Devil Entendre

by Lawson, John Edward

  “Amazing how the women here keep in such great condition,” Lil stated. “What’s the big secret, Annie?”

  Sister Anne sloughed off the remainder of her garb. The revelation that a red bikini bottom was the only thing on her lower half was beyond disconcerting for the priest. Before he could make any demands she fixed him with her unblinking gaze, joking, “Easy enough, child. I made a deal with Leviathan.” Anne possessed a dry wit indeed, as there wasn’t the faintest trace of humor in the remark.

  Lil, however, laughed heartily, slapping Picard’s knee as she remarked on convent humor. He chuckled nervously, his own thoughts drawn away to the physical contact. While Lil continued on about some subject or another he watched the nun as she went about her business, preparing for the next day. She had the sleek legs and enticing hips of a high-priced stripper. Somehow, the attractiveness that had been concealed until now seemed even more out of place than her behavior. A woman in her mid-forties who maintained a largely sedentary lifestyle shouldn’t look like that, not at all. He chalked it up to genetics, then decided to retire for the night before any more surprises could present themselves.

  “So soon?” Lil pouted. “I thought maybe we could grab a late-night snack or something.”

  “Perhaps another time…I’m not hungry.”

  “You sure?” she asked, assuming a recumbent position and laying her boots across his lap.

  He removed her feet and stood. “Yes, quite.” He bid the women goodnight and left with haste.

  After returning to his quarters above the old fool’s lodging Picard regretted not indulging his taste for alcohol, surely as renowned as his conquests over evil, perhaps more so. Often such bookish sorts had no inkling of what successful social interaction entailed and sought to purchase favor by digging up interests and playing to them, rather than simply being friendly. Perhaps that had been Anne’s game—asking around about him to sway him with his favorites. Then what about the other business? The day had left him with little energy or tolerance for protracted meditations on the motivations of others, so he resolved to deal with it the following day. A look at the clock revealed it already was the following day, several hours into it. How long had he been engaged by the women?

  Under those enemies of comfort purported to be blankets Picard was seduced by restlessness, a lover most familiar to him. Leviathan, he thought, his mind unable to relinquish its pursuit. Why that? If one were to make a remark about supernatural dealings, wouldn’t it be “the devil” or some other euphemism? The more he contemplated it the further sleep ran, a marathon sprinter disappearing over the horizon even as the sun crossed that finish line, killing any chance of rest for the night. Therefore, no alternative presented itself other than to seize his curiosity and ride it wherever it may lead. To the curator’s, then, with inquiries into the occult and an apology for keeping such early hours. As he finished dressing, however, it struck him that Sister Anne was the curator of Perpetual Mercy’s library. “Dash it all,” he muttered.

  Hoping for coffee he stopped in at the caretaker’s hovel. The man was still absent, yet instead of leaving Picard took the opportunity to rifle through the man’s belongings. While a fresh pot of coffee brewed he uncovered a full set of luggage, unused for some time it appeared, and quite handsome aside from the cobwebs and dust sheathing it. Also, it didn’t seem as though any clothes were missing. He decided the man’s absence was due to a lover in town, or perhaps a den of gambling, drugs, or other ill repute—such places swallowed men of faulty morals whole for weeks at a time. Coming across a hefty stash of money he struck gambling from the list, unless, of course, Abernathy was from the old school that considered a money fund titled “under the mattress” the only safe investment. Yes, that was it: the groundskeeper was out of touch with the times, subject to the whims of his base desires, and to compound matters a complete bore, doubtlessly in need of a sound talking to on his return, to be administered by Picard himself. He pocketed half the money for his troubles in advance.

  It was a pity he’d not been able to pick the old man’s brain regarding the confounding Sister Anne. The only thing left was to confront her directly, or risk attempting to break into the library to see what he may find about her there, or both perhaps. In his estimation it would be more efficient to simply bull over her defenses and, after her admission to behaving poorly, chastise her. Even the Reformists quaked at the thought of his recommendation for excommunication.

  They had all disappeared. Sister Anne wasn’t in her quarters, where Father Picard imagined he’d have to slap the information out of her. Likewise, none of the other nuns were to be found. Furthermore, it appeared as though none of their beds had even been slept in. It was unsettling. All was still in the building—he listened at various points for minutes on end. If the Sisters were missing, what about the children?

  The boys were where they were supposed to be, cowering under their blankets in the dark. The giant room seemed far less ominous after Father Picard threw the light switch. From their mood he could discern the boys weren’t cowed by his presence alone but that something deeper was amiss.

  “I wouldn’t normally disturb your sleep, but have you young men by any chance seen or heard the Sisters within the last hour or two?”

  They peered at him, only their eyes daring to appear over the tops of their covers.

  “It’s okay. You can tell me.” Still, the children refused to answer. “Don’t try my patience, you! I’ll get my answers one way or the other!”

  For emphasis he smashed one of their playthings underfoot. A few of them momentarily allowed their eyes to slide around in their sockets, looking from bed to bed. Tense moments later all eyes were on him again with no reply forthcoming.

