Thirteen Days of Midnight (27 page)

“But I didn’t . . . oh. Oh.”

Mr. Berkley grins a shark-white grin.

“As called, here I am.”

“
You’re
the Devil?”

“I am he: Satan, Lucifer, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Abaddon, Prince of Darkness, Father of Lies, and many other lesser-known titles. I shan’t bore you by rolling them out like some great moldering carpet. We have business to attend to.”

“The ritual failed, though. My sacrifice got away.”

“Did not the oil anoint both the creature and your own hand? Was not your own blood spilled within the bounds of the circle? I make no distinction as to the precise nature of the offering.”

“I . . . oh.”

“I believe you have some boon to ask of me?”

The Devil is smoothing part of his hair down with his hand.

“I want to . . . Mr. Berkley, sir, I would like you to remove the Manchett Host from my service. I would like you to take it with you, into Deadside.”

We’re not at the Devil’s Footsteps anymore, I realize. We’re standing next to a vast wall made from crumbling stone, which stretches as far as I can see. The ground underfoot is heather, lifeless and dry. The cool mist is all around us. I see a wooden door in the side of the wall, painted light green. The Devil picks at his nails.

“And you are sure this is the boon you desire? From all the things I can grant you, this is your wish?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“I shall do as you ask, Luke Manchett. There is no price.”

“Thank you.”

“Shake my hand, and it shall be done.” He reaches out one long-fingered hand, a slightly bored expression on his face. Without hesitation I grasp hold and we shake. His skin feels no different from anyone else’s, but when his hand moves away from mine, I see there are no lines on his palm.

“Is that it?” I ask.

“They are coming.”

I shut up and wait. The door in the side of the wall has swung open, revealing a dark, narrow passage. A wind blows out of the opening.

After what might have been minutes or hours, there is a figure walking out of the fog, a thick-necked, slouching man. The Judge walks toward me with his head down. His boots make muted crackling noises as they crush the heather. He stops before me and looks back down at the ground.

“Boss,” he says.

“What did you do to Elza?”

“Nothing, boss, believe me!”

“What happened to her?”

“Nothing. I don’t know! Only pretended to chase her, didn’t I?”

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know! You got to believe me! Don’t send me over, boss, I did the right thing. I helped you best I could, didn’t I?”

“You ‘pretended’ to chase Elza . . . but for all we know, she’s dead now. You didn’t help. You’d have let them kill me,” I say, “if I hadn’t discovered how to use the Book. You’d have helped them do it. You’re a weather vane; you choose whoever you think is strongest. Right?”

“I never, boss, swear on my soul. I’m not a bloody weather vane!”

“Sorry,” I say.

“Where are they sending me?” he asks. “Where am I going?”

“The darkness, of course,” says the Devil.

“No! Boss, Luke, please don’t make me! I don’t want to —”

“And yet you must,” the Devil says, sighing. “You belong to me. The Manchett Host is broken, the deal is done, and your punishment is already prepared. Now cross the threshold.”

“You promised,” the Judge tells me. “Promised I wouldn’t go to Hell. Just like your pa. Always promising. You’re just the same.”

He turns away from me and, after a hesitation, walks forward into the dark doorway. The sound of his footfalls cuts out.

There’s a period of gray silence. The Oracle drifts out of the mist in her white dress, stopping to wrap her thin, cold arms around my neck and kiss my cheek through her veil. She vanishes into the dark gateway without a word. Now the Heretic walks forward, bones flaring and spitting sparks, chanting his idiot litany. He passes between us and his fire is extinguished.

We stand and wait. The Shepherd appears, his suit seeming faded in the gray light, more charcoal than black. He holds his wide hat in his hands and moves with a shuffling gait, like a limp. I realize that he’s terrified.

“Octavius,” says the Devil as the Shepherd hobbles closer, “good to see you again. I’ve missed your company.”

“I shall not beg,” the Shepherd says to us. His mirrored glasses are missing. I look him in his tar-pool eyes.

“Nobody is asking you to,” says the Devil.

“Luke,” the ghost says, moving closer to me. “You are a fool. I have dealt with this being, and it led me to damnation. You cannot imagine —”

“You didn’t leave me a choice,” I say. “I didn’t want a Host. If you hadn’t been obsessed with your revenge, I’d have let you all go. But you made Mum kill me and then you watched me die. You got your revenge. Now here’s mine.”

