The Devil's Harp String: Hexham Chronicles: Book One

by Anthony Barber

  Jeremy scooped a heaping tablespoon into the pink cup and three heaping ones into the plain white one. He needed a caffeine kick.

  “Cream and sugar for me,” Carrie said as she brought the hot kettle back to the table.

  “The doctors cleared you for work?” She took a tentative sip from her cup looking at him intently.

  “Yes.” He said. Lying with ease.

  “Well, what was the verdict?” She grimaced a bit at the bitter taste of the coffee.

  Jeremy looked down briefly into his cup. “Just a bit of overwork, per the doc.” He was suddenly tired and not very enthused by the conversation. He didn’t like to lie, but also really did not care much for people to know his private business. Even if it was out of concern.

  A sharp flash reflected off the kitchen window. Moments later a very loud thunder crash. Jeremy flinched slightly and looked out the window. The sky to the south was thick with dark storm clouds. Carrie seemed unmoved by it.

  She brushed the hair from her face and briefly looked out the window. Jeremy could smell the heavy shock of ozone in the air. The storm was here. Another flash of light from the south. More distant, but it cut a clear path across the southern sky. A boom of thunder, more distant.

  Mixed with the smell of ozone in the air, he could smell Carrie. Soap on clean skin poured off of the attractive woman in waves. Jeremy felt nervous and light headed.

  He really needed to get her out of here he thought. Grace would be home soon and if he did not end this little tea party soon, Grace would likely invite Carrie to stay for dinner.

  They finished coffee in silence. The way Carrie looked at Jeremy made him feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. She was also widowed. Her husband, Greg Mythsol, a good friend, and coworker was killed in a tragic accident on the rig where they both worked. A high tension equipment cable snapped and Greg was standing in the wrong place. The one-inch thick cable cut through the man’s body like butter.

  Greg’s headless body was found floating a couple of hundred yards from the rig.

  Jeremy found Greg’s head. It was discovered after an exhaustive search that evening, resting upright, in a corner of the catwalk next to the rig’s control room. Eyes and mouth agape, with a perfectly frozen look of surprise and indignation. Carrie was spared these details, of course. Jeremy shuddered.

  Carrie got up, came around to his side of the table and put her hand on his shoulder, as if in sympathy with the recall of the horrible memory. She froze.

  “Jeremy?” She asked.

  He was flustered and not looking in her direction. She was looking out of the kitchen window towards the street.

  “Who is that?” she pointed.

  “Jeremy came to from his waking nightmare of his friend’s death and stood up. “Who?”

  Carrie was pointing to a man, or so it seemed, standing on the sidewalk across the street.

  The person was very hard to see. He or she wore a black hoodie, which was up over their head, black jeans, and black boots. From this distance, he could see a very pale face recessed into the hood and thick black hair. The figure stood still and was staring directly at them. The rain started to fall and made it difficult to see the stranger.

  The Rain patted onto the oil-stained blacktop in the early afternoon.

  Two neighborhood girls who were riding their bikes up and down the street, quickly rode off trying to dodge the storm. Neither seemed to notice the stranger. A large moving van drove by just as Jeremy had made the decision to go outside and find out who the mystery creeper was. By the time the van passed northbound between Jeremy’s house and the sidewalk across the street, the person was gone.

  Grace pulled into the drive in Jeremy’s beat up, sky blue 1978 Ford F150 pick-up. Lord knows why she drove it. He bought his daughter an older, but pristine VW Bug, which sat in the garage sharing space with his riding mower.

  Disregarding the rain, Jeremy ran outside looking north and south on his street. No one. Carrie was close on his heels.

  Grace walked up to the pair carrying two paper grocery bags which were quickly becoming soaked.

  “Dad?” She smiled at them slyly.

  He ran past his daughter to the sidewalk and then north to the intersection with Bouillard Ave. Nothing. Several commuters rushing home to avoid the brunt of the storm. Jeremy returned to the house. Grace and Carrie had gone into the house but were both standing by the large bay window watching his search for the stranger.

