The Devils of D-Day (8 page)

I climbed out and helped her stow one kit away in the back
of the car. She said: ‘I got everything.
The crowbars, the
hammers.
Everything you told me.’

‘That’s good. What did your father say?’

‘He isn’t so happy. But he says if we must do it, then we
must. He’s like everyone else. They would like to see the tank opened, but they
are too frightened to do it themselves.’

I glanced at Father Anton, sitting patiently in his seat. ‘I
think that’s how the good father feels about it. He’s been dying to tackle this
demon for years. It’s a priest’s job, after all. It just took a little
coaxing.’

As I opened the door to let Madeleine into the back of the
car, I heard Eloise calling from the kitchen. She came out into the dull
afternoon, holding her black skirts up above the mud, and she was waving
something in her hand.

‘Monsieur’
.
You must take this!’

She came nearer, and saw Father Anton sitting in the car,
and nodded her head respectfully. ‘Good day, father.’

Father Anton raised a hand in courteous greeting.

Eloise came up close to me and whispered: ‘Monsieur, you
must take this. Father Anton may not approve, so don’t let him see it. But it
will help you against the creatures from hell.’

Into my hand, she pressed the same ring of hair that had
been tied around the model cathedral in Jacques
Passerelle’s
parlour
. I held it up, and said, ‘What is it? I don’t
understand.’

Eloise glanced at Father Anton apprehensively, but the old
priest wasn’t looking our way. ‘It is the hair of a firstborn child who was
sacrificed to Moloch centuries ago, when devils plagued the people of Rouen. It
will show the monsters that you have already paid your respects to them.’

I said, ‘I really don’t think...’

Eloise clutched my hands in her own bony fingers. ‘It
doesn’t matter what you think,
monsieur
.
Just take it.’

I slipped the ring of hair into my coat pocket, and climbed
into the car without saying anything else. Eloise watched me through the
snow-streaked window as I started up the motor, and turned the car around. She
was still standing on her own in the wintry farmyard as we drove out of the
gates and splashed our way through the melting slush en route to Pont
D’Ouilly
itself, and the tank.

Twisted into the hedgerow, the tank was lightly dusted with
snow, and it looked more abandoned than ever. But we all knew what was waiting
inside it, and as we got out of the Citroen and collected together the torch
and the tools, none of us could keep our eyes off it.

Father Anton walked across the road, and took a large silver
crucifix from inside his coat. In his other hand, he held a Bible, and he began
to say prayers in Latin and French as he stood in the sifting snowflakes, his’
wide hat already white, with the low cold wind blowing the tails of his cape.

He then recited the dismissal of demons, holding the
crucifix aloft as he did so, and making endless invisible crosses in the air.

‘I adjure thee, O vile spirit, to go out. God the Father, in
His name, leave my 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 God who commands thee, for it is I who command thee. Yield to me, to
my desire by Jesus of Nazareth who gave His soul. To my desire by sacred Virgin
Mary who gave
Her
womb, by the blessed Angels from
whom thou fell. I demand thee be on thy way.

Adieu O spirit, Amen.’

We waited for a while, shivering in the cold, while Father
Anton stood with his head bowed. Then he turned to us, and said, ‘You may
begin.’

Hefting the canvas bag of tools, I climbed up on to the
tank’s hull. I reached back and helped Madeleine to scramble after me. Father
Anton waited where he was, with the crucifix raised in one hand, and the Bible
pressed to his breast.

I stepped carefully across to the turret. The maggots that
I’d vomited yesterday had completely disappeared, as if they’d been nothing
more than a rancid illusion. I knelt down and opened the canvas bag, and took
out a long steel chisel and a mallet.

Madeleine, kneeling beside me, said, ‘We can still turn
back.’

I looked at her for a moment, and then I reached forward and
kissed her. ‘If you have to face this demon, you have to face it. Even if we
turn back today, we’ll have to do it sometime.’

I turned to the tank’s turret, and with five or six ringing
blows, drove the edge of the chisel under the crucifix that was riveted on to
the hatch. Thirty years of corrosion had weakened the bolts, and after five
minutes of sweaty, noisy work, the cross was off. Then, just to make sure, I
hammered the last few legible words of the holy adjuration into obscurity.