“You think the Black Goat has answered your call from the goodness of its heart? It has none! You are deluding yourself. There is always a price. This is the end for us both,” the Shepherd snarls.

I don’t answer. He might be right or he might be trying to frighten me one last time. Either way, I can’t change what’s happening now.

“If we could move this along,” the Devil says.

The Shepherd pauses at the edge of the doorway, muttering to himself, and then the Devil clears his throat and the Shepherd stumbles through into darkness. His white hair is visible for a moment, a bright blot, and vanishes. As he leaves, I realize that I’ve won. The Host is leaving, it’s over. The Shepherd’s gone to the darkness, into Hell, and I’m still here.

We wait on. The Devil picks his nails, fiddles with his golden pocket watch. Eventually the smoky form of the demon appears from the fog, carrying the Innocent in thin black arms. The Fury’s horrible dog head is tilted downward, like Ham’s when he’s made a mess on the carpet. The Devil steps out in front of the door as they approach, holding up his long unlined hands.

“Most disappointing, my child.”

The Fury cringes.

“Attempting to escape into Liveside, to be reborn with the mortals,” he says. “You are fully aware of my view on those matters. Fully aware . . .”

Further cringing.

“We shall not discuss this in front of outsiders. But please . . . I should not welcome my kin in such a manner. Know that you shall be forgiven, in time.”

The Devil places his hands on the demon’s black head and strokes his finger down its snout. He stands aside, and the Fury stalks into the passageway, the baby held gently in its clawed arms. The demon stoops in order to fit.

The Fury doesn’t even glance at me.

Don’t you know me?
asks the Innocent as it’s carried into the tunnel.

The green door shuts with a soft click. The Devil is rubbing his hands together, staring off into space. I clear my throat.

“Uh, that’s only six . . .”

“I am aware.”

“Well —”

“Your Vassal was consumed. He is no more.”

“Can’t you —”

“If I carve clay from the earth and bake it into a pot, then present the pot to you and ask where is my clay, what would you tell me?”

“He was a good guy. . . . He didn’t deserve what happened.”

“You would tell me that the clay is transformed, become something else. The process of being fired, in the kiln, has changed it forever.”

“And the Prisoner?”

“That starveling was already past my reach when your ritual was completed, so I cannot force him to cross over. But he is no longer bound to you.”

“What do you mean? What happened to him? What about Elza?”

“I do not know this ‘Elza.’ I believe you have me confused with my opposite. I do not keep track of where every sparrow falls. I only watch those who amuse me.”

“OK,” I say. If I got rid of the Host but I lost Elza and Ham and Mum, then . . . I don’t even want to think about it. They must be alive. When I get back, I know they’ll be waiting for me.

The wall is gone, and I’m standing with the Devil on a lonely gray beach. There’s still heavy mist all around us, obscuring the sea. I can hear a faint lapping of waves. I look down at my shoes.

“So now what happens?” I ask him.

“That is in your hands.”

“Can I go back?”

“You will not die today, Luke.”

“Thank you.”

“I cannot speak for tomorrow, or any day after that. But not today.”

“So I can go back?”

“Of course,” he says, turning his white smile to maximum radiance, “but there is one small thing I’d like you to do for me first. A tiny favor.”

“You said there would be no price.”

“I am the Devil. I am a liar. Luke, my price is only this: There is someone who wishes to talk to you. You will speak with him. This is all.”

There’s a shape walking through the mist toward us.

“And who is this,” says Berkley to himself, “that is coming?”

The shape emerges slowly, head down to the gray sand. It’s a man wearing a white suit and a light-purple shirt. The top of his head is balding, but his remaining hair is hanging past his shoulders. His hands are heavy with rings.

I’m five years old, watching the snow at our old house. The kitchen is tiled in warm pumpkin-orange. It’s winter, and I’m standing up on tiptoes to see over the counter. The garden is transformed into a driftscape of curves and contours. The sky is so white it’s invisible, and flakes are flopping down in fat clumps. I shuffle upstairs to Dad’s study in my green snow pants, and he grins and puts down his book without me even asking, and we run out into the snow.

