The Devil Upstairs

by Anthony O'Neill

  ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Cat,’ said Agnes ‘You can’t seriously tell me you’re not sick of the way things are in the world? The way the shit always floats to the top? And that you’re not tired of just accepting it, being philosophical? As everyone clings to the life rafts?’

  ‘Spoon out that omelette, will you?’

  ‘Aye, I think it’s well and truly cooked now. Looks OK, eh? Not bad for a first try with black pepper.’

  ‘Black salt.’

  ‘Whatever. What am I supposed to spoon it onto?’

  ‘There are two plates in the drawer there. Can you spare some for the cat?’

  ‘A vegan cat, is it?’

  ‘Until he tells me otherwise.’

  Agnes scooped out two servings of omelette and Cat scraped the rest onto the cat dish.

  ‘So you’re seriously trying to tell me I’m a witch?’ she asked, rising.

  ‘Oh, fuck no,’ Agnes said. ‘I’m a witch. Maggie Balfour is a witch. And Lucifer would never unlock any power in someone as petty as us two. I mean, hell’s bells, there’d hardly be anyone left.’

  ‘So what am I?’ Cat asked, as they took their plates to the kitchen table. ‘What on earth am I – according to you?’

  ‘You need some wine with that. You got some wine?’

  ‘There’s grape juice in the fridge.’

  ‘Grape juice, for fuck’s sake.’ Nevertheless, Agnes bent over to fetch it.

  ‘Then what am I?’ Cat asked again. ‘You still haven’t answered.’

  ‘What do you think, girl? What the hell do you think?’

  ‘Some sort of devil?’

  ‘Not a devil.’

  ‘You’re still speaking in tongues.’

  ‘OK, let me say it then. Let me say it out loud. You’re the Devil.’

  Cat settled back into her kitchen chair. ‘This is getting more absurd all the time.’

  ‘I’m not being absurd. You’re the Devil. You always have been.’

  ‘Stop this. Stop. Now you’re starting to annoy me.’

  ‘Oh, hell no, we don’t want that.’ Agnes grinned. ‘We certainly don’t want that.’ She set the glasses on the table and started pouring the juice. ‘I’m just telling you what you already know. Everyone carries the Devil inside – in the heart, in the head, in the instincts – but the magic that goes with it, the full powers of Lucifer, they’re almost never fully realised. They’re never unlocked.’

  Cat had a vision – a memory – of a huge leathery hand descending on her head as the Satanists chanted in Aileanach Castle.

  ‘You know what?’ Agnes said, surveying her. ‘I can see it in your face. It’s all falling into place, isn’t it? You’re reliving it right now – the coronation.’

  ‘The coronation?’

  ‘The moment the Laird of Howgate unshackled your powers. And relinquished his own. The moment he released the Devil upstairs . . .’

  Cat continued to stare into middle space, feeling everything coalesce. Simultaneously she heard the acolytes outside starting to chant, as if purposely to remind her of the ritual.

  ‘That’s it, girl, that’s it,’ Agnes said. ‘The reckoning. It’s not so hard, is it? It’s a moment of triumph. The baton has been passed, girl – to a woman for the very first time – and now it’s your turn to sprint. I always said you were awesome. And’ – with a chuckle – ‘no one’s gonna argue with me now.’

  Cat lowered her eyes. ‘The acolytes . . .’ she breathed.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The acolytes . . . the people outside . . .’

  ‘Oh, the disciples, aye. Crackpots, most of them. They shouldn’t even be here but it’s hard to keep things completely secret. I blame Petra Varga – that bitch never shuts up.’

  ‘Salute o Satana,

  O ribellione,

  O forza vindice,

  De la ragione!’

  Agnes repeated their litany. ‘Hail Satan, o rebellion, o you avenging force of human reason.’ That’s the “Hymn to Satan”, you know.’

  Cat shook her head. ‘They’re making too much noise.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I said they’re making too much noise – they’ll wake the neighbours.’

  Agnes laughed. ‘Still thinking about noise, are you? Cat, you’re a classic. Anyway, don’t worry your pretty head about it. The disciples will disappear as soon as you order them to. Nothing is going to be a problem. Nothing. The plods will never be able to pin a thing on you. And if anything does become a bit of a bother . . . well, you can always deal with it. You can deal with it the same way you dealt with the fud upstairs.’

