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

by Anthony Barber

  Walter spent the better part of an hour investigating shelves loaded with old books. He gathered several volumes on early American Piracy and took them to a large overstuffed chair in the middle of the room.

  A pretty young girl with long blond hair tied back in a festive red ribbon sat in the chair next to him. She wore glasses and a green velvet dress. Walter forgot about his pirate books and the chandelier.

  Walter pretended not to notice the girl, who he would later find out to be Amanda Childress. He took up residence in a chair so large it seemed to have been made for giants to rest their enormous asses in. The two children were sitting directly below the rocking chandelier.

  “What are you reading?” The prettiest girl Walter had ever seen, asked him.

  Walter, stunned that someone as pretty as Amanda would dare talk to him, could only produce a squeak.

  She was looking at him with a frank and open smile. There was no question the girl came from wealth but was not spoiled. She was just, well, nice.

  “Uh, American pirates.” Walter stuttered awkwardly, his cheeks flushed red.

  “Do you mean like Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn?” Amanda asked.

  Walter, was indeed an intelligent boy, but a cinephile, he was not. “Who are they?” “Pirates?”

  The girl laughed shyly. Walter thought he would melt under it.

  “Sort of.” She said. “They were movie stars who played pirates in the movies a long time ago.”

  “My name is Amanda.” The young lady stood up and offered her hand. For a moment Walter just stared at it dumbly. She smiled again, continuing to hold her hand out for him. Embarrassed, he finally shook it.

  His stomach did flip flops, cartwheels and a flying Wallenda trapeze act all at the same time.

  “Walter,” he said. Almost whispering it.

  The ornate and very large light decoration, above them, was swinging in widening swaths and the ceiling supports which held it began to crease under the stress.

  Nine-year-old Tommy Pritchard, the spoiled idiot child of a particularly rich politician attending the Christmas Party, was the only one who witnessed what happened next. He was the ‘it’ boy in the current game of hide-n-go-seek.

  Amanda looked down at her hand. Walter was still holding it.

  “Oh sorry.” He let her hand go and quickly turned back to his book. He was completely dumbfounded and felt dizzy.

  “Do you mind?” Amanda asked, making a scooching motion with her hand. Walter stared at her like an idiot for a moment.

  The young lady put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. A lock of blonde hair fell into her eyes. She blew it aside coyly.

  Walter, still clueless, continued to gawk at her like a dumb cow. And then it hit him like a Mack Truck.

  “Oh. Hahaha.” He laughed awkwardly. Walter slid over to allow Amanda room next to him on the chair. Red pinpricks of heat were spreading over his face, and that dizzy feeling that had left him a moment ago returned with a vengeance. It was pleasant though and Walter thought he had never felt so happy or terrified.

  “Thank you, Sir Walter.” She laughed openly, crossing her legs while leaning over his shoulder to look at the pirate book. They sat quietly, together, looking at the illustrations in the pirate book.

  A bright red light flashed into Walter Kline’s vision. He felt like he was suddenly blinded. They flashed before his eyes faster and faster, until pictures began to form in a zoetrope-like fashion. A flash of blood… Then pink… Red… Green.

  Amanda was talking to him and nudging with her shoulder. Walter could hear nothing. Amanda’s lips were forming words, but he heard nothing.

  Sudden flashes of silver flashed into his eyes. Then red, then green. Walter thought he would faint.

  Tommy Pritchard, currently on the hunt, was standing near the oversized fireplace, twenty feet from the two kids sitting on the couch. Although winter, it was not lit, and Tommy was peaking his head in looking for an unsuspecting hider.

  A ripping sound, loud and violent suddenly felt like it was coming from everywhere in the gigantic room, followed by, what sounded like tinkling glasses.

  The weakened supports could no longer hold the weight of the chandelier and metal supports ripped free from the wooden beams with a snap that sounded like a rifle shot. Craaaaaack!

  The chandelier started its thirty-foot descent to the floor of the study.

  In the moment the elaborate decoration broke free from its mooring, Walter stood up. Amanda was surprised by the loud explosive sound but had no idea what had caused it.

  The multi-colored flashes in the zoetrope of Walter’s mind coalesced into a single image. Bloody and twisted body parts smashed beneath the chandelier in the center of the study. In his mind, it appeared as a still photo. Amanda’s head, no longer attached to her body, resting against a small table, holding an ornate vase, across the room. The rest of their body parts an indistinguishable twisted mass of flesh and limbs.

