House Infernal by Edward Lee (37 page)

"You can wait here, sir," the kid practically stammered.
"Father Driscoll will be with you in a minute."

"Okay, thanks."

Berns sat in an old armchair by a high window with
newly painted trim. He thought, What a way to start the day.

He'd been driving up to the prior house when the radio
call had come in: "Two-zero-zero, do you copy?"

"Roger."

"We just got a message from central commo at state HQ."

What the hell do theywant? Berns wondered, taking the
wooded road up the hill. Sue Maitland's in their custody
now. "What is it?"

"Susan Maitland committed suicide in her cell about an
hour ago," the dispatcher informed him.

Berns almost drove off the road. First Freddie Johnson,
and now her! My only suspects are all killing themselves!

"According to the state security director, she died by
self-inflicted blunt trauma to the head."

"How the fuck is that possible?" Berns complained, violating radio protocol with the profanity.

"See banged her head against the cell wall until she
died. But at least it was after the state did their own interview. They said they'll send you the transcript by
five."

"Great," Berns sputtered. "Two-zero-zero over and out."

And now here he sat, in this dreary prior house. Pissing
in the wind again. He figured anything was worth a try.

At least Maitland proves I was right about Freddie's accomplices not leaving town. He was the heavy so it makes sense for
him to have left. But the others didn't.

Why?

Because they still need to be here? But if so ... for what?

Another ritual. Maybe the two in March were just the beginning of something.... He mulled over the idea.

Eventually Dan appeared and took him to a downstairs
office where he met a tall man in an identical black shirt
and Roman collar. "I'm Father Christopher Driscoll," the
man said.

Berns shook his hand. It struck him that Driscoll had a
firm, "priestly" voice, but his face-and blond Marine
Corp crew cut-made him look like anything but a priest.
"Captain Ray Berns, Father."

"I'm sorry I missed you yesterday. Dan told me about
the interview with the murder suspect." Driscoll's height
made him seem cramped in the small white office. "How
is the case coming?"

Berns could've laughed. Yesterday, great. Today, not so
good. He elected to not mention that both of his material
suspects were now dead. "We're making some headway,"
he said. "And the reason I'm here-" He hefted his briefcase. "I'd like to show you some things because, to be
honest, I don't have a clue. I'm hoping that religious guys
like you might shed some light."

Driscoll smiled. "The 'religious guys' are at your service, Captain."

Berns opened the case and without thinking asked,
"Where's Venetia?"

"She may be down later," Driscoll said in an almost
guarded tone.

"She's not feeling well," Dan added.

Keep on track! Berns scolded at himself. "The reason I
need your consultation, Father, is because we believe the
March murders were perpetrated by a-for lack of a better term-a suicide cult that practices Satanism." At once
Berns winced at his own choice of words. "I know that
sounds hokey but-"

"Why hokey, Captain?" Driscoll countered. "For the two
thousand years that Christianity's been around, there have
been sects that exist in total rebellion to it. God is love, God
is life; hence, an antithetical cult who adheres to the opposite. Their god-Lucifer-is not love but hatred, and not
life but death." Driscoll seemed content with the prospect.
"In other words, Satanism is nothing new. It's always been
here; its just harder to see in these modem times."

"I appreciate your open mind, Father." Berns could've
laughed. "That's not quite the response I've gotten from
the diocese."

Driscoll waved a hand. "Don't worry about those sticks
in the mud."

Dan chuckled.

Suddenly the door clicked open and Venetia slipped in.
"Hello, Captain. Hope I'm not intruding."

"Not at all." But when he looked at her, with all that
blond hair down, and the thrusting bosom, he could've
keeled over.

"I think it's a case of the more the merrier," " Dan interjected.

Berns was instantly distracted from withdrawing his
materials from the briefcase. He wanted to look right at
her but could only steal glimpses. Holy Moses, she's beautiful. Her apparel made her appear half-trashy and halfchaste: flip-flops and bare legs, her white blouse knotted
to expose her midriff, yet the frumpy black skirt and cross
glittering in her cleavage. He finally focused. "What I've got here are copies of some papers that were found in
Freddie Johnson's domicile in Maine. That's where he fled
to after the murders." He removed the printouts that the
Lubec PD had scanned for him. "This isn't Latin, is it?"

Venetia and Dan stood on either side when he placed
the sheet on Driscoll's desk.

They all peered down at the rushed scribble whose first
line read:

1) Zvaetlot srrpoyssuzc foedf du puzvmwuv an wiffew
treeg untl!

"No," Driscoll, Dan, and Venetia said all at once; then
Venetia added, "And it's not Old English, Frisian, or
Norse."

Driscoll was squinting. "I have no idea what that is. It
looks like gobbledygook."

"Maybe v that's exactly what it is," Dan suggested.
"Maybe it's just a bunch of bunk scribbled by a crazy drug
addict-this Freddie guy, perhaps. Or Sue Maitland."

Driscoll mulled it over. "Delusional people often pursue their delusions with great detail."

"These people think they're really worshiping Satan,"
Venetia suggested, still scanning the pages. "Maybe they
created their own language to accommodate the fantasy."

"Crazy people do crazy things," Driscoll said.

"But Freddie Johnson wasn't crazy," Berns corrected.
"We gave him every psych test in the book."

Venetia's cross dangled when she leaned over farther.
"Forget about what language it is. Each paragraph is
numbered. Like a list of some kind."

"A list of instructions," Berns told her. "That's what
Maitland implied."

Dan said halfheartedly, "Instructions for a devilish ritual designed to appease Satan." Then he chuckled.

No one else laughed, and Berns thought, Buddy, you just
might be right.

Venetia looked to Berns. "Captain, Freddie Johnson
was the ringleader, right?"

"Yeah, that much we know for sure. The boss of the
cult, or whatever you want to call it."