  Cat, with her fork poised over the plate, looked up at her sharply.

  ‘I meant the musician,’ Agnes clarified promptly, ‘not the grandmaster.’

  Cat sighed ruefully. ‘Robin didn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘None of them did.’

  ‘Just eat your omelette, girl,’ Agnes said. ‘Drink your grape juice. You’ll need some strength. Sounds like this is still going to take some time to sink in. And then, when you’re ready, you can start the revolution.’

  The two women finished their meal in silence, the cat groomed its whiskers, and the clock ticked on into the wee hours of the morning.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Another wistful look upwards at the ceiling, another lament for what might have been, another gut-wrenching wave of shame, another feeling of having been emotionally torn apart, and then Cat helped Agnes wash and tidy the dishes. They repaired to the living room, sat on the sofa amid the darkness and the warmth, and turned on the TV for the overnight news – yet more launching missiles and raging forest fires – and Agnes even fell asleep for a while, snoring again like a grizzly, before snapping awake when an early morning van rumbled past. She blinked and stretched and looked at Cat, who was stroking Thomas Cat expressionlessly.

  ‘So, are cool with it yet?’

  Cat was staring at the switched-off television.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Agnes said, frowning. ‘Have you accepted it?’

  ‘They were showing something . . .’ Cat began.

  ‘Huh? I can’t hear you.’

  ‘They were showing something on the news,’ Cat said, louder. ‘A live press conference . . . from a military base somewhere.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘And there was this guy, someone Robin Boucher called “the Most Dangerous Man on the Planet” . . . he was announcing a new series of air strikes or something.’

  ‘I think I know the fud you mean,’ said Agnes. ‘Go on . . .’

  ‘And for a moment,’ Cat admitted, ‘I felt a flicker of anger – “fox devil rage” or whatever the Germans call it.’

  ‘Oh?’ This got Agnes’s attention. ‘Go on.’

  ‘And I decided to test it out . . . the powers or whatever you’ve talked about . . . to concentrate my thoughts for a second.’

  ‘And what?’ Agnes leaned forward. ‘And what?’

  Cat looked at her guiltily. ‘And the guy . . . the Most Dangerous Man in the World . . .’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He exploded,’ Cat said. ‘Right there on live TV.’

  Agnes paused for a moment, as if to verify that Cat wasn’t joking, then exploded as well – into laughter.

  ‘Way to go, girl! Way to go! So you see? You see it now? The sort of thing you can do?’

  Cat looked back to the blank television. ‘It was horrifying.’

  ‘It was liberating.’

  ‘You didn’t see it.’

  ‘I don’t need to see it. And neither do you, if you don’t want to.’

  Cat grasped for words. ‘But you can’t just . . . you can’t just do things like that to people.’

  ‘Of course you can do it. He deserved it, Cat. In one stroke you probably saved a hundred thousand people. A million people. You might even have saved the world.’

&n
bsp; ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘He’s a fud, Cat – or at least he was. A genuine fud.’

  ‘One person’s fud is another person’s messiah.’

  ‘Pffft. Stop getting yourself tangled up with questions of morality. The sociopaths never do – it’s a dead giveaway.’

  ‘But the sort of power you’re talking about,’ Cat insisted, ‘it’s not for mortals. It’s really, really not.’

  ‘And it’s because you really, really believe that,’ Agnes returned, ‘that you’re exactly the right person to command it. It’s supremely logical, Cat, and you know it. You know it. It’s why you were chosen.’

  Cat was silent for a few moments and finally she sighed. ‘I don’t want any more problems.’

  ‘You won’t have any problems.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave Edinburgh.’

  ‘And you won’t have to leave Edinburgh. Hell, you won’t even have to leave this building. There’s a property upstairs that’ll soon be on the market, from what I hear. Why not buy the place and merge it with this flat? Make it a duplex? Why not turn this whole building into your castle? It’s not beyond you now, I promise you.’

  Cat shook her head. ‘You’re trying to make everything sound so simple.’

  ‘That’s because it is simple. Relax. You’re already across the Rubicon – whether you know it or not.’

  ‘Am I?’ said Cat. ‘Am I really? I still don’t believe in the Devil, you know.’

  ‘Then you don’t believe in yourself.’ Agnes frowned at her impatiently. ‘Scot or not?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Are you a Scot or are you not? No true Scot would ever be frightened of being the Devil.’

