The Devils of D-Day

by Graham Masterton

  Apart from that, I stayed well back because those devils, those terrifying gargoyles who lived and breathed and ground their teeth in almost overwhelming blood-lust, were the shadowy stuff of nightmares, and I knew that if I came any closer, I would find out that the nightmares were real.

  The devil Umbakrail raised its bony head from the crawling mass of demons, and I saw the dim basement lights blotted out by the narrow goatish shadow of its skull.

  ‘The highest act of devotion which a mortal can pay to Adramelech is to offer life, breath and blood. How can you say you are Adramelech’s loyal servant if you are reluctant to offer your greatest gifts?’

  Madeleine said: ‘I have a greater and more mysterious gift for your master Adramelech than my life, breath and blood.’

  The devils whispered and murmured. They were exuding a stench now that made me feel as if I was trapped in a zoo. A sour, dry fetid odour like the urine of bears or apes.

  Umbakrail said harshly: ‘You will soon have the chance to prove what you have, mortal woman. We shall now call up Adramelech from his sleep of many years, and you shall have the honour of offering your gift directly.’

  Madeleine was silent for a moment, and then she said: ‘Very well,’ and turned her back on the thirteen devilish acolytes of Adramelech as if they were no more vicious than thirteen chained dogs.

  On the floor by the steps, Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet coughed, and moaned. I called:

  ‘Colonel! How do you feel?’

  He coughed again. ‘I don’t know .. . pretty rough. I think I broke a rib on the stairs.

  And something’s dug its claws into my back. I can feel the blood.’

  Yet another thunderous rumble shook the basement, and the devils’ groans and whispers rose in a wave of discordant lust. Cholok said: ‘It is time. It is time for the summoning.’

  While Madeleine and I kept ourselves back against the wall, the devils moved themselves into a semi-circle around the centre of the floor. I tried to look at them as they stood there in the dense, clotted shadows; tried to see what they really were.

  But they seemed to have shadows of their own making, actual cloaks of darkness, and all I could make out were scaly wings and curved horns and eyes that glistened and glowed with hellish lights. They were medieval devils of the most legendary kind

  - the devils that have plagued men and women from Europe’s earliest times. It was almost no surprise at all to find that they were not figments of some frustrated nun’s imagination, but that they walked the earth with real claws and real teeth, and that we have as much to fear from devils when the nights are dark as we have from muggers or murderers.

  Madeleine bent towards me and whispered: ‘What you are going to see now will be frightening. You will be in danger of your life. But whatever happens, don’t panic or try to get away. You saw what happened to Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet.’

  I nodded, dumbly. The stench and the darkness were beginning to close in on me now, and I felt as if I was faced with some horrible but inevitable moment of fear, like sitting in a 747 with faulty landing-gear and knowing that you have to come down sometime. I think I would have done anything for a cigarette. I know I would have done anything to be somewhere else.

  The devils began to chant some long litany in a language I couldn’t recognise. It had a curiously compulsive rhythm to it, a repetitive harshness that made me feel unexpectedly nauseous. The basement grew stuffier and stuffier, and it was impossible to take a breath that wasn’t ripe with the stench of demons. I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, and tried to keep my stomach muscles tense so that I wouldn’t heave.

  ‘Adramelech chastu remlishthu narek. Adramelech hismarad yonluth. Adramelech chastu remlisthu narek.’

  At first, there was nothing but this unsettling chanting. But then I felt an odd sensation, a kind of singing metallic emptiness, as if I was under novacain at the dentist. The next thing I knew, the temperature dropped lower and lower and lower, and I had the feeling that the far wall of the basement had vanished, and that there was nothing there at all but a void of freezing darkness.

  ‘Adramelech chastu remlisthu narek. Adramelech hismarad yonluth. Adramelech chastu remlisthu narek.’

  Now, the walls of the basement seemed to dwindle away, and a chill astral wind blew across us. We appeared to be poised somewhere timeless and airless, and I couldn’t work out which was up and which was down, or how far away anything was, or how close.

