He paused to furrow his brow and purse his lips, as though mocking the whole idea that he needed time to consider.
‘Uhhhhh,’ he mused, frowned some more, and narrowed his eyes. ‘Well, yes . . . yes, I suppose . . . yes . . . indeed.’ As if the reality had only just occurred to him. ‘You know . . . yes . . . I can’t imagine anything I’d like more.’
‘Good,’ she said with finality. ‘Good.’ And they sat there at her Heart Foundation table for what seemed like sixty seconds, coming to grips with what they’d both agreed to, before Cat pushed herself back, the chair scraping across the boards, and got to her feet.
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘let’s get on with it.’
Later she told herself that the real reason she’d set the whole process in motion was curiosity – that she needed to assure herself once and for all that he was not the same ludicrously muscled and over-endowed demon that had visited her in her dream.
But when he disrobed at the foot of her bed – she was already naked on top of her duvet, waiting for him – she saw bristling fur, biceps, triceps, abs, pecs, trapezoids, deltoids, obliques, and a throbbing member that already looked the size of a rolling pin. He must have seen she was aghast – she’d stopped breathing, her eyes widening in horror – but he swiftly swung into position anyway, wrapping his huge hands around her throat and forcing his immensity into her while staring down at her with snarling lips and flared nostrils and pointed teeth and eyes that were positively demonic.
‘Everything is going to be all right,’ he kept hissing as he thrust and thrust into her, again and again like some piston-operated machine, and Cat, with her heart hammering around her ribcage, could only shudder in terror, because it was true, oh dear God it was true.
She was getting fucked by the Devil.
PART
THREE
CHAPTER
ONE
Cat expected the home of Madam Morganach to be intensely dark and cluttered with occult mementoes and arcane texts, much like Agnes’s flat, but instead it was bright, exceptionally warm and decorated only with a few sticks of mismatched furniture. The whole effect – like the set of an avant-garde play – seemed to Cat curiously artificial, not to be trusted, and made her further ill at ease when she could least afford to be. She had been struggling for two days to get a grip on herself and scarcely needed more complications now.
After their extraordinary intercourse Boucher had transformed instantly, magically, into the most charming and sympathetic of lovers. His whole body seemed to deflate. But Cat herself was nauseous. She told him he was great, marvellous, then whisked off to the bathroom, locked herself inside, and in a blind panic tried to douche out what seemed a half-pint of his essence. She had a scalding hot shower. She almost threw up. But at the same time she became determined not to betray her feelings. Part of her feared Boucher would think she was mad. Another part feared she was mad. She climbed back into bed and turned her back on him and bunched the sheets to her throat and tried to sleep even as he caressed her hip as if, for the love of God, he was anticipating another session. She was unmoving as the Sphinx, however, and eventually Boucher rolled over and fell asleep, snoring in barely audible exhalations. He had kissed her in the morning – she had slept barely a wink – and they had shared some breakfast and a smattering of small-talk, but everything about her body language communicated to him the folly of trying to mark out new territory. She had ignored an ambiguous text from Maxine downstairs:
Not another nightmare, I hope?
And, through a distinct aura of petulance, had compelled Boucher to retreat to his own flat upstairs. But it wasn’t until she heard the reassuring creak of his floorboards that she finally exhaled. And resolved to visit Madam Morganach as soon as possible.
‘I should warn you now,’ Cat said, still clinging desperately to reason, ‘that I don’t believe in Satan.’
‘Oh,’ Morganach twittered with weary amusement, ‘that matters not, dear, if he believes in you.’
The old woman was seated on a damask chair, balancing a flower-patterned teacup (Cat had declined a drink of her own), and in the cold light of day – and it was cold, and it was light, with the sun blazing through the conservatory and airing the room with a foggy luminescence – she appeared much statelier and more elegant than how Cat remembered her from the night in the street. But that only made her seem even more at odds with the minimalist décor.
