Graham Masterton - The Devils of D-Day

I grimaced. “Would you believe I spent a night with Father Anton?”

Jacques laughed. “These priests! They’re worse than the rest of us!”

I stepped around the thickest ruts of mud until I reached the cowshed door. It was warm and musky in there, scented with the breath of cows. Madeleine was perched on a stool, wearing a blue scarf around her head, jeans, and muddy rubber boots. Her hands worked expertly at the cow’s teats, and the thin jets of milk rang against the sides of the zinc pail. I leaned against the door for a while, and then I said: “Madeleine.”

She looked up, surprised. In her work clothes, she had a casual, gamine attractiveness that, in normal circumstances, I couldn’t have resisted. She said: “Dan! Quelle heure est-il? ”

“Seven-Ten.”

“Why have you come so early? Is anything wrong?”

I nodded, trying to keep my shock and nausea under control. I said, “I don’t know how to tell you.”

She let go of the cow’s udder, and set the pail down on the cobbled floor. Her face was pale and strained, and it looked as if she hadn’t slept a lot more than I had.

She said: “Is it Father Anton? Is he all right?”

I shook my head.

“He’s not—?”

I was so exhausted that I leaned my head against the frame of the cowshed door, and when I spoke I could only manage a dull, tired monotone. I felt as if I’d been gutted, like a herring, and left to drain on somebody’s sink.

“The devil broke out somehow. I heard it in the night. I went downstairs and it had killed Father Anton. Then it killed Antoinette in front of my eyes, to prove its power.”

Madeleine came across the shed and touched my shoulder. “Dan—you’re not serious. Please.”

I lifted my head and looked at her. “How serious do I have to be? I was there. I saw the devil cut Father Anton open, and I saw him kill Antoinette. It says its name is Elmck, the devil of sharp knives. It said that if we didn’t help it find its brethren, it would cut us to pieces as well.”

“I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“Well, you’d better damn well believe it, because it’s true! If you don’t want to wind up like Antoinette, you’d better find some way of making your excuses to your father and getting yourself an indefinite vacation.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that all the time we have is the time that devil decides to grant us. It insists we help it find its brethren, and we’re only going to stay alive as long as we appear to be co-operating. It wants to leave for England this afternoon. If we leave at eight, we can just catch the ferry at Dieppe.”

Madeleine looked completely confused. “Dan, I can’t just walk out of here! What can I say to papa? I’m supposed to be here to help!”

I was so tired and upset that I was near to tears. “Madeleine,” I insisted, “I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t deadly serious. If you won’t make your excuses to your father, then I’ll have to go and tell him the truth.”

“But Dan, it seems so unreal. ”

“Don’t you think I feel the same way?” I asked her “Don’t you think I’d rather get on with my damned work and forget this thing ever happened? But I’ve seen it for myself, Madeleine. It’s real, and we’re both in danger of death.”

Those pale Norman eyes regarded me seriously. Then Madeleine slowly pulled the scarf from her hair, and said, “You mean it.”

“Yes, I damned well mean it.”

She looked out of the cowshed across the foggy yard. Over the hills, behind the dim tracery of leafless elms, the sun glowered through the grey haze of another winter day in the Suisse Normande.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll go and tell my father. I can pack in half an hour.”

I followed her through a flock of grubby geese and into the farmhouse. Jacques Passerelle was in the red-tiled hallway, combing his short hair into a neat parting. Madeleine came up behind him and held him round the waist. He glanced up at her face in the mirror and smiled.

“You’ve finished the milking already?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I’m afraid that Dan came with an urgent message. I have to spend a little time in England.”

He frowned. “ Angleterre? Pour quoi? ”

Madeleine lowered her eyes. “I can’t lie. It’s something to do with the tank. We have to go and find some information for Father Anton.”

Jacques turned around and held his daughter’s arms. “The tank? Why do you have to go to England because of the tank?”

“Because of the English priest, father. The Reverend Taylor, who was here in the war. He is the only man who really knows about the tank, and what was inside it.”

I put in, “We won’t be away long, Monsieur Passerelle. Maybe a week at the outside. Then I promise I’ll bring her straight back.”

Jacques rubbed his shiny shaven chin. “I don’t know what to say. All this tank seems to bring is trouble and more trouble.”

I said, “Believe me, monsieur, this is going to be the last of it. Once we’re back from England, you won’t ever hear about that tank again. Not ever.”

Jacques Passerelle sniffed. He didn’t seem to be particularly impressed by that. He turned to Madeleine and asked, “Why does it have to be you? Can’t Mr. McCook go by himself. It always seems that you have to do the work that others should do. And what about Father Anton?”

Madeleine looked across at me appealingly. I knew she didn’t want to leave her father to cope by himself in the middle of winter. But I shook my head. The last thing I was going to do was cross that devil again. My ring of hair was going to protect me only until the sun set, and then I would be as vulnerable as Madeleine.

“Monsieur,” I told him, “we really have to go, both of us. I’m sorry.”

The farmer sighed. “Very well, if that’s what you have to do. I will call Gaston Jumet and ask him if Henriette can come up and help me. You said a week, no more?”

“About a week,” I told him, although I had no idea how long it was going to take us to dig up Elmek’s twelve infamous brethren.

“Very well,” he said, and kissed his daughter, and shook my hand. “If this is something really important. Now, would you like some calvados and coffee?”

While Madeleine packed, I sat at the kitchen table with Jacques and Eloise. Outside, it began to snow again—thin, wet snow that dribbled slowly down the window panes. We talked about farming and cows and what to do when turnips started to mildew in the ground.

After a while, Jacques Passerelle knocked back his calvados, wiped his mouth with his spotted handkerchief, and said, “I must get to work. We have two fields to plough by the end of the week. I wish you bon voyage .”

We shook hands and then he went off into the hallway to pull on his Wellingtons and his thick jacket. I stirred my coffee carefully, waiting until he was out of earshot, and then I said, “Eloise?”

The old woman nodded. “I know.”

“You know? How do you know?”

She said nothing, but reached in the pocket of her apron, and produced a worn sepia photograph of a young cleric. He was holding a boater in his hands, and squinting into the sun.

I looked at the picture for a long while, and then I said: “This is Father Anton.”

“Yes, monsieur. I have known him for many years. When we were young, we were close friends. We were so close, in fact, that we hardly had to speak to know what each other was thinking. Well, Father Anton reached me last night, after a fashion. I woke in the night and felt that I had lost him; and when I saw you this morning, I knew that he was dead.”

“You didn’t tell Jacques?”