Next, After Lucifer

by Daniel Rhodes

  ** ** **

  Still breathing hard, Boudrie pulled up in front of the Perrin house. There was no sign yet of Devarre. As Mme. Durtal opened the door, Alysse walked past. She showed no indication of haste or upset, no recognition. Without speaking, she simply continued on into the kitchen. Stunned, Boudrie watched her disappear before he remembered to shut the door, and abruptly he realized that the house reeked of cooking cabbage. Alysse, too, is unwell. Mother of God, what was going on? Torn, he decided to ignore the girl for the moment—at least she was walking.

  “Wait for Devarre,” he told Mme. Durtal gruffly, and strode to the stairs.

  Though the room was not warm, Amalie Perrin was perspiring heavily. The bedcovers were a twisted knot at her knees. The outline of her body through the linen nightgown was thin to the point of fragility; her hollow cheeks and shrunken limbs gave her the appearance of a bird. With clumsy gentleness, he untangled the covers and pulled them up to her shoulders.

  “The girl,” she rasped suddenly. So startled that he flinched, Boudrie held his breath to listen. She twisted, moving her head from side to side. Her hands clenched the sheets. “Not the little one. Save her, save her.” The sound of her voice iced the blood in his veins. Swallowing, he leaned forward and took her hand.

  “What girl, Amalie? What do you see?”

  Her eyes opened so abruptly he dropped her hand and stepped back. She stared at him, pupils contracting like a cat’s.

  “The black robe,” she said distinctly. Hope leaped in him—he was wearing a black robe. But as quickly, he understood that this was not the garment she meant—that whatever she was seeing was not in this world. He remembered the dreams Melusine Devarre had described earlier. Brain whirling, he hurried to an open window to escape both his thoughts and the stifling, overwhelming reek of cabbage. He could have wept for gratitude when he heard a car door slam in the street.

  Seconds later, Devarre walked into the room, with Mme. Durtal right behind. He nodded to Boudrie without pausing, opening his bag on the way to the bed. Once again, Boudrie watched him go briskly through the mechanics of pulse and temperature. Amalie Perrin moaned in protest at the thermometer.

  Devarre straightened. His fingers moved to encircle her wrist; he lifted it, displaying its matchstick thinness. “I think this struggle is rapidly taking what remains of her strength,” he said. “She should go to the hospital immediately.”

  Boudrie saw Mme. Durtal’s head give a small shake, and in his heart he agreed. If she was going to die, better for her to die here in her own home than to waste away, plugged into a mysterious array of machines and bottles, among uncaring strangers. Suddenly he remembered the way he had been greeted.

  “What about Alysse?” he said to the woman.

  She shrugged hopelessly. “She seems to be in a dream, to have no real idea of what is taking place around her. She came home late, so I was forced to do the shopping. When I get back, the house smells like a gypsy camp and poor Amalie is half-choked. Alysse has not spoken a word, not so much as walked upstairs to peek into her aunt’s room. I shouted at her for filling the house with such a smell, and again to go fetch you, monsieur. She ignored me as if I did not exist.” She spread her hands, her face expressing misery and worry.

  But Boudrie was too numb for pity. Another steely probe had entered his mind: Do you ever—dream while you’re awake? How was it possible the girl had not realized what the cooking smell might do to her aunt? The implication was chilling, and the cold fear was rising in him that there were a good many questions he should have asked sometime ago. He caught Devarre’s eye and said to Mme. Durtal, “Perhaps you’d better fetch Alysse.” She looked doubtful, but left the room. To Devarre he said quietly, “We’ll talk later, but for now, one question. I came prepared to administer the Last Sacrament.”

  The doctor’s gaze seemed to turn inward.

  “It is a thing not lightly done,” Boudrie said.

  “I can make no predictions. She’s very weak.”

  “Her chances of regaining consciousness?”

  Devarre hesitated, then shook his head. “If we rushed her to Grasse—”

  “Would it help? Truly?”

  He exhaled. “It’s my duty as a physician to say yes, it’s her only chance. The truth is, I don’t believe there is any.”