‘Tell me,’ Cat asked, ‘why you said you’ve been keeping an eye on me.’
‘I regard it as my duty to do so,’ Morganach told her, ‘because I was once very much like you. I once turned to the black arts too, you see, and I also consorted with witches.’
‘What witches?’
‘Some of the very witches you yourself have met.’
‘Who exactly?’
‘Elspeth Ross, Maggie Balfour, George Pickingill, Zara Mashasha . . .’
Cat recognised some of the names from the conclave. ‘Agnes Sampson?’
‘She is not of my generation, dear, but I know of her well enough. I know all of them in one way or another. They claim to be direct descendants of witches past, but in truth their names are rarely those that they were born with.’
‘They change their names?’
‘To honour famous witches, dear. Allison ‘Maggie’ Balfour – tortured in Edinburgh Castle in 1596. Agnes Sampson – tortured in Holyrood Palace in 1591. Both were later burned at the stake.’
Cat shook her head. ‘Just because they were burned at the stake doesn’t mean that they were witches.’
‘Again, it matters not, dear. For their imaginations alone – for the strength it took to fabricate outrageous confessions in the face of death – the witches of old are worshipped by today’s covens. There are scores of Maggie Balfours and Agnes Sampsons out there.’
Cat, nodding now, saw a glimmer of reason. ‘So you’re effectively admitting they worship a myth, right?’
‘Of course they worship myths. The Satanic community is as prone as any cult to nurture their fantastical stories, to revere their martyrs, and to revel in a sense of persecution. But the witch trials of history require little exaggeration. They are evidence enough of the madness at the heart of piety. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea?’
‘I’ll be OK.’
‘Then excuse me a moment while I fetch Sirius – he frets when I have company.’
Now that she thought about it, Cat had registered the persistent snarling of a dog somewhere. And when Morganach returned she was holding the hostile Border Terrier, which glared at Cat with its flews curling.
‘I once was deeply religious,’ said Morganach, settling back into her chair. ‘A devout Baptist. But then mother was diagnosed with liver cancer and my prayers went unanswered. My own daughter died in infancy after my prayers went unanswered. My husband died of malignant mesothelioma after my prayers went unanswered. So when my son fell ill with pleurisy, I turned to a different power. I attended a séance. I implored Lucifer for help because the traditional deities had ignored me. And I learned the founding myth of modern Satanism.’
‘Which is?’
Morganach spoke in warbly voice. ‘Lucifer broke with the Creator over the right of mortal human beings to supernatural deliverance. The Creator is – and has always been – an arrogant, disinterested, even contemptuous deity. He cares not for even his most devout followers and refuses to meddle in their affairs. If the human race is damned, He believes, it’s because it has damned itself. His hands are off. But Lucifer, who adored humanity with all its warts and weaknesses, was moved to tears by the suffering of the mortal masses and pleaded with the Creator to change His mind. When the Creator refused, Lucifer absconded from Heaven, vowing to share his powers with the beleaguered souls of Earth.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Cat said. ‘You’re not telling me you really believe that?’
‘No more than the acolytes of any religion really believe their foundation myths,’ Morganach admitte
d, a little defensively. ‘It’s the sentiment that’s important and the sentiment is enough to constitute a truth. But I will say this, dear.’ She was stroking the dog furiously. ‘More unaccountable happenings occur under the aegis of Satanism than any other religion. My son was saved, I can tell you that, and he recovered fully. I too prospered in many other ways. It was a genuine miracle.’
Cat thought again of the illuminated sign around the corner from Dean Village: THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE. ‘Then I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You’re trying to tell me that Satan helped you?’
‘He will do that when he sees fit.’
‘Then’ – Cat frowned – ‘you’ll have to forgive me, but I’m still confused. Are you a Satanist?’
‘A former Satanist. A former witch.’
‘Then why did you leave?’
‘Because Satanism is evolving, dear. It has ambitions, very grandiose ambitions. Too grand for the likes of me.’
