongs from the firedog, and stacked the log back
on the fire.

I said: ‘It’s
Elmek
. I’m sure of
it. He’s restless. Come on, Madeleine, I think we ought to get out of here
before anything worse happens.’

The Reverend Taylor raised his hand. ‘You mustn’t leave on
any account. I was just as responsible for what happened as anybody. And
perhaps I can help.’

He went across to his bookshelves, and spent three or four
minutes searching for what he wanted. He tugged it out at last – a small book
as thin as a New Testament, with black leather covers and a frayed silk
bookmark. Holding the book long
sightedly
at arm’s
length, he licked his thumb and leafed through six or seven pages.

Madeleine and I waited impatiently, while the clock struck
nine.

‘Ah, here it is.
The invocation of angels.’

‘I have a French book about that in my luggage,’ I told him.
‘
L’Invocation
des
Anges
by Henri St
Ermin
.
The trouble is
,
I can hardly understand a word of it.’

Again, the house trembled. A china donkey with a dried-up cactus
in its pannier was shaken off its shelf, and shattered on the floor. Two or
three books dropped out, and the windows vibrated in their frames with a sound
that set my teeth on edge.

‘
L’Invocation
des
Anges
is just what you need,’ said the
Reverend Taylor, a little breathless. ‘But this book will help you identify
each of the twelve other devils in turn and call an appropriate angel to
dismiss it. Did Father Anton mention the seven tests to you?’

‘You mean the seven tests of a devil’s identity? Yes, he
did.’

The Reverend Taylor nodded gravely.
‘A
brilliant man, Father Anton.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am that he’s
gone. Well, he was absolutely right.
When you find the devils
you must identify each in turn, and use your book
L’Invocation
des
Angts
to send them away.
They are French
devils, you see, and French dismissals will have a greater effect on them.’

Madeleine said: ‘If we dismiss them, will that prevent them
from summoning
Adramelech
?’

The Reverend Taylor looked at her seriously. ‘One hopes so, my
dear. But of course devils are devils, and one can never quite predict how they
are going to behave, or what tricks they are going to use. Take this terrible
beast
Elmek
, for example...’

The curtains covering the windows suddenly flapped, as if
they were being blown by a wind that we couldn’t even feel. I turned towards
the window in fright, and I was sure that for one second I glimpsed, in the
darkness outside, the evil slanting eyes of the demon of knives. Above us, the
lights went dim and sickly, until we could hardly see each other, and a sour
smell of decay flowed through the room.

The Reverend Taylor shivered. Then he raised his hand and
drew the sign of the cross in the air, and called: ‘Devil,
begone
!
I adjure thee, O vile spirit, to go out! God the Father, in His name, leave our
presence! God the Son, in His name, make thy departure! God the Holy Ghost, in
His name, quit this place! Tremble and flee, O impious one, for it is...’

There was a howl so loud that I jumped in terror. It sounded
as if a fearsome beast was actually devouring the whole room. The curtains
lifted and flapped again, and a whole row of books toppled like dominoes and
splayed across the carpet. Madeleine clutched my arm in fear, and the Reverend
Taylor raised both his hands to protect himself from the rushing sound of
demonic hate.

‘It is God who commands thee!’ shouted the Reverend Taylor.
‘It is I who command thee!’

The windows burst in a cloud of tumbling, spraying,
razor
-sharp glass. Fragments flew across the room and hit
the Reverend Taylor in a glittering explosion that sliced into his upraised
hands, ripped the ecclesiastical cloth from his arms and chest, and slashed his
face and hands right down to the raw nerves. Before he collapsed, I saw the
whiteness of his forearm bones, laid bare amidst the chopped meat of his flesh.

Miraculously, or devilishly, the glass passed Madeleine and
me and left
us
almost unscratched. We watched in
horror as the Reverend Taylor sank to the floor, ripped into bloody pieces, and
Madeleine pressed her face into my shoulder, gagging with horror.

The last fragments of glass tinkled on to the floor, and a
freezing wind blew in through the window. Holding Madeleine close, I said: ‘
Elmek
.’

There was no answer.

‘
Elmek
!’
I said, louder.

Outside, in the darkness, there was a dry, laughing sound.
It could have been laughing or it could have been the swish of the trees as the
wind moaned through their leafless branches.