Breathing hard, I stood still for a while and listened.
There was no sound except for my own panting, and the soft whispery fall of the
snow. In the distance, it was almost impossible to see the trees and the farm
rooftops
any more
, because the snow was thickening
and closing in; but Father Anton stood alert with his white hat and white
shoulders, still holding the silver crucifix up in his
mittened
hand.

I tapped on the turret, and said, ‘Is anyone there? Is
anyone inside?’

There was no answer.
Just the dull echo of
my cautious knock.

I wiped my chilled, perspiring forehead. Madeleine, her hair
crowned in snowflakes, tried to give me a confident smile.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘this is the big one.’

With a wide steel chisel, I banged all the way round the
hatch of the turret, breaking the rough welding wherever I could, but mostly
knocking dents in the rusted
armour
plating. I was
making my seventh circle of the hatch when the blade of the chisel went right
through a deeply corroded part of the metal, and made a hole the size of a
dime.

Even in the freezing cold, even in the blanketing snow, we
heard the sour whistle of fetid air escaping from the inside of the tank, and a
smell came out of that Sherman like I’d never smelled anywhere before. It had
the stomach-turning sickliness of rotten food, mingled with an
odour
that reminded me of the reptile houses at zoos. I
couldn’t help retching, and Madame
Saurice’s
rough
red wine came swilling back up into my mouth. Madeleine turned away and said:
‘Mon
Dieu
!’

I tried to hold myself steady, and then I turned back to
Father Anton and said, ‘I’ve broken a hole through, father. It smells really
disgusting in there.’

Father Anton crossed himself. ‘It is the
odour
of Baal,’ he said, his face grey in the afternoon cold. Then he raised the
crucifix higher and said: ‘I conjure bind and charge thee by Lucifer,
Beelzebub,
Sathanas
,
Jauconill
and by their power, and by the homage thou
owest
unto
them, that you do torment and punish this disobedient demon until you make him
come corporally to my sight and obey my will and commandments in whatsoever I
shall charge or command thee to do.
Fiat, fiat, fiat.

Amen.’

Madeleine whispered: ‘Dan – we could seal it up again.
There’s still time.’

I looked at the tiny hole, out of which the polluted air
still sang. ‘And then how long before it gets out of here, and comes after us?
This thing killed your mother, Madeleine. If you really believe that, we have
to get rid of it for good.’

‘Do you believe it?’ she asked me, her eyes wide.

‘I don’t know. I just want to find out what’s inside here. I
want to find out what it is that can make a man puke maggots.’

I licked my lips, and raised the hammer once again. Then I
struck the turret again and again until the hole grew from a dime to a quarter,
and eventually the
armour
plating began to break off
in leaves of black rust. Within twenty minutes, I’d broken all the metal away
around the hinges of the hatch, and the hole was the size of a large
frying-pan.

Father Anton, still waiting patiently in the snow, said:
‘Can you see anything,
monsieur
?’

I peered into the blackness of the tank’s interior.
‘Nothing so far.’

Taking a crowbar from the canvas bag, I climbed up on top of
the Sherman’s turret, and inserted one end of the crowbar into the hole. Then I
leaned back, and slowly began to raise the hatch itself, like opening a
stubborn can of tomatoes with a skewer. Eventually, the welding broke, and the
hatch came free. I stood there breathless and hot, even in the sub-zero
temperature of that gloomy afternoon, but at least the job was done. I said to
Madeleine: ‘Hand me the flashlight.’

Her face pale, she passed it over. I switched it on, and
pointed the beam downwards into the Sherman’s innards. I could see the tank
commander’s
jumpseat
, the breech of the cannon, and
the
gunlayer’s
seat. I flicked the beam sideways, and
then I saw it.
A black sack, dusty and mildewed, and sewn up
like a mailbag, or a shroud.
It wasn’t very large – maybe the size of a
child, or a bag of
fertiliser
. It was lying next to
the side of the tank as if it had fallen there.