  The door of the room opened. Mme. Durtal looked pale and haggard. “Alysse is gone,” she said.

  ** ** **

  It had to be black, that was the only thing Alysse was sure of: He wanted her in black. She had gone through her closet, vaguely aware that she did not own a single all-black dress—a sorry state of affairs. At last she remembered the slip she had bought a year before on a whim, because it was so pretty, even though she really had nothing to wear it with. It came to just above her knees, and would do, although now she felt a little cold walking through the misty night. The stones on the roadside bruised her feet, and there was a dull ache somewhere near her middle. But that was not important. The whispering had been tugging at her for days now, confusing her, but at last it had all come clear. She had had to pick flowers, and then cook. Then she had to wait, confused again, until the whispering told her what to wear and do.

  Now she was almost there. The only important things were that she hurry, and be wearing black. His face hung before her like a lamp, calling, guiding—the strong, hard face with its single eye that had been coming clearer in her mind for days now, though it kept blurring into the kind, handsome, familiar face she really preferred. Somehow, the two were one and the same, she was not sure how.

  She knew she would understand, though, very soon.

  ** ** **

  The heat was stifling, the darkness absolute. Chains bound Melusine’s wrists to a stone wall. From above came the harsh, guttural chanting of a single voice in a language she had never heard. The sound was atonal, discordant, making sudden bizarre shifts: an insidious beckoning like the tightening coils of a snake. The voice rose, fell, rose higher, like the fear in her chest. Abruptly it ceased.

  From outside came the sound of footsteps on stone: Metal grated harshly as the door opened. The man was silhouetted by the torch he carried: a huge, broad man in a hooded black robe. His other hand gripped a dagger. He set the torch in a sconce and unlocked her chains. The dagger’s point pierced her side, seared into her flesh. Gasping, she stumbled forward up a narrow flight of steps. Through blurred eyes she saw a fire—and an immense stone altar stained dark, emblazoned with a strange looping design. The firelight caught her captor’s grim one-eyed face.

  She had seen it before.

  But now there was another face, a man’s, as frightened as her own. The bigger man shoved her forward, held the dagger out hilt-first. Shaking his head in protest, agonized with fear, the other man nevertheless stepped closer and took the knife. With trembling hands he raised it. And as his eyes met hers, she understood that this man who was about to take her life was not an enemy but someone who loved her desperately. Her own desperation seized on his struggle; she threw her will against his.

  Abruptly, she was lying on her own couch, eyes wide, powerless to move, with the dreadful sense of being pinned in a coffin. The image of the man with the knife flickered in and out of the bright familiar reality of her parlor. She fought, and as the knife trembled, about to fall, she cried out.

  The image blurred. She leaped to her feet and rushed to the door.

  This time there could be no waiting for what was sure to begin again. It was several blocks through the misty night to her husband, and safety. He had taken their car; her leg held her back. She moved as swiftly as it would allow, concentrating on the image of her great-aunt’s face, struggling to hold off the creeping angry darkness that pressed around.

  Not until she turned the corner to the Perrin house and saw the Citroen did she allow herself a sob of relief. It was then she discovered that the ache in her side was not a stitch from hurrying, but a wound seeping blood.

  ** ** **

&
nbsp; Gravel sprayed as McTell wheeled the BMW back into the driveway and gunned it toward the villa. He slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, pulled himself out.

  The house was dark and silent.

  He swallowed, the lump in his throat like a thick greasy ball. His left eye was throbbing steadily; when he covered the other with his hand, the vision was dark and blurred. He had been on his second brandy in the bistro in Saint-Bertrand, trying to disguise the shaking of his hand as he raised the glass, when the image of the gutted hanging dog had flared in his mind. For the second time in that same tavern he had slammed down his drink half-finished and lunged for the door.

  But as he stood in the misty night, staring at the darkened house, an awful gloating insistence gained steadily: too late.

  Swallowing again, he began to walk.

  He reached inside the hallway, touched the light switch. It was on. He closed his eyes, remembering Mona, and flicked it back and forth. Nothing. It took him three attempts to clear his throat. “Lin?” he called. The sound came out a hoarse mocking croak. “Linden?”

