The Devil's Bible

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  “Why do you care?” she asked. “No one else would. You don’t know anything about me. I could be a con artist or a prostitute or . . . or a murderer.” Mouse’s jaw clenched on the last one.

  “I’m sure you left a string of victims in your wake before you ran to the church.” He smiled.

  “Are you really that damn naïve? You should let me go,” she said coldly.

  “I’ll take you to hospital, but—”

  “No.”

  “Let me call someone. A friend or—”

  “I don’t have friends. I can take care of myself.”

  “Under normal circumstances, I can see that. But now?” He shrugged. “You’re pretty messed up. What are you into, Mouse?”

  Every time he said her name, something inside her uncoiled a little, just enough for her to want more.

  Mouse put her head in her hands and stared at the floor. “Why didn’t you tell the Father about me?”

  “I did.”

  “Not my name. Not . . . how you found me.”

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought . . . ,” he stammered. “I figured that was between you and me.”

  Mouse jerked back from the closeness of his voice. “What do you want from me?”

  But he couldn’t explain what made him so compelled to help her. Not yet. She would think he was crazy. “Look, Mouse. Just eat something. Rest some more.”

  Mouse wanted to push him away, but she couldn’t find the strength. And last night, when she had told him her real name, when he had seen her at her worst, he had just accepted it. He hadn’t asked her questions or forced her to go to the hospital. He had done what she asked, what she needed and nothing more. Maybe she could stay long enough to catch her breath, to get her legs under her before she ran again.

  “I stink,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?” he asked, confused.

  “I stink. I need a shower. Would you hand me my bag?”

  Mouse studied the canvas bag as she opened it, and Angelo noticed.

  “I started to go through it, but I didn’t.”

  She looked up at him, angry and skeptical. “Why not?”

  “I decided to trust you.”

  Again he surprised her, and it made her furious—both his trust and the thrill she felt at not knowing what he might do or say. She knew if she gave him even a sliver of the truth she could shatter his childish trust and scare him into letting her go. Or she could make him let her go. Command him. It’s what her father would have done.

  Mouse looked at Angelo, her eyes narrowed.

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Why not?”

  Her only response was a shrug of her shoulders and a wince of pain.

  “Let me take those, and then I’ll come get you.” He grabbed the bundle of things she’d pulled from her pack. When he came back, he found her sitting on the floor a few feet from the couch and rubbing her ankle, which was healing abnormally fast like her body always did, but her ankle was still very much broken.

  “Tried it on your own?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you stupid or just stubborn?”

  Seething at her weakness and his arrogance, Mouse let him slide his arm around her waist. She didn’t breathe. He lifted her easily and sat her on the toilet beside the shower stall.

  “You think you’ll be able to manage?”

  “Yeah.” Mouse avoided his face. “Thanks.”

  “Call when you’re ready.”

  She supported her weight on the pedestal sink in front of the mirror as she stood. The reflection should have been a shock, but she was already reeling—hurt with no place to go and relying on the unexplainable kindness of some stranger. All of it was so far from any sense of what Mouse had considered normal for the past seven hundred years that she couldn’t get her footing.

  She blew out a sigh. She couldn’t afford to be unsure or unstable. The power had been oddly quiet despite her emotional chaos, but she couldn’t run the risk of it slithering to life again—not while she was here with Angelo. She needed to rebuild her defenses and establish that emotionless, calculated routine, but it was so hard after what she’d done in Nashville. She was like so many addicts she’d seen over the years—she’d been seven hundred years sober, keeping her oath not to kill, but now that she’d fallen off the wagon, she had to start all over again. It would be harder this time because she knew she could fail.

  Trying to swallow the aching sadness that seemed ready to choke her, she counted her hobbled steps to the shower, counted her heartbeats while the water warmed, and thought about how small her life must become once more. Her head leaning into the running water, Mouse worked to find words to fill her mind, to build her mental firewall again, but it all slipped away like the water sliding down her face. She spit the bitter taste of soap from her mouth as the water plastered her hair to her blackened shoulder.

  Today was day one. Again. She took a breath. “I did not—” But the words opened the door for the sorrow to flood in, choking her. She closed her eyes and tried again. “I didn’t kill . . . Oh, God, I can’t do it anymore,” she whispered in supplication and then sank to the shower floor, sobbing.

  “Mouse? Everything all right in there?” Angelo had cracked the door open. “Mouse?” He saw her huddled silhouette through the shower door and bolted across the room, visions of razorblades and bloody baths driving his panic. He pulled open the door. She shuddered as the cool air from the hall came into the shower with him. He turned the water off and wrapped her in a towel.

  He knelt beside her.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Can’t what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’ll get better.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Angelo.”

  As she said his name for the first time, she turned to him, her green eyes wide and so dark they were almost black. He felt something inside him shift, like the switch at a railroad turnout—he had been moving along one line and now he had no idea where he was headed.

  “I’m not what you think I am.” Her words came in rushes of breath.

  Angelo got very still and whispered, “What are you then?”

