Demons of Ghent

by Helen Grant

  It made Veerle’s skin prickle, just remembering the conversation. She thought, Who goes around looking for demons in a city after dark?

  And then there was the way the woman had still been standing there when Veerle looked back, just standing and staring fixedly at the buildings on the other side of the canal. It was . . . creepy.

  She tried to rationalize it away, that feeling of wrongness. Supposing there was somebody up there – what’s the big deal? Maybe you can get up there from the top floor of those flats. Maybe it was just someone getting a bit of air and admiring the view.

  That was certainly possible.

  It was weird, though, Veerle thought. The way she said, You’re not from Ghent. Like she thought I wouldn’t understand whatever it was, because I’m not from here.

  It was puzzling. Unsettling, even. The woman was probably crazy – had to be, when you thought about it – but still Veerle couldn’t dismiss the incident as easily as that.

  She wondered whom she could ask about it. Not Geert: she couldn’t ask him without revealing that she had been wandering along the bank of the Coupure when he and Anneke thought she was asleep in the next room, somehow magically snoring her way through their argument.

  Bram? She stifled that idea sternly.

  Geert stopped on the pavement outside the school. There was something about the decisive way in which he came to a halt that told Veerle he was going to wait outside again until he was sure that she had gone in.

  Verdomme, does he have to? she thought.

  She said goodbye and went inside. There were still a few minutes before lessons began, so she waited, and then went back to check whether he had gone.

  Geert was still there, standing impassively on the pavement, his battered leather briefcase in his hand. As Veerle watched, he shot his hand out of his sleeve and checked his wristwatch. He was obviously planning to wait until the bell rang.

  Why? she thought. Is he so desperate to make sure I get through the year and leave?

  She looked at her father, at his heavy, sleepy-looking features, his shock of light brown hair touched with grey. It was hard to tell what Geert was thinking or feeling; he wasn’t a demonstrative person. All the same, Veerle thought he looked weary. He probably didn’t want to stand there outside the school any more than she wanted him to. He probably wanted to get to his office, make himself a cup of strong coffee and collapse into a chair. Still he stood there, the last of the students pushing past him in their haste to get into school before the bell rang.

  He’s my dad, thought Veerle. Perhaps it was as simple as that. Maybe that’s what dads do.

  It was unknown territory as far as she was concerned. Her parents had split up when she was only eight or nine and she’d rarely seen her father. Until this summer, when the thing had happened that she didn’t want to think about, it had just been her and her mother, Claudine. Claudine could be strong, but in the way of the ivy that clings to an ancient wall, insinuating its roots between the crumbling bricks, adhering so closely that to tear it down would bring chunks of brick and mortar down too. Claudine’s influence crept up on you through closed doors and pursed lips and infectious worries that nibbled at the edges of your consciousness. Geert, on the other hand, had a way of attacking problems that Veerle found jaw-droppingly direct.

  He wants me to stay in school, so he stands outside and makes sure I do.

  Veerle chewed her lip. The bell was going to go at any minute, and there was no way of getting out of school without passing Geert.

  Well, he’s won. For now, anyway.

  She turned her back on the door and began to walk down the corridor, towards the first lesson of the day. The thought didn’t exactly fill her with joy, but she felt less rancour towards Geert for his vigil than she might have done.

  After all, she thought, if I were him, it’s what I would have done.

  11

  As soon as Veerle entered the classroom, she could see that something was wrong. The English teacher, Meneer Ackermans, wasn’t there, that was the first thing, and the bell was already ringing. Half the class weren’t sitting at their desks, either. They were clustered in little groups and there was no merry buzz of voices, no friendly shoving or clapping on the shoulder going on. Everyone looked sombre. Even the boys who habitually sat at the back, their long legs sprawled out in front of them, had a grim self-conscious look on their faces, as though they had been caught out in some unseemly display of emotion. Veerle looked around and saw reddened eyes, puffy faces streaked with mascara. Two girls were openly weeping.