  Grace, predictably, invited Carrie to stay for dinner, and the neighbor insisted on helping in the kitchen. Jeremy begged off quickly and changed into dry clothes.

  Jeremy could hear the women giggling. Conspiring, he guessed. While his daughter and the neighbor buzzed around the kitchen, he had excused himself to take care of some ‘man-business’ in the garage.

  Carrie did not bring up the stranger and his daughter showed zero curiosity. Jeremy thought maybe he hallucinated the entire thing. Not possible. Carrie had seen the person. Jeremy was not lent to being paranoid.

  He opened the small fridge in the garage grabbed a beer and sat on the edge of his work table looking out the open garage door. He could hear the heavy rain crashing on the roof. It was early evening and the sky was nearly black with storm clouds. In spite of the rain, it was still hot and humid. Jeremy downed the beer, tossed the can in the recycling bin and walked back to the house.

  After dinner, they gathered in the living room. Jeremy thought about bringing up the stranger in black but decided against it. Fluff conversation about Grace and her plans for the fall and college. No discussion about his ‘incident’ or the stranger at all.

  Carrie made light pleasantries about her garden and her own daughter’s acceptance to the University of Louisiana on a volleyball scholarship. After dessert and dishes, Carrie left and Grace went upstairs after asking Jeremy about twenty times if he was feeling ok and did he need anything. He assured her he was fine. He would read for a while before going to bed.

  It was well after ten when Jeremy turned on his laptop, deciding to go over several work schedules for the next run in the gulf.

  The rain started to let up about two hours later as Jeremy finished his schedules. He began to feel himself again and looked forward to going back to work.

  He stood up from his makeshift desk that was the kitchen table and stretched. His back cracked audibly. He turned towards the living room. Grace was standing in the doorway.

  She was looking past him, or through him, he thought eerily.

  “Kiddo?” He took a step towards his daughter.

  The Kitchen lights flickered on and off.

  Grace was dressed in light pajama shorts and one of his t-shirts from the oil platform company he worked for. A dark blue shirt with white lettering. PEMOS Co. stamped on the front.

  “Grace?” he walked over to his daughter, who very much looked like she was sleep-walking. She appeared not hear him at all. As he approached her, she turned around and began walking up the stairs.

  The lights in the living room and the single bulb that lit the stairwell flicked on and off. He followed quietly behind his daughter. Jeremy heard but did not know it for a fact that it could be dangerous to wake someone up who was sleepwalking.

  Halfway up the stairs, Grace stopped. He almost bumped into her.

  “Daddy” he heard in a whispering voice but from where? Grace? Couldn’t be. The acoustics of an old house, he thought. It sounded like it was directly behind him.

  The lights on stairwell went out completely.

  “Daaaaa-Deeee,” Grace whispered again. This time it was coming from the blackness in front of him.

  The lights in the kitchen came back to life first, then the rest of the house. His daughter was gone.

  Chapter Two

  Mads sat behind the desk and turned on her laptop. A crucifix hung loosely around her neck like an early morning talisman to guard against the dark. She wore a white tank top that shown in bright contrast to her ebony skin. It was four h
ours before her shift started at the Flannel Ribbon, a convenience store three blocks from her apartment.

  While her laptop warmed up, she walked into the kitchen and started a tea kettle. It was a cramped but clean kitchen which had not been remodeled since the construction of the complex eighty years ago. Madeline filled the copper teapot and stared out the window above the sink into the Portland night. It was three in the morning and she should be asleep. She could not, of course. Mads rarely slept more than four hours a night.

  After starting her teapot she opened the fridge. Several stained plastic containers with lord knew what, and a mason jar of white liquid.

  She could hear the beeps and the whir of the fan on her laptop in the other room. The only other room really. She lived in a small studio flat where her dining room and bedroom were the same room and the bathroom was a tiny affair, attached to the kitchen area and separated by only the sheerest of curtains. She didn’t mind it.