  He cracked his knuckles. “Have it your way. You’ll all be severely disciplined in the morning. Now go back to sleep.” He strode away, rather smug, hiding just outside the door. Eventually a boy approached to turn off the light. Father Picard pounced on the hapless youth, declaring that none had been allowed to get out of bed. Dragging the boy away by the ear he stated with grim authority, “I’ll have to take you outside, young man.” On hearing this the rest hid their faces, and the boy shrieked. He put up quite a struggle but he was no match for the older man. Before they reached an exit, however, Father Picard pulled the boy aside. “Look, we’re not going to set foot outside of Perpetual Mercy. Just tell me what’s going on out there?”

  When the boys lay silent following his bellow he had picked up on strange sounds emanating from the surrounding forest. After that it was only a matter of trapping them into coughing up the goods.

  “Y-you don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Well, uh…bad things. I mean, all I know is nobody ever comes back when they take us out at night.”

  “They? You mean the Sisters—they take you boys and girls away at night.”

  The boy nodded. So, were there black market dealings taking place? That didn’t make sense. After all, one would assume the children would be happy to leave such a dump. When asked, the boy stated that he’d never seen the other children hurt beyond standard corporal punishment. But there was something “not right” when the Sisters crept in at night. It had only been occurring the last month or so, with increasing frequency. Each and every time one of them left never to return. Equally disturbing was the fact that the bear attack survivors, Timothy and Nadine, had passed a note along to friends stating there was no bear. Shortly after that they disappeared.

  The phones were filled with some manner of interference, as if a modem were hooked up. Try as he might Father Picard was unable to locate the source, nor did the boy remember any computers on the premises. “Go back and tell the rest of the boys to get dressed. I’ll be up shortly. Go on.” Obviously the children were in danger, but there were too many for him to protect if things got hairy. The best move would be to
get them into town. He remembered the cars being repaired down at the garage…but no, Sister Mary had remarked that they didn’t have oil or gas in them, and besides, he could only drive one vehicle at a time. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found the girls sound asleep in their dormitory on the other side of the building. After waking them and instructing them to get dressed, he rushed off to check on the boys.

  On the way he remembered his briefcase—it was right where he’d accidentally left it, outside the boys’ room. Those old books were inside, beckoning to him…wait. He remembered now. When entering into his apprenticeship as a covert agent of the Church he’d heard numerous references to Celestial Intelligencer. It was better known as The Magus, and included a roster of the devils and their corresponding sins. Furthermore, it detailed how to fight them. What madness was this? Malevolent forces of eternal darkness…pah! Surely he was allowing himself to get carried away. Could he seriously contemplate occult activity in a nunnery of all places?

  Obsessed with the thought he situated himself by the front entrance, armed with a baseball bat in case of trouble. While the children gathered themselves he studied the archaic materials he’d acquired. After a cursory examination of the Opera Omnia he quickly discerned that the compiler, a one Ambroise Paré, was completely addled. It presented the reader, as best he could tell, with list after list of demons and the saints appointed to battle each in turn. If his grasp on the text was correct one needed the information not so much for exorcism as for practical use, such as conjuring forces of the underworld for unsavory dealings. He had to laugh. Who in their right mind believed in such hogwash? Furthermore, if one believed such antiquated nonsense, they’d have to be certifiably insane to attempt meddling with forces of the nether world.

  By far the most disturbing revelation was that The Courier de L’ Egypte was, in fact, the travelogue of a medieval fool who insisted, among other things, that sects of Egyptians still worshipped the serpent Asmodeus in a desert temple near Ryanneh. What was Lil’s involvement in all this—had she been trying to warn him by mentioning this book? Such fanciful accounts read like a pulpy fantasy novels.

  “Rubbish!” Father Picard shouted, surprising even himself. The children stood all around, fully dressed, clutching whatever belongings they could carry. They were perplexed, frightened, exhausted, and looked at him intently. It was time for him to provide guidance.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do…”

  Sister Elizabeth and Sister Mary Cheron had both been hanged. That is, Mary Cheron was dangling from a wire looped around her neck, obviously dead, while Elizabeth was suspended from the ceiling by her wrists. Nobody else seemed to be hiding in the attic.

  Mary Cheron had been bound, apparently dragged from her bathtub. Water still dripped from her limp from. Somehow, the serenity of her facial expression was entirely wrong. Worse still, her head was titled to the side, facing the entrance and Father Picard. Sister Elizabeth, on the other hand, was still alive, eyes wide with fear. Picard rushed to the young Turkish nun and began to work at the rope binding her wrists to the ceiling.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll have you down in a second,” he assured her. During the entire process he was mindful to keep an ear out for the sounds of approach; the rumbling of Perpetual Mercy’s bus faded into the distance. The eldest boy, Jacob, didn’t have a driver’s permit but he promised not to drive over ten kilometers per hour. Picard returned his attention to Sister Elizabeth. She didn’t seem to have been in this predicament for long, and he thanked the Almighty that he’d found her when he did. Thinking that she had tried to say something he removed the duct tape from her mouth, cursing himself for not doing so earlier. “What was that?”

