Free The Devils of D-Day by Graham Masterton Page A

we
could do to stop him. I just hoped that the thing wouldn’t decide to wake up
and take its revenge on. any of us for being disturbed
so unceremoniously on a cold December afternoon.
    I opened the back of the Citroen, and between us we carried
the sagging, musty sack across the road and laid it gently in the car. Then I
collected up the tools that Madeleine’s father had lent us, and climbed into
the car myself. Father Anton, taking off his hat and shaking the snow off it,
said: ‘I feel strangely elated. Can you understand that?”
    I started the motor. ‘This is what you’ve wanted to do for
thirty years, isn’t it? Open the tank and find out what the hell’s happening.’
    ‘ Mr McCook,’ he said, ‘you should
have come here years ago. It takes unusual simplicity, unusual directness, to
do something like this.’
    ‘I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or not.’
    ‘I didn’t mean naivete .’
     
    We drove through the gathering dusk, and the thick
snowflakes whirled and tumbled all around us. But the time we reached Father
Anton’s house in the middle of the village, the church clock was striking five,
and we could hardly see through the pouring snow. The housekeeper opened the
door as we arrived, and stood there with a sour face and her hands clasped
across her apron as I helped Father Anton into the porch.
    ‘ Il a quatre - vingt -dix arts,’ she snapped, taking the old man’s arm and
leading him inside. ‘Et il faut sortir dans la neigt pour jouer comme un petit garcon?’
    ‘Antoinette,’ said Father Anton reassuringly, patting her
hand. ‘I have never felt so healthy.’
    Madeleine and I went round to the back of the Citroen, and
lifted out the sack. From the dark hall, Father Anton called: That’s right,
bring it inside. Antoinette – will you bring me the keys to the cellar?’
    Antoinette stared suspiciously at the black bundle we were
carrying through the snow.
    ‘ Qu’est-ce que c’est ? ‘ she demanded.
    ‘ C’est un sac de charbon , ‘ smiled Father Anton.
    With one last backward look of ultimate distrust, Antoinette
went off to fetch the cellar keys, while Madeleine and I laid our unholy bundle
down in the hall.
    Father Anton said: ‘If these are bones, then I have a
ceremony for disposing of them.
    The bones of a demon are just as potent as the live demon
itself, so the books say; but they can be scattered in such a way that the
demon cannot live again. The skull has to be interred in one cathedral, and the
hands and the feet in three others. Then the remaining bones are laid to rest
in churches all around the intervening countryside, in ritual sequence.’
    I took out my handkerchief and blew my nose. It was so cold
that I could hardly feel it. ‘Supposing we ask the Pentagon
how to get rid of it?’ I asked. ‘After all, they put it there in the
first place.’
    Father Anton looked down at the black sack and shook his
head. ‘I don’t know. I think the most important thing is to exorcise this beast
as quickly as possible.’
    Antoinette came bustling back with the cellar keys, and
handed them to Father Anton. She pursed her lips in disapproval, but then
Father Anton said gently, ‘I would love some of your barley broth, Antoinette,’
and she softened a little, and went off to the kitchen to prepare it.
    Madeleine and I lifted the soft, yielding sack once more,
and Father Anton said;
    ‘Follow me.’ But as we shuffled off down the long polished
hallway, I glanced back at the place where the sack had been lying, and a
feeling went down my shoulders like ice sliding down the inside of my shirt.
    The wooden floor had been burned, as if by a poker. Where
the black sack had been laid, there was the distinct, unmistakable outline of a
small, hunched skeleton.
    ‘Father Anton,’ I whispered.
    The old priest turned and saw the burns. He said: ‘Lay down
the sack, gently.’ Then while we settled the decaying black fabric on the floor
again, he walked back on