Demons of Ghent

by Helen Grant

  He let himself out through the fire escape at the back. It was good to feel the cool night breeze on his face, to feel air and space all around him. He always kept the roller shutters down on the top floor: opening and closing them might have attracted attention, and they needed to be closed at night to prevent anyone seeing light within. Coming outside was like leaving a dark and stifling cave.

  He limped down the steps, the pain flaring and smouldering, burrowing redly into his joints. The stiffness, the creaking articulation of his limbs, the hotness: he felt like a brass automaton, exuding scalding steam with every heavy step. Down he went, down, and out into the street.

  The city was not dark, not in the way of the countryside and villages. There were always streetlamps; there were always lights left burning uselessly in the windows of shops. The trams would stop running for the night very soon, but here was one of the very last rattling its way down the street, brightly lit and empty. Many of the ancient landmarks of Ghent were floodlit all through the night, the lights coming on at dusk and only fading with the dawn. The great bell tower of Sint-Baafs cathedral was a splendid golden monolith against the night sky.

  Death walked the cobbled streets, and as he strode onwards, stepping out with greater and greater ease and confidence, he felt his strength growing. The pain that glowed like red-hot coals in his limbs gradually cooled and almost, almost died. His footsteps ate up the ground; behind him the silent streets folded up like origami and vanished. There was nothing in the world except him and his goal, and the space between them was dwindling like the last grains of sand running through an hour glass. Time was indeed running out for his target.

  Let it be tonight, he said to himself. Let it be now.

  From time to time he glanced up at the old buildings as he passed, searching with glittering eyes for signs of movement on the rooftops and parapets, daring them to show themselves, daring them to try and stop him.

  Demons. Let them take human form; he knew what they were. And in human form they were vulnerable; a knife would kill them, or a fall from the roof to the cobbles below. Iron and salt would prevent them from returning.

  He passed down Sint-Michielshelling, crossing the canal by the Sint-Michielsbrug. It was a less direct route than crossing it at Hoornstraat. He would have to double back upon himself, rounding the massive bulk of the Sint-Michielsplein, the great grey stone church with its stump of a tower. The bridge was well-lit, but it had the great advantage that it was wide. He need not pass within close range of any other person, should there still be anyone wandering the streets at this late hour, anyone who might gaze too long at his seamed face and blazing eyes, and remember them later.

  It gave him some small satisfaction too to pass within the shadow of the Sint-Michielskerk. On the bridge was an iron statue of the saint himself, the Angel of Death, preparing to slay a dragon that writhed under his armoured feet. It looked like a dragon, with its scaly tail and leathery wings, but he knew what it really was: a demon.

  He glanced up at it as he passed, and he could feel the blow that was about to descend upon the struggling creature; he could feel the weight of the sword in his hand and the rush of air as his arm descended in a great arc, slicing with deadly force. Death, he thought; the person who made that statue understood what a glorious thing it is. He would have liked to pour it out upon the sleeping city like a floodgate bursting, let it rage through the ancient streets in torrents.

  He did not let himself be distracted from the task in hand, however. Death is not only strong and implacable, he is wily. How else could he be sure of taking each one of his victims, no matter where they hid, no matter what subterfuge they attempted, whether it took five years or a hundred and five?

  He had rounded the church now and was moving down Onderbergen towards his goal, silent and ominous, like the drifting smoke of a burning.

  He passed ornamental trees and close-clipped hedges, and then the façades of buildings, brick and stucco, their big windows dark. None of it interested him; he was looking for something specific.

  This was not his first attempt and he knew that it might come to nothing, as the others had. He knew that, and yet he felt a growing conviction that this was the time, at last; he could feel it preparing to happen, like an increase in atmospheric pressure building up to thunder.

  And he was meticulous; he would search Onderbergen from end to end and then he would visit every one of the surrounding streets. If it was to be found, he would find it.

  And he did. There it was: a sleek black Audi, polished to such a high shine that it gleamed like a bubble. As if its outward appearance were not ostentatious enough, the parking was deliberately careless: much of Onderbergen was punctuated with bollards designed to prevent anyone leaving their vehicle on the street, but the owner of the Audi had simply pulled up onto the pavement on the corner of an intersection where there was no bollard, and left it there. There was less risk of being booked by the police if you left your car there at, say, 11.30 p.m., and removed it again at 4.30 a.m., of course. Or if the police recognized your car and tactfully ignored it.

  These considerations were of no consequence. The important thing was that the driver of the car was here, and not at his well-protected villa with its subterranean car park and state-of-the-art security system. Here he was almost as vulnerable as he would have been on the open street. There were many ways in which Death might gain access to him.

  The front door of the apartment block was an old-fashioned wooden one, with a slot for letters in the middle rather than a box attached to the wall outside or embedded in it. It was a small slot, perhaps thirty centimetres long and four high, but it was enough. There only needed to be one small breach in the building’s defences, like a tear in a hazmat suit.

