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

by Anthony Barber

  “Creighton.”

  They were both hunched over the Bishop’s Lincoln and did not see Father Peterson approach from behind.

  “Sister?”

  Mads stood up and turned to the older priest.

  “Father?” She didn’t like his tone much. His voice was solemn. “It is time Madeline.” He said.

  Father Creighton Gilliam looked a bit puzzled by the exchange but said nothing. He bowed slightly to the older priest, then looked at Madeline.

  “Sister?” he asked.

  Mads winked at him, looked over her shoulder as she walked towards Father John. “Thanks for the bike rental.”

  The Poole house a white, normally cheery looking two story which fit in with the rest of the homes in the newer suburb of New Orleans, today looked sallow and oppressive in the afternoon rain.

  The Priest and the ex-nun pulled into the driveway of the house. It was early afternoon and Mads felt a tingle of dread spreading from her abdomen. Father John parked next to Jeremy’s Ford pick-up, put the car in park and cut the engine. They sat silently for a moment listening to the thud of fat raindrops against the windshield.

  The aging priest sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel, head cocked, looking out the window.

  “John?” Mads dropped the title for now. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  The priest relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and looked at her.

  “Nothing that will make a difference right now,” he said.

  Mads did not believe him, but said nothing, while opening her tobacco pouch. She sat in silence and rolled a cigarette. Mads guessed he was right.

  Mads reflected on the tapes of the Grace Poole investigation. One thing kept nagging at her.

  Grace had spoken in a language she never studied nor had spent any time listening to. Polish. This was a little bit unusual, at least in Madeline’s experience. The alien oppressor of the possessed often focused on Latin, Greek, French, and German. Occasionally Spanish. Grace spoke Polish with a very thick male accent.

  During her review, collectively with Father Peterson and her own private one, she noted several unidentifiable languages. John informed her the recordings were taken to an outside linguist to identify them.

  Aramaic was one. The now mostly dead language spoken by Jesus. The two other discernable languages were tentatively identified as African Tribal dialects.

  In most cases of possession, several distinct presences could be identified. On the tapes, Grace’s voice, during a state of possession, was that of a male. Low, tuberous and intellectual.

  Mads wrote one thing in her review notes of the tapes. A phrase in Latin the presence repeated over and over again: ‘piaculo sit.’ Atonement.

  “I’m ready,” Mads said to the priest.

  Chapter Eleven

  Detective Mills stood on the roof of New Orleans PD Headquarters, smoking a cigarette. A habit, his wife, believed he’d given up.

  He looked out over the city facing southeast at the Mississippi River. The rain was picking up and the detective sheltered underneath the overhang of the exit door.

  He came up here to think and get away from the jabbering younger detectives. The offices where he had been held up manning phones, pouring over interviews and forensics for the family murders had become a living hell of calls from family members, press, and the brass. They all asked the same understandable question. How long?

  The serial killings gripped New Orleans in a near state of panic. Detective Mills believed, not from genuine fear of a madman on the loose, but the effect it may have on tourism.

  He didn’t fear much. Detective Mills witnessed his share of death over the decades. Bloated, and decaying bodies, sometimes so far gone they crawled with maggots. None of that bothered him. He did fear to leave the dance before the music stopped, however. He hated unfinished business.

  The detective looked down at the growing pile of stubbed cigarette butts. He lit another one, and took a drink of his ice cold coffee, thinking he should just be shut off the whole mess and retire. Vacation accrual would allow him to leave three weeks short of actual retirement.

  “Shit.” He sighed under his breath and took a drag from the filter-less cigarette, dropped it and crushed it under his heel and went back inside

  On his ancient, coffee ring stained desk, two messages were waiting for him. He picked up the phone.

  Clarice Kline agreed to meet Detective Mills at police headquarters. The church’s details about her son’s death were limited. The phone call she made from Poland, was hurried and the church informed her that Walter died in a car accident.

  Upon her arrival in New Orleans, she called the police, rather than the church. After several maddening transfers, she was put through to the detective’s bureau and Detective Mills.

