Mephista

by Maurice Limat

  I’m right. The door creaks open. A man is entering. I’m scared not knowing. And I’m scared when I see him. I’m disgusted…

  He is thick, short and ugly, with the neck of a bull, a shaven head and a brick-red face. The face of an alcoholic, of a degenerate. Those eyes… I know those eyes, and all girls like me know them all too well… The eyes of a perverted man whose pupils light up in a weird, disturbing way before a pretty girl… Eyes that grope and molest…

  The man is carrying a tray. A tray with a bowl, a glass and a chunk of bread. He walks in. A bunch of questions bubble up in me, but I can’t make a sound. Still looking at me, he puts the tray at the foot of the bed. He sighs and hesitates. I’m trembling, but I want to control myself.

  He has to talk. He has to tell me… What is this story out of the Middle Ages or of some bad soap opera where the poor heroine is locked up like this? And yet I’m in the middle of the 20th century. Through Olga, I belong to the world of movies and television… and things like this can’t happen.

  He looks at me and it’s this look that keeps me from talking. What frightful desires reside in those eyes! He leaves, as if regretting it…

  The evil spell is broken. I rush to the door but it is locked. I bang on it, bruising my fists. I scream:

  “Talk to me! Tell me the truth! I want to know! I want out of here!”

  I scream the same things over and over.

  He’s gone. Silence again. I have seen only one human being. And I’m scared again.

  Where did he go? Who is he? That brute could not be behind my abduction. So who is he working for? Who is he holding me for?

  Minutes of anguish creep over me. I cry. I yell. But I’m cold and hungry…

  Oh, the tray. I go back to my cot. Soup and a glass of wine. Bread. That’s all. I swallow the wine, then the soup, which I had let get cold. I nibble on the bread. And then… and then, nothing. Hours in my tomb.

  The horror…

  He came back. Twice. He brought me the same meager, tasteless meal. I tried to talk to him. He answered, barely, in a lowered voice, but that horrible, lecherous look in his eyes that terrified me.

  “I can’t tell you anything. I’m nothing. I obey. The masters command…”

  I begged him. I threatened him. I don’t remember everything I said. He came closer and fear came over me. I knew what monstrous desires were rumbling inside him.

  His lower lip hanging down, his eyes shot with blood—he was an awful sight. But I saw what an effort he was making to hold himself back. He feinted a move toward me and I screamed. He stopped.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re so pretty.” He repeated again and again, “so pretty… pretty.” In a tone of voice… It made me sick.

  But the woman whom a man desires has control over him. I took a chance.

  “Please, tell me what’s going on. Where m I? Why did they bring me here? What’s going to happen to me?”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  He looked at me. He was about to talk. He gulped hard, in a disgusting way.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “So you know.”

  He nodded and I begged him to talk.

  “If I told you… No, it’d be terrible for you. It’s better you don’t know.”

  He left and looked back one last time from the doorway. And with a sigh of regret he said:

  “Such a pretty girl. What a pity.”

  Here I am alone again. With the horror.

  It’s better I don’t know. But is what’s going to happen really so terrible?

  I can’t sleep. I’m scared. I turn off the light but the chill darkness makes me so scared… and I’m afraid of the spiders.

  So I stay there with my eyes wide open.

  I’m cold. I’m scared. I try to exorcise my horror by thinking of Michel. Michel whom I desperately want to see again.

  And Olga? Olga the she-demon… Olga the bird of prey… Olga who tried to strangle me…

  “Don’t kill her, Olga.”

  I have to live. Olga has to let me live. To live for… For something that man knows about. Something so horrifying that he didn’t want to tell me.

  Oh, when he comes back I’ll jump on him, I’ll fight… he has to tell me.

  He came back. I was waiting for him. I had the fever. I was ready for anything. I asked him again and he refused to answer. So when he was about to leave I gathered all my strength and jumped on him, screaming, trying to bite him.

  He lost his head.