  At first he’d merely assumed the coolness of her skin was due to the fact that she was in shock. However, with the tape removed, he observed the blue hue of her lips, the fact that her unblinking eyes were fixed on one point. Realizing it was entirely futile, Father Picard uttered a fiery string of expletive deletives, then counted to ten and regained his composure. What did he see?

  Sister Elizabeth had been forcefully bound. Her hair was unkempt and her nightgown askew. On the exposed portion of her chest a series of scratches was evident. Did they form some illegible writing? The large gash on her forehead was surrounded by sticky blood. At her feet a number of pearls were scattered, and upon examination he could make out a series of small, closely-formed bruises around her neck—she was likely strangled with a pearl necklace. It didn’t appear to be enough to kill her, especially in light of the fact that the necklace had broken. In fact, there was no visible cause of death. There were, however, multiple sets of footprints in the dust covering the floor immediately surrounding her. He wasn’t the first one up here. Something else caught his eye—something embedded in her forearm. On extraction it proved to be a fingernail, painted black.

  Or…no, the nail itself was black. The more he scrutinized it the less sense it made.

  He turned to study Sister Mary Cheron. Several beads of bath water still clung to her bare flesh, which was also cool to the touch. Then again, from what he remembered of his brief encounters with the woman, she was a rather cold person in general. There was only the one set of footprints near her, and…her toenails. They were black. As were her fingernails, one of which had recently been wrent from its moorings. So, was she fighting off Sister Elizabeth when she broke her nail off? It seemed likely. But what could motivate Sister Elizabeth to attack one of the other nuns, and why Mary Cheron? Why would the others, when happening upon the scene, bind Elizabeth and do, well, whatever it was they did that resulted in her death?

  Mary Cheron’s eerie gaze was bothering him. Then he realized it wasn’t the serenity in her features that unsettled him, but the fact that head had originally been tilted toward the door. “What the devil…” He reached up and grasped her jaw. It moved easily in his grip, too easily.

  It was moving of its own accord.

  The corpse seemed to be trying to form words, as impossible as that was.

  “I’m a man of the cloth, a man of reason. This is not reasonable.” Determined that fatigue would stop toying with his mind when he opened his eyes, he stood beneath Mary Cheron’s hanging corpse with his eyes clenched tight.

  “I did so enjoy slitting your throat in that Bangkok gutter,” her cartilege-choked voice whispered.

  His eyes flew open. He’d not mentioned the source of his scar to anyone, not even the medics who repaired him later that fateful day. Furthermore, the dead cannot speak. Had he been blinded by assumptions? Had she not been killed? Looking up into the malice of her glare Father Picard decided that there was only one way to tell. He broke the leg off a nearby antique chair and plunged its jagged end into her torso, just below the ribcage, and forced it upward, ever upward, toward her heart. The brutal impact, the tremors of internal tissues tearing vibrating through the wood, it was all quite a shock. Conversely, it was a relief to return to the tactics that were his oldest friends on the lonely road of enforcing the Chruch’s will. A gout of crimson splashed his cheek, his lips. It was tasty.

  Blood sputtered out of her mouth when she asked, “Are you sure that’s the only thing you want to stick in me?”

  He faltered, stumbling away from her. The wood jutted grotesquely from her upper abdomen, thick blood running down its length. What the devil could possibly be keeping her alive?

  “Sin,” she stated with difficulty. “We need it to thrive, and you’re a veritable battery of the stuff.”

  “I’ll show you a battery!” he raged, besetting her prone form with a series of blows, stopping only to question his sanity when she began to laugh. Grabbing hold of her elbows he sank all his body weight into completing the job of strangulation which had so sorely gone unfinished. The thin cable that had been looped around her neck constricted savagely, but all he succeeded in doing was to make her pale brea
sts jiggle in silent laughter.

  She’s on PCP, he told himself. She’ll die soon but she can’t even feel it. She’s spouting nonsense because of the drugs. Even if these assurances were the truth, there was still the situation with Sister Elizabeth to consider. Backing out of the room he shut and barricaded the door on the horrid sights and laughter within.

  The office was, thankfully, empty. He had suspected all manner of evil would be lurking in the shadows, but instead found a fairly innocuous room waiting for him. Or so it appeared after a cursory examination. He had been plagued by the question: why Sister Mary Cheron? Hopefully her office would provide answers he so desperately sought.

  Her desk was filled with blank paper. One locked drawer contained a crude clay figurine, loose hair, and a chunk of rotting meat that was missing several bite-sized pieces. He nodded grimly. He recognized the figurine as a representation of the demon Gresil, referenced as a helper of Asmodeus. It was all so clear now.

  Father Picard had spent some time beforehand pacing about, reading from those dire tomes stowed away in the luggage given to him by Zachary Withers. Yes, locked away in those archaic lines of text were descriptions of a small, hairy demon of lust said to have the power to make humans commit atrocities. He was most noted in the case of the Louviers nuns who were bewitched in France during the 1640s. As impossible as it seemed Father Picard was trapped in a cheesy horror film, a cut-rate interpretation of Christianity’s darker roots. Demons! Possession! Utter hogwash. He’d never seen a true case in all his service for the Church.