  She was told Walter’s body was being held by the coroner’s office for examination but given no reason why.

  Detective Mills greeted the mother of Walter Kline in the lobby of police headquarters and led her upstairs to a private room next to the homicide bureau. It was used alternately as a family lounge and interrogation room.

  The meeting with Detective Mills was short. Clarice Kline wanted to know when Walter would be released from the coroner’s office. Detective Mills, very sympathetic, let her know it would be one or two days yet.

  “It wasn’t a car accident,” Clarice said, almost perfunctorily.

  “No. Ms. Kline.” “No, it wasn’t.” He said and sat down across from her.

  “What happened?” she asked and sipped on the cup of terrible police coffee offered to her by the detective.

  “We think it was an attempted carjacking gone wrong.” Detective Mills diverted his eyes away from Clarice.

  He left Clarice for a few moments and returned with a cardboard box.

  “A few of your son’s belongings retrieved from the car.” He said.

  “How did he die?” Clarice Kline took the box from the detective. “You and the church should get together and make up a story that jives.” She stood up and put her jacket on.

  “All I can say now is that he died from wounds sustained in an assault.” “When the coroner releases their full report you will get it.” “Ms. Kline?” He stood, meaning to help her with her coat.

  She waved him off and turned to the door. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Do you know what your son was assisting Father Peterson with?” he asked.

  “No idea.” She said and opened the door. “The church should know.”

  Detective Mills grunted. “I suppose they would.” He said, not letting on that he already followed this dead end with the church.

  He escorted her downstairs to the main entrance.

  “I will call you personally when the coroner is finished.” He said. Clarice ignored this and walked out the front door into the steady heavy rain.

  Clarice opened the cardboard box when she arrived back at the hotel room. She left her cell phone in the room during her trip to NOPD, and upon her return, she had a missed call and a voicemail. Before returning the voicemails, she went through the box. In it a bible, a worn leather wallet, and a St. Christopher’s medal, made of silver attached to a heavy chain. The opposite side of the medallion bore a crudely carved symbol.

  “What the fuck are you two trying to say?” Grace’s father said, visibly shaken. He was pacing back and forth in the living room in front of the large bay window, balling and un-balling his fists.

  Father John sat on the couch serenely, unperturbed.

  “Jeremy.” “Mr. Poole.” Father Peterson stood up and walked over to the man, who was now standing in front of the bay window, looking outside. Heavy rain and wind gusts made it feel like the entire house was inside the world’s biggest drive-through car wash.

  “It is a lie,” the priest said.

  Jeremy turned to the older man and relaxed a bit. “What do you mean?”

  “Grace has physically recovered, as a means to an end, and is in
greater danger now.” Father John looked at Jeremy and clasped his shoulders with his thick workman’s hands. “The demon lies in an attempt to trick us.”

  “The dioceses have given us permission to perform the rite.” “We must begin immediately. “Now.”

  “No Father.” Jeremy pulled away from the priest’s strong grip and walked into the kitchen. The priest stood by the window looking out at the rain.

  The house began to tremble. At first, Madeline thought it was thunder from the rainstorm. She sat on the living room sofa, remaining silent, during the exchange between Father John and Jeremy Poole. The tremble turned into a shake and a sudden freezing draft filled the room. Her forearms rose in gooseflesh.

  The feeling of being watched suddenly came over her. All of the lights in the living room and kitchen began to flicker and she looked to Father John, but he was staring past Mads at the staircase.

  The eighteen-year-old girl, who once was Grace Poole, stood on the 2nd-floor landing. Her nude, pallid body flashing in and out of the failing lights. Grace’s, unbound blond hair hung down in sweat-covered strings over her breasts.

  Mads stood up, her skin crawled with goosebumps and the hair on the back of her neck stood at attention, like soldiers awaiting their commanding officer. “What the fuck?”

  Grace’s head was in the shadows, and they couldn’t see her face. The house shook as the teenager descended the stairs.