"Did anyone ever ask him outright?"

"Ask him what?"

"If he was a Satanist."

Good question. "Yes. And you know what he said?"
Berns whipped out his pad of notes. "He said he was an
'Eosphorian."'

Venetia, Driscoll, and Dan all looked at each other
without a word.

"Why do I have this feeling everybody knows something I don't?" Berns asked.

"Follow us, Captain," Venetia said. "We'll show you."

What the hell? They took him upstairs and showed him
each corner room, and the weird words written beneath
the broken plaster: Ash-shaytan, in one room, Lux Ferre, in
another, then Iblis, and finally, Eosphorus.

"Four different names for Satan," Driscoll told him.

Berns was confused now. "Freddie wrote these names?"

"That's the interesting part," Driscoll said. "No. They
were under plaster forty years old."

"And Johnson was only in his thirties," Berns said. "So
this cult..."

Venetia leaned against a dresser. "Maybe this cult has
existed for all those decades, and Freddie and Sue were
just the most recent recruits."

Sounds nutty, but she's got to be right, Berns thought.
"This is so weird. It's almost like this building has some
specific significance to the cult."

"And that's not all," Driscoll said, and then explained
the history of Amano Tessorio.

"A Vatican architect who practiced devil worship in the
closet." Berns felt waylaid.

"He secretly adorned the building with homages to Lucifer," Venetia added. "Built-in desecration."

It was difficult to process the information. Berns held
up a finger. "Ah, but there's one more thing I need to show
you." He led them back downstairs to Driscoll's office.

"This," he said. He pulled out the last sheet from the
Lubec file: the sketch.

"Any of you got an idea what this might be?"

"A design," Dan said, "that looks ... occult."

"That's exactly what I thought, and everyone else who's
seen it." Berns looked harder. "Freddie and Sue Maitland
had the same diagram tattooed on their lower abdomens.
Originally I thought it must be a logo for some heavy
metal band."

Driscoll ventured, "But it's probably the logo for Freddie's cult."

Berns nodded. "I asked him what it was and he called it
'the Involution.' It's a geometric term-the spiral. I've
never seen anything like it."

Venetia was staring, her face going pale. "I have."

"That's it?" Boniface was astonished. "It's so ... meager."

Pasiphae-the raven black regent of the Labyrinthhad just led in the nine-foot Golem, whose moldering
clay hand clasped the arcane device. The lifeless monster
placed it on a gem-studded stand just before the Pith,
where the six angels-pregnant and insane-squirmed in
naked turmoil.

Willirmoz' char-crisped face smiled within the hood.
"Meager in only appearance, my repugnant lord. It's the
only one of its kind, and it's a thousand times more accurate than even the latest-generation Occult Sensors. It's
the ultimate safeguard for when the Involution is charged
and the Pith is insolvent."

"I see," Boniface uttered, but he really didn't. Best to
leave these technical matters to the technicians.

The device was called the Smoke-Light: a glass cylinder
framed by iron. It looked like a lantern the size of a soup
can-very small. Beneath the stand on which it sat was a
candle made of infant fat.

"The Smoke-Light's glass chamber holds the smoke from six burned Human hearts," Willirmoz explained,
charred fingers interlaced. He lit the candle beneath. "Behold how it works, my diabolical prince."

The Wizard stood back as the lantern's chamber began
to glow. Boniface could see the strange smoke swirling
within. Fascinating, he thought a moment later. The light
that now poured off the object tinted the entire stonewalled room.

The light was black.

"It's beautiful," the Exalted Duke admitted, "but I still
don't understand."

Willirmoz stepped closer. "Were there an infiltrator
here, his intentions would be betrayed by the obsidian
light, my lord. The light would turn white around his
aura. The device instantly detects any thought, notion, or
motivation that is hostile to Lucifer. Charmed objects, too,
and Power Totems would be similarly detected."

Boniface's dry eyes scanned the populants of the Lower
Chancel: Golems, Ushers, Conscripts, and the oil black
Pasiphae. The light around them all was brilliantly black.
"But everyone here is a servant of Lucifer," Boniface objected. "How do we really know it works?"

Willirmoz' grin sharpened as he snapped charred fingers. Pasiphae stepped up, her bare breasts shining black
as the light, and withdrew something from a small box.

"Here is a detestable relic from a terrorist we caught
sabotaging an Electrocity Station recently," the High
Priest explained.

When Boniface glimpsed the trinket that dangled from
Pasiphae's sleek fingers, he winced as if bile had flooded
his mouth.

It was a crude tin crucifix, and during the instant it was
revealed, the light around it glowed white.

"Put it away," Boniface groaned. "It's making me sick."

Willirmoz nodded and the obscene object was removed
from view.

"So you see, my hateful lord?"

The Exalted Duke had to catch his breath, huffing
through the salt-mask's mouth slit. "Indeed, Wizard. It's works perfectly." At once the decayed lump that was
Boniface's heart beat with joy. With the Smoke-Light, no one
who may be plotting against us can possibly taint our plans.

"You've done well, Wizard, and you will be rewarded,"
the Duke promised.

"But now, my lord," the Lithomancer spoke, "it's nearly
time."

Pasiphae led the priest and the Exalted Duke out of the
chamber, the Smoke-Light's indescribable glow glittering
behind them.

Oh, so soon, Boniface thought.

"Yeah, Mom. You remember, the convenience store,"
Venetia was saying into her phone. She sat in the passenger seat of Captain Berns' unmarked police car.

Venetia's mother sounded duped. "Convenience store,
honey?"

"Yeah. Not a 7-Eleven but something else."

"Oh, yes." Maxine Barlow connected the dots. "Where
you fainted."

"Right. Could you ask Dad exactly where it was?"

"Of course ..."