by Jill Harris
She-Who-Dwells was gone, but the demon was with him. He could smell the stench of its breath, feel its clammy hand closing over his heart. There was a darkness filling his mind, his home. It was as if Vedmak was trying to claw its way into the very core of his being, desperate to blacken his soul, and it took all his strength to keep the thing at bay.
Turning to survey the room, he hated it because nothing he'd read had led to any discoveries as to how to rid himself of the demon. Branwell stormed over to the desk and swept all the books to the floor. Nothing was helping.
He had started the day with strong coffee, and a dish of eggs. Adeline was right, he should eat to keep up his strength. When he thought of her refusal of him the night before, it left a bitter taste in the back of his throat. How could he have been such a crass fool. His mind returned to her smile and the delightful crease in her forehead when she thought things through.
Her feminine scent.
The attentive way she seemed to care for him.
Despite his natural reticence when it came to the very concept of marriage, he had offered her his hand and she had slapped it away because she could see what a dreadful monster of a man he was.
His wealth would have saved her, yet she had rejected him sensibly and without fuss. What else could she do? Soon there would be nothing left of him but a shell. Vedmak was closing in, and he would rather take his own life than harm Adeline.
Branwell slapped his head with his fist. If only he could dislodge her ribbons coming free from her bodice from his memory, her soft lips, her tiny, fierce little frame.
Her footsteps came closer. Something inside him leaped to know that in a moment she would enter his room, his lair. The elation was replace by a boiling rage. Vedmak wanted her blood, he knew with a terrible certainty. Tendrils of darkness crept around the edges of his heart.
No, no, no. Branwell's hands shook as he picked up the whiskey decanter and threw it at the wall.
His plan to send Adeline away that day was collapsing. Hoxley had set out on the path down to Templesea an hour ago. They needed supplies for their guests. Hoxley got about twenty yards. He'd returned with the news that there was no way he"d live to tell the tale if he took another step.
Branwell believed him.
If you couldn't see the path beneath your feet, there was a one hundred percent likelihood of falling to your death. The sound of the distant waves seemed to call to him. He longed to get down to the cove. Walking by the sea always lifted his spirits but everything had turned to dust. The spectre of the demon loomed over him, whispering its foul desires and threatening to cut Branwell down if he did not do what it wanted.
Adeline knocked on the door, opening it before he had a chance to tell her to go away. He turned slowly to face her, his leg screaming in pain.
He grunted a greeting, eyeing the carpet bag as she placed it carefully on his desk. Would the woman never give up? The thought of having an electric current running through him made him sick to his guts. Branwell felt a muscle in his jaw twitch.
"The house is almost back to normal," she said. Her gaze took in the broken decanter, the mess of books at his feet.
Her cheeks were flushed with pink and her dark eyes were bright and even more determined and forceful than usual if that were possible. Branwell looked away, not wanting her to see the strain on his face. He had slept outside her door most of the night with a pistol in his hand. The demon came to him in his dreams, its shadow mocking him and he'd awoken in agony, his wound weeping with poison.
"Did you sleep well?" he said.
Somehow, her very presence calmed the storm in his head and he felt Vedmak withdraw, skulking to a corner.
"Very well. Maria put salt around my bed. It's got into the rug. I'm not sure the maid will get it all out."
Branwell gripped the side of the desk until his knuckles were white. "Salt. Simple but effective. Italian witches are very knowledgeable when it comes to folk remedies."
"I thought she was a befana? Now you call her a witch."
"A befana is a witch."
"Well it's all rather tiresome. She's just a girl."
Branwell bent down and picked up the book of demons. He flicked through the pages of the large, dusty volume.
"She's much more than that. The mythology of the befana is half right. Parents teach their children that a befana is an ugly a fairy. But a good one. She rides a broomstick, delivering gifts to children at Christmas. This story has its roots in ancient times. Truth is, the befana was not one, but many. A group of women who practised earth magic. Based on the ancient priestesses of Diana," he looked up. "Little Maria is a hereditary witch. When I talked to her last night, she said she's had a long-running problem with demons like Vedmak.
"How extraordinary."
Adeline opened her bag, reached in with both hands and took out a wooden box. "Why have you never installed electricity in this house?"
"What?"
"You can afford it," she shot him a knowing look. As if she had seen everything about him and his cowardly fears in the cursed scrying ball. The lightening strike of pain. The intense agony as his body convulsed. For days he had lain in bed afterwards, unable to move a muscle, fearful that he might die.
He swept his hand over his forehead to wipe away the sweat.
"Electricity is a fashionable extravagance," he said. "I don't waste money on fripperies."
Adeline shrugged. Turning her attention back to the box she opened it, took out the handle, and fixed it to the side. Then she carefully unravelled the long wires of the paddles.
"You wanted my advice about something?" she said.
Branwell glowered at the box with a growing sense of horror. "I don't recall."
She looked up. The Captain found himself unable to stand any longer. He sank into the armchair by the fire. Logs blazed away, although the room remained stubbornly cold.
"Before the earthquake. You said you wanted to ask me about something."