Madeleine touched my shoulder. ‘What is it?’ she whispered
in a frightened voice.

‘What can you see?’

I stood straight. ‘I don’t know. It’s a kind of black bag. I
think I’ll have to go down there and lift it out.’

Father Anton called: ‘Monsieur’. Don’t go in there!’

I took another look at the bag. ‘It’s the only way. We’ll
never get it out of there otherwise.’

The last thing in the whole world I wanted to do was get
down inside that tank and touch that bag, but I knew that if we tried to hook
it out with the crowbar we’d probably tear the fabric. It looked pretty old and
rotten – more than thirty years old, maybe more than a hundred. One rip and
whatever was inside it was going to come spilling out.

While Madeleine held back the jagged hatch for me, I
carefully climbed up on to the turret and lowered my legs inside. Even though
my feet were freezing cold, I had a strange tingling feeling, as if something
inside the tank was going to bite them. I said hoarsely, ‘I always wanted to
see what a tank looked, like inside,’ and then I lowered myself into the
chilled, musty interior.

Tanks are claustrophobic enough when they’re heated and
lighted and they’re not possessed by demonic sacks. But when I clambered down
into that cramped and awkward space, with wheels and instruments hitting my
head and shoulders, and only a flashlight for company, I felt a surge of fear
and suffocation, and all I wanted to do was get out of there.

I took a deep breath. It still smelled pretty foul in there,
but most of the
odour
had dispersed. I looked up and
saw Madeleine’s face at the open hatch. She said nervously, ‘Have you touched
it yet?’

I shone my torch on the sack. There was something or
somebody inside it, whatever it was. As close as this, the fabric looked even
older than I’d imagined. It could almost have been a piece of the Bayeux
tapestry, or a medieval shroud.

I reached my hand out and touched it. The cloth was soft
with age. I ran my fingers gently along the length of it, and I could feel
various protrusions and sharp knobs. It felt like a sack of bones; an old and
decaying sack of bones.

I coughed. I told Madeleine: ‘I’m going to try and lift it
up to you. Do you think you can take it?’

She nodded. ‘Don’t
be long
. Father
Anton’s looking very cold.’

‘I’ll try not to be.’

I wedged the flashlight against a hydraulic pipe so that it
shone across the inside of the turret, and then I knelt down beside the sack.
It took a lot of summoning-up of nerve, but in the end I put my arms ‘around
the black fusty cloth, and lifted it a foot or so upwards. It was saggy, and
whatever was inside it, the bones or whatever they were, tumbled to one end of
the sack with a soft rattling sound. But the fabric didn’t tear, and I was able
to gather the whole thing up in my arms and lift it towards Madeleine. She
reached down and gripped the top of it, and I said: ‘Okay, heave.’

For one moment, for one terrifying moment, just as Madeleine
took the weight of the sack and hoisted it upwards, I was sure that I felt it
wriggle, as if there was something alive inside it. It could have been a bone
shifting, or my own keyed-up imagination, but I took my hands away from that
sack as fast as if it was burning.

Madeleine gasped. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Just get that sack out of here quick!’ I yelled. ‘Quick!’

She tugged it upwards, and for a few seconds it snared on
the rough metal around the broken-open hatch. But then she swung it clear, and
I heard it drop on the hull outside. Taking the flashlight, I climbed out of
the tank on to the turret, and I haven’t ever been so glad to see snow and
miserable gloomy skies as I was then.

Father Anton was approaching the side of the tank where the
black sack lay. He was holding the crucifix and the Bible in front of him, and
his eyes were fixed on our strange discovery like the eyes of a man who comes
across the evidence, at last, that his wife has really been cuckolding him.

He said: ‘
Enfin
, It
diable
.

I touched the sack tentatively with my foot. ‘That was all
there was. It feels like it’s full of bones.’

Father Anton didn’t take his eyes away from the sack for a
second.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the bones of a demon.’

I swung myself down from the hull of the tank, and helped
Madeleine to jump down after me. ‘I didn’t know demons had bones,’ I remarked.
‘I thought they were all in the mind.’