Our snowmen were always uneven. I would make the bottom and he would do the top. I would roll up a big, lopsided ball and then keep cramming clumps of heavy snow onto the sides, wherever I felt like it. Dad was a craftsman when it came to snowmen. He would spend forever on the head, making it so perfect that it looked like it came from a factory mold. He arranged the coal eyes and mouth with equal care. He said he would get a hat and scarf and a carrot for the nose, and he went off across the garden in a long lope. I remember the snow was so heavy and white that he had vanished before he was even halfway down the garden, and I was worried he wouldn’t come back out of it.

Dad stops just in front of us and draws himself up to his full height. He looks me in the eye and actually manages to smile and steps toward me, hand outstretched. I take a quick step backward and Dad falters, lowering his arm. The Devil stays where he is, looking eagerly from one of us to the other.

“Luke . . . my son.”

“Don’t,” I say, “don’t even —”

“My son.”

“I’m not touching you!”

“Very well.” Dad adjusts the collar of his mauve shirt. “I was hoping we could act like adults, Luke, but if you still want to behave like a child, then I suppose I can’t stop you. Not many people get a chance to speak to their father after he’s dead, you know. I had to pull a lot of strings to even be allowed to meet with you like this.”

The Devil raises one white eyebrow at this but says nothing.

“Not many people get a chance to speak to their father?” I say. “What about when you were alive? Why couldn’t we speak then? Where have you been? You’re not even going to pretend to be sorry?”

“I am sorry, Luke. I’m sorry I haven’t been a part of your life. It was unavoidable.”

“Ten years, barely even a birthday card, and then I find out you’re dead, and your lawyer, who turns out to be the actual fire-and-brimstone devil, tricks me into inheriting a Host of dangerous, pissed-off spirits, who then try their absolute hardest to turn me, your son, into a dead person as well, and now you’re here for one last chat and you’re telling me I should be grateful? Are you serious?”

“I won’t deny there have been some events in my life that didn’t transpire exactly as I had intended. Especially in recent weeks. I did my best to contact you once you were in the thick of it. It hasn’t been easy. My communications have been restricted.” He breaks off, glances at the Devil. “You’ll find you make mistakes, too, Luke. It’s part of what being an adult means. You’ve got to live the life you have, rather than the life you wanted.”

The invisible tide rushes and breathes somewhere in the mist. So the dream I had . . . it really was him. He did try to help me.

Dad’s face looks awful, really swollen and pale, with red blotches on his nose and cheeks. His eyes are badly bloodshot, and he’s got wrinkles on his wrinkles. He’s trying to sound angry, but I have the suspicion he’s scared of me, or of the Devil, or maybe both.

“So what exactly was your life, Dad? What was the life you wanted? Who even are you?”

“A necromancer,” Dad says. “I am a necromancer. And to have come this far, to have begun to use the Book of Eight and my sigil, you have the makings of one as well. It’s rather a shame you chose to disperse my Host. If mastered, they could have taken you far.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “The only place most of them seemed to want to take me was into a grave. The Vassal was the only one who tried to help me, and your demon ate him. How long did you have the Host for? Why did you summon it?”

“A shame,” Dad says. “I was always fond of the Vassal. Would that you had . . . No matter. I began binding the Manchett Host nine years before your birth. You must understand I did not summon a full eight spirits all in one go. Finding the correct fit for each role takes time. As for why I started . . . do we have time for this?”

Dad looks over to the Devil, who is staring into the mist.

“Time enough,” the Devil replies.

Dad breathes out heavily. He runs his thumb over the largest, blackest ring on his fingers, which I recognize as the sigil, the ring I’m also wearing. I presume it’s just the spirit image of the ring, part of his ghost in the way his suit and shoes are.

“It begins with the discovery of a tomb, fittingly enough,” Dad says. “I was a few years older than you are now, working one summer on a building site. We were digging out the foundation for a new shopping center, and I had the . . . misfortune to drill into something that should have been left alone. A tomb, a strange chamber that contained a single skeleton wearing a black suit. Clasped in its hands were a green book fastened with silver clasps, and a black-stoned ring. You are familiar with these objects. There was something about them. . . . I took them. I still do not know why. I hid them, and then I called the foreman over, and after that, they brought in archaeologists. It was a curious tomb; every wall was covered in writing, strange symbols, a language nobody from the museum understood.