The door of the sitting-room opened and I froze in fright.
But then a red-faced woman in a turquoise overcoat and a turban hat peered
around the door and said: ‘What a commotion! Is everything all right? I thought
I heard glass.’

The Sussex Constabulary kept us at Lewes Police Station for
almost three hours.

Most of the time, we sat on hard wooden seats in a
green-painted corridor and read the same crime-prevention posters over and
over. An unsmiling superintendent with a clipped black moustache and shoes that
were polished beyond human reason asked us questions and examined our passports,
but we knew from the start that the Reverend Taylor’s hideous death could only
look like an accident.
A freak accident, of course.
But an accident all the same.

Elmek
, in his lead-and-copper
trunk, was not going to be delayed or thwarted, especially by the procedures of
the British police.

At five minutes to midnight, the superintendent came out of
his office and handed us our passports.

‘Does this mean we can go?’ I asked him.

‘For the moment, sir.
But we’d like
a forwarding address. You may have to give evidence at the inquest.’

‘Well, okay.
The Hilton Hotel.’

The superintendent took out a silver propelling-pencil and
wrote that down. ‘All right, sir. Thanks for your help. We’re advising your
embassy of what’s happened, just as a matter of courtesy.’

‘That’s all right by me.’

The superintendent tucked away his pencil and regarded us
for a moment with eyes that looked as if they’d been pickled in bleach. I knew
that he didn’t really understand how the Reverend Taylor’s window had blown in
with such devastating force, or how Madeleine and I had escaped with nothing
but superficial cuts. But there was no sign of explosives, no sign of weapons,
no motive, and no possibility that we could have cut him to shreds ourselves
with thousands of fragments of glass. I had already heard one constable
muttering to his sergeant about ‘peculiar vacuums’ and ‘thousand-to-one
chances’, and I guessed that they were going to put the Reverend Taylor’s death
down to some wild peculiarity of the English weather.

‘You won’t be leaving the country, sir?’ asked the
superintendent.
‘Not for a few days, anyway?’

‘No, no. We’ll stick around.’

‘Very well, sir. That’ll be all for now, sir. I’ll bid you
goodnight.’

We left the police station and walked across the road to the
sloping car park. The Citroen, silent and dark, was the only car there. We
climbed into it warily, and sat back in the rigid little seats. Madeleine
yawned, and pulled her ringers through her dark blonde hair. I glanced back at
the devil’s chest, and said: ‘If
Elmek’s
going to let
us, I think it’s time we had some rest. I didn’t sleep last night, and I don’t
suppose we’re going to get ourselves a lot of relaxation tomorrow.’

There was no answer from the dull medieval box. Either the
devil was sleeping itself (although I didn’t know if devils slept or not) or
else it was silently granting me permission to rest. I started up the car, and
we went in search of somewhere to stay.

We spent half an hour driving around the streets of Lewes in
the dark before Madeleine spotted a bed-and-breakfast sign on the outskirts of
town, on a gateway just opposite the forbidding flint walls of Lewes prison.
Set back from the road in a driveway of laurel bushes was a red-brick Victorian
mansion,
and someone was watching a black-and-white television
in the front downstairs room. I turned the Citroen into the driveway, parked
it, and went to the front door to knock.

I was answered, after a long and frosty wait, by a small
hunched old woman in a pink candlewick dressing-gown and paper curlers. She
said: ‘It’s very late, you know. Did you want a room?’

I tried my best not to look like a
dishevelled
madman or an escaped convict from across the road.
‘If that’s
possible.
We’ve come from France today and we’re pretty well bushed.’

‘Well, I can’t charge you the full rate. You’ve missed three
hours’ sleep already.’

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment, and all I could
say was: ‘That’s okay. That’s wonderful. But I’ll pay the full rate if you want
me to.’

I called Madeleine, and the old woman let us into the house.
She took us up a cold flight of stairs to a landing laid with green-and-cream
linoleum, where a painting of ducks by Peter Scott hung under a frayed and
dusty lampshade. She unlocked a door for us, and showed us into a typically
freezing British bedroom, with a high double bed of cream-painted iron, a cheap
varnished wardrobe, a cracked sink and a gas fire with half of its fireclay
missing.