  ‘I’m not frightened.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled then. Hey’ – Agnes cocked an ear – ‘I don’t hear your disciples.’

  ‘They stopped chanting about an hour ago.’

  ‘They’re only human.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time, you think?’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Aye, you know . . . for the sparrow to take up her bow and arrow? And march forth into the great city?’

  Cat nodded resignedly. A brisk pre-dawn walk might be just what she needed to get a grip on things. She got tentatively to her feet – Agnes was nodding in encouragement – and wrapped a scarf around her neck and very quietly opened her door – the stairwell was still pitch-dark – and went down the granite steps on hushed feet.

  ‘I’m right behind you, Satan,’ Agnes whispered.

  When Cat opened the stair door she discovered that Dean Village was full of people – acolytes, disciples, whatever – all huddled in the darkness. They must have come from everywhere. They must have known.

  Cat looked back at Agnes. ‘You coming with me?’

  ‘This isn’t my moment, lassie.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Cat was about to turn but then paused. ‘You never did tell me what a fud is, by the way.’

  ‘A cunt, basically.’

  ‘OK.’

  The acolytes were muttering and pointing – word was spreading fast – and the frenzied chant was building again.

  ‘S’innova il secolo,

  Piena e’ l’etate.’

  Agnes translated: ‘The new age is dawning; the time has come . . .’

  Then Cat Thomas – with Thomas Cat hugging her heels – made her way out from the building and through the disciples, who were bowing and peeling away from her while renewing their acclaim.

  ‘Rege Satanas!’

  ‘Ave, Satanas!’

  ‘Die Frau ist Gott!’

  ‘Gott ist die Frau!’

  ‘Hail Satan!’

  Cat went all the way to the wrought-iron footbridge with the stars gleaming above and the river burbling below and she paused there in the middle, surrounded by magisterial Victorian tenements, watched by hundreds of adoring eyes, feeling an immense sadness mixed with an immense joy, and an extraordinary sense of power. And though she normally derided such whimsies, she felt that this was somehow right – it was destiny, it was the moment she had been born for.

  EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.

  Because when you thought about it . . . really thought about it . . . and took all the variables on board . . . and came to terms with all the pros and cons . . . well, it was right, wasn’t it? . . . right and proper, after all these centuries, that the Devil should be a woman . . . a level-headed and self-analytical woman at that . . . a discriminating and compassionate one . . . and a vegan . . . and for that matter a Scot.

  I mean, who better to shake up the world? To challenge the indifference of the heavens? And do something?

  So Cat Thomas and Thomas Cat continued across the Rubicon – or at least the Water of Leith – and headed up the steep stone stairway, climbing out of Dean Village into Belford Road, into Edinburgh, into the world, and into the brightening dawn.

  She couldn’t decide which fud she would kill next. But she would think of someone.

  ‘But at the Dean Bridge, you may behold a spectacle of a more novel order. The river runs at the bottom of a deep valley, among rocks and between gardens; the crest of either bank is occupied by some of the most commodious streets and crescents in the modern city; and a handsome bridge unites the two summits. […] And yet down below, you may still see, with its mills and foaming weir, the little rural village of Dean. Modern improvement has gone overhead on its high-level viaduct; and the extended city has cleanly overleapt, and left unaltered, what was once the summer retreat of its comfortable citizens. Every town embraces hamlets in its growth; Edinburgh herself has embraced a good few; but it is strange to see one still surviving—and to see it some hundreds of feet below your path. […] The smoke still rises thriftily from its chimneys; the dusty miller comes to his door, looks at the gurgling water, hearkens to the turning wheel and the birds about the shed, and perhaps whistles an air of his own to enrich the symphony—for all the world as if Edinburgh were still the old Edinburgh on the Castle Hill, and Dean were still the quietest of hamlets buried a mile or so in the green country.’

  Robert Louis Stevenson,

  Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With humble thanks to my editors, publishers, agents and inspirations: Emma Hargrave, Campbell Brown, Rod Morrison, Ali McBride, Dr Ariel Moy, Debs Warner, Janne Moller, Thomas Ross, Alice Latchford, Guy Carvalho, James Graham (Jim’s Barbers) and David Forrer at InkWell.

  Also by Anthony O’Neill

  The strange case continues . . . in this ‘fiendishly ingenious’and brilliantly imagined sequel to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

  www.blackandwhitepublishing.com