He leaned forward, his eyes full of sorrow and fire. "I wanted to find out whether you could find a replacement nurse. You're dismissed from my service. Take your infernal shock box and get out of my sight. I never want to see you again."
Chapter 45
For the rest of his days, Captain Branwell Henry Fortescue Hughes found the next few hours of his life almost impossible to recollect. There was some comfort in that - because having a demon removed was just about as painful a thing as he'd ever been through and he was glad he passed into unconsciousness for most of the procedure.
He recalled the door to his library bursting open and Sanderson rushing towards him, fists at the ready. A brief moment of wrestling the other man. The blossom of pain when Sanderson punched him in the face and his nose exploded. Blood everywhere. On his hands, his face and Branwell reeled from the blow, falling heavily to the floor.
Then there was shouting and hands clutching at him, lifting him up, carrying him through the house to his mother's little chapel of All Saints. They must have laid him down on the altar, since he remembered looking up at the simple rafters through a mist of blood as it trickled into his eyes.
Adeline's voice telling everyone to be gentle with him, that he remembered best of all. He wanted to tell her there was no need, he could take rough handling as Sanderson, the Vicar and Hoxley bound him with ropes so he could not escape however hard he fought them.
He had visions of the dead, visiting his side and standing over him. His mother and father, their thin, waif like forms wreathed in mist and a kind of floating gauzy cloud on which they floated.
A part of him separated from his body, stepping down below the altar to the crypt where he walked among the dead. There was an ancient charnel house dating back to the days of the plague and he felt the demon, Vedmak, was with him and the creature rode his back, screaming for blood until Branwell thought he wanted it too, and he dreamed of falling down among the bones and watching the demon feasting on the dead for Vedmak himself was death and it wa
s him.
A burst of electricity, a fork of lightening arcing over his body, setting his skin on fire and what followed was madness, running through the chapel on fire - the taste of metal and flames and fear. Then he listened to a while, as if he was far away, to the sound of his own screams.
He looked up through the blur of blood-stained visions at the stained glass angel window, high in the wall above the altar.
"Adeline?" he shouted. "Where are you?"
"I'm here."
"I cannot see you."
"Nevertheless, I am right here by your side my love."
He was confused. "You love me?"
"As much as its possible to love a man possessed by a demon who wants to kill me."
A hand slid into his. Then he heard a child's voice chanting in Latin and he saw the reverend Gillyflower leaning over him, sprinkling water over him which calmed the burning sensation in his limbs. Someone stripped him carefully of his breeches.
Adeline Winslow beside him with her cursed shock box. She took one of the paddles in her hand, and touched the wound on his thigh with the other and electricity sparked through his veins, lighting up the darkness.
He convulsed at her touch and then all was quiet for a while until he could see what might have been a glorious sunrise just above her head or maybe it was simply a candle burning in the sconce beside the altar. Then everything felt bad again, as if his very soul was ripping apart and something was tearing open his skin, his bones.
"I fear I am broken," he said, matter of fact now and completely fine about it. "I am. Broken and smashed." Torn asunder by the stream of electro-magneto current running through him.
"You are neither broken nor smashed. Your leg is healing remarkably quickly. I am of the opinion you'll be walking properly within a few short days."
"I am healed?" he said.
Then another burst of electricity jangled every nerve in his body.
A guttural roar escaped his lips.
The reverend Gillyflower started shouting. "Be gone foul spirit, you are diabolical and cursed. Be gone and never return and become obedient unto death thou unclean demon. Scatter before the armies of the light and know that as smoke is driven away, so you are driven. As wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish..."
And then he saw it, the red, scaled skin, the boney spine, the staring yellow eyes, the distorted mouth open in a scream of anger. That was him, Vedmak, pouring out of Branwell's stomach and flopping to the ground, hissing and squawking with pain. Branwell leaned over as far as he could, straining against the ropes to see the dreadful creature, its writhing, lumpen, scaly form seemed to shrink as it lay there on the cold tiles. He looked into its eyes and found nothing but anger, fear, cruelty there within the burning coals. Thick, dark smoke curled around it as if it was burning now, shrinking and shrivelling and there was the stink of rotting corpses as its flesh falling from its skull, and its clawed hands scraped along the floor as it turned to ashes, spitting congealed blood as it screamed at him.
The horror was gone. He knew as he fell back on the altar, sighing with triumph.
Then silence. Welcome silence. And darkness.
Chapter 46
When someone handed her a cup, Adeline took a sip of wine. They left the chapel and she walked behind them as they carried Branwell up to his bedchamber. Four people carried him. Sanderson, Blythe, Hoxley and Roberts. They made a slow march of it up the stairs. Adeline had applied a dressing to his thigh, bandaging it down to the stump where the leg ended, just below the knee. Someone, the child perhaps, had wrapped him in a sheet and fresh blood seeped through although Adeline knew the shock box had worked, the awful wound in his thigh had finally healed completely, the skin already knitted together in a neat scar.
The reverend Gillyflower walked beside them, one hand on Branwell's shoulder, shaking somewhat, his hair sticking up on end as his lips moved in prayer. He stumbled a few times, as if he was drunk. Adeline guessed that he'd probably never actually expected to see a devilish creature in the flesh rising out of a man’s body, despite all the drama of chanting, candles and holy water.
