Graham Masterton - The Devils of D-Day

This room was totally dark inside, and airless. There were no windows, and the room was empty but for a few broken flowerpots and a rusted mangle. It was floored with dusty clay tiles, and whitewashed with lime. Father Anton switched on the single bare bulb and said, “Lay the sack down here. This room was originally used for storing valuables and furniture. The lock is very strong.”

We set the black bag down in the centre of the room, and stood back from it with considerable relief. Father Anton reached inside his coat and took out his worn brown spectacle case.

“First of all, we have to find out what kind of a demon this is,” he said. “Then we can do our best to dismiss it. Mr. McCook—you’ll find a garden sickle in the next room. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to bring it in.”

I went to fetch the sickle while Father Anton stalked impatiently around the flaccid, lumpy bag, staring at it closely through his gold-rimmed spectacles, and coughing from time to time in the cold air of the cellar.

There were five sickles of varying sizes, so being a native of Mississippi I chose the largest. I took it back to Father Anton, and he smiled, and said, “Will you cut it open? Or shall I?”

I looked across at Madeleine. She was tired and tense, but she obviously wanted to know what horrors were contained inside this sack just as much as I did. She nodded, and I said, “Okay—I’ll do it.”

I leaned over the sack and pushed the point of the sickle into the ancient fabric. It went in easily, and when I tugged, the bag ripped softly open with a dusty, purring sound, as fibre parted from fibre after centuries of waiting for unimaginable reasons in places that could only be guessed at.

The bag was full of dust and bones. I stood back, and stared at the bones with a kind of horrified curiosity, because they weren’t the bones of any human or beast that you’d recognize. There were narrow ribs, curved thighbones, long claw-like metatarsals. They were dull brown and porous, and they looked as if they were six or seven hundred years old, or even more. I’d once dug up the skeleton of a Red Indian at my father’s place at Louin, in Jasper County, and that had the same dry look about it.

It wasn’t the bones of the body that frightened me so much—though they were grotesque enough in themselves. It was the skull. It had its jawbone missing, but it was a curious beaklike skull, with slanting eye-sockets, and a row of small nib-like teeth. There were rudimentary horns at the back of the head, and if it hadn’t have been for the reptilian upper jaw, I would have said it was the skull of a goat.

Madeleine took my hand, and squeezed it hard. “What is it?” she said, in a voice unsteady with fear. “Dan— what is it?”

Father Anton took off his spectacles, and closed them with a quiet click. He looked at us, and his eyes were red from tiredness and cold, but his face was alive with human compassion and religious fortitude. He had been a priest for seventy years, twice as long as either of us had been alive, and even though he was elderly, he had seen in those seventy years enough miracles and enough demonic fears to give him strength where we had very little.

He said, “It is just as I suspected.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You suspected something? You mean, you guessed what this was beforehand?”

He nodded. “It was after we spoke, after we talked about the thirteen tanks. I spent an hour or so looking through the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum , and I came across a small reference to les treize diables de Rouen . There is very little there, very little information. But it appears from what Jean Wier says that in 1045 the city of Rouen was terrorised by thirteen devils which brought fire, pestilence, sorrow, and disaster. They were the thirteen acolytes of Adramelech, who was the eighth demon in the hierarchy of the evil Sephiroth, and the grand Chancellor of Hell.”

I reached inside my coat for my stale Lucky Strikes. I said, “Is it that unusual to find devils in teams of thirteen?”

“Well, quite.”

“But what were thirteen eleventh-century devils doing in thirteen American tanks in the Second World War? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Father Anton shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. McCook. Perhaps if we knew the answer to that, we would know the answer to everything.”

Madeleine asked, “What happened to the devils of Rouen? Does the book say?”

“Oh, yes. They were imprisoned in a dungeon by a powerful spell imposed on them by the medieval exorcist Cornelius Prelati. The book is in medieval French, so it’s a little difficult to decipher exactly how, or for how long. But it mentioned the word coude , which I thought at first meant that the devils were imprisoned very close together, rubbing shoulders. However, when I saw this sack I realized that there could be some connection. The French word coudre, as you may know, monsieur, means ‘to sew up.’ ”

Madeleine whispered, “The devils were sewn in bags. Just like this one.”

Father Anton said nothing, but raised his hands as if to say, c’est possible.

We stood around the bones for a long time in silence. Then Madeleine said, “Well, what’s to be done?”

Father Anton sucked at his ill-fitting dentures. “We must spread the bones across the countryside, as the Kabbalah recommends. But of course we cannot do it tonight. In any event, I shall have to call every one of the church authorities involved, and ask for permission to bury the bones in such a way.”

“That’s going to take forever,” I told him.

Father Anton nodded. “I know. But I’m afraid that it’s necessary. I cannot simply bury the bones of a creature like this on sacred ground without the knowledge of the church.”

Madeleine took my hand. Very naturally, very easily, and very affectionately. She said, “Dan, perhaps you ought to stay with Father Anton tonight. I don’t like to leave him alone with this thing.”

Father Anton smiled. “It is kind of you to feel such concern. But you really needn’t worry.”

“No, no,” I told him. “I’d like to. That’s if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. We can have a game of chess together after dinner.”

I said to Madeleine: “I’ll run you home.”

Father Anton switched off the light in the room where the demon’s remains lay scattered. For a moment we paused at the door, looking back into the pitch darkness. I could have sworn I felt a light breeze, sour with the same odor that had pervaded the tank, coursing out of the room. Of course, it was impossible. The room had no windows. But all the same, there was this strange, unsettling sensation, as if you were awakened in the night by the breath from some creature’s nostrils on your cheek.

Father Anton closed the heavy door and locked it. Then he stood before it, and crossed himself, and spoke a prayer I’d never heard in my whole life.

“O devil,” he whispered, “thou who hast touched no food, drunk no water, tasted not the sprinkled flour nor known the sacred wine, remain within I command thee. O gate, do not open that the demon within may pass; O lock hold thyself firm; O threshold stay untrod. For the day of the Lord is at hand, when the dead shall rise and outnumber the living, in His name’s sake, amen.”

The old priest crossed himself again, and so did Madeleine. I wished right then that I’d had that kind of religion, too—the kind of religion that gave me words and actions to guard me against the devils of the night.

“Come,” said Father Anton. “Perhaps you’d like a calvados before you take Mademoiselle Passerelle home.”

“I think I could use it,” I told him, and we went upstairs, with only one backward glance at the door that held back the bones of the demon.