  The hallway inside had some kind of matting on the floor, and there was a little wooden console supporting a large and elegant display of dried flowers, subtly coloured, beautifully arranged and tinder dry. These things were no secret; anyone who passed the block regularly would be bound to see the door open now and again as someone carried something in or out – a delivery, or shopping, or a suitcase.

  The man who was Death stood before the door and gazed up at the parapet of the building, far above. There was no movement up there, no deceptively human form crouched there, watching with inhuman eyes. Now was the right time; the demons had scattered, defeated.

  There was no need for ritual. The man he had come to kill had escaped Death too long, but he was as mortal as any other man. Iron and salt were not required to seal him in his grave. A blade would have been enough. Fire would be enough.

  He had fire with him, corked in a bottle. He drew out the cork and put the neck of the bottle to the letter slot cut into the door, as tenderly as a priest putting a chalice of sacramental wine to a parishioner’s lips. The liquid passed easily into the house through the slot, with a sound like the falling of rain or blood. His nostrils flared at its evil perfume.

  With great care he lit the match and let it fall inside the letter slot. The petrol went up with a great sigh that lit up the window above the door like a pumpkin lantern. The matting was swift to kindle, and then the dried flowers went up, orange and yellow like the spread tail of a phoenix. Flames leaped at the staircase, adoring the wooden banisters, curling lovingly around them. Already it would be almost impossible for anyone to escape that way, even if they awoke before the smoke took them.

  He watched for as long as he dared, the lines in his face deeply graven by the glare of the fire. There were four floors in the burning building; as the smoke and flames moved up them, he could be more and more sure of success.

  The man he had come for was dead, or as good as.

  For the certain deaths of other people in the block he felt no remorse. He had brought them a blessing, not a misfortune: an end to the suffering of existence.

  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes . . . neither shall there be any more pain.

  He looked at the
flames and felt only joy.

  Very soon now the orange glare and the sound of cracking glass would alert the neighbours. The building was beginning to look like one of the quaint little ceramic houses that tourist shops sold, with a space for a tea-light inside so that it could be lit from within. Flames flickered and danced behind glass that could not hold for very much longer before it blew out, and the building inhaled, drawing in more and more oxygen to feed the fire.

  It was glorious, thought Death, and then he turned and vanished into the night.

  16

  Veerle slept badly, hovering just under the surface of sleep as though she were drifting through dark murky water. She woke several times, retaining nothing but fragments of unpleasant dreams – dreams of fleeing or stifling or screaming. Once she thought she heard sirens some distance away, perhaps in the north or east, faint and urgent. The sound still chilled her, reminding her of darkness and smoke and breaking glass, and the long drop that had broken her like a teacup dropped onto quarry tiles. She stretched out her limbs in the dark, reassuring herself of their integrity.

  The sirens had fallen silent and she wondered whether she had dreamed them, but in the morning she discovered that Anneke had heard them too. Geert had heard nothing; he had slept like the bear he resembled, deep in hibernation.

  Over breakfast Veerle checked her phone for messages. One from Bram De Wulf. Nothing from Kris. She sighed, and then wished she hadn’t; Geert glanced up from his coffee and pastry and gave her an enquiring look.

  I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking it’s Kris and now he’s considering telling me not to see Kris. Again.

  She flashed Geert a quick tight smile, hoping to put him off, and was relieved when he went back to his pastry. She looked down at the phone again, at the message from Bram waiting to be opened, and for a moment she almost wished she hadn’t given him her number. It had been hard to refuse, after she’d spent an hour pouring her heart out to him. All the same, seeing his name there on the screen just underlined the absence of any message from Kris.

  She touched the screen to open the message.

  Wall tonight, 6 p.m.?

  Six p.m. That was still eight hours away, but somehow she’d thought she would have more time to think.

  Do I want to see Bram? she wondered, and it was a question she couldn’t answer. Veerle wasn’t even sure what she would have answered if the question had been Do I want to see Kris? What she actually wanted was impossible; she wanted yesterday not to have happened, or for Hommel to have been alone in the shabby flat above the music shop. When it came down to it, you could go a lot further back than that. She wished she had not had to move to Ghent at all, she wished that Claudine, her mother, difficult though she could be, were still alive, she wished she and Kris were still having fun exploring the unbelievably fabulous houses of absent rich ex-pats. One thing she did know: she didn’t want to see Kris if he had Hommel hanging off his arm. She didn’t want to hear his excuses, and she didn’t want to see Hommel’s face, the expression as cool and bland as milk but hiding the inevitable smugness of victory.

  None of this was helping. Do I go tonight or not? she thought. Her finger hovered over the tiny screen.

  There seemed to be 101 reasons to go, and as many not to go, the chief one being that Bram might take her acceptance the wrong way. He might think she wanted to start something, whereas actually she wanted a lot of time to digest the fact that something else had ended. Maybe I need to tell him that, she thought.

  The thing was, she did like Bram. He was friendly and kind, and (she reflected ruefully) a very good listener. It was just that starting something with him or anyone else right now didn’t feel possible; it was like being offered a glass of wine when you were desperately thirsty and dying for a drink of cold water. There was nothing wrong with the wine, but it was the water you longed for.