  Tommy ran into the tunnel-like opening of the giant Edwardian-era fireplace. It was tall enough to fit several full-grown adults.

  He looked over his shoulder. The boy dressed in a grey sweater and dress shirt, who had been sitting on the sofa with the girl, was now standing and staring up at falling chandelier. The lights in the entire mansion flickered and the air filled with static electricity. The hair on Tommy’s head stood on end.

  In the next moment, the pretty young girl who'd been sitting next to the boy seemed to be floating. No, she was floating in mid-air above the overstuffed sofa chair. Then the boy and the girl were gone, and in their place, three-quarters of a ton of metallic and crystal wreckage.

  Tommy Pritchard, the nine-year-old spoiled son of a Massachusetts Senator, fainted.

  The story Walter told Clarice after the incident was a confused mess relayed by a frightened child. Walter and Amanda both received cuts from shards of crystal, but overall they were in one piece.

  By the time the adults from the Christmas party, raging in the mansion’s great hall, arrived to investigate the explosion in the study, it was over. Clarice’s son and the pretty young blond were found lying in the foyer fifty feet away from the obliterated center of the room.

  She did not witness the event, but Clarice pieced together what happened.

  Her son had powers that she could only imagine, and at a level, she trained a lifetime falling short of achieving.

  Clarice recalled the events of her son’s childhood with sadness as she drove to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.

  She rented a four-wheel drive. Always be prepared, she thought. Given the hard rains over the last couple of days, it paid to have a caution.

  She was sixty-seven years old but as spry as someone in their forties. No one could ever guess her age, nor would she give it.

  During the phone call with the Bishop, she felt hesitation by the church to give her any information about her son, other than details she already had.

  She asked to speak to the priest her son was working with but was told the man was unavailable. She pressed the stuffy-sounding Bishop, but he balked and told her nothing else. Only that the church was sorry for her loss.

  The four-wheel drive negotiated the flooded streets of New Orleans in the early morning rain, with ease.

  Clarice Kline was going to get answers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The legions gathered. Their scattered presence now wedded into the King’s Army. The time for individual battles now passed.

  The demons knew not their master by his name. His presence lived in them like a separate living organ of consciousness. If demons could be said to have such a thing.

  Bale watched the march of man as a tide. Receding and building. Receding and building. The drag controlled not by the gravity of the moon, but by the ignorance and fear of humanity. The God of Man stood by and watched with indifference. He waited for his children to grow into a faith they could never intellectually grasp.

  The anti-creators grew in
strength while the beings of light grew weak.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Quiet.

  The house was dead still. No sounds of settling, as most homes have. On the first floor of the Poole House, the lights flickered weakly on and off. The living room was dank and oppressive. Even the rays of the early morning sunrise could not penetrate the large bay window.

  Outside the rain stopped falling. Sunlight reflected off the wet sidewalks and flooded streets of the quiet, middle-class suburb. Neighbors were clearing branches and debris from front lawns. Sounds of life bounced from house to house and echoed. The sounds of the living hit the Poole house like music off the walls of a soundproof room.

  Madeline Hexham and Father John Peterson, of St. Patrick’s, stood at the foot of Grace Poole’s bed in her emptied and bloodstained room on the second floor. The room was not quiet. Deafening sounds of oppression and hate-filled the air and stifled the senses.

  The old black priest, wearing a purple stole and surplice over his cassock. Next to him stood Mads, the excommunicated nun, exorcist for hire, and smoker of shitty home-rolled cigarettes.

  She was bundled up. The temperature in Grace’s room dropped once again. To Mads, it felt somewhere south of Antarctica

  Bale, not Grace Poole, sat tethered to the bed facing the opponents. The demon wore the girl’s skin and spoke with her voice when he chose, but Grace was not there. Not dead, just gone. She existed and did not exist. Awareness, for her, was a nightmare that never ended. Wet darkness and cold terror. A child’s terrifying dream from which there would never be awakening.

  The Demon King was very close to victory. His patience and careful manipulation of the meat-puppets who served him on earth paid great dividends.

  Bale was careful not to play his hand too quickly. The long game must not be squandered with impatience.

  The last piece of the puzzle still sat in the box, waiting patiently to be set in place. His legions sat poised. Hell was a silent battleground trench with its soldiers waiting for the bugle call.

  Bale pursed his lips and prepared to blow the horn.