by BJ Hoff
Annie could not sleep. Countless times her mind danced through the events of the evening, savoring them over and over again, determined to store for a lifetime each moment. And with each recollection, her happiness grew, her excitement swelled, her smile broke wider.
For the second time that night, she scrambled out of bed and plopped down on her knees. On the opposite side of the bed, Fergus stretched and lifted his head just enough to peer over at her.
Apparently he was growing accustomed to seeing her in this position, for he merely gave a great yawn and went back to sleep. Lazy wolfhound!
Repeatedly, Annie gave thanks, praying aloud. Somehow, speaking in a normal tone of voice made it seem more likely that the Lord was right here, in this very room, keeping company with her.
She thanked Him…again…for her adoption, for the approaching wedding, the babe to be born, the new joy that now seemed to be permeating Nelson Hall.
“Oh, and before I go to sleep, Sir—though in truth I do not see how I shall ever sleep this night—but just in case, I want to ask You once more to please bless my mother. The Seanchai says it was the loving thing she did, giving me this opportunity.”
Annie stopped, feeling her happiness begin to recede and determined not to let it. “The Seanchai doesn’t think I know the truth, Lord. He would have me believe that Mum gave me up because she loves me and wants what’s best for me. He wouldn’t like knowing I understand the true way of things, that I was always just a bother to her and Tully, that she never really wanted me at all.”
She pressed her lips together, determined not to let anything darken this shining night for her. None of it mattered anymore, not a bit. No longer would she waste time feeling sorry for herself and contemplating a bleak future outside Nelson Hall. She was now the…the legitimate daughter of Morgan Fitzgerald himself.
Pressing her face into the palms of her hands, she breathed in another deep sigh of happiness. She thought she understood why the Seanchai didn’t want her to know the truth.
“It’s because he really loves me, isn’t it, Lord?” she whispered into her hands, smiling. “He truly, truly, truly loves me! And I am going to make him proud, I am! I will be the very best daughter he could imagine.” She paused, thinking. “Although I expect I’ll be bothering You even more, from now on, Sir, for as You know, my good intentions are usually better than my behavior.”
Still smiling, Annie touched the brooch that she had fastened to the neck of her nightgown. “Well, I expect I should try to go to sleep now and let You attend to some other prayers. I know You’re busy, and You’ve already done more than enough for me. So…goodnight, Sir. And thank You again.”
Much later, while the household slept, Sandemon, still dressed, paced the bedroom.
He had been restless throughout the last hour, had even found it difficult to concentrate during his prayer time. Then the idea had come, only moments ago, and now it would give him no rest.
It could work, he thought. It would work, with careful planning. But the time was short before the wedding, and his hours were already filled with much to do. Still, he required little sleep. He would use the two hours before dawn, when the Seanchai slept most deeply.
And, later, he would enlist the help of the child. He smiled. No doubt the Seanchai’s new daughter would be pleased and eager to combine efforts in the creation of such a very special gift—a wedding gift. They had succeeded in keeping a secret once before, had they not?
Yes, and they would do it again.
Eager to begin, and knowing sleep to be impossible, he decided to go to the stables and take stock of his supplies. After looking in on the sleeping Seanchai, he put on his shoes and, closing the door quietly behind him, started down the hall.
On her way to the kitchen, Lucy Hoy tried to avoid the chapel doors, as she always did. Somehow, even the thought of the holy place made her feel dirtier and more vile than ever.
For a time after Finola’s tragedy, with Gemma’s place and the life of the streets behind her, she had attempted to overcome her feelings of defilement. She had hoped that this new life, so far removed from the drunken sailors and her wicked past, would eventually bring about a kind of cleansing, even enable her to forget her shameful yesterdays.
Instead, her self-disgust and hatred had grown more intense. This separation from the past, instead of distancing her from her sin, had only seemed to increase her awareness of it. At the same time, the slightest contact with something holy—like the chapel—chilled her blood and made her want to turn and run away.
Yet, inexplicably, she could not seem to approach it without stopping to peer inside. After a moment, she cracked the doors and stood staring into the dark sanctuary, shuddering at the holy hush within. Finally she started to back away, as if some heavy, unseen hand had warded her off.
The woman’s back was to him as Sandemon turned the corner and started down the hallway.
He stopped, watching her. With one hand on the chapel door, which was partially open, she stood staring inside.
It was a familiar scene. Any number of times, he had seen her, standing just like this, staring inside the chapel—but always safely outside the doors. Evidently, something about the chapel itself drew her, as if she were fascinated, yet unwilling to enter.
Clearing his throat so as not to startle her, Sandemon said, “You may go in, you know. The chapel is for everyone.”
She whipped around, letting the door swing shut. A hand went to her throat. “No—I—no, I don’t want to go in. I was just—curious, is all.”
Sandemon nodded. “Still, remember that it is always available to you as a member of the household.”
She made a weak attempt to jest, her chin trembling as she said, “Sure, the timbers might fall in, were a sinner such as myself to enter.”
Sandemon smiled at her. “I think not. This is a very old house. I’m sure far worse sinners than you have walked through those doors over the years.”