  The hallway loomed crypt-black and endless. He cursed himself for not having a flashlight in the car; his only one was still in his rucksack, and he was not even sure where that was. The only thing left was candles, in the kitchen. With them he could find the fuse box. He took several slow, steady breaths, lit a match, and began the step-by-step journey down the creaking hallway. His fingers whispered against the cold plaster of the wall.

  The dining room was pale with faint moonlight. He crossed it quickly. In the kitchen he pulled open drawers, groped until his fingers found the candles. Shadows jumped with the flickering flame. He raised it—and saw that the cellar door was open.

  It was always kept closed.

  Feeling as if an iron band were tightening around his chest, he edged toward it, peered down into the inky stairwell. Two white objects lay blurred by the candle’s glow. He held the flame closer.

  Shoes. Linden’s.

  The lights, he thought weakly. He had to fix the lights.

  Instead, with terrible slowness, he began to descend. When he was halfway down, the candle flared, sputtered, died. He stood in the sudden dark, shaking, barely able to hold off utter panic—and the urge to race back upstairs and out into the night, to charge blindly into the brush and run until he could run no more, then to bury himself with leaves and duff and crouch like a hunted animal until the morning sun.

  He struck a match, relit the candle. “Linden?” he whispered.

  The walls were lined with shelves holding cans and jars that seemed to contain eerie floating shapes—fetuses, organs. Something brushed his ear. With a gasp he flailed at it, putting out the candle. He was barely able to make his hands light it again. The thing was a cobweb; a truculent black spider crouched near its edge, looking ready to pounce.

  Then he saw her.

  She was sitting up against the far wall, mouth open, staring sightlessly—exactly as Mona had been. McTell’s blood surged in his veins: She was alive! He ran to her, dropped to one knee. The flame died again. Pale, ghostly moonlight filtering through a dirt-encrusted window allowed him to make out her face and dark eyes. Trembling with excitement, he touched her.

  “Baby?” he whispered. “Are you all right?"

  She made no move. Her flesh was cool. Gently, he touched the artery of her throat. Nothing. Panic rose again swiftly. He tugged at her blouse to feel her heartbeat. The cloth fell open, as if it had been slit. His fingers found a strange vertical ridge on her flesh. He lit the candle once more, pulled the blouse open, and leaned close.

  Then he spun away, vomit burning his throat, and crashed blindly toward the stairs—holding before him the hand he had wet with blood as he parted the flesh and peered in to see her spine.

  CHAPTER 14

  Boudrie’s hand made the so-familiar motions through the air: the names of the three persons of God, the sign that was tonight sending to her final rest the woman who had been his lover’s sister, aunt to the girl who might well be his daughter. He stepped back from the bedside and took off his surplice, shedding with it his role as emissary of the faith that had dominated the Western world for twenty centuries, becoming again a simple man prey to every form of human weakness. The strange behavior and disappearance of Alysse had not left his mind for a second. Hurriedly, he folded the surplice and began to put away the oils.

  Mme. Durtal rose from her knees, crossing herself. “Some tea?” she said timidly.

  “Tea,” Boudrie growled. “My God, woman, haven’t you got anything to drink in this house?”

  Her eyes widened. “I’ll look,” she said, backing away.

  Devarre was standing against the wall, hands folded before him, missing nothing. He cleared his throat. “A word with you, Etien. Perhaps in the hall.” Boudrie nodded, and paused to offer a final silent prayer. Though breath remained, she was almost there. He had seen it many times.

  “I hate to pile on more bad news,” Devarre said, “but you may as well know now. Not long before you phoned, I got a call from the hospital in Grasse. I seem to be doing a good deal of business with them these days.”

  An unpleasant premonition rose in Boudrie. “And?” Devarre looked away. “The Taillou boy. It seems he was working by himself off in some field, hidden from view. He was operating his father’s backhoe—whether he was qualified, I don’t know—but apparently he had gotten off to poke around in the hole he was digging and the machine somehow broke loose and pinned him. It seems he lay there for hours, until his mother missed him at dinner. Well, they found him at last and got an ambulance. It was one of those terrible situations where as soon as they moved the machine, his death was virtually certain. The hospital wanted to know if I had his blood type, to be ready just in case.”