  Mouse lowered her head. She couldn’t answer him. She’d worn a costume for so long, pretended to be so many other people, that she didn’t know who she was anymore.

  “Lost.” Her voice was hollow again.

  “Well, luckily for you, I’m trained at finding lost sheep.”

  “What?” she murmured, only half listening; she hadn’t heard the disappointment in his voice.

  “I’m a Father—well, almost.”

  “What?” she asked, now staring at him incredulously.

  “You know, a Father Father. Catholic Church kind of Father.”

  PODLAŽICE MONASTERY,

  BOHEMIA

  1278

  Mouse would not be able to finish the calendar, but she thought the bishop would be pleased with his book nonetheless. It was much too large to slide through the opening at the floor, so Mouse wrote a note instead: “It is finished.”

  She paced as she waited for his daily visit to bring her food and water. She kept her ears trained on listening for the slap of his slippers in the hallway as her mind raced to figure out where she would go and how she would elude her father.

  I have thought of something to persuade you, daughter.

  Her father’s voice filled her mind like a dead echo in an empty house. But the intensity of sound in her head, unfiltered by eardrum or softened by distance, was searing. She grabbed at her head, squeezing it as if she could push him out. He had slipped into her consciousness before, but she did not know he could do something like this—to speak into her mind, to fill it up with his own presence.

  I am here in Opava.

  Mouse’
s stomach lurched from the pain, and she barely had time to turn before the vomit spewed into the corner, away from the book. Her head was spinning and her emotions running wild; it made her weak. She needed something to ground her, and without thinking, she began to recite Father Lucas’s favorite psalm: “‘Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.’” As her mind cleared a little, her father’s words struck home and she put her hand to her mouth.

  He was at Opava. With Nicholas.

  Your son thinks a family should be together.

  Though what he said pierced her, the sound of his voice in her head seemed muffled, as if the psalm that ran through her mind was drowning him out somehow.

  “If you hurt him, I will kill you,” she said as she wiped away the bile on her lips.

  You can’t even kill yourself. If you want to save your son, you must come with me.

  Mouse clenched her jaw against her fury. She had to think. She would do anything to keep Nicholas safe, but a simple yes now offered him no protection. Her father would just keep Nicholas as a way to control her. Mouse needed time.

  She took a deep breath, steadying herself. She had learned from her father these past weeks, studying him as closely as he studied her. She saw how carefully he parsed out truth and lies. He said and did whatever it took to get what he wanted. He crafted a mask for himself so meticulously that she wondered if he even knew who he really was. She would do the same—mask herself as thoroughly as her father had.

  She already knew how to lie to herself. When she had read Father Lucas’s letter revealing who her father was, she had feared what she would do to those she loved, and so it had been easy to run away into the Sumava wilderness. But after a few days, the sacrifice she’d willingly made became unbearable. Her breasts were engorged, milk leaking down her tunic, and every part of her burned with wanting her baby boy. She found herself drifting toward the trade paths that cut through the forest toward Prague, toward Nicholas. But she was like poison, tainted by her father’s blood, and she would not infect her son with it; she would not put him in danger.

  Yet she knew she wasn’t strong enough to stay away—not if she kept thinking about him and wondering what he was doing and how much he had grown or what new words he was saying. Not if she kept imagining his weight in her arms or his hands playing with her hair. Mouse needed for him to be gone from her so she could keep him safe. And so she had convinced herself of a lie—that her little golden-haired boy was dead.

  Lying to herself had saved him then. Another lie was her only chance to save him now. She had to make her father believe her.

  “I had already changed my mind,” she said, cloaking the truth with anger. “But now I am rethinking my decision to come with you. I cannot be with someone who would cruelly torture an innocent just to get what he wanted.”

  I have not tortured him. Yet.

  Mouse heard the slap of shoes in the hall and the scratch of parchment against the stone. Bishop Andreas had come at last and had gathered his note.

  “Brother Herman, is it true? But to script a book so quickly! It is, it is . . .” He crouched near the opening along the floor.

  “It is a miracle, Bishop,” she answered him, and she heard the rustle of his robes as he made the sign of the cross.

  “God is good,” he said. “I will go fetch the Brothers to tear down the wall.”

  Who are you talking to? her father asked.

  “Bishop Andreas. I sent him a note to tell him the book was nearly done, that I would have it completed in three days time. I told him I wanted to leave that day.”

  And go where? Mouse could actually hear the hope in his voice, and she wondered if he had dropped his façade or if she had learned to read him better than she thought.

  “Where else is there? You know I do not want to be among people. I had meant to go with you, but now all that depends on what you have done to my son.” Mouse sheared herself from her fear, from any real feeling, and let herself become an empty vessel to hold her lie.

  I have done nothing to him. He paused a moment, his voice gentler in her mind. He is sleeping.

  “Then you are lucky.”

  You will go with me?

  “Yes.”

  How do I know you are telling the truth?

  “Have I lied to you?”

  Not that I am aware of.