  I understood what a stupid mistake I had just made. When I touched him, as violent as it was, I unleashed all the lechery that he had repressed. He howled like a wild beast and, with no regard for my nails scratching his face, searching for his eyes, he grabbed me with his strong hands. He lifted me like a feather and carried me to the cot.

  I understood. I yelled, fought, begged…

  “No, not that, not that!”

  He said nothing. He was panting like a beast. He threw me on the cold, hard bed and tried to rip my clothes off.

  No, I’d rather die…

  But he’s strong and I’m just a young girl. I can’t go on…

  Michel… Where is Michel?

  I feel his disgusting breath on my face. His heavy, hairy hands are tearing off my dress…

  And everything stops. I hear a voice. A voice that I recognize. The brute lets me go, backs away, his head lowered. He takes refuge in a corner of the cellar like a guilty dog about to be punished.

  I raise myself up a little and see him. Oh, that ghostly face… No, he’s not a man, not a living being…

  He’s the one I saw in the café in Boulogne, who followed us along the Seine, who separated me from Michel at the Blue Parrot… the one who told Olga, “She has to live.”

  His pale hand lifts up and slaps the brute.

  “Stupid moron! Don’t you know she has to stay a virgin, she has to stay pure?”

  What does he mean?

  He continues in his monotone voice, a voice that sounds like it comes from another world.

  “Purity… Our master demands that her purity remain unmolested, that pure blood flow in homage to the impure… The red mass gets all its power when the victim is unspoiled.”

  He looked at me. And I was scared, more scared by his ice-cold eyes of death than by the eyes of the hysterical madman who had attacked me.

  I’m alone again. I’m cold. I can’t even eat. Everything makes me scared. In the yellow light, I tremble in horror… A horror that staggers me, that I don’t understand, that I don’t dare try to understand.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The whiteness of the pillow and the sheets brought out the jet-black radiance of the beautiful hair that the nurses had let down and the black fever that burned in the eyes. Thus stripped of all artifice, back to her natural state, Olga was still curiously seductive, with that disturbing aura that gave her all her charm.

  Her charm that tomorrow would spread all over the world through the big and small screens, would reach the average man, bewitch the older man, the energetic young man, the teenager who called himself free and was always a romantic of some sort.

  Olga looked around. The shot had immobilized her a little, struck her nerves. But she was lucid, very lucid. She realized that they must have driven her to a hospital and locked her up, closely guarded. And these people around her…

  There were four of them. The nurses had left. Olga figured that they are not exactly friends, that they had brought her here by force, that they were bold enough to kidnap her right in front of the studio personnel and journalists, and that the battle was about to begin.

  They had the upper hand. Would people be suspicions? But who would suspect Edwige Hossegor? Anyway, Olga knew what they would say in this case: “Just a publicity stunt. A trick played by a couple of stars on the media, nothing more…”

  Despite her disorientation Olga was aware of her delicate situation. She saw them: the man with the hazel eyes, spirited but
always a little sarcastic, and, in spite of everything, with that look on his face that his mysterious nature forced him to occasionally deny: kindness.

  The other, younger man looked athletic, determined, with unfriendly eyes and no regard for her beauty. Had she seen him before? It seemed that he had mentioned Martine… It was she who was on his mind. He felt nothing of the spell that Olga’s flesh gave off. Because of this, she could not expect any mercy from him.

  This other man with gray hair, whose eyes were hard behind the frameless glasses. She heard his name. Gelor… a doctor… yes, that must be it.

  Finally, sitting at the foot of the bed, staring hard at her, a woman. More beautiful than ever, in spite of her 40 years plus, and maybe because of her dazzling maturity. Edwige Hossegor. From her either, she could not expect pity or weakness. Olga knew this from the start.

  But Professor Gelor was talking.

  “Can you hear me, Mademoiselle Mervil? Yes… I know that you hear me. We’ve just given you a tranquilizer. The nurses put you in bed because, in my opinion, you’re not an enemy, not guilty but sick. So, please consider your condition as such, and treat me only as you would your doctor.”