  Veerle stood in the doorway with a cold feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. What’s happened? she wondered, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. It meant something bad for someone, that was clear; the sort of bad that meant knocks on the door in the middle of the night or phone calls from the hospital and people saying Oh my God, I’m so sorry, just like—

  Her mind swerved round the thought like a figure skater sweeping round a patch of rotten ice. She might simply have turned and left the classroom again, but for the knowledge that Geert was still standing outside the school. There was nowhere to go.

  Veerle swung her bag off her shoulder and made for a seat at the back. It wasn’t possible to ignore what was going on, though; you’d have to be blind and deaf or made of marble. She knew one of the girls standing there talking in low tense voices; they’d been paired for a science project.

  ‘Anne?’ she said, and the girl turned to look at her, blue eyes rimmed with pink under her fall of light hair. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  Veerle shook her head.

  ‘It’s Daan De Moor.’

  ‘Daan De Moor?’ The name didn’t mean anything to Veerle.

  ‘From the parallel class. You don’t know him?’

  Veerle shook her head. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘He’s dead.’ The girl’s mouth stretched into a rictus of grief. The girl next to her, a dark-haired girl whose name Veerle couldn’t remember, put an arm round her. She looked at Veerle with such naked anger in her eyes that Veerle was taken aback.

  ‘Killed,’ she said. ‘He was killed.’

  It’s not me she’s angry with, Veerle realized.

  ‘They’re saying it was suicide,’ the girl went on. ‘But he wouldn’t do that. Daan wouldn’t do that.’

  Anne was crying now, big racking sobs. The dark-haired girl wasn’t looking at Veerle any more; she was rubbing Anne’s shoulders, whispering something to her.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Veerle managed to say.

  ‘It was murder,’ insisted the dark-haired girl.

  ‘You don’t know that, Merel,’ said one of the boys.

  ‘He wouldn’t have jumped,’ the girl said angrily.

  ‘Jumped?’ said Veerle.

  ‘They found him on Belfortstraat,’ the boy told her. ‘He’d jumped from the top of one of the buildings.’

  ‘I heard it was the Belfort,’ said another boy, sitting on the far side of the first.

  ‘Belfortstraat. Look, it can’t have been the tower. They’ve upped the security on all those places since the other one, the guy who jumped off Sint-Baafs. No way could you get into the Belfort at night.’

  ‘The other one?’ said Veerle incredulously.

  ‘Yeah. Some guy threw himself off the cathedral tower a few months ago. Freaky.’ The boy shook his head. ‘He went to all the trouble of getting duplicate keys. The tower’s normally only open for maybe one week a year, in the summer. They didn’t open it at all this time, because of this guy. He got these keys and just let himself in one night, went all the way up to the top and jumped off. It’s – I don’t know, maybe a hundred metres high, that tower.’ He looked at Veerle, his head on one side. ‘You didn’t hear about it?’

  ‘I wasn’t here then,’ said Veerle. And I had other stuff on my mind. She didn’t say that. Unconsciously she rubbed her left forearm. The cast
had itched so badly.

  ‘Well, it was bad. We had a lecture from the directeur – you know, about talking to someone if you’re thinking of killing yourself. I guess there’ll be another one now.’

  ‘Stop saying Daan killed himself,’ said the girl called Merel.

  The boy shrugged. ‘Just saying what I heard.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t,’ said another girl who was leaning against the back wall, standing a little apart from the others. She had a round, pallid face, her big grey eyes outlined heavily with kohl, her red hair pulled into two bunches so that you could see the light brown roots. She looked like a grubby version of a Manga character; she even had the knee socks under her short skirt. ‘Maybe it wasn’t murder, either. Well, not normal murder. Maybe it was them.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Suki,’ said the boy disgustedly.

  ‘Don’t tell me to shut up.’

  ‘It’s crap. Demons on the rooftops. Crap.’

  Demons? Veerle stared at the boy, open-mouthed. For a moment she wondered whether she had misheard. It was too unlikely, hearing two different people talking about demons on the rooftops within twenty-four hours.