‘What sort of ambitions?’
‘Satanists now see themselves as the saviours of the world.’
‘You’ll have to explain that.’
A wan smile and another grrrrrr from the dog. ‘Look around you. The history of humankind long ago reached a point where certain ideologies became not just life threatening but world threatening. And still the Creator – the distrustful deity – remains aloof and disinterested. Because He cares not if the whole planet is reduced to ash.’
‘And Satan?’
‘Is the only one prepared to act.’
‘How?’
‘By removing malignancies.’
‘What malignancies?’
‘Enemies of humankind.’
‘What enemies?’
‘Enemies that don’t even know they are enemies.’
‘Such as who?’
Morganach offered the faintest of smiles. ‘Have you never encountered a human being who offers nothing to the world but trouble? Whose only purpose seems to be to create misery?’
Cat felt her blood heating. ‘Perhaps.’
‘And have you ever thought about killing that person?’
‘I guess I have. I guess we all have. But it’s not to us to make such judgements.’
‘Of course not. God will sort it out, will he not?’
‘We have processes in place, processes that—’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Morganach gave an impatient frown. ‘There are always processes, aren’t there? Always laws and regulations and adherence to codified principles. As the hawks soar and the sparrows cower. As the sociopathic, mendacious and psychotically greedy continue to pilot us towards destruction.’
Cat was startled: Morganach seemed almost to be quoting from Boucher’s website.
Morganach shifted in her seat, as if belatedly realising she’d gone too far. ‘The point is that Satanism is not just about liberation, dear, or freedom from shame and intellectual oppression – it’s about realistic answers to existential problems. It’s about taking action when conventional morality inhibits us from acting, using powers not usually at our disposal.’
‘Now I’m really confused,’ Cat said, shaking her head. ‘Because – you’ll forgive me if I say this – you sound like you’re proselytising. Like you’re promoting Satanism. I can’t see what your issue is with it at all.’
Morganach grunted self-consciously and her face softened. Sirius seemed to be daring Cat to move.
‘My issue is with the way they go about things,’ she said. ‘The way they seek out those who share their world view and recruit newcomers into the fold. The way they charm them, manipulate them, make them beholden to them. And yes, in certain cases, where a person is particularly attractive to them – when a person wins the approval of Lucifer himself – the way that person is groomed.’
‘Groomed.’ The very word sounded like a curse.
‘Groomed for a very special role.’ Morganach’s watery eyes were barely blinking. ‘They once tried to groom me, you know. Because I was very much like you back then – pretty, intelligent, scathing about corruption.’
‘I’m not scathing about anything. I’m cynical, that’s all.’
‘Atheistic, self-reliant, sexually liberated.’
‘Sexually liberated? Who told you all this?’
Morganach’s eyes narrowed. ‘Can I ask, dear, if you went to Lucifer with a request?’
‘I went to a meeting, that’s all – a conclave.’
‘At which Lucifer was invoked?’
‘I don’t know – I didn’t see anyone. Just the . . . the . . .’
‘The?’
‘The Laird of Howgate.’
‘The Laird of Howgate.’ Amusement flashed across Morganach’s eyes. ‘And did the Laird agree to intercede on your behalf?’
‘As far as I know, nothing was ever agreed.’
‘But you went there with a need, a wish? A desire they knew about?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what they knew.’
In the silence that followed, as Morganach studied Cat, there came creaking from upstairs. Someone in the flat above – it was a two-storey house – was shifting furniture.
Nnnnnnnhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrr.
Creak creak creak.
Ka-LONK.
Cat felt as though she were being deviously mocked. And she could not hold Morganach’s gaze. Even as the woman reiterated the awful truth.
‘They groomed you, my dear. Because you fit a certain profile. Because you have certain values that make you useful to them. They groomed you as they tried to groom me. But you still have time, if you wish, to extricate yourself . . .’