  The devils were still there, though. They were chanting their conjuration over and over again, in their harsh insect voices, and I could feel whatever it was that they were summoning draw nearer, the way you can feel someone approaching you in the pitch blackness of a darkened room. Something indescribably frightening was coming, called up by this evil and arcane chant that hadn’t been heard on earth since the Middle Ages. I thought I heard Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet shrieking, but the piercing sound of it was overwhelmed by the devils’ litany, and by the endless emptiness all around us.

  Madeleine turned slowly towards me, slowly, slowly, like a woman in a dream. I tried to say: ‘Madeleine …’ but my voice came out as nothing but an endless blur of whispered sounds. She shook her head, and half-smiled, and turned away again.

  ‘Adramelech usthul! Adramelech hismarad! Adramelech ghuthil called the devils. And then their dark membrane-like wings lifted wide and stiff, and their eyes glared through the darkness, and I saw with my own eyes the first manifestation of Adramelech, the Grand Chancellor of Hell, since Patton and Montgomery had raised him during the war.

  The vision was so terrifying that I went cold with wave after wave of shock. In the middle of the reptilian circle of devils, huge and hideous, stood a dark thing that looked like a giant deformed donkey, rearing up on its hind legs. It had a monstrous head, and a chest covered with shaggy hair, but its stomach and its hind quarters were afflicted with some kind of crusty excrescences, like tumours. As it appeared through the darkness, there was a screaming sound all around it, a thousand decibels of feedback, and the air itself was distorted like heat rippling from a road.

  For endless minutes, the eighth demon of the evil sephiroth stood there, turning its head to gaze with stately malevolence at his thirteen acolytes, and the noise was so overwhelming that I thought it was going to deafen me for ever.

  Madeleine went down on her knees, and I followed her. She shouted, unheard by the devils in the howling noise: ‘This is Adramelech! He takes on the form of a donkey to mock Our Lord’s ride into Jerusalem!’

  ‘What the hell are we going to do?’ I yelled back. ‘Even more to the point—what’s Adramelech going to do to us?’

  ‘Wait!’ she told me. ‘When the moment comes—we’ll act!’

  There was a deep rumble, and then the feedback noise dropped off to a low howl.

  The basement walls began to rematerialise, and within a few moments the awesome Adramelech was standing amongst us in the cellar, slowly taking in his surroundings, and waiting for the subservient rustling of his devils to subside.

  I was aware of such evil in the air that my pulse refused to calm down. It was more terrible than I could have imagined possible. It was a hundred times more scaring than being jostled by hoodlums on your way home, or waking up in the night to hear someone breaking the window of your back door. It was absolute high-pitched fear that went on and on and on and never subsided.

  Adramelech turned towards Madeleine and me. I heard a clear, cultivated whisper say: ‘Who are these?’

  ‘They are mortal disciples, converted to the ways of hell by Elmek,’ responded Umbakrail.

  There was a pause, but I didn’t dare to look up. Beside me, Madeleine stayed on her knees, her hands clasped together as if she were praying. I didn’t blame her. In the face of the demon Adramelech, there didn’t seem to be much else you could do.

  Adramelech said: ‘I am pleased, Elmek. You have brought us together again at last, as the Nine Books of Hell have always predicted. Does
it not say in the Third Book that we shall help in a mortal war which shall divide us, but that we shall come together in time for yet another mortal war?’

  ‘Those are the words, master,’ said Umbakrail, in a subservient tone.

  Adramelech turned his attention to Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet, who had been forced to kneel in front of him by two of the devils.

  ‘And which is this?’ he asked.

  Cholok said: ‘This is one of the mortal warmakers, who has been attempting for years to discover the words which could summon you up, O master, but also those words which could send you back,’

  Adramelech laughed. ‘Only a blood-bargain can send me back, little warmaker,’ he said. ‘And each time I am summoned, the blood demanded must be more. You are even more ignorant than those warmakers of times gone by.’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet raised his bruised face and looked up at the demon Adramelech. ‘Would you really help us?’ he said, unsteadily. ‘If we struck a blood-bargain, would you really help us, like you did during the war?’

