Son of the Endless Night, page 30
Laughter flew in his face like a black bird with sparkling talons.
"IF YOU WANT THIS HUMAN, YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE HIM FROM ME. IF YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH TO OPPOSE ME!"
The priest began deliberately to sprinkle the room and everyone in it with holy water. Crystalline purging drops charged with the power of undaunted love. Tears of Christ. They rained blurringly upon the possessed and there came a wild shriek, not of pain but of outrage.
Rich collapsed suddenly, in a dense scrabbling heap, his face pressed against the shit-covered floor. He groveled there briefly and then sat up, as if jerked from behind by a hand on his hair; his horrible defiled face began shrinking toward normality but still ran livid and mad with veins. There was brown froth at the corners of his mouth: he regurgitated some of the shit he had been made to eat. Conor crossed himself fervently twice, three times, to reinforce the priest's efforts to establish dominion over the inhuman spirit. Rich toppled then, and lay still. The ripe goo and heaps of sinister excrement dematerialized within moments. There were no further sounds except for Adam Kurland's panicked breathing. He lay on the floor in a fetal position, grinning vacantly, a grin that looked as if it were sewn to the bulging angles of his jaws. His eyes rolled so anxiously that Conor imagined he could hear them clicking in his head like pinballs. But his own mind was still jerking and balking, unable to fully assimilate the horrors he had thought himself prepared for; he was desperate to get out of that basement room.
He hauled Adam to his feet and found him lightly constructed, of rubber bands and scant padding. His Unitarian God, largely an intellectual exercise, had proved faithless under fire. Adam's entire life was a pragmatic structure, reason and clear thinking his sword and shield. His mind now would hold or not hold, like a car with old worn brakes parked on a steep incline. Seconds counted, no time to be gentle. Conor hit him in the face with a hand like a chopping board. A tooth chipped, blood flew from Adam's lower lip. There. Some spark of anger deep in his haunted eyes, a stiffening of the body. Conor glanced at Merlo, who nodded.
"There's nothing more I can do," the priest said regretfully. "Let's get out of here. And when Adam comes around, we have to talk."
51
Adam's nerve had been severely tested but not broken; his mind, trampled by cloven hooves, was not disabled. In the hours of the afternoon he recovered slowly, like a man with a totally unfamiliar type of hangover, his vision uncharacteristically misty at the edges. He recovered alone, finding both solace and a renewed will to survive in punishing physical activity. Until dusk he skied cross-country, covering twenty-three miles beneath a burnished overcast. When he returned to the remodeled barn, lungs weighted by fatigue, eyes hollowed, all the lingering boyishness had been seared from his face.
Conor, Lindsay, and Merlo were waiting for him. He looked at them as if they were foreign to him, said few words, went to shower and change his clothes. Lindsay had made Irish stew in a big iron pot, and soda bread. She took a drink, a stiff martini, into the bathroom for Adam and returned leading him by the hand. They settled down in front of the fireplace. Adam gazed into the blue and yellow flames of the gas log fire for a long time. Then he raised his eyes to the priest.
"Have you ever seen anything like that before?"
Merlo shrugged. "Well, I've seen much worse, but usually during the Roman ritual, when the— disturbances can go on day and night, sometimes for weeks."
"How can you stand it?" Adam said tonelessly, drinking so fast he seemed to be sloshing solid gin down his throat. Lindsay put a hand casually on his wrist.
"For one thing, I'm conditioned through my faith in God to withstand whatever the inhuman spirit, the guiding intelligence behind these assaults, can devise. And I know that, in the end, ninety percent of the time God will win."
"What about the other ten percent?" Conor asked, with a touchingly slurred voice. He was humped at one end of a blue sofa, working on another Irish and soda, one of many with which, during an endless afternoon, he had soothed his own nerves and blotted the ugly eruptions, like running sores in the mind, that remained of a sixth of a morning hour spent skidding helplessly part way to hell. He had tunnel vision, and poor depth perception; faces swung blandly in and out of his orbit, the fire either roared hotly right between his eyes or receded to the dimness of a star scratched on a windowpane, but he was following the conversation perfectly well, with a deadly ineradicable spot of fear on his heart.
