The White Devil

by Justin Evans

  “Thank you, Roddy, you’re a gentleman,” a female voice stated. Roddy blushed and withdrew, savoring the compliment. Andrew remained splayed on the bed.

  “Should I leave?” Persephone said when the door had closed.

  “Are you even allowed to be here?”

  “Ironically, so few girls visit Harrovians in their rooms, there are no rules against it.”

  Andrew grunted. “That’s about the only thing.”

  “Lucky for me. And you.”

  The air grew charged, as if lightning were about to strike. Persephone glowed: her white shirt, her curls, the erectness of her posture; pert, mysterious, feminine, fragrant. She dignified the cruddy little space. A part of Andrew cringed over his rotten behavior. Yet he felt compelled to keep up his angry sulk. He’d come this far.

  To his surprise, Persephone sat on the bed next to him.

  “You left me there,” she said.

  “I found out something important,” he moped. “The ghost. It’s real. Even Fawkes believes it now. He thinks it’s Byron’s boyfriend from Harrow.”

  “Fawkes?” She was surprised. “He thinks that?”

  “Yes, Fawkes. You still don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “He thinks it’s Byron’s boyfriend? That’s odd. I thought Byron . . .”

  “He went both ways. For a while, anyway.” Andrew picked up the battered manila folder. “Poems about the boyfriend.”

  She took the folder and thumbed through it. “This whole obsession of yours is weird,” she declared.

  Andrew lay back, wounded.

  “Does that door lock?” she asked suddenly.

  “No,” he grumbled. “None of them . . .”

  Her lips were on his. He resisted for a microsecond, then opened his lips in response. Their tongues touched. Andrew abandoned his pose and sat up.

  “I thought I was weird.”

  “A little,” she said. “Maybe a lot.” She laughed.

  “What about Seb?” Andrew asked bitterly.

  She frowned. “Don’t spoil it.” Then she offered: “If you were normal, I wouldn’t like you.”

  She kissed him again. Her hands—white, small, freckled—were twisting around her shirt, popping two, three, four buttons. Andrew’s heart stopped. Then she reached inside and twisted the clasps of the pale beige bra, and her breasts suddenly appeared in the faded daylight of his room—pale and freckled and larger, more nippley than he could have dreamed of—proffered like a kind of sacrifice; as if to say, If you don’t believe I like you, here is the only token of sincerity I can offer. If Andrew had stopped to think, he might have found this offering a little sad—why would stripping, surrendering herself, be her first and instinctive means of getting his attention? But he wasn’t thinking. When he gained his breath back, he crouched down and took her breasts in both hands, tenderly—they were cool to the touch—and his powers of observation ceased. He dove for them, groped them, licked them hungrily, a starving man offered a bowl of sweets, and she held his head there until he had had enough, and then she raised him, Come here, and Andrew pressed himself to her, kissing her, gnawing her neck, hoping desperately this would lead to more. She pulled away. Stood. Began to button back up. He watched her in agony.

  “Why don’t you come to my house,” she said, her cats’ eyes glowing, her hands working the bra and buttons. “The next exeat weekend.”

  “Your house . . .” He had trouble speaking. “Headland House?”

  “My mum’s. In Hampstead. She’s in Athens. We’ll make a weekend of it.”

  Andrew felt a jolt of adrenaline, an unexpected terror. Of sex. Of the moment of truth. “Okay.”

  He tried to fight the memory descending on him. Of the humiliating (exciting strange) ritual in the basement with John Harness now he could name him who had stirred him. More than stirred. Delivered him up.

  John Harness was Byron’s lover

  Maybe this ghost thinks you’re Byron

  He felt an unexpected gloom. And a terror that Persephone could read his thoughts.

  “I like you, Andrew.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “You’ve kind of left me speechless.”

  She liked that. “Good.”

  Then a look of insecurity shadowed her face. Perhaps she could read his mind.

  “So you’ll come?” she said, standing there.

  “Of course. Yes.”

  She smiled again and departed with an actress’s outward dignity.

  EVENING CLASS, THE one that ended at 5:15, nearly dark, in this northern latitude: French. A kid from Druries was butchering some lines of dialogue when a boy knocked on the classroom door with a message—for Andrew. Oohs, aahs, and catcalls erupted.