  Jeremy, came back into the living room, echoed Mad’s, “What the fuck?” “Earthquake?” He looked to Father Peterson than to her. Like a patient fan watching a tennis match. Jeremy turned to the stairs. The glass of water he was holding dropped from his hand and exploded onto the floor.

  Grace’s face came into view through the shadowy light of the stairwell. A wet viscous substance, which Mads mistook as tears, drooled down the girl’s cheeks and dripped into her matted hair.

  The priest, who had been frozen in terrified wonder, started towards the stairs. He was crossing himself and whispering a prayer.

  Mads joined him at the foot of the stairs. They could now see the horrifying truth. The lights stopped their epileptic twittering and illuminated the stairway. Grace Poole’s eyes were gone. In their place, bloody congealing sockets, expectorating blood, and puss. She was smiling. Jeremy Poole started screaming.

  Grace continued her slow, gliding walk down the stairs. She whispered something unintelligible in a low raspy voice of an old man.

  The overwide smile showed terrifyingly false, and blood from her spongy eyeless sockets flowed into her mouth coloring her front teeth a bright, almost Halloween fake blood red.

  Mads stood firmly. Father Peterson, normally sturdy and serene as Michelangelo’s statue of David, looked shit-scared.

  The house shook violently and pictures fell from their places on the walls, tables, and mantles. The large flat screen television mounted on the living room wall flickered to life and began a wild scroll through all three hundred channels. Mads, frightened by little, felt the sudden urge to urinate. Get your shit together, she thought to herself.

  Jeremy Poole continued to scream. To Mads, it closely resembled the bray of a cartoon donkey.

  Father John broke from his paralysis and quickly ran over to Graces’ father.

  “Jeremy!” he yelled, trying to out-pitch the shaking of the house and the violent storm outside. The man did not seem to notice the priest at all.

  The house rumbled and Grace’s whispers grew, into a full-throttled male voice. Eastern European or Russian from the sound.

  The television stopped at an infomercial where a suspender-clad man, wearing a bow tie and ridiculous bowl-cut urged viewers to buy the amazing Can-o-Magic! Whatever the hell that was.

  “Do you have a first aid kit?” The priest was now shouting into Jeremy’s face and gripping his forearm.

  “Jeremy get your shit together right now!” The priest slapped the man across the face with the back of his hand. This seemed to launch Grace’s dad back into reality. He blinked and looked at the priest.

  “First aid kit man!” “Get it!” Father Peterson shouted again.

  Mads stood at the base of the stairs, looking at the Grace/thing.

  “Piaculo sit!” the thing roared in Latin, through that impossible grin. It glared at Mads through sightless oozing sockets.

  The King of Demons, Bale, in his current incarnation now fully inhabited Grace Poole.

  Jeremy Poole ran in a frenzy of terror. Her eyes! Grace’s eyes, he thought. The imagery of his daughter’s eyeless, bloody and grinning face burned into his brain. Although the entire house was freezing, sweat rolled off him in rivulets. He grabbed the army style medic bag from underneath the cabinet in the laundry room and rushed back to the scene of horror.

  Mads and the priest were standing shoulder to shoulder at the foot of the stairs, facing off with Grace, or whatever it was inside her.

  Mads was shouting something Jeremy Poole could not hear above the screaming of the house.

  “Grace!” The man shouted his daughter’s name in desperation and pain. His voice fell dead against the roar of the house.

  “Lord have mercy.” “Lord have mercy,” Mads repeated after the priest as he began to recite the litany of saints. Jeremy stood watching, dumbfounded. The eyeless monster that once had been his daughter continued to grin.”

  The demon inhabiting Grace, watched the filthy black cunt and ignorant old priest recite their meaningless drivel. Bale the powerful and malignant king demon with powers beyond imagining, relished the game.

  The old black priest was weak, and Bale could see into his stinking flesh like an X-ray machine. He was dying. The fetid malignancy grew in the old fucker like mold on rotting cheese.

  “Your name demon!” the mahogany sorceress of the church screamed at the body of the whore girl he wore like a cheap suit.

