The White Devil

by Justin Evans

  The idea grew ever more clear.

  If I give myself to Harness then maybe he’ll leave the others alone. I’m what he wants. Just let him know he could have me, if he gave the others back.

  Andrew propelled himself forward on the mossy brick pavement, leaning against the plane trees. His breath came in gulps. His muscles scarcely obeyed his commands. His flesh had been devoured away.

  He was emaciated.

  He might not have the strength to make it to the Lot. He saw a car come around the bend and pause at the light at the crest of the Hill.

  Andrew flung himself into the road, holding up his hand. The headlights were blinding.

  “Can you . . .” The rest of the sentence died on his lips. Can you give me a ride, just a few blocks up? The pain in his throat was excruciating—a dagger stroke. But worse, perhaps, was the look of shock on the driver’s face. He was fortyish, fit, wearing an exercise tank top, heading home from the gym. He started to respond to Andrew, then recoiled. The driver saw a gaunt youth, cheeks thrusting from wilted skin; dark hair over a starved, angular face. The boy—if you could assign such a vibrant word to the thing he was looking at—had the appearance of something freshly exhumed. But what truly frightened him was the eyes. They were sunken in their sockets. They stared out at him with a kind of dull desperation; they wanted things from him, yet they knew asking was futile; they were going through the mere motions of survival. The figure mumbled. It was wearing some odd, old-fashioned coat. The driver slammed the stick into neutral, let the car ease down the gradient a few feet—away from the figure, who had lurched into his headlight beam, and then, when the vehicle pulled clear, gunned the engine. As the driver put distance between himself and the figure, he glanced back. Was he dreaming? He dismissed the notion of calling the police or even an ambulance. Instead he would speed home, move quickly to his own door, and lock it tight.

  “STOP, STOP,” INTERRUPTED Fawkes.

  Father Peter regarded him quizzically. He had been reading in a strong voice, trained by years of projecting into the back corners of chapels. They stood in Andrew’s nooklike room. The desk contained the debris of Andrew’s burst of research earlier: stray printer paper with circlings and underlines. Beside the wardrobe lay a large duffel bag, unzipped, stuffed with some hastily packed items.

  “We’re in the wrong spot,” Fawkes said, frowning.

  “The ritual calls for the principal rooms in the house to be blessed,” countered Father Peter. “You did say the spirit had appeared to Andrew here . . .”

  “I know,” Fawkes admitted.

  “Well, Piers, make up your mind,” Dr. Kahn said.

  “The basement,” he replied, finally uncovering the answer that had been nagging at him. “The cistern room. When we uncovered it—when I uncovered it—that’s when the real trouble started for Andrew. It’s where the spirit is strongest. That’s where we can drive him out.”

  “It was their hiding place,” Dr. Kahn agreed. “Byron and Harness,” she explained to the priest.

  Dr. Kahn and Fawkes looked to Father Peter for approval.

  “All right.” The priest sighed. “We’ll just finish this prayer, shall we? Lord, how many adversaries I have,” he continued. “How many there are who rise up against me.”

  “Peter.” Fawkes raised his voice in impatience. “Now.”

  THE WORKMEN HAD begun to repair the hole. With the anxiety oppressing the school, and with the headmaster’s threat hanging over Fawkes, any historical interest in the hidden cistern room had been set aside for the needs of short-term morale. The stretch of basement corridor was littered with building materials and tools, stacked on paint-spattered drop cloths that lined the floor. A stack of boards would constitute the new stretch of wall. Plaster in a tub would fill the gaps. Trowels and sandpaper were ready to smooth it over. While they waited to begin, Reg had found a fortuitously sized square of wood paneling and had affixed it with epoxy over the hole leading to the cistern.