  It flashed through her mind that perhaps this was some kind of ongoing local joke, something to tease outsiders with, but instinctively she knew it wasn’t that; the older woman’s face had been too shocked, and Suki’s was too avid. They believed it, both of them: that there were demons lurking on the rooftops of Ghent.

  She didn’t believe it herself – of course she didn’t – but still she felt a slithering chill in the pit of her stomach.

  Demons on the rooftop. The whole idea was crap, but she’d have found it easier to shrug off if she hadn’t seen something up there herself, indistinct in the darkness but definitely there.

  ‘Merel said Daan wouldn’t top himself,’ Suki was saying, as though this constituted proof of something.

  ‘So what?’ returned the boy, sticking his jaw out aggressively. ‘You’re sick, Suki. If he didn’t jump, either it was an accident or someone pushed him, but it wasn’t a demon.’

  ‘What about the salt?’

  ‘Salt? What salt?’ The boy looked at Suki incredulously.

  ‘There was salt around the body.’ Suki’s gaze flickered up and down the boy, daring him to contradict her. ‘My uncle’s a policeman and he said so.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So salt’s what you use to ward off demons. Maybe Daan knew it was dangerous up there, so he went prepared.’

  ‘Verdomme, Suki, you should hear yourself. Why would he go up there if he thought it was dangerous?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to confront them.’ Suki folded her arms.

  ‘Jesus.’ The boy was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You know your problem, Suki? You watch too much verdomde Buffy.’

  ‘I’m not the one saying that Daan didn’t kill himself.’ Suki’s gaze slid resentfully towards Merel. ‘If he didn’t go up on the roof to jump off, why did he go up there, then? He must have had some reason.’

  ‘Have some respect, Suki,’ Merel cut in angrily. She still had her arm round Anne. Now she was glaring at Suki as though the girl had made a deliberate attack on her friend. ‘Daan’s dead and you’re still talking that rubbish.’

  ‘It’s not rubbish,’ said Suki resentfully. ‘I’ve seen them.’

  For a moment no one said anything. They all gaped at her. Then Merel broke the silence.

  ‘That is such crap, Suki. You haven’t seen demons, except maybe in your dreams. It’s just another of your sad little bids for attention.’

  ‘Fuck you, Merel,’ snapped Suki. She pushed away from the wall and stalked to the front of the classroom, where she slumped into a chair with her back to the rest of them.

  ‘Whoa,’ said someone.

  Demons. Veerle was still having trouble getting past that idea. She had a feeling it was just going to annoy Merel and Anne if she pursued the topic, but she had to ask.

  ‘What’s this thing about demons?’

  Merel simply gave an exasperated sigh and turned back to her friend. For a moment Veerle thought her question was going to go unanswered.

  Then the boy sitting nearest to her, the one who had told her Daan had died on Belfortstraat, said, ‘It’s just this rumour going round. Like a – you know, whatever it’s called, an urban legend.’

  ‘An urban legend?’

  He shrugged. ‘Supposedly the rooftops of Ghent are haunted by demons.’

  Veerle had worked that out for herself. She waited, but it seemed that nothing more was forthcoming.

  ‘Why the rooftops?’ she said.

  ‘You’re really interested?’ He raised his eyebrows.

  He’s probably wondering if I’m like Suki, thought Veerle. ‘It’s kind of unusual,’ she said, trying to sound as non-committal as possible.

  ‘OK . . . well, I don’t know the whole story. It’s kind of old – you know, the stuff your grandma tells you. Years and years ago, I mean hundreds of years ago, there was this rich guy who lived in Ghent and he’s supposed to have summoned these demons up to protect him and his family, so nobody could kill them. I think that was it. Anyway, I guess they were easier to call up than to get rid of, because supposedly they’re still here, up on the rooftops, watching the city every night.’

  ‘That’s creepy,’ said Veerle, imagining the stepped façades of the guild houses on the Graslei or the turreted roof of the old Post Office as a nest of grim and angular things like gigantic bats, chittering shrilly, jostling for position with the scuffling of curved claws upon stone, taking to the air with the rustle of leathery wings.

  ‘I guess.’ The lack of enthusiasm in his voice was palpable.