  Mads carried her teapot, a stained coffee cup with a WTLZ Radio Station logo on the side, and the Mason jar of “clear liquid” to the desk near the window.

  Her laptop finished booting up. She opened the lid of the half-empty jar and poured two fingers worth of the moonshine into her tea. This wasn’t holy water. She had a friend of her former convent who provided her with an occasional supply of his home distilled booze from time to time. She sat back stared at her laptop screen and took a sip of her doctored tea.

  The Flannel Ribbon convenience store was not a great gig, but it paid the rent and kept her in hot pockets. Madeline Hexham did have a degree in nursing which she may or may not make eventual use of again, but for now ringing up early morning commuters suited her fine. It was a mindless task and she didn’t want a job right now where anyone’s life (or soul.. her inner voice whispered), hung in the balance.

  Mads was a very pretty thirty-year-old black woman. Pretty, she supposed, if one judged such things. She looked much younger, often mistaken for being in her late teens.

  Good genes she thought. She could not know this for sure since Madeleine Hexham was an orphan. She did not know from which genes… or jeans…, she giggled a little stupidly at this, she had sprung.

  Madeleine Hexham was not her real name, of course, but it was the only one she had ever known. Hell, she really didn’t know her exact age. She had no real memories before the age of five.

  Five. The age the nuns had guessed at when she had been dropped off (dumped is more like it) in front of the Catholic Hospital, St. Mike’s in Boston. How catholic could you get? Boston for Christ’s sake.

  She was found standing in front of the hospital in late December 1992 during a freezing blizzard, without shoes, the thinnest of t-shirts and a pair of underwear.

  What had the priest asked her? He had asked her something when he found her shivering and alone. To this day, she couldn’t remember and had never gotten the chance to ask the priest. Father Raphael Solomon died three days after he rescued her from certain death.

  Father Solomon started his shift at St. Mike’s Hospital early due to the large storm that was started blowing into Boston. If he had decided to come in even an hour later he would not have made it and Madeline Hexham, future ex-communicated nun, wouldn’t have been found. Alive anyway.

  Raphael was referred to by the staff as the “Old Man.” Father Solomon was fifty, and his hair was heavily shot-gunned salt and pepper grey. The doctor/priest had been offered promotions many times to hospital administration, but politely refused. He preferred getting his ‘hands red’ as he called it, in the busy emergency room.

  “Old man.” Father Solomon stood up from his desk and turned around. Reacher was leaning on the doorway of his office.

  “How are you Reach?” Raphael stood up and walked over to Father Justice Reacher, another doctor/priest who worked the busy emergency room at St. Mikes. He would normally be gone before Raphael arrived. Father Justice Reacher had him, in age, by at least ten years, but still called him by the nickname.

  “God will forgive you for your sin of vanity, but I certainly won’t. You old pooper,” Raphael said with good humor.

  Father Solomon looked up to Justice Reacher with reverence. Reacher had worked at St. Mike’s for the past six years or so and rarely spoke of his past. Raphael respected the man’s privacy but was always curious about the rumors. He spent years on mission work, mostly in Africa and South America.

  They exchanged pleasantries and a few stories from Reach about the cases in the emergency room that day. After coffee, and Reach’s departure Raphael went outside for a smoke.

  It was freezing, but he needed the fresh air and the nicotine. The wind howled and he could barely see the parking lot or street lights through the blizzard.

  He crushed his cigarette and started to walk back through the sliding doors of the hospital when he heard whining. He might have mistaken it for the wind but something about it sounded desperate. Perhaps a dog. Raphael turned around and peered back into the blizzard. He could see a dark form laying a few hundred feet from the main entrance, in the parking lot.

  Raphael ran out towards what he believed would be an injured animal, struck by a snow-blinded employee or patron leaving the hospital. He thought about going inside to tell security.