  Andrew felt his breath coming shallower and shallower. He had to squint through his fever and occasionally shake his head to refocus on his surroundings. Whether by luck or by virtue of the shadowy zone he inhabited, he saw no other students as he climbed down to the basement, stopping every few steps to rest against the wall and listen to the sound of his own breathing. The popping. He did not have the energy to feel afraid anymore. He merely experienced the exhaustion, the desire for relief—a cold compress, a cool bed . . . or something else. Death. Up to now it had been an abstraction, something that happened to grandparents, not to you, not in a damp basement stairwell in England.

  By the time he reached the basement corridor, sweat slicked his face. He tugged feebly at the wood panel. It would not budge. He lay down next to it, on the paint-stained sheet. He closed his eyes and rested.

  Maybe he would die right here. Alone.

  Persephone and Roddy. They were dying alone, too. Only they did not know the way out. He, at least, saw the exit. He understood, or guessed, that if he surrendered himself to Harness, the others might go free. Harness had wanted him all along. Harness was hungry. Let him devour Andrew. Here was, perhaps, his sole gift: his ability to understand and solve this riddle.

  After a moment, he tried again. He wrapped his fingertips around the top of the wood panel, then threw his weight backward and pulled the board free. He managed to thrust his legs—bone-thin, his trousers now flopping like sail canvas—into the hole. On instinct he propped the board back into place behind him. He was not sure how he descended the ladder. He was not sure if there was a ladder. He might have been borne into the gloom by the glowing white arms of Harness, his white angel in the blackness. He did reach the bottom, though, and felt the damp stone under his fingers, the carved gutters running into the cistern’s hole; the sandy grit, cold and unappealing. He eased himself to the floor and lay there. He had made it. The cold felt magnificent, a salve on his fever. Even if the ridges of the stone dug into his skin. Even if it was dirty.

  He reached out to see how close he was to the edge. The cistern was full. It brimmed with cold water, shimmery, welcoming. Of course it did.

  He closed his eyes. He could not move anymore. He lay on his back, enjoying the peace. The silent, sensationless void of the cold room.

  That was when he heard it.

  Hrr hrr hrr hrr

  Hrch

  The noise rose from his own gullet.

  Hrch

  Sir Alan had said the words. The death rattle. The sign that there was no return, that the slide to death had begun. He felt its pull.

  Hrr hrr hrr hrr—inhale.

  Hrch—exhale.

  His breath had become a feeble bong. A poor exchange of gases. There was very little of him left.

  Millimeter by millimeter, Andrew raised his body. He pushed himself up on his elbows. He thought he might vomit from the effort. He thrust out one brittle arm, and raised himself on it like a tent pole. He remained there for a moment, poised, nearly fainting, and then, like a statue toppling, he fell into the water.

  The cistern water enveloped him with a sigh.

  His fever was relieved.

  ANDREW TAYLOR STOOD waist-high in the chilly river Cam, his feet in the muck.

  It was midsummer. He was drunk. He was naked. A glorious bright blue sky blazed above him. John Harness splashed a few feet away. This was a swimming hole they had found—another in a long list of their hideaway spots. Andrew’s body had been restored. His skin was full again—goose-bumped from the cold, and from excitement.

  Harness. He is showing me the reason he came back

  He and Harness had never kissed before; only chaste pecks that could have been confused with friendship. Well, not really. But they could not have been confused with lust. But now, the alcohol made it inevitable, and it was just a matter of waiting; his whole body reached out, through the air, it seemed, toward Harness. Andrew had never seen anything more gorgeous: blue eyes against the fair hair and the white skin, pale
and shapely; he seemed a kind of river god, stirring from marble; Andrew wanted to own him, to consume him. Harness stepped toward him and their faces met in a kiss so hungry they nearly bit each other. Andrew pulled away. He felt something under his hand, some flotsam in the water, and he raised it, water dripping away, and held before his eyes: a late June blossom, round and white with a black rim, the shape of a fingernail. A petal, the pure coinage of summer. Fragile, fresh, delicate, and good.

  he had seen it before

  He looked in Harness’s eyes and saw there what was to come.