The air smelled of burning, although the house felt warm rather than stifling hot or icy cold as it had done ever since she arrived.
In the main hall she looked up through the hole in the roof, to find a blue winter sky. At last, she thought, she could leave this house and visit her cousin, perhaps even get to see the child. For when she'd lost her baby, it was one of twins, and the other lived and Adeline was sorely in need of a visit.
She pulled her shawl tight around her. It felt like a funeral procession even though the Captain was very much alive. He had however, lost a lot of blood when his wound spouted red like a fountain when the demon appeared - as if it had entered into his body through that place, preventing it from healing.
Adeline held his hand, looking down at his sleeping features, and wondering how much she wanted him to live. Because even though he had survived the exorcism, she was afraid he might die. After he lost consciousness on the altar, his lips were blue and she had feared the worst, although his colour had returned since then and she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
And she had to make a slight readjustment in her belief system for now she was under no doubt that a demon had clung to Branwell for years, ever since the charge of the Light Brigade.
Who could bear such a thing?
She shuddered to think of the demon"s claws. The way it gnashed its yellow teeth as it streamed out of Branwell's thigh, its eyes rolling. The thing turned on the host body which was rejecting it, and Adeline held fast to the shock box, pouring electricity into Branwell's leg. One thing was for certain, Vedmak was angry as hell. She was convinced the demon would have torn out Branwell's throat if Sanderson and that other woman, the one who turned up at the last minute, hadn't slashed at it with their weapons.
When Gillyflower sent it back to hell and it was mortally wounded, Vedmak screamed, burning in flames that seemed to come up from the ground. Adeline put her hands over her ears to block the sound although there was no escaping the smell. As if a thousand latrines had spilled their contents on the floor of the tiny chapel. Adeline tried to cover her face with her shawl, yet still it left her gagging.
Vedmak took an age to dissolve.
Sanderson and the tall, spike-haired woman had stabbed at it over and over again. Flames leaped from his eyes, setting the reverend's hair on fire at one point. The sensible child, Maria climbed calmly onto a pew and put the burning hair out with her hands. Both of them received burns which Adeline had attended to and the reverend would have to return home without his eyebrows, having gained a large bald patch high on his forehead.
It was as though Vedmak had torn Branwell apart as it raged against its demise. If she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, she would never have believed that such a thing could exist or bring all that malice into the world. Pure evil. That was the only word for it.
Irrational and something about which she would never, ever speak. Her experience now told her that, against all reasonable intelligence, foul spirits did indeed exist but there was no need to discuss such things.
The group of them came to Branwell's room at last. Hoxely opened the door, held it open as they trooped inside. Apart from the bed, which was huge, there was little in the way of furniture. A desk by the window, a writing desk, a jug and basin. Outside, a crimson sun was sinking into the sea.
Tears burned Adeline's eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She wiped them with the embroidered kerchief Blythe had given her. Maria slipped a small hand into hers.
"You have great power," the girl said.
Adeline shook her head. "I didn't do anything."
"Without your healing, he would never have expelled the demon."
"Will he live?"
The girl did not reply.
Adeline knew she was wrong to ask the question. No one knew what the following weeks and months would bring. They laid Branwell on
the bed and covered him with blankets. Adeline asked Hoxley to bring her a comfortable chair so she could sit by him. Everyone crowded around the bed, staring at Branwell's silent form. His lips had turned red but his skin was still milky white and waxen.
Hoxley and Roberts disappeared for a white and returned with a chair for Adeline, a tray of cold meat cuts, cheddar cheese and bread, glasses and wine.
Adeline drank two glasses of the red liquid, and ate her fill of bread and cheese.
One by one the guests took their leave.
Sanderson crushed her in a hug which took her breath away. Gillyflower mumbled a blessing and she thanked him.
The tall woman, Blythe, introduced Adeline to another, equally tall woman called Constance. The one who had fought the demon alongside Sanderson.
"We are sisters," Blythe said.
Adeline looked from one to the other. Constance was as dark as Blythe was fair. Constance wore men's clothes, whereas Blythe wore a blue silk dress in the Grecian style. Constance had struck one of the fatal blows to the demon.
"I'm so grateful to you both," Adeline said, taking each of the women by the hand.
"Sorry I was late," Constance said. "The fog was very difficult to get past and I had to climb up the cliff which was slow work, but mother was right, we needed to be here to get rid of that thing. And you did well. To be frank, I didn't think you'd be any use which means I've lost a bet and I'll now have to find a chest of pirate treasure to pay of my other sister."
"How interesting," Adeline said, trying hard to imagine what Constance would look like scaling the sheer cliffs up towards Raven's Nest. Yet somehow she did believe it, however difficult it was.
Adeline recalled how Constance and Sanderson had fought with the demon. Constance struck him between the eyes with a golden trident. Sanderson used a sword as long as Adeline was tall to slice the creature through the heart which was the very moment it burst into flames. She shuddered at the violence of the memory.