  His housemaster needed to see him urgently.

  On the walk over, every kind of doomsday scenario played in Andrew’s mind. His father had run out of money. He was being withdrawn from Harrow. But as soon as Andrew entered the Lot foyer, it became clear that none of these melodramas was the one unfolding.

  Fawkes paced the foyer, in black robes, whirling on Andrew as soon as he entered. Andrew immediately grew wary. Fawkes’s eyes were red-rimmed; he had a wobbling, slurry appearance, overlaid with an affected calm, a Mona Lisa smile, intended, no doubt, to give him an air of confidence, self-containment; but it only had the effect of making Fawkes seem like he were listening to some other conversation, the ongoing and ever-charming party in his bloodstream.

  At Fawkes’s side stood two shuffling workmen, both bored (they had been kept waiting) and suspicious (the housemaster was loaded). Around these three men, several younger boys hovered, curious. Andrew could see why. The two workmen—in dusty, paint-stained jeans and sweatshirts—carried sledgehammers. The handles were three feet long with heads as big as iron bricks.

  Fawkes waved Andrew to his side. “C’mere.” Over his shoulder, he called, “One moment, chaps.”

  He took Andrew by the shoulder—a chummy, we’re-old-friends gesture, in keeping with his off-kilter management of the whole scene, almost as if he needed to prove how in with Andrew he was, to the laborers—and escorted him to a stairwell, where they could speak in private. The elder of the two workmen rolled his eyes. “Whenever you’re ready. Sir.”

  “We have thirty minutes before the next lesson gets out and the house fills with boys,” Fawkes hissed near Andrew’s ear.

  “Okay . . . ,” said Andrew uncertainly. “What’s going on? Why did you pull me out of class?”

  “We can find the room!” Fawkes said with a crazed grin.

  “Find . . .” Andrew was puzzled.

  “That room,” Fawkes said impatiently. “The room . . . in the past . . . where John Harness took you. It could still be here. In the house. These places are mazes. If you can find it, find that actual room . . .” He gestured grandly. Andrew waited. Fawkes leaned forward and breathed gin on him. “It would prove it.”

  “Prove what?”

  “Prove the ghost exists!”

  Andrew squirmed. “I don’t need any more proof.”

  “But you do. I do. All of these things—The White Devil, Lord Byron, John Harness—could be in your mind. Weird coincidences, certainly. But not proof. No one knows exactly what Harness looked like. There are no portraits. There’s no place to check.” Fawkes drew closer. “Think about what we’re trying to accomplish with the play. This is a one-in-a-million . . . confluence. A discovery. The ghost, returning? Trying to tell us something? It could be important. Very, very important.”

  Andrew regarded Fawkes. “You mean it will make you feel very important.”

  Fawkes drew back, stung. Was he being too obvious? He needed to lighten up. He was sounding desperate again.

  “I admit. I want the play to be unique. I want it to be wonderful. I want it to be . . . published.” He gave a bitter laugh. “There’s nothing wrong with that. And you can help.”

  The American’
s tone was worldly and deflating: “I’m just an actor in your play.”

  Fawkes’s eyes flashed. His diction might be slurry, but his mind snapped with alcoholic inspiration. He saw an angle and did not hesitate to take it. “We’re not just helping ourselves, Andrew. We’re helping Theo.”

  Andrew glanced at his housemaster sharply.

  “You said it yourself. How he died. It happened. It’s real. But no one will believe us,” Fawkes continued. He placed a confiding hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “Don’t we owe it to Theo—you and I—to find out for certain?”

  ANDREW FELT LIKE a bloodhound. A string of people followed his every move as he traipsed around the house, guided by some invisible scent. The first clue was finding the right staircase. He started in his bedroom, paced the length of the corridor, but then, seeing the new construction of the western staircase, doubled back, forcing his entourage to squeeze, grumbling, back through the tiny space. “We’re going on a guided tour of the Lot, Reg, aren’t we fortunate,” cracked the elder workman, Dick, to his mate. The handles of their sledgehammers bumped and nicked the walls. Eventually the group descended the eastern staircase together, with Fawkes watching Andrew’s every move with his bulgy eyes.