  They others said nothing. Olga did not respond. The silence was heavy in the room. Olga watched them. She drew on all her strength. She knew that she would have no room for error.

  Gelor enunciated every word:

  “You’re not in your normal state. You’re under an evil spell, probably of a demonic kind. Our task is to free you from it. But you have to help us. Are you ready to give us this help?”

  Silence from Olga. But a momentary twitch in the corner of her mouth.

  Neither Gelor nor Teddy Verano were fooled. It meant: “Don’t count on me. You’re dreaming. I belong to the world beyond that you deny. I know what I know, and you can’t do anything about it.”

  Calmly, the doctor approached her and took her wrist. Olga appeared passive but her eyes were glaring harder and harder.

  “Mademoiselle Mervil, you wanted to become an actress. Everyone knows that, in order to succeed in such a field, and to avoid one disappointment after another, just to give up in the end, or hold on until you’re poor or commit suicide, there are four things that are necessary...”

  He counted them off, probably Edwige Hossegor had helped him to draw up such a list.

  “Talent… Beauty… Wealth… and Luck. You’re beautiful and you have talent, but you lacked wealth and you needed luck to replace it and provide it at the same time. We know your impeccable past. You always refused the sad compromises that so many girls succumb to. Therefore, this luck… you somehow helped it along.... Brought it up... I just want to ask you a simple question: How did you do it?”

  Silence. Four pairs of eyes posed on Olga, but she did not answer. Gelor, who was probably expecting this, jumped right back in.

  “Let’s say, if you prefer, what price did you pay to buy your luck, that crazy chance that takes an unknown today and turns him or her into a big star tomorrow, in demand from Paris, or Hollywood, even before finishing his or her first film, whose face is on TV and on the front page of newspapers and more... Mademoiselle Mervil, we’re well aware that this came after, er, let’s say, a pact that you signed, some kind of agreement that you made. Will you tell us what kind of pact it was?”

  Olga did not budge. Now she was looking beyond them, at something or someone unseen.

  Gelor pressed a button. A nurse entered with syringe at the ready. She prepared to give the injection. Olga reacted in a flash. She tried to jump out of bed, but screamed out in pain and rage and fell back onto the pillow.

  Gelor had moved quickly, but someone had been even quicker yet: Teddy Verano. He knew judo, karate, and all kinds of clever moves to immobilize the strongest adversary. The nurse took advantage of this to stick the needle in Olga’s enticing flesh before retreating.

  Olga writhed in anger. Gelor stepped back.

  “Mesdames and messieurs, it will take a minute.”

  The scopolamine would work and put Olga at their mercy. She cried out her powerlessness. The breakdown of her will. She knew that, in the altered state her enemies had created, she would be forced to answer their terrible questions and give up, in spite of herself, even more terrible answers. In a few minutes… or hours. Olga did not know.

  Everything around her grew blurry against the light blue paint on the bare walls. She saw nothing but all these blazing eyes trained on her. Then, with her last bit of strength, she called out, mentally:

  “O powerful master, don’t let me give in… Help me, help me, in the name of Evil…”

  And the voice came to her, hard, unshakeable, as Gelor’s eyes seemed to cast steel darts that wound her.

  “Olga Mervil, did you sign…”

  “Yes.”

  “A pact? A diabolical contract?”

  “Yes.”

  Now it was a mere whisper. She struggled not to answer, but it was too hard.

  “Who dragged you into this?”

  The unshakable voice repeated the question until she grumbled:

  “Him…”

  “What is his name?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “At night… the fog… I was cold and hungry… it was all over… he came out of the shadows… he said, ‘I know who you are,’ and he knew my name, my situation…”

  “You were with Martine?”

  “No. He didn’t talk about Martine.”

  “We’ll get to that. Now, tell us about this man.”