The woman said nothing, but simply stood, looking acutely embarrassed and miserable.
“You are troubled,” Sandemon said. The words came unbidden, and he felt an instant of surprise.
She made no reply, but he had a sense of some overwhelming conflict raging within her. He saw the anxious, evasive glances, the slight tremor of her hands. The woman was in pain.
She was also frightened.
To be pursued by the Ancient of Days, the Holy God, could be a terrifying thing.
He remembered.
Suddenly, she looked at him and blurted out, “They will ask me to leave soon!”
Sandemon frowned, but she hurried on before he could protest. He heard the fear behind the rush of words. “They will! He doesn’t approve of me, you know it’s true! He will hire a nurse—a regular nurse—for Finola, and then he’ll send me packing, you just see if he doesn’t! He doesn’t think I’m good enough to take care of her—or the child! He looks at me as if I’m—diseased!”
So that was it. She had reached the point where she imagined her own hatred for herself reflected in the actions of others. “The Seanchai would never condemn you. He is not that kind of a man. He might have been impatient with you once, for what he thought was a minor negligence. But I explained that I was at fault, and he has never mentioned it since that night.”
She wasn’t listening. Shaking her head, she said again, “He will send me away. He will!”
Studying her, Sandemon felt a great pity overwhelm him. “And where would you go?” he asked softly.
Slowly she raised her head and looked at him. “I’ve only one place to go,” she said dully. “Back to Gemma’s.”
A sense of her despair shuddered through Sandemon. “But you would not choose to do so?” he questioned gently. “That is not what you want?”
Slowly, she dragged her gaze back to his, and the agony in those world-weary eyes pierced his heart. “I would rather die,” she said flatly. “When I look back on that time now…it is like a memory of hell.”
Sandemon nodded, understanding all too well. “I know,” he said softly, to himself. “I know.”
Abruptly, her eyes blazed. “You do not know! A man of God—what could you know about hell?”
The knife twisted even more deeply. “I am no man of God,” he answered quietly. “I am only a man saved by God. And I have my own memories of hell, Miss Lucy.”
Her eyes widened, questioning.
The urgency inside Sandemon swelled to a thunderhead, and he knew that it was time. Once again, the time had come to break the silence, to unseal the tomb of the past.
All that was light within his soul seemed to flicker and go out. For one terrible moment, a keening rose up inside his spirit, like the wailing of the damned, and he longed to flee: flee the woman, Nelson Hall, and his memories.
Instead, he simply gave a heavy sigh and, resigned, said quietly, “I will tell you what I know of hell. Perhaps then you will understand what I tried to tell you once before, that there is nothing in this world so wicked that God cannot redeem it.” He paused. “Perhaps then you will finally understand that all the legions of evil cannot stand against the army of heaven.”
Then he turned and started for the kitchen, the woman following him.
37
Dark Dragons
I see black dragons mount the sky,
I see earth yawn beneath my feet—
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN (1803–1849)
In the kitchen, Lucy sat down at the table. The black man, however, went to the window and stood, unmoving, bracing the palm of each hand on either side of the window frame as he stared out into the night.
A storm had blown up over the past hour, and now the wind howled and whipped the rain against the house with a vengeance. Lightning streaked across the window, flaring and leaping in a frenzied, eerie dance to the night.
Always nervous in a storm, Lucy jumped as a chain of thunderbolts seemed to tear the heavens open, pummeling the house and rattling the windows. The familiar sense of confusion and intimidation the black man evoked in her only added to her growing anxiety.
Without turning, he finally began to speak. The ease of his posture, his calm demeanor and quiet voice struck a direct contrast to the wildness of the stormy night and the darkness of his words.
“You spoke of memories—‘memories of hell’ you called them.” He paused. “I think you cannot imagine the reality of such words, of a life lived altogether in the shadow of hell.”
A roll of thunder silenced him for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was so low it seemed to shudder and vibrate with the storm. “For years I spoke of my past to no one—you will see why. So hideous, so painful, are the memories that lie buried deep inside me that, to this day, I cannot call them forth without a most deadly anguish.
“The Seanchai knows, of course,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Lucy. “It seemed…deceitful, somehow, not to tell him the truth. But apart from him—and, now, you—I keep silent about my yesterdays. It was a very long time ago, and God has given me a new life. The old one is best forgotten, as much as possible. I tell you this only so you will understand what I was, where I came from—and the supreme act of deliverance it took to rescue me.”
He turned back to the window. “I am a freed slave,” he said. “My people were slaves—generations of them—taken from Africa to Barbados to work on the sugar plantations. As is so often the case with an oppressed people, we sought solace in superstition and magic. Our religion was vodun—voodoo. Do you know of it?”
Again he looked at her. Lucy was bewildered by the raw pain…and something else, something that looked very much like dread…in his eyes. She nodded. “The sailors sometimes talked of it.”
Lowering his head, he turned back to the window. “Followers of vodun believe our world is filled with demons. Demons and gods and spirits of the dead. There is much magic—dark magic—in vodun. Charms and spells, sacrifices, secret ceremonies—all these make up the magic,” he explained.