  ‘Which war?’ demanded Adramelech. ‘We have fought in many wars! We fought at Agincourt, and we turned the Romans back at Minden! We fought in South Africa, with the Boers; and we fought best of all on the Somme, and at Passchendaele, and Ypres, where we did what you wanted us to do, and exterminated a whole generation of your young men.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet. ‘But will you help us now?’

  ‘You want to exterminate more?’ asked Adramelech. ‘Then you have a lust for destruction and violence which pleases me. There is a close bond between the hierarchy of hell and mortals like you, and it pleases me. One day, perhaps, when mortals finally understand the purpose for which they were created, they will destroy themselves no more, and despair no more; but I trust that we can stay that day as long as we can.’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet, for one rare moment, looked up at Adramelech like a man, instead of a soldier. ‘You know?’ he asked the demon. ‘You know why we’re here? Why there are humans on earth?’

  Adramelech’s sardonic laugh sounded like a thousand tons of rock dropping down a thousand empty mineshafts. ‘Know? But of course I know! But why should that trouble you? Your purpose is infinitely tinier, yet infinitely more exciting! To destroy, and to have in your hands the power of destruction! To inflict pain on yourselves! To pull down everything that the works of man and God between them have created!

  Why should you concern yourself with philosophy when you have such pleasure at your disposal?’

  Clustered around Adramelech like fawning courtiers, the devils hissed and whispered. There was a pause, and then Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet said: ‘We need your power for NATO. Do you know what NATO is?’

  ‘Of course, little warmaker. Adramelech is omniscient.’

  ‘Well, it’s been my brief to summon you up, and ask for your help.’

  Adramelech looked down on Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet with indulgence. ‘You do not have to ask for my help. But you do have to bargain for it. Tell me what destruction you desire to be wreaked, and I will tell you what price you will have to pay. The price, I warn you, is always blood.’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet looked disconcerted. ‘I don’t want any destruction,’ he said. ‘I simply want to have you on hand as a defence unit.’

  Adramelech laughed. ‘Defence is nothing more than latent destruction! Why pretend that what you are arming yourselves for is defence, when all you wish to do is destroy those who you believe to be your enemies? Show me the difference between a weapon of attack and a weapon of defence! Do they kill differently? Is one less dangerous than the other? You are even more of a fool than I thought!’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet tried to get to his feet. ‘Now look here!’ he snapped. ‘It was my work that brought you here, and it’s about time you appreciated it!’

  Adramelech, for a moment, was quiet. Then he said: ‘I appreciated the work of Patton and Eisenhower, little warmaker. Patton had me summoned through the circle of my thirteen acolytes, and he came to me as a man bent on destruction. He wanted the Germans killed, and killed quickly. I admit that he was frightened of us, and that he kept us in check with his priests. But he desired death for his enemies, and he paid us in blood, and we were satisfied. Patton and Eisenhower were both men that I could be proud of. But you? What are you saying? That you don’t want to kill after all?’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet was flustered. He was also terrified, although he was trying desperately not to show it. He said shakily: ‘We can’t ask you to go out on a rampage of death and destruction right now. There isn’t a war. Not like there was with Patton.’

  ‘Why should that matter?’ asked Adramelech drily. ‘If you unleash us on your enemies, we will make a war for you. A war that you will win.’

  ‘I don’t want you to!’ shouted Thanet, wincing in pain from his broken rib.

  ‘You have no choice,’ said Adramelech. ‘Now we are summoned, you cannot send us back without fulfilling a bargain. You have absolutely no choice at all.’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet said: ‘What kind of a bargain would you settle for? You’ve already killed four of my men.’

  Adramelech turned his monstrous head. ‘I would settle for you,’ he suggested, in that sinister whisper. ‘I would definitely settle for you.’

  ‘Me?’ asked Thanet, horrified. ‘What do you mean, me?’