"The possessed body," Father Merlo explained with a tired but still compassionate smile, "is unequal to the strain placed on it, the tug of war between God and devil. And— nobody wins." His own drink, a schooner of beer, had turned warm in his hand. He had reached the point where he couldn't lift the heavy mug from the arm of the sofa. And he was facing a long ride to Boston, a much longer flight to Rome, driven hammer-and-tongs by the sense of urgency that now possessed him as fully as Richard Devon lay possessed in his jail cell.
"Could that happen to Rich?" Lindsay said. She was
not drinking; she had agreed to see to it that the priest made his flight, which was scheduled to depart at ten thirty. She wore a headband to cover the bandage on her forehead, which made a bump like an unrealized but anxious thought.
"Yes. This is the first time I've come face to face with a devil who has the power, the status in the Kingdom, of Zarach'. It's almost unprecedented. The guiding entities behind demonic possessions always like to keep their identities secret. So I can be sure of one thing already: this is not a typical case of possession— in my experience, it's unique. I don't know yet what it means. But Zarach' Bal-Tagh was telling the truth about his place in the hierarchy of the Fallen. Before the world began, his brother, called Lucifer, was next to God in his majesty. But Lucifer wasn't content to be less than perfect. He wanted to possess all that God possessed: to rule, absolutely, the heavens. For this sin of covetousness he and Zarach' and the host of angels who also coveted God's powers were banished, or so we believe, from God's house.
"But they were not chastised in their banishment, nor did they beg God's forgiveness. They swore eternal hatred for their creator. Lucifer became Satan, which means 'the Father of Lies.' And the name Zarach' Bal-Tagh means, in the Palaic dialect of the Hittite language, 'the Son of the Endless Night.' "
"Hell itself," Conor murmured, drooping despite himself, his glass in one hand sinking below the level of his spread knees with a little tinkle of ice.
Father Merlo got up to walk off a strong urge to sleep. Not yet; perhaps on the flight to Rome. He felt that he was not yet out of range of the danger he had stirred up earlier. He rubbed his bald forehead with the heel of one hand.
"Not exactly. The Endless Night is that shadow of God under which the Fallen Angels perpetually dwell. The darkness from which comes all of their hatred, their evil, their disruptive energy. Hell for us, maybe: but it is their element. In the Endless Night all the negative energy of the universe is concentrated. Don't be misled because these spirits are described as 'fallen.' They have inconceivable powers. They're immortal; they don't obey physical laws. They possess all the arcane and mystical secrets of existence. They work ceaselessly for the destruction of mankind. In other words, you don't mess with them unless you know what you're doing. Are you listening, Conor?"
"Listening," the ex-priest mumbled. "Too tricky for us. The in-your-face-disgrace shot."
"Right," Merlo said, with a brisk handclap. Adam looked up, startled, and rattled the ice in his empty glass. He got up and went to the bar to make himself another drink.
"If they're so powerful," Lindsay ventured, "how have we all managed to survive this long?"
"Men have a covenant with God; and that covenant serves to protect them as long as they honor Him, and obey His laws."
Adam rejoined them with a refilled glass, slouching down beside Lindsay, his lower lip swollen, a deep, nearly black bruise along the jawline where Conor had belted him. He looked harassed and anguished. He said, "What I saw this afternoon will stay in my mind until I die. All right. Let's say I'm willing now to accept that Rich is under the influence of something, someone supernatural." He drew a heavy breath; another. "A spirit. The spirit has— dehumanized him, and may have directly caused the death of Karyn Vale. The question is, how do we save Richard?"
"There's no simple answer," Merlo told him. "The problem of Rich's possession is compounded by his being in jail, and by the nature of his possessor. Zarach' is very powerful. I'd have to do some extensive research into old manuscripts, but I know he's been seldom heard from during the past two thousand years. Yet he always seems to make an appearance just before periods of great upheaval, of world catastrophe."
"He said something about Armageddon," Conor reported; he seemed to be chewing the words through suet. His eyes, as he tipped his head to drink, revealed beneath the drooping lids bloodknots of pain.