“Many years ago, when I was still a young man, I became the houngan—a vodun priest, a person with the magic, and of great influence among the people.”
Lucy caught her breath in astonishment. As she watched, the black man’s entire countenance seemed to go taut, as if set in marble. A muscle at the base of his jaw tightened, and his shoulders visibly tensed.
“The houngan is a person of great power…and of great evil. He is looked upon as a kind of physician, but he is much, much more. At times he acts as a kind of intermediary between his people…and the Evil One. Among other things, he supervises ceremonies whereby they become possessed by demons of darkness—or in which they make pacts with Satan.”
He stopped, drawing in a long breath. When he continued, his words were tinged with unmistakable sorrow and much pain. “I did terrible things, dark, evil things—demonic mysteries—which seemed only to increase my powers. I applied the secret poison that turns the living into the walking dead—zombies. I presided over brutal animal—and human—sacrifices. I participated in the secret chants and strategies whereby the demons are called forth to possess beasts and human beings. And, perhaps most damning of all, I initiated any number of young people into the rites.”
Unexpectedly, he turned and faced Lucy full on. She put a hand to her mouth to stop a gasp of dismay at the bleak anguish burning from his eyes.
“Know this,” he said in a terrible voice, “your worst nightmares could never hold even a part of the evil which consumed my life! I could tell you things…that would drive you mad, things so vile and unbelievable your mind could not begin to take them in.”
Once more he turned away from her, and Lucy found herself relieved to escape the torment in his eyes. He went on then, his words drumming out in a dull, plodding monotone, as if he were merely repeating a sequence of memories and images that had come, unbidden, to his mind.
In a voice so low Lucy had to strain to hear, he resumed his story. And even though his eyes were turned away from her, Lucy shivered under the conviction that she was hearing things—hidden things, secret things—which were best left concealed by the darkness….
His mind followed the dark path back to the past…back to that night, just after the priests came, when he had been forced to look upon the reality of his own evil….
Like a brief, terror-filled moment, when something vile rises up out of the darkness to be suddenly and brutally revealed by a flash of lightning, that night he had looked in horror upon a scene emblazoned by firelight…and beheld things depraved, an evil that seemed to permeate his brain, his senses, his entire body.
It had been a night very much like this one, without rain, but with a savage storm gathering in, preparing to assault the island. Thunder threatened to rend the earth, and dangerous lightning seared the darkness.
Around the fire on the beach, the people were dancing and chanting to the beat of the drums. The drums. Always, the incessant, bewitching seduction of the drums. Enticing the people, calling forth the powers of darkness, the rulers of the night. Sounding the ancient rhythm of the dance of hell.
His power had been very great that night. Many of his people had become hosts or had received new visions; countless pacts had been made, and the Prince of Darkness was pleased.
But suddenly, as if borne on a mighty gust of wind, the fire had blazed up, furious and out of control. Startled, Sandemon whirled around, looking up to the gentle rise only a short distance away. Two black-cassocked priests stood, unmoving, framed against the horizon by the glow from the raging fire.
One, a small man with a sorrowful countenance, turned his face toward Sandemon, impaling him with his piercing priest’s eyes.
Sandemon stood, breathless, feeling himself stripped, not only of his outward clothing, but of his pride—which was great—and his deceits—which were many. His feet, bare upon the sand, felt as if he were treading on hot coals, yet so violent was the chill that shook him that his entire body began to tremble.
When he finally managed to tear his gaze away from the priest, he saw in the angry red flames what appeared to be a vast number of faceless shadows, monstrous silhouettes, writhing and snaking upward from the blaze. A blood-tinted glow sprayed the beach, where his people crouched and rolled, danced and wailed. And in their midst, two little girls…so small…lay dead. Slaughtered…mutilated…sacrificed by their own friends and families. An offering…to the Prince of Devils.
The rhythm of the drums went on, louder and faster, more frenzied and demanding, as the people swayed and leaped and screamed.
Again Sandemon traced the ascent of the shadows, the dark dragons rising and mounting the air, then swooping down, their loathsome forms mingling among the people, transforming familiar faces into the heads of beasts or hideous demons. Unable to stop himself, he turned once more to look at the mournful-eyed priest. And suddenly, he felt his evil self wracked and torn asunder as if the very armies of darkness and light were deadlocked in a battle for his soul.
As quickly as it had begun, it was over. The fire flickered and waned to a struggling flame. Rain began to fall. The sacrifices were disposed of, and, finally exhausted and depleted, the people groaned and slowly began to creep away. Some went on all fours like weary animals, others stumbled, dazed and drugged from the magic.
Sandemon was left alone, standing in the rain on the darkened beach, staring out at the sea. For the first time in his life, he questioned the magic, wondering what he had seen and what it meant.
From then on, things began to change—at first in subtle ways, then more dramatically. The priests—Father Ben and Father Eric—came among the people, teaching and ministering, healing and loving. Rumors circulated of powerful prayer meetings, meetings where people were delivered from possession and spirits were bound and banished.
Sandemon began to feel his own powers blocked, as if some unseen, unknown presence were tying his hands. Some followers fell away; others ran away—and disappeared entirely.