In a flood of rapid-fire memories Cat heard Agnes saying, ‘He liked you, Cat, he really liked you.’ And ‘We want to see plenty of bairns now, don’t we?’ And she saw the admiring face of the Laird of Howgate in the darkness of Aileanach Castle. And Boucher poised over her with his ripped physique and his demonic eyes. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE. And repeatedly she relived the extraordinary moment when her own body had convulsed and trembled and she had lost control. No man had ever done that to her before. And the mere idea that it had taken the Devil to bring her to orgasm, for the very first time, nauseated her all over again.
She shook her head with despair. One moment of weakness and whimsy, one reckless acquiescence, one mysterious night in a Scottish castle, and one night of submission had led to the demolition of her belief system, the pollution of her body, and endlessly horrifying complications she could not bear to contemplate.
‘But how do I extricate myself,’ she asked, raising her eyes to Morganach, ‘if it’s already too late?’
‘Is it too late, dear?’
‘I fear it is,’ whispered Cat. ‘He conquered me, you know. Because I allowed him to. Because I let him inside.’
Morganach leaned back in her creaking chair, looking fatalistic.
‘Then you must do your duty, dear, to the best of your ability,’ she said. ‘My only mission was to avail you of the facts. And that I have done, as well as I can. But if it is already too late, as you now claim, then the time for chatter is over. Also the time for regrets and tears. Destiny commands that you take up your crown and march forth into the great city. I bow to you, offer you my fealty, and humbly seek your clemency. Shenhamforash!’
Cat was wordless. The dog was growling. The uncooperative sun was still flooding the room with shafts of heavenly light.
CHAPTER
TWO
A chain of emergency vehicles howled down the street. A page of newspaper flapped past, bearing photos of tanks and aircraft carriers. A flock of ravens swayed on the bare branches of a sycamore tree. Cat lowered her head but otherwise saw very little, immersed in her own turmoil, oscillating wildly between acceptance and rejection, between a conviction that everything made too much sense to be denied and an equally adamant commitment to reason she was unwilling to sacrifice, even for a moment’s whimsy. Robin Boucher, said one side of her mind,
was the Laird of Howgate. More than that, he was Lucifer himself. At Aileanach Castle he had become so smitten with her that he had moved swiftly to eliminate Moyle and install himself in the flat upstairs. To work his devilish charm on her. To infiltrate her dreams. To impregnate her. And make her his Princess of Darkness.
Yet, even as such thoughts swirled like dead leaves through her mind, Cat scolded herself all over again. For bothering to listen to an eccentric old crone who clearly believed too much of what she should have been debunking. A mad hag who clearly couldn’t decide if she was promoting or denouncing Satanism. Or if Cat was cursed or blessed.
Why had she visited her in the first place? Was it genuine fatigue or just fear of conventional happiness? Some mysterious and ongoing legacy of her early trauma? In the end Cat wondered if she had simply set a test for herself – to challenge the structural integrity of her reason – and the act of rejecting it all, blowing it clear out of her head, was now a matter of principle.
She was so emboldened by this new resolve that she barely noticed a car swerve across Murrayfield Road and almost clip her as she reached the kerb. She took the stairs down to the Water of Leith walkway and gained speed as she negotiated the winding path, under old stone bridges and soaring branches, all the way to Dean Village. But here she encountered even more tourists than usual – as if half a dozen coaches had disgorged them all at once – and they were more brazen than ever. They crowded around Cat, speaking a whole babel of tongues, gasping, snapping photos, pointing from afar, even presenting her with trinkets and strange figurines.
They were treating her like a princess.
She was almost panting when she spilled into the common stair. Halfway up to her flat she heard a squeak which could only be Boucher opening his door. She raced up the steps, struggling to get her keys out, like a scream-queen eluding a masked killer in a slasher movie.
She had not even made it to the fifth level when she saw his shadow sprayed across her door. Boucher was standing on the granite steps above, one arm hidden behind his back.
The Devil Upstairs Page 20