"Armageddon," Adam said, but only as if it were his turn to keep the conversation going. His jaw muscles were bunched, on the side where it didn't hurt. Fear kept coming back to him unexpectedly, floodtides. He wondered, quite simply, if he would ever be a man again, having so ignominiously failed himself this morning. His tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had leaked in his pants. He shivered from self-doubt; only Lindsay felt it.
"The end of modern civilization," Merlo explained. "Which we supposedly face along about the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999. I'm afraid I don't take that timetable seriously, or predictions of global disasters by so-called psychics. Doomsaying is a thriving cottage industry. A great many people are convinced that God is about to exact a terrible vengeance, through nuclear war or some natural calamity like the shifting of the poles of the earth. In their fear, unfortunately, they neglect God all the more. The Dark Ones are easily attracted by a mood of negativism. There's been a tremendous revival of belief in the occult, in Satanism. It's almost safer to play with high explosives. The Church, with the shooting of John Paul II, has reached a point of real peril. The appearances of Zarach' can't be coincidental. Simple possession may not be all he has in mind. That's why I have to return to Rome tonight, to talk to my superiors."
"You can't go," Conor cried, lunging to his feet. "What about Rich?"
"Conor, ridding your brother of Zarach' would require exorcism by the most experienced and holy men of the Church. I can tell you that the rites would last for weeks, even months. It would be an incredible ordeal, particularly for your brother. If we could do it. But we can't. He's in jail."
"Without possibility of bail," Adam said.
"There is nothing the Church can do to help Rich until— unless— he's acquitted."
"But he won't go to trial before May at the earliest," Lindsay pointed out.
"Well, speed it up!" Conor bellowed.
"We need time to prepare," Adam said crossly.
"Maybe we need a new lawyer."
Father Merlo walked over to Conor, put an arm across his shoulders and turned him, rather effortlessly, around, forestalling a confrontation. He talked to him quietly, and Conor nodded.
"Even if Rich gets off on an insanity plea, he'll be committed to an institution. What good can you do him there, Father?"
"I doubt that we'd be granted permission to do anything. Our only hope would be to have him transferred to a Catholic institution, like St. Elizabeth's in Washington, then have him furloughed in our care; but there would be legal problems."
"Conor," Adam said, "I'm doing the very best I can. I'm sure we'll win. The best strategy is to deflect the focus of the jurors from the facts of the case to the complexities of Rich's behavior. The eyewitnesses will be very important, but I also need psychiatric opinions— expert testimony."
"You wouldn't need it if a jury saw what we saw today!"
Adam whistled a few notes that descended, derisively, down the scale, ending with a flat exhalation. "Unfortunately no one in this country has been allowed to plead demonic possession in a murder trial. I wouldn't care to be the first defense attorney to propose it."
Lindsay got up and walked to the stove in the kitchen, stirred the stew with a wooden spoon, opened the oven door. The odor of freshly baked bread flowed along with her as she returned to them.
"If anyone's hungry," she said unhopefully, "we can eat now."
Adam was gazing at the fire with a composed, ironic smile. Conor, without Merlo's long arm to anchor him, merely drifted, a few feet here, a few feet there, like a vast and empty hulk on a windblown reef. Out of it.
Merlo spoke when the others failed to: "Your stew smells wonderful. I'd love to have some."
Lindsay brightened. "Father, you've made my day." She whirled toward the butcher-block table, where place settings surrounded an arrangement of dried flowers in a Greek bowl, caught her lower lip between her teeth, hesitated. She smiled, a little cutely, over one shoulder. Her heart was hammering. "You could make it even better."
"How, Lindsay?"
"Bless this house before you leave."
Crystal Kinsman and her cousin Caitlin met in New York Friday evening to have dinner and see a show, a Neil Simon comedy. Caitlin had taken the train into the city from Springfield, Massachusetts and Crystal drove her Ford Tempo over from New Brunswick to meet her. The plan was for Caitlin to return to Rutgers with Crystal and spend the weekend. There was to be a basketball game and a dance; Crystal had lined up dates for them.
After she stepped off the train at Grand Central and they fell into each other's arms with squeals of delight, and admired each other's outfits, Caitlin's smile faded. She said, "I'm worried sick about Jeff. He's been in the infirmary up at Williams for three days now."