  That sunny protected spot in the Cam vanished. Time summoned him somewhere else.

  and this is where it all led

  He was in a cramped room in London. There was a bed, and a small chest, and a wardrobe with one hinge broken. This was all John Harness could afford. Outside it was dark. Who knew what time it was, day or night; it might have been four, five in the morning; the deathwatch had been continuous. On a little table, a candle nursed a tiny flame, a mere bead of light. On the bed, Harness’s jaw moved in that random gyration that preceded death. His white-blond hair was shaggy, unkempt, and uncut. His cheeks had sunk to starving hollowness. His chest emitted the death rattle. No one was there, except this young man, expiring. The candle, eventually, sputtered out and the room went dark. No one relit the candle. The death sound continued on. But by the time the dawn rose over London and the horses’ clopping and voices of the day got under way, its rays, filtering through the shutters, lit on a corpse.

  Praise the LORD with the harp; play to him upon the psaltery and lyre

  Sing for him a new song; sound a fanfare with all your skill upon the trumpet.

  The voices pulled Andrew from the scene.

  Andrew was aware of the water now. His limbs, in it. No longer fevered. He was swimming, but in a narrow space. He knew where he was. The cistern. He was free of his disease. He had survived! Some chanting from a handful of voices—amateur, and off-rhythm, yet booming and strong—filtered through to him. He felt the keenest desire to be with those voices.

  But then he saw Harness before him. Harness’s hair floated in the dirty grey-brown water—all the rain that Harness himself had brought that autumn. Together they swam in it. They were still locked together in struggle. Harness’s face grew fierce. His eyes were angry, it was true. But just as much, Andrew realized, they were confused and frightened. John Harness had not known the person he had killed—and now he did. He had not understood the wrongs he had committed—and now he did. And he had not grasped—here, in his prison, in this cave, outside and underneath time—that he was truly dead.

  Those eyes were now comprehending it all.

  It was Andrew’s doing. But also the work of these words and poems that rang in the well water around them. Fawkes and Father Peter and Dr. Kahn had arrived. They were performing the house blessing. Andrew might be saved.

  He gathers up the waters of the ocean as in a water-skin; and stores up the depths of the sea.

  Harness’s face twisted. The prayers seemed to enrage him. He reached out in the murk, gripping Andrew’s arm. In return, Andrew kicked his feet wildly—those wingtips, heavy, water-sodden, impossible!—and in a final burst of effort, pushed himself to the surface. He gasped. One deep breath.

  The voices hesitated—had they heard him? Andrew filled his lungs to cry out.

  Harness reached out again and pulled him down.

  Andrew choked on the cold water. He flailed with his arms and legs, and struggled to reach the surface. But his tailcoat and thick trousers became a kind of wet parachute, dragging him under the water—and Harness’s grip was irresistible. The bubbles ran out of Andrew’s nose. Panic wracked every cell. He clawed at the sides.

  And then he remembered.

  What if I give myself to him?

  Andrew released his grip on the craggy cistern walls and felt himself sink. He held his hands up so Harness could see them—free, no longer fighting. Andrew met Harness’s gaze one final time. He understands. The fierceness slowly went out of those piercing blue eyes, and by degrees, they faded into the murk. Harness was gone.

  Andrew had won.

  Water poured into his nose and mouth. He felt himself sinking deeper into the black water. Exhaustion seized him and he succumbed to it.

  THE THREE COMPANIONS heard the sharp gasp. They exchanged a glance. The presence had been so powerful here, they expected any sudden sound to come from it. But there was another explanation for this disembodied noise. Fawkes said it first.

  “My God, Andrew’s there!”

  He began ripping at the wooden panel. He needn’t have—it came away in his hands. They had not brought a flashlight, so Fawkes fought his way blindly into the hole, kicking at the broken plaster with his heels, and lowered himself into the darkness. He dropped, stumbled, and fell over backward. The ground was hard, and slick. Father Peter followed (more athletic, he had a better landing). Scraped, but unharmed, they let their eyes adjust to the darkness. And for a moment Fawkes could not comprehend it: the cistern was full. It had been nearly empty before, drained except for a foot of rusty runoff and debris. Yet here it was, sloshing over, like a creek swelling under heavy rains. An arm, and a white hand, protruded from the murk.