  ‘I would find it enjoyable to bite off your head,’ said Adramelech.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet was very white. He knelt there for a long while, swaying with shock and stress. Even then, I don’t think that he could truly believe that Adramelech was real. His mind had retreated into itself, and his subconscious was probably busy reassuring him that he’d drunk too much bitter and eaten too many pickled onions, and that he was going to wake up soon.

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ he said queasily. ‘War? Is that it?’

  Adramelech said nothing.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet twisted his head around painfully and looked at Madeleine and me. Madeleine hissed: ‘Don’t offer him anything! Sit tight and don’t offer him anything!’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thanet looked back at the Chancellor of Hell. He said, in an almost inaudible voice: ‘You have to give me some time.’

  Adramelech said: ‘There is no time.’

  ‘But I don’t know what to do! I can’t let you-

  Adramelech bellowed, in a surge of ear-splitting feedback: ‘There is no time!’

  There was a frozen moment when the demon was glowering at Thanet and Thanet was staring back at him in terror. Then the Colonel heaved himself up from the floor and made a dive for the cellar steps, screaming at the top of his voice at the pain from his broken rib.

  It was Askalon, the devil of fire, who stopped him. As Thanet reached the fifth or sixth step, he was suddenly engulfed in fierce, roaring flames. The spectacle was horrifying. Thanet screamed again, and tried to beat out the fire that shrivelled his hair and his skin and burned up his body fats, but his hands were alight, too, and all he did was fan the flames even more ferociously.

  He stood for a moment, a man of blackened flesh and fire, and then he dropped sideways off the steps and collapsed on the floor.

  Adramelech watched him in grotesque silence. Then the demon whispered: ‘A coward and a fool. Not a warmaker at all. At least Patton gave me blood.’

  Madeleine touched my hand. She whispered: ‘Don’t move. Don’t say a word,’ and then she stood up and faced Adramelech and his devils with a calmness and a straight-backed self-confidence that I think I would have found impossible.

  She said: ‘Adramelech.’

  At first, the demon didn’t hear her, although some of his lesser devils did, and turned their slanted goat-like eyes towards her.

  Madeleine said, louder: ‘Adramelech!’

  The demon lifted his strange mulish head. He said nothing for a while, until Madeleine had walked right up to his deformed feet.

&
nbsp; ‘I know you,’ he whispered, suspiciously. ‘I recognise you from times gone by.’

  Madeleine stayed where she was—erect and unafraid.

  ‘I have seen you before,’ said Adramelech. ‘Speak your name, mortal!’

  ‘My name is Madeleine Passerelle,’ answered Madeleine. ‘But you know me first as Charlotte Latour; and you shall know me by another name, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ growled Adramelech. There was something about Madeleine that unsettled and disturbed him.

  Madeleine placed her hands together in the gesture of prayer. She said quietly: ‘I was the girl given to you by General Patton in payment for Operation Stripes. They said I was a collaborator, and that I had betrayed the French resistance movement.

  Only God knows that this was not true, and that jealous friends had given the story around. But I had to suffer for it, all the same, and I was taken to England and put before you, to appease your destructive wrath. I shall never forget what you did to me, how you gave me agony beyond any endurance, and how you abused my womanhood to the ends of natural or supernatural imagination.’

  Adramelech didn’t answer, but his devils were disturbed, and I could hear their claws scratching impatiently on the floor.

  ‘I died,’ said Madeleine simply. ‘I died and I ascended into the realms of Our Lord, and into the care of Our Lady Queen of Heaven. I know now what heaven is; and because I know what heaven is, I can understand hell. Heaven is the state in which the faith and steadfastness of the heart are rewarded in the very way in which your mind imagines Heaven to be. Hell is the working of ignorance and self-indulgence against the real purpose of humanity.’

  Adramelech said: ‘If you died, Charlotte Latour, how are you here?’

  Madeleine lifted her head, ‘I was reborn on the day of my martyrdom as the daughter of Jacques and Edith Passerelle. I did not know that I was a reincarnation, not until the time came to take Elmek from the tank, and to reunite your acolytes in this cellar.