  There is no mercy, Boudrie thought, no relief. Heaven is a fantasy made up by cynics and believed by fools. “He’s dead?”

  Devarre nodded. “Apparently he was conscious to the end, but couldn’t speak because of the weight on him.”

  A sharp knock came at the outside door. Alysse, Boudrie thought with relief. He heard it open, heard Mme. Durtal say, “But come in, madame,” sounding flustered as usual.

  But the voice that murmured thanks was not Alysse’s. Devarre was already striding down the stairs.

  “I can’t stand it any longer,” Melusine said into his chest. “It’s going to drive me mad.”

  “Another—visitation?”

  “The worst yet. Some sort of ritual sacrifice. I couldn’t make it stop. I think—this happened during it.” She took her husband’s hand, touched it to the wound. His face went bloodless with rage. He glared around the room, but there was nothing to fight.

  “We’ll start by dressing that,” he muttered, and turned to his bag.

  Her gaze met Boudrie’s. “A dreadful one-eyed man,” she said quietly. “I had seen him once before.”

  He nodded, too numb to feign surprise.

  Mme. Durtal was staring from one to the other, openmouthed, looking vaguely like a fish in an aquarium. “Brandy,” Boudrie told her gently. Her mouth snapped shut. She hurried out of the room.

  Devarre was holding bandages and bottles. “Come along, my dear,” he said. “Unless you want to be undressed in public.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “A scratch.”

  “I’ll use force if necessary.” Reluctantly, she followed him to the bathroom.

  Mme. Durtal returned with a dusty bottle and a tray of glasses. Boudrie poured a drink distractedly, tossed it off, poured another. She watched with an astonishment that was beginning to annoy him. He took his glass to the window and stared down the street at the faint rainbow-hued haloes of mist around the lamps.

  It was impossible, of course. But if the impossible had in some unfathomable way come true, was it simply random? Or was there a pattern, an object? For no reason he was again aware of the fading smell of cabbage.

  Devarre walked back in with his arm around
his wife; she was buttoning her blouse. Boudrie turned to Mme. Durtal. “Alysse said nothing about where she might be?”

  “I didn’t even see her,” she said despairingly. “One minute she’s cooking cabbage, the next she’s gone. She left her coat, even her purse.”

  Melusine looked at them questioningly. “She’s disappeared,” Devarre told her. “Apparently she’s in some sort of daze.”

  “But where could she have gone? A friend’s? A bistro?”

  “With her aunt nearly dead upstairs?”

  “My God,” she breathed. “I’d forgotten all about it.” She turned to Boudrie, eyes gone anxious. “Perhaps two weeks ago I sensed that something was bothering her, and made her tell me what. She had been bathing, and thought she saw a man watching her—a big, ugly man with only one eye. Of course, it was impossible; the bathroom is secluded . . .”

  “I think,” Boudrie said slowly, “that we had better find her.”

  It was Melusine who put words to his suspicion. “Could she have gone back to the Americans’?”

  “For what?” said Mme. Durtal. “She was done for the day.”

  Boudrie ignored her, gazing at Melusine. “That tainted water you spoke of. I know now what it is.” For a second he hung in indecision—to desert the dying was no small thing. But the living came first. He wheeled, looking for his bag. “You all must excuse me. I have a visit to pay.”

  “You’ll want company,” Melusine said firmly.

  “But it would look odd—”

  “Pah.” She tossed her head impatiently. “Let’s be truthful. There’s something. We both know it. And it’s very strong.”

  Mme. Durtal stared, bewildered. “What is very strong? What do you keep talking about?”

  “Pray, madame,” Boudrie said, starting for the door. “Pray for your cousin, pray for yourself, pray for all of us. You’ll be safe.”

  The three of them walked out into the misty night and climbed without speaking into Devarre’s Citroen. There they paused and looked at each other.

  “I hope,” Melusine said, “we go home feeling very foolish.”