  “That’s him!”

  They squatted, then heaved. Pulling a human being in wet clothes from water was hard work. They grew soaked as they scrambled; they scraped their knees against the stone. Finally Andrew cleared the water.

  Oh my God he’s not moving

  Fawkes’s mind reeled. He almost did not hear Father Peter saying something practical, something urgent. Fawkes found himself pushed to the side, to witness the priest pumping the boy’s chest. A few desperate minutes later, Father Peter stood, a dark silhouette, staring down at the figure . . . in triumph? In despair? Is he all right? Fawkes flung himself forward, his shoes squelching, and pulled the wet body to himself. He held it. He squeezed it to him. He could not let this one go. He could not. He began to speak to the boy, eagerly, but choked on his words. Andrew’s flesh had gone a kind of fish-belly grey, seemed to be slicked with the dirty cistern water. His eyes stared forward. But the expression on the boy’s face is what stopped Fawkes. Instead of showing the panicked horror of the drowned man, Andrew’s lips, in death, had parted and curled, very slightly, at the corners; as if he’d had a secret whispered in his ear, and it had made him smile.

  Epilogue

  Lord Byron lay on his deathbed. Around him stood a munitions officer in gleaming white breeches and a red coat, as well as several Greek soldiers wearing mournful expressions (these latter were Shells, heavily made up with big black mustaches).

  After a few moments of dialogue and a pregnant pause, the comforting figures froze in a tableau. Byron stood. Dusted himself off. (The audience tittered; it was a comical touch, to puncture the moment.) He stood up and came downstage. The lights tightened around him. The audience in Speech Room hushed, prepared to give the actors one last burst of attention. Under the blanket of darkness, Lord Byron recited, in a calm, cool tone, a final spell:

  The dinner and the soiree too were done

  The supper too discussed, the dames admired.

  Byron’s eyes winked at one section of the audience, center left, as if he were tempted by some of the girls he’d seen there over the course of the evening. But he moved on.

  The banqueteers had dropped off one by one—

  The song was silent.

  And the dance . . . expired.

  He cast another glance around the room, fully in control. Then he turned. Slowly and deliberately, he climbed back into his place in center stage, amid the peering forms of the Greek soldiers, and under the munitions officer’s concerned gaze.

  “The last thin petticoats were vanished, gone,” declared Lord Byron, with a wan gesture at the sky. “Like fleeing clouds into the sky retired. And nothing brighter gleamed through the saloon . . .”

  The lights narrowed on the stage tableau.


  “Than dying tapers,” he said, dreamy now, reclining into death. “And the peeping moon.”

  The spotlight faded and . . . extinguished.

  The applause in Speech Room was polite, even warm, though from his spot in the back row, Fawkes wondered if it amounted to a sigh of relief. Piers Fawkes had not scandalized the crowd with his potty mouth and vulgarity, or included X-rated references too raw for the grandmothers in attendance. No, for Fawkes it had been a rather conservative affair, befitting the stack of thin trade paperbacks arranged on the card table in the corridor on the way out, the ones with the oil painting of Byron on the cover along with The Fever of Messolonghi (a title he had come to despise) scribbled across it in what was meant to be a nineteenth-century-inky effect. Tomasina’s idea. Seven pounds ninety-nine from Barking Press, with a blurb from Andrew Motion. Not bad, in all. Still, Fawkes, in his sport coat, sank down into his seat. While he had been the guest of honor for drinks in Colin Jute’s office with the governors, the evening was really for the students, and the audience said so with their applause. Cheers for the thirteen-year-old Greek platoon and their comic relief officer with the pillow-stuffed belly (Fawkes could not resist applauding; he liked his own broader jokes; and the boy’s performance had been winning); grateful applause for Hugh; huzzahs for the ladies, especially the battle-ax Lady Melbourne, an unexpected audience favorite.