  “Ahhhhhh..ggmph.” Came back from the white freezing snow.

  Raphael jogged out to the form, the biting cold slamming his face.

  “Jesus!”

  It was a child of five, maybe younger, shivering on the pavement.

  “Where have you been?” Father Solomon asked, and scooped the little black girl up. He bundled her into his wool overcoat. She stared up at him completely conscious and aware but trembling. The little girl grinned feebly and closed her eyes, burying her face into the priest’s cassock.

  The “old man” did not see the figure, wearing all black, standing near the entrance of the hospital. By the time he reached the door it was gone.

  Chapter Three

  Madeline finished her shift at the convenience store and stopped off at Gary’s for a couple of drinks. It was after midnight and she was tired and a little drunk as she walked home to her flat. She shivered in the damp foggy Portland night. Mads could have hailed a taxi, but decided in the end to walk. She never learned how to drive a car, and her motorcycle had been sold off ages ago to pay bills.

  The walk home from work at night usually helped clear her head. It had been six weeks since the last ‘job.’ She preferred to think about her for hire exorcisms as jobs. She pretended that it helped her sleep at night. It didn’t.

  Since the former nun’s, excommunication two years ago, she continued to perform exorcisms for a fee. The church sanctioned very few exorcisms, leaving many tortured individuals and their families nowhere to turn.

  Madeline Hexham still had connections within the Catholic Church. And there were some who disagreed with the strict requirements needed in order to sanction the rite. Before being thrown out on her keister, she had gained a reputation as a young nun and nurse for assisting in the rite of exorcism many times.

  She assisted the Exorcist Priest, monitoring the possessed individual’s vitals during the physically taxing expulsion ceremony. After leaving the church she performed many such exorcisms, with and without church approve. Two within the last six months, the last one ending in September.

  Kate Chenowith was a precocious nine-year-old girl who lived with her family in Eugene, Oregon. The set of circumstances that led Madeline Hexham to perform the right of exorcism on the girl are denied by the official side of the church.

  The expulsion was a success and the grateful family paid Madeline a $10,000 donation.

  A priest from the church in Eugene spent six weeks with the girl and tried to obtain enough acceptable evidence for approval to perform the rite. The Diocese would not grant approval, despite the pleas from the priest and the family of Kate.

  Mads had seen the digital video recordings provided by the priest and his assistants. They were se
nt to her by a friend in the Vatican. On them were scenes that made the film The Exorcist seem like Bambi by comparison.

  The Catholic Church would not officially sanction it, but unofficial channels in the Vatican were convinced. The Bishop in Portland reversed his decision after a few loud conversations with leadership in Rome.

  The ritual left Mads exhausted, malnourished and spiritually tortured. It lasted almost seven weeks, and in the end, nearly killed her and the girl.

  As she walked home in the dark and damp Portland night she recalled the name of the primary demon which inhabited the little girl. Eligos.

  Mad shivered and pulled her jacket tightly around her.

  Once back at her small flat, Mads changed into sleep gear. Her standard tank top and boy shorts. Not exactly nun attire, she thought wryly to herself.

  She was a little bit drunk but poured herself three fingers of moonshine into a dinosaur-themed jelly jar.

  Mads went to her bookshelf, a built-in job that covered one entire wall of her flat. She had an extensive collection of books. Most of them dealing with the occult, witchcraft, and demonology.

  She had trained as a nurse in college, but also carried a minor in folklore. There really wasn’t such a thing as a degree in demonology. Folklore is about as close as you could get.

  She was currently diving into the fascinating history of the Salem Witch Trials. Pulling a dusty volume from the shelf, an old reprint edition written on the trials by one of the participants, she collapsed into her overstuffed recliner. Madeline flipped through the volume, mindlessly playing with the crucifix around her neck.

  Her cell phone, sitting on the night table next to her, began to vibrate. She thought about ignoring it in favor of a hot shower. Mads reached for the phone instead. It had already gone to voice mail.