  Do I mean never? she wondered, but she couldn’t even answer that question.

  She thought that she had decided to text Bram and tell him she wasn’t coming, and half a minute later she thought that she would text him and say she would come.

  For the hundredth time since she had moved in with Geert and Anneke she wished that there was someone she could confide in, someone who didn’t have an angle of their own on the situation. She imagined talking it over with Lisa, the friend she had left behind in the old place.

  Go, Lisa would say. Veerle could almost hear her saying it, in her mind. You can always tell him you’re not ready to start anything new. And anyway, it’s not like you’re being unfaithful to Kris. He’s just dumped you, Veerle.

  Veerle texted Bram back and said, OK, 6 p.m. No kisses, no smiley face, no initial. Then she slid the phone into her jeans pocket and finished her breakfast.

  Later she took the tram part of the way to the climbing wall, and walked the rest. Although it was a Sunday evening, the tram was relatively full. Two women in their late fifties or early sixties were standing behind Veerle and she heard one of them say, ‘The whole street was taped off.’

  ‘They still don’t know exactly who was in there,’ said the other one in a tone of grim satisfaction.

  Veerle had to ring the bell, and that meant leaning between the two women to press the button. They fell silent, regarding her with faint disapproval, and said nothing more until she had got off the tram.

  When she got to the climbing wall she went straight to the desk, deliberately not scanning the place for a glimpse of Bram. She couldn’t imagine giving him a dizzy little wave. She paid, and just as she was putting her bank card back into her wallet, there he was at her elbow, looking as disconcertingly good-looking as usual in a blue T-shirt that matched his eyes and a pair of loose-fit climbing trousers.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  Instantly Veerle thought, This was a mistake; I shouldn’t have come.

  But there was nothing for it. She had come; she might as well get on with it.

  She gave Bram a tight smile. ‘Hi.’

  After she’d changed her shoes she followed him through the bar into the climbing area. There were three halls, with a mixture of levels, including a bouldering area and an intimidating competition face. Normally Veerle was on her own, so she mostly stuck to bouldering unless she could find another lone climber prepared to belay her on one of the higher climbs in exchange for her doing the same for them. Having Bram to climb with was a definite advantage; she could tackle anything she liked, even the twelve-metre climb to the very top of the highest section.

  After a while she forgot to feel self-conscious about being there with him. The climbing itself, the solution of a vertical problem, drew her in and absorbed her totally. For once the arm that had been broken wasn’t bothering her. Nothing hurt. She felt as though the tracery of tiny aches and pains that so often covered her body like a roadmap had dropped away like the shed skin of a snake. She felt good.

  Veerle shifted her weight from side to side, weaving her way up the wall. She didn’t have to tell Bram when to take in the slack rope or when to let it out a little. He just watched her from below and did the right thing without being asked. In spite of the exertion of climbing it was relaxing in a way, putting herself in someone else’s hands. If she fell, she knew absolutely that he would hold her up.

  She didn’t fall, however. Some of the power that had seemed to burst out of her when she fell from the castle tower had flowed back in. When her rock shoes touched the thick crash mat again she was grinning from ear to ear.

  After that she belayed Bram while he climbed, and then they spent some time in the bouldering area.

  Just before seven o’clock they took a break and went to the bar for cold drinks.

  ‘That was great,’ said Veerle as they sat down.

  ‘You were good,’ Bram told her sincerely.

  They chatted for a while – about Bram’s course (his family was from Ghent but he had digs of his own), about the routes they had just done. Veerle couldn’t help enthusing: it was so good to f
eel like this, as though she had suddenly surfaced from the depths of a black and stinking lake to feel sunlight and air on her upturned face. She had got out of the habit of being happy, it seemed, and now she remembered the feeling. The shock of yesterday’s discovery had been terrible, and yet something of the kind had been hanging over her for more than a week, ever since Kris stopped taking her calls. To get away from that feeling of lowering misery for a while was such a blessed relief, and anyway she couldn’t help it; she felt like the shoot of a plant that has lain buried in the cold black earth all through winter, blindly growing upwards, seeking the light.

  After a while she realized that Bram wasn’t saying much. She was chattering on but his replies were slower in coming. He looked at her thoughtfully, as though he were summing her up.

  Veerle stopped talking. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘You want to climb some more, or are you finished for tonight?’ asked Bram.

  ‘I’m not tired,’ said Veerle. ‘Well, not very.’

  For a few moments Bram didn’t say anything at all. He seemed to be considering. ‘You’ve climbed outdoors, right?’

  ‘Kind of,’ said Veerle. ‘Not cliffs or anything. I’ve done a fancy villa and the front of an apartment in Brussels.’ She grimaced ruefully. ‘And a castle, only I messed that one up a bit.’

  Bram leaned towards her across the little table. ‘It’s going to be dark soon. The sun’s going down. You want to go and do something now, before it gets too dark?’

  Veerle looked at him. ‘How do you mean, do something?’