  Veerle didn’t like to ask any more, and anyway, here was Meneer Ackermans in the doorway of the classroom, his expression grave. Evidently the anticipated lecture was on its way. Veerle gave the boy a rueful smile and went to sit down.

  At the end of the first lesson she went down to the front door, her bag over her shoulder, and looked out. To her amazement, Geert De Keyser was still standing there on the pavement opposite, watching the school door with a stolid expression. Veerle stepped back, wondering whether he had glimpsed her peeping out. There was nothing for it: she turned her back on the door and went to her second lesson. She didn’t try to leave again that day until the final bell rang.

  12

  No two dreams were ever the same, and they were all terrible. Veerle never dreamed about Joren Sterckx himself, that was the odd thing. He stalked across her waking mind often enough, but he was curiously absent from her dreams. Once she dreamed that she was inside an enormous house, but it was no house that she had ever visited, no house that could possibly exist, because instead of proper rooms and corridors it consisted of a seemingly endless series of tiny chambers, each just big enough for her to crouch in, connected by even smaller passages, all panelled in worn and shiny oak. She would squeeze her way along the passages, struggling from room to room, twisting her limbs in the confined spaces, hoping to find a way out, afraid that the passages would instead narrow to the point where she could neither turn round nor go on. She woke up panting and perspiring, sick with horror.

  This time it was voices. She was in the house in Kerkstraat, the one she had grown up in, the one now emptied and up for sale. Veerle herself did not seem to have any physical form; she drifted like tendrils of fog in the heart of the house, absorbing the sights and sounds. The house was not empty, she observed; the old furniture and ornaments were still in place. Most of the internal doors were open but the door to the living room was closed, and it was through this door that she could hear the voices. One of them was her mother’s; she recognized it at once, the fearful, irritable tone. The other voice was male. Kris. They were arguing.

  The cloud that was Veerle drifted closer to the door, and now she could hear actual words, ragged fragments of the argument.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Claudine was saying, over and over again, like an audio clip o
n eternal replay, and Kris was speaking over her.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he said forcefully. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘No, no, no.’

  Open the door, Veerle wanted to scream, but in her form-less state she was unable to make a sound. She wanted desperately to see her mother, to see Kris, but the door remained stubbornly closed. Open the door!

  The voices fell silent, and for a moment she thought they had actually heard her. Then they began again, but this time the litany had changed.

  ‘You have to choose.’

  ‘It’s him or me.’

  ‘You have to choose.’

  With horror Veerle realized that they were no longer arguing with each other; now they were addressing her directly.

  ‘It’s him or me,’ insisted her mother’s voice.

  I can’t choose!

  ‘You have to choose.’ That was Kris.

  Veerle awoke to morning light slanting in between the curtains. Her throat felt tight, as though a cold hand encircled it; her mouth was full of saliva. She rolled onto her side and gazed at the window, letting time and place coalesce around her. For one long moment she thought that bright strip of sunlight was the door opening at last on the two people she longed to see. But the voices were fading. The sun went behind a cloud, and suddenly the blaze of light was simply a dingy-looking windowpane.

  I’m not at home, I’m in Ghent. I don’t know where Kris is, and Mum . . .

  She grimaced, squeezing her eyes shut, but then she opened them again. Even the dull impersonal interior of the bedroom was preferable to the images that lurked behind her eyelids.

  It’s Saturday, she thought, and sat up.

  Geert and Anneke had already left the flat. Anneke wanted to buy baby clothes, and Geert had gone along to carry the bags and buy cups of coffee when Anneke got tired. Veerle ate breakfast standing by the kitchen window: a glass of juice and a pastry from a box she found in the fridge. She looked out of the window at Bijlokevest without really seeing it and thought, Please God let Bram have found something out. It was a slim hope, really. Ghent wasn’t like the village; it had nearly a quarter of a million inhabitants. The chance of finding one person by asking around was tiny, especially if that person didn’t want to be found. Probably more realistic to let it go, Veerle thought. So I’ve seen her. I know she’s alive. Maybe that’s enough.