"Why, what's wrong with him, hon?"
"I don't know for sure; he's running a high fever they can't knock down. I tried to call, but they wouldn't let me talk to him. That's how sick he is."
Crystal had met Jeff Pepperdine for the first time on that ill-fated ski holiday in Vermont, and she had found him likable, droll, and self-deprecating, unusual for a redhead. Usually they were pushy as all get-out.
"That's a real shame. But you know he's gonna be okay. Don't let it go and spoil your weekend."
They ate at the Four Seasons, a treat paid for by Crystal's uncle Roy, who had come up from Yazoo City and made a name for himself in the advertising game. Crystal, at least, found the Simon comedy a scream, the best thing he'd done in years. At the intermissions Caitlin went through half a pack of cigarettes, although too much smoking already had aggravated a fever blister that was almost as difficult to cover up as a cockroach on her lip, and she couldn't seem to keep her mind on their conversation.
Crystal gave her reassuring pats and was solicitous about the funk into which she had descended. Crystal herself had a good philosophy of life, which seemed composed of homilies from the lips of Miss America contestants but which nevertheless stood her in good stead: almost nothing could get her down. Caitlin just had this dark streak of fatalism and nothing could be done about it. She was convinced that Jeff had died while she was grudgingly laughing in the crowded, stifling theater, and she felt terrible about it. But she wouldn't go to the telephone after the play ended and purge her fears by calling the college: or perhaps she was genuinely afraid of having those fears confirmed.
Crystal retrieved her Ford from the municipal garage on Eighth Avenue where they'd left it. The city was free of snow but there was a bone-chilling wind; the constellated lights of the city were sharp against a sky black as a sorcerer's curse. There were always too many bums on Eighth, and the tenements of the far west side reminded Crystal of dungeons. She gladly partook of the delights which the city offered but never lingered after dark, and she never caught the bus to Jersey.
Crystal drove downtown on Ninth to the Lincoln Tunnel and they crossed beneath the Hudson River, traffic running moderate as far as the New Jersey Turnpike, which they picked up in Secaucus. Caitlin rummaged and found a tape of her current favorite group and popped it into the cassette player, but even the music didn't cheer her up for long. She smoked two more cigarettes as they traveled south along the boring stretch of turnpike from Newark Airport to the Raritan River.
"It was that murder," Caitlin complained. "See, I've just never been able to get it off my mind. I have such terrible nightmares, Crystal, you can't imagine. Sometimes it's me, and not her, that's getting killed." Crystal shivered sympathetically but Caitlin went on without taking notice. "You don't know how it's affected my life. I meet a new boy and I think he's really darling, but I don't want to be alone with him. Oh, no! Not for one second."
"Aw, you'll get over this."
"Maybe I should see a shrink," Caitlin said morosely. She looked around, as if expecting one to come cruising by in a mini-van. They were passing through flat terrain decorated with skeletal castles of oil refineries, robed in light and hissing flame high into the night sky. "Would you look at that?"
"Look at what?" Crystal said, her eyes flicking to Caitlin's face. But she rarely took her eyes off the road, and she kept two steady hands on the wheel. Five miles over the posted speed limit was as daring as she got. She knew better than to let Caitlin drive, funk or no funk. Caitlin lit out as if her pussy was on fire.
"It's not a cop," Caitlin said disdainfully. "They wouldn't be interested in you. It's an old Cadillac. Older than we are. You almost never see those any more. It must be what, a '58, '59?" She was peering, a trifle nearsightedly, past Crystal's shoulder. "Cousin Bertie Armitage had one like that, three summers ago in Pass Christian."
"Oh, yeah, I remember." Crystal turned her head for a quick look. The turnpike had four southbound lanes, framed by two asphalt-paved breakdown lanes, all of it enclosed by steel guardrails. She saw the Caddy in question, two lanes to her left, cruising slowly abreast of her own car. It looked to be a genteel wreck, although it isn't easy judging the condition of black cars at night. But the ludicrous tail fins were obvious, as was the heavy grill and chrome front bumper with its bulletlike projections.