  At the bottom, Andrew paused. He turned around slowly, once again forcing the dubious sledgehammer bearers to back away. That door, with the battered tin handle, would have been . . .

  “Here,” he said.

  “You’re sure?” Fawkes cried.

  Of course I’m not sure, he thought, snappishly. But he restrained himself. The workmen had already been making remarks. They invented somefing called plumbing, Mr. Fawkes. No need for cisterns anymore. “Yep,” he said aloud.

  They came to a stop, crammed into the tiny crossroads of basement corridors, all seven of them. Andrew, Fawkes, the two workmen, and three boys who had trailed along to see what happened next: one, the messenger from French class, and two of his pals—all Shells.

  “Now what?” Dick challenged Fawkes.

  Fawkes hesitated. “Now . . . smash through.”

  “Smash through? Are you joking?” The workman rubbed his meaty palm lovingly on the creamy-yellow surface. “This is new plaster. We just fixed this up last year.”

  “Dick . . .” reminded Fawkes.

  “All right,” grumbled Dick. “New paint, have to redo everyfing . . .”

  Now that they had their orders—though not without some final, skeptical head shaking—Dick and Reg got to business. They paced out the area, measured how much room they had to swing. They produced plastic goggles. They spread their legs for leverage, gripped the base and neck of their hammers—and began pounding. The noise was terrific. Dents appeared. Paint and plaster cracked and flew in white chips, chunks, and finally whole honeycombed slabs. Metal rods were exposed. The men’s clothes grew dusty. More students appeared, hovering in the stairwell, whispering, asking for explanation, receiving uncertain replies. From the original three, there were now more than seven boys watching. They kept coming, gathering in a queue up the stairwell. Fawkes ignored them, his big eyes never wavering from the action. Until Matron arrived.

  “What the devil is happening?” she said, pushing down the stairs. The boys parted for her. “My apartment’s shaking like an earthquake!”

  “We’re doing a bit of exploring,” said Fawkes.

  “Exploring?” She took in the mess. “You’re destroying the house!”

  “We’re not destroying it, Matron . . .”

  “This fella says there’s somefing behind this wall,” said Dick, pointing at Andrew, and puffing from his efforts. “An old cistern, he says.”

  “How would he know?” Matron scowled at Andrew. Andrew wished he could crawl into his collar. Then her eyes squinted at him suspiciously. “I hope this isn’t any silly business with the Lot ghost.”

  For an instant, Fawkes’s nervous glance skittered across the faces of the gathered boys. They in turn stared back at him, eyes wide.

  Dick grinned: Now he’s in trouble.

  “It’s of historical interest,” Fawkes declared, summoning his peremptory English arrogance. “Nothing to do with ghosts, Matron. Now please, let us get on with the work.”

  “Work!” she scoffed. She retreated up the stairs, grumbling. Fawkes gestured for Dick and Reg to resume.

  Despite Dick’s shuffling manner, he was hell with a hammer. He and Reg moved like pistons, swaying, smashing, in orchestrated rhythm. On their tenth stroke, Reg’s hammerhead vanished halfway into the wall. Dick stopped swinging. For a moment they just stared. Fawkes lit up. Is that it? Is that it, Dick? he called out.

  Now the hammers reared and slammed quickly. They beat a large, rhomboidal crack in the plaster. Reg gave it a terrific kick with his thick-soled yellow boot. The wall curled in. A hole stood about four feet high and two wide. Dick pulled his goggles onto the top of his forehead. He got down on one knee before the dark gap and peered through. His head disappeared. When it reappeared, his expression was begrudging.

  “Looks like you got yourself a new basement, Mr. Fawkes.”

  A LADDER APPEARED, and a large flashlight with an orange grip. The ladder was shoved through the gap and secured. Andrew stripped off his jacket and tie. Why is he going down? the gathered boys asked. Reg descended with the flashlight. He called up that the ladder was secure.

  Andrew stepped backward, through the hole. Eager boys, peering after him, crowded the opening. The last face he saw as he descended was Dick’s, scowling and dubious.

