John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

While they were standing and talking by the French doors, Kim had quietly come over from the fireplace and joined them. She spoke in a small, uncertain voice. “Do you think it could have been the same person who sawed through the step in my basement?”

Gurney and his son both seemed about to respond to this when a metallic clang from somewhere outside the house diverted everyone’s attention.

Gurney looked through the glass door down toward the remains of the barn. There was another clang. He could just make out the kneeling form of the investigator, wielding what appeared to be a small sledgehammer against the barn’s concrete floor.

Kyle came over to his father’s side. “The hell is he doing?”

“Probably widening a crack in the floor with a hammer and chisel to get a sample of the earth underneath it.”

“What for?”

“When a liquid accelerant gets on the floor, it tends to seep into any available cracks, then down into the soil. If you can get an unburned sample, it makes precise identification easier.”

Madeleine’s eyes grew angry at this new aspect of the violation. “Our barn was doused with gasoline before it was set on fire?”

“Gasoline or something similar.”

“How do you know that?” asked Kim.

When Gurney didn’t answer immediately, Kyle explained, “Because of how fast it went up. A normal fire couldn’t spread through a building that quickly.” He glanced at his father. “Right?”

“Right,” muttered Gurney vaguely. His attention had moved back to Kim’s suggestion that the staircase saboteur and the barn burner might be the same individual. He turned to her. “Why did you say that?”

“Say what?”

“That it might be the same intruder-here and in your basement.”

“It just popped into my head.”

He thought about it. It brought to mind a question he hadn’t wanted to ask her the night before. “Tell me something,” he said softly. “Does the phrase ‘Let the devil sleep’ mean anything to you?”

Her response was immediate and startling.

Her eyes widened with fear, and she took a small step backward. “Oh, my God! How did you know about that?”

Surprised by her reaction, Gurney hesitated.

“Robby!” she cried. “Damn it, Robby told you, didn’t he? But if he told you, why are you asking if it means anything to me?”

“I’d like to hear about it from you.”

“This isn’t making any sense.”

“Two nights ago in your basement, I heard something.” Kim’s expression froze. “What?”

“A voice. A whisper, actually.”

The color drained from her skin. “What kind of whisper?”

“Not a very pleasant one.”

“Oh, my God!” She swallowed. “There was someone in the basement? Oh, my God! Was it a man or a woman?”

“Hard to tell. But a man, I think. It was dark. I couldn’t see.”

“Oh, my God! What did he say?”

“ ‘Let the devil sleep.’ ”

“Oh, my God!” Her frightened eyes seemed to be roving over some perilous terrain.

“What does that mean to you?”

“It’s… the end of a story my father told me when I was little. The most frightening story I ever heard.”

Gurney noticed that she was digging the fingernail of her middle finger into the cuticle of her thumb as she spoke, trying to gouge away bits of skin. “Sit down,” he said. “Relax. You’re going to be okay.”

“Relax?”

He smiled, spoke gently. “Can you tell us the story?”

She steadied herself by holding on to the back of the nearest chair at the table. Then she closed her eyes and took a series of deep breaths.

After a minute or so, she opened her eyes and began in a shaky voice. “The story… was actually pretty short and simple, but when I was little, it seemed so… big. So scary. A world I got pulled into. Like a nightmare. My father called it a fairy tale. But he told it like it was real.” She swallowed. “There was a king, and he made a law that once a year all the bad children in the kingdom had to be brought to his castle-all the children who’d gotten in trouble, who’d lied or been disobedient. Children who were so bad that their parents didn’t want them anymore. The king kept them in the castle for a whole year. They had good food and clothes and comfortable beds, and they were free to do whatever they wanted to do. With one exception. There was a room in the deepest, darkest part of the castle basement that they were warned to stay away from. It was a small, cold room, and there was only one thing in it. A long, moldy wooden chest. The chest was actually an old, rotting coffin. The king told the children that it held a sleeping devil-the most evil devil in all the world. Each night after the children got into their beds, the king would walk from bed to bed, whispering in the ear of each child: ‘Never go down to the darkest room. Stay far away from the rotting coffin. If you want to live through the night, let the devil sleep.’ But not all the children were wise enough to obey the king. Some of them suspected he made up the story about the devil in the chest because the chest was where he hid his jewels, and once in a while a child would get up in the night and sneak down into that dark room and open the rotting chest that looked like a coffin. Then a piercing shriek would rise through the castle, like the scream of an animal caught in the jaws of a wolf. And the child would never be seen again.”

There was a stunned silence around the table.

Kyle was the first to speak. “Holy shit! That was the bedtime story your father told you when you were a little kid?”

“He didn’t tell it that often, but every time he did, it terrified me.” She looked at Gurney. “When you said ‘Let the devil sleep’ just now, that cold feeling came rushing back to me. But… I don’t understand how someone could have been waiting for you in the basement. Or why whoever it was would have whispered that in your ear. What sense does it make?”

Madeleine plainly had a question that was troubling her as well. But before she could ask it, there was a firm knock at the side door.

When Gurney went and opened it, the arson investigator was standing there. The man was older, heavier, grayer-haired, and considerably less athletic-looking than most BCI detectives. The outside corners of his unsympathetic eyes seemed permanently drawn down by a lifetime of disappointment in human beings.

“I’ve completed my initial inspection of the site.” His weary voice complemented his expression. “Now I need to get some information from you.”

“Come in,” said Gurney.

The man wiped his feet carefully, almost obsessively, on the doormat, then followed Gurney past the little mudroom into the kitchen. He glanced around with an air of disinterest that Gurney was sure veiled a habit of suspicious scrutiny. The arson investigators he’d known in the city were all keenly observant.

“As I just informed Mr. Gurney, I need to get some information from each of you.”

“What’s your name again?” asked Kyle. “I missed it when you arrived this morning.”

The man looked at him blankly-no doubt, thought Gurney, assessing the aggressive edge in the young man’s tone. After a moment he said, “Investigator Kramden.”

“Really? Like Ralph?”

Another blank look.

“Ralph? In The Honeymooners ?”

The man shook his head in a way that seemed more a dismissal of the question than an answer. He turned to Gurney. “I can conduct these interviews in my van or here in the house, if there’s an appropriate area.”

“Right here at the table would be good.”

“I have to conduct them individually, without everyone present, to avoid one witness’s recollections being influenced by another’s.”