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

creaking boots and knelt stiffly and painfully down.
His fingers traced the pattern that was scorched into the woodblock flooring,
touching it as respectfully and gently as a fine medieval brass. I stood behind
him and said: ‘Do you know what it is?’
    He didn’t look up. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I know what
it is. It is the mark of the demon. This house is holy, you see. It has been
the vessel of years of prayer and blessings. And a demon’s bones cannot touch
it without making a mark.’
    ‘It looks very small. Not much more than a child.’
    ‘It is no smaller than the devils and gargoyles that are
carved on medieval churches, my friend. We forget that many of those were
carved, secretly, from the actual bodies of such fiends. I have the memoirs
upstairs of a stonemason who worked at Chartres, and he tells of how the monks
would bring him skulls and bones of creatures that he could never identify.’
    Madeleine came up and took my arm. ‘What are we going to
do?’ she asked softly.
    ‘What if it tries to break free?’
    ‘We must take it to the cellar at once,’ said Father Anton.
‘I can confine it there by the power of the crucifix and the power invested in
me by Our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, at the first opportunity, we must take the
skeleton to pieces and scatter those pieces according to the Sepher Ha Zohar, which is the most important book of the
Kabbalah.’
    We returned to the black sack, and this time all three of us
took hold of it, and we walked with it as quickly as we could to the carved oak
door of the cellar, way down at the end of the hall. Once we were there, Father
Anton took out the largest of his keys, and put it into the lock.
    Inside the door, it smelled of limestone and must. Father
Anton switched on the light, and said, ‘Be careful of the stairs. They’re very
old and uneven.’
    Like the cellars of most French houses of any size, Father
Anton’s was enormous, and divided into several rooms. I could see wine racks
through one half-open door, and inside another, garden tools and pieces of
medieval masonry. But Father Anton directed us down to the very farthest
recesses of the cellar, to a heavy door studded with black iron nails, and
opened it up with another elaborate key.
    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