  Inside the temperature dropped. All went black. The bobbing wisp of the flashlight below him illuminated the rungs.

  “I got yer,” came Reg’s voice, echoing.

  “You holding the ladder?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Is it secure, with the water?” Andrew asked nervously. He clung to the braces and made deliberate steps until he felt Reg’s strong grip on his triceps easing him to the floor.

  “How did you know it was wet?” Reg asked.

  Andrew followed the light. The floor had been littered with distinctly twentieth-century evidence of their demolition: plaster, dust, nails, wire.

  “How did you know it was wet?” repeated Reg.

  “Wet?”

  Andrew followed the beam of the flashlight. He saw the sloping floor. The holes punched in the stone wall. The slick of dribbling water. And the cistern mouth, some seven feet wide, with its jagged stone lips.

  “Look there,” grunted Reg, casting the light into the gloom of the hole. “Fall righ’ in there. Break your neck. Eh! Careful!”

  Andrew circled the hole, staring into its depths, mesmerized. On the far side he stopped. Reg was saying something. Telling the group assembled above what they’d found. Fawkes’s face appeared in the opening. He was calling Andrew. What is it? Curious and anxious. What’s down there, Andrew? But Andrew was not listening. There, on the floor, straight and stiff, as if someone had been tugging hard on both ends, lay a clean white handkerchief.

  PART II

  What are a thousand living loves

  To that which cannot quit the dead?

  11

  Suffocation

  DR. JUDITH KAHN entered her home. It was a modest two-bedroom on Covey Lane, a ten-minute walk from school. It had been her father’s home (her mother had died when Judith was young), and she had redecorated it completely in a desire to make the place her own, to avoid that feeling that she was still living in her parents’ house. New paint, new furnishings. But that had been thirty years ago. Now the place looked battered in its own right. Scuffing on the walls, papers on the desk, too many picture frames on bookshelves and windowsills, her old comfortable caftan flung over the back of her favorite chair. She was proud she had avoided becoming old-lady-cozy; she could live with being bohemian-shabby. Her father had taught her how to manage money. She owned the houses on either side and rented them, as well as one of the nearby storefronts at the corner of Dudley Gardens and Lower Road. If the swaggering aristos of Har
row knew how much their school archivist had put by, they would have a shock.

  The message light blinked on her phone. She saw its winking orange from where she stood by the front door. She punched the code into the burglar alarm (a concession to living alone), then crossed the room in the dark, illuminating a lamp along the way, to hear the message. It was Fawkes. He sounded both drunk and excited. She smiled. Everyone needed a Fawkes. A fountain spilling over with ideas. Or was that an overbrimming bathtub, threatening to flood the house: lately she had sensed, in addition to his usual narcissism, a careening, out-of-control quality, and it worried her. His message tonight was more garbled than usual. Could you help us once again? Fawkes asked. They had found a hidden room in the Lot; did she know anything about it? He thought it all linked back to Byron’s time, and suspected an element of the bizarre. Those were his words: element of the bizarre. Dr. Kahn frowned. Fawkes’s voice cracked when he said the words. Like he was trying to be comical, to cover up for something that upset him, and the strain was too much for his voice. Dr. Kahn picked up the phone to return his call.

  Her finger never touched the buttons. Her senses tingled and she became aware of another person in the house. Whether it was through some small, scarcely detectible sound or true instinct she could not say, but she knew it instantly. She went to the hearth, attempting to remain calm, not to startle anyone. She wrapped her fingers around the heavy poker, then turned, and carried it in front of her like a bayonet. Her strategy lacked finesse—what would she do when she’d cornered the intruder?—but she was scared, and curious, and outraged. How did they get past the alarm? And what on earth would anyone want to steal? Books? Dr. Kahn edged into the corridor.

  “Hello?” she called. Her voice was weak. You can do better than that, she told herself.

  But she didn’t. Her senses more than tingled now. Something had changed in the house: she felt an oppressive cloud on her, a thickness in the atmosphere. It made breathing difficult. Her movements dragged, as if a weight lay upon her limbs. Even her thoughts came sluggishly.