  “He… saw me again… made me a proposition…”

  “What kind?”

  “Success. To be a star… The queen of the ’70s…wealth... fame... to be the prettiest, the richest and most admired…”

  She became excited, talking in spite of the drug. Her face lit up with an inner fire that was frightening to behold, even with all her seductiveness. But none of this told the questioners much. Teddy Verano said he suspected much of this already.

  Gelor waved to the detective to continue his questioning.

  “Who taught you how to cross yourself backwards?”

  Real terror came over Olga’s pretty face as she mumbled:

  “Him.”

  “Where did he take you?”

  “To… the mass… the red mass…”

  “Where?”

  She struggled not to talk, but the question was repeated.

  “In a house… in Paris.”

  “What area?”

  “Near one of the Portes… In a house that will soon be demolished.”

  “Where, Olga Mervil? You have to tell us.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was around the house?”

  A pause before she stammered.

  “Water… tower.”

  They looked at one another.

  “Maybe the Porte des Lilas?” guessed Teddy Verano.

  The detective and Gelor patiently continued questioning the poor girl who was starting to drool a little. But, bit by bit, they wrestled the secret out of her.

  The man. The leader of the inner circle of a dark cult, made up of people who had devoted themselves to evil in order to become rich and powerful, to climb the ladder of politics, or control the one they desired, to satisfy their vices… They celebrated the red mass, the cursed mass, the bloody mass, the horrific sacrilege. Blood was spilled and it always ended in an orgy.

  Teddy Verano and Gelor were experts in demonology, so they were not surprised. They knew all the secrets of the black and red masses, the ploys of blasphemers devoted to the Devil, the products of an aberration whose origins was found in the twists and turns of the human brain, so subtle and so fragile.

  Olga had gone there. Olga had denied Love and Truth. Olga had—at least, she believed it—sold her soul to the Devil.

  From these madmen, these dark, lunatic sorcerers, these bloodthirsty monsters who did not understand the dreadful consequences of
their awful rituals, the poor girl had believed that she would get the gilded future she had dreamed of. And events, at least at the onset, seemed to prove them right.

  It was a frightening story, but by no means original, except for Edwige Hossegor who, despite being tormented by thinking about all the evil characters she had played, had never imagined that such perversity truly existed.

  And it was frightening for Michel Roz, too, strong and healthy, a sportsman, an athlete, to think that in this Space Age, right in the middle of Paris, there were men and women backward and evil enough to worship Satan.

  But like a parrot, Teddy Verano kept repeating a question that had already been asked by Professor Gelor, and that Olga had so far refused to answer.

  “What was the price of success, Olga?”

  “My eternal soul,” she finally groaned.

  “No, Olga. That’s not enough. The Devil is not satisfied with vague promises for the future. The Devil, or at least those representing him here, always requires more. We know that, in a true pact with the Devil, there’s always a clause that demands proof—a gift—a sacrifice. You were supposed to bring an innocent victim to the red mass and hand her over to these monsters reeking of sulfur… No, don’t writhe in denial... Sulfur! A feature of Hell’s presence on Earth! Or perhaps they just buy some at the chemist’s to impress people like you... No more nonsense, Olga! You promised to sacrifice a ‘lamb,’ something to serve as a guarantee of your good faith to the master to whom you gave your soul… What’s the name of the victim?”

  Olga struggled, groaned, tried not to talk.

  “Her name?” Teddy Verano barked.

  He knew it, of course. They all knew it. But they wanted her to admit it. Finally, in a frightening wheeze, Olga panted out:

  “Martine…”

  “Good. And where’s Martine now?”

  “At their house.”

  Michel Roz looked like he wanted to pounce on Olga, but Teddy Verano stopped him. They had to find out the location first. A house that was going to be demolished... Near the Porte des Lilas perhaps… But there was also an entire area scheduled for renovation right next-door the Porte de Bagnolet... Old houses stagnating amidst new high rises and motorways popping up on all sides.