  Their tricks of light were useless against him. The lesser demons of Bale’s legions could be driven out by such bullshit, he could not.

  Bale focused his concentration, not on the old dying shaman, but on the young woman. All of the demon’s energy, through this weak vessel, pushed out like tentacles from an octopus, yet he could not penetrate her. The demon roared in frustration.

  Jeremy took in the surreal scene. He witnessed the horrors of his daughter’s recent illness, but they paled in comparison to what he was now watching. He ran to the pair confronting Grace at the stairwell.

  “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are.” The priest’s voice was drowned out by a throaty, almost jocular laugh which seemed to be coming from the walls of the house.

  Jeremy tried to push through the priest and Mads but was flung backward by a force which roped him with invisible arms.

  He crashed into the front door, medical bag skittering across the floor. Jeremy sat, stunned. Grace or it, he was no longer sure this was his daughter, stood facing Father Peterson and the young black woman. Grace stood still, with her mouth yawned open in an ever-present Joker grin. Blood and goo continued to ooze from her eye holes, drying and crusting on her cheeks like insane clown makeup.

  “Get the bag, Jeremy!” Father Peterson shouted over his shoulder. Mads left the priest’s side to retrieve her own bag, which lay on the couch.

  Fresh blood flowed from slashes, which appeared from nowhere, on Grace’s ankles.

  “Help me!” yelled Father Peterson.

  Jeremy, still stunned, scrambled for the bag. It had slid into the kitchen, where glass dishware defenestrated itself onto the tile floor.

  Father Peterson turned to Jeremy and shouted over the sound of exploding dishware in the kitchen.

  “Whatever you do, do not acknowledge it!” “It is not Grace.” The Priest turned to Mads, who was splashing holy water from a small vial onto Grace. They continued the holy rite. The teenager/thing on the stairs howled in anger.

  Grace’s father retrieved the medical bag and rejoined them.

  Mads noticed the Grace Poole/Thing on the stairs sta
rted to back up. It seemed like an illusion. Her legs weren’t moving. She looked down at the teenager’s feet. They were floating above the stairs, with blood dripping from the wounds on her ankles splashing in droplets onto the white carpet.

  Father Peterson, holding a crucifix, pressed forward touching it to the girl’s abdomen. The thing continued its backward journey up the stairs but began to bob back and forth like a child’s balloon.

  Two small windows in the kitchen exploded inward and the lights went out. It was still afternoon, but the storming sky outside was black, and the house fell into marshy darkness.

  The creature stopped grinning. “Idz do piekla!” it screamed. Grace collapsed on the stairs. She/it flopped forwards like a heavy bag of laundry, knocking Mads and Father Peterson off balance, like bowling pins. They ended up at the foot of the stairwell, a mass of tangled arms and legs.

  Grace was back in her bed, arms and legs secured to safety straps, two hours after the battle on the stairs. They recovered and were able to carry, Grace, who was now unconscious, to her room.

  Using the supplies from the medical bag retrieved by Jeremy and Mad’s own cache, they bandaged Grace’s eyes and sedated her. Mads nor the priest could come to a conclusion as to how the eyes were removed. They were excised cleanly, as if by a surgeon. By the time they had carried grace to her room the bleeding from the sockets slowed to a trickle.

  There was a brief shouting match between Mads and Jeremy about calling an ambulance. Mads was an experienced nurse and assured him she could handle it. The girl was physically weak, but at the moment not in danger.

  “The hospital would be of no help to your daughter right now Mr. Poole.” The priest said as he watched Mads work on the girl.

  “Let us do what must be done now Jeremy.” the priest said. He took Jeremy downstairs and left Mads to attend to Grace’s wounds.

  She cleaned the girl’s wounds and bandaged them. Grace looked oddly like a soldier in one of those old WWI casualty photos, with the bandage around her eyes. Mads wiped down Grace with a warm towel and dressed her in fresh pajamas. She administered a strong sedative and the young women now slept heavily. Madeline knew this would be a brief respite.