  “Come now. You have always been able to see through me, as if I am nothing but a bit of glass. Even now you play inside my head. How can I keep the truth from you?”

  I will come for you.

  “Today?”

  Why not?

  “You are most welcome to visit as always, but I must wait to finish the calendar and hand the book over to the bishop before I leave.”

  Why not just leave it in the cell for him to find?

  Mouse laughed. “An empty cell and a book with a full-length portrait of Satan in it? What stories would they tell?” She let herself laugh again before making her tone more serious. “They would likely burn the book before they even read it. No. I will not take that risk. Would you? It is yours as much as mine. Do you want me to leave our work undone? It is only three days.”

  Mouse counted her breaths as she waited for his response.

  Three days?

  “Three days.”

  So be it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  So you’re Father Angelo.” She had repeated the same line more than once since she’d gotten dressed and he had helped her back to the couch, but the title still felt wrong.

  “Almost. I finished seminary last year, but I haven’t taken vows yet.”

  With the ghost of Father Lucas playing at the edges of her mind, Mouse tried to decide if this changed anything for her. Angelo’s laugh startled her. “I didn’t realize I was so un-priestly. You can’t see me tending the flock?”

  “No. I mean, sure, of course. You’ve taken care of me.” For some reason, the idea that his compassion had come as a consequence of his vocation bothered Mouse. “You just seem so young.”

  “Says the decrepit old lady. I’ll be twenty-eight next month. Should I recite a liturgy? Pontificate on some deep theological issue—the nature of sin, perhaps? Or assess the various historical, metaphorical, and literal contemplations of Hell?”

  Mouse pushed her head against the back of the couch as she tensed. She needed to figure out what was going on here, to slow everything down and get control again.

  Angelo read it as a sign she was tired. “Want me to let you sleep?”

  “No, I’m fine.” She was afraid that as soon as she was by herself, the hopelessness of her situation would start gnawing again. She’d rather talk about him. “So, how’d that happen?”

  Angelo chuckled. “The priesthood, you mean? It’s not as though I’ve got a disease.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I’m . . . I mean I was raised Catholic.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “What?” He kept surprising her, as if she were on a roller coaster and the bottom kept dropping out from under her.

  “I saw the angel when I opened your bag. It’s a christening gift, right?”

  And down Mouse went again, zooming headlong into the unknown.

  “It looked pretty old. A family heirloom?” he asked.

  Mouse felt as if she’d been skinned and her secrets laid bare.

  “I don’t have a family.”

  “What about your parents?” he asked.

  Mouse’s heart thudded against her chest.

  “My mother died having me.” Just enough truth, she thought.

  “And your father?”

  “Didn’t want me.” Which was true at the time.

  “That must have been difficult. Where’d you go?”

  She gave him the truth carefully. “An abbey in the Czech Republic.” Mouse shrugged with her right shoulder. “The Sisters were nice, especially Mother Kazi. And Father Lucas. I was . . . loved.”

  “Me, too.”


  “Sorry?” she asked.

  “Orphaned—and ‘loved secondhand,’ I suppose. I grew up in a home, too. Not with Sisters. With Cistercian monks in an abbey at Fossanova. After my parents died.” His eyes were fixed, like he was staring past her, and his voice held that emptiness that was too familiar to her.

  “What happened?” Mouse never asked questions any more than she answered them, but she seemed to be breaking all her rules now.

  “I was four. My parents and older sister and I were driving home to Priverno from Terracina. My mother played the mandolin, and there had been a folk festival. It was late; I was likely asleep in the back. It was raining. They never figured out what happened.” Angelo paused to swallow and the rest of it sounded like a news report. “We hit the other car head-on. My mum, dad, and sister were dead. The driver of the other car, too. I wasn’t even hurt. My sister was only seven.”

  Angelo stood up abruptly. “Will you be all right out here or do you want to take the bed tonight? It might be more comfortable.”

  “I’m good here. Thanks.”

  “Good night then.”

  “Wait, Angelo. I . . . I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I mean, this isn’t normal, not for me at least. I don’t go home with strangers. I don’t tell them my life’s story. I don’t—”

  “I know. I don’t normally pick up girls in the crypt of a church in the middle of the night either. I mean there was that one other time . . .” He chuckled. “I understand what you’re saying, Mouse. This is definitely weird, like fate or something, but I’m okay with not normal. Let’s just ride it out and see if tomorrow gives us any answers. Okay?”

  Mouse nodded. “Good night, Angelo.”

  In the morning, Angelo found Mouse rifling through the cabinets.

  “Coffee?” she mumbled, wincing as she put a little weight on her ankle.

  “I’ve got it. You go sit down.” A few minutes later he handed her a cappuccino and a pastry over the back of the couch, yawning. He’d spent most of last night wrestling with the question she’d raised. What was going on? He was desperate to know who she was. He kept going over the scene in the church, dissecting everything she’d said. He searched for missing persons on the internet and even looked up the Milton quote, but nothing gave him any answers.