Before the Devil Fell

by Neil Olson

  Or was he? It was Sam who put his name on the list. Did she believe it, or did she only want the Prices to be culpable in some way? He really did not need an ancient feud clouding up the already-murky facts.

  “You won’t find them acknowledging kinship with Eddie,” she replied. “He’s the black sheep of that family.”

  “You’re taking this very personally,” Will said. He would have expected her to embrace whatever solution Evelyn offered. Instead, she had become angry and resistant. “Something’s gotten under your skin. What?”

  She settled back in her seat and grew quiet. Possibly embarrassed.

  “Nothing,” she said finally.

  “She said something that threw you. What was it?”

  But she would speak no further the rest of the drive.

  * * *

  His mother was watering flowers in the blue dusk. She smiled when she saw him coming through the pines.

  “Having fun with your girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” Will agreed, unwilling to be provoked. “You’re energetic this evening.”

  “We haven’t had enough rain. I meant to do this earlier, but I fell asleep. I never used to be able to nap and now I can’t stop.”

  “You’re still recovering. It’ll be a while.”

  “Do you think this forsythia needs trimming?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty leggy. I’ll get the clippers out tomorrow.”

  “How’s Evelyn?”

  “Fine,” he replied. Quick and easy, not asking how she knew. He was almost proud of himself. “She sends regards.”

  “Margaret stopped by with an apple pie.”

  “Only a pie?” he asked, taking the hose from her and bending over to get at the base of the blueberry bushes. “Not a turkey too, or a side of beef?”

  “She said you’d been over to visit.”

  “She invited us. Me and Sam.”

  “You’re getting quite chummy with the Prices,” she said.

  “Maybe because they’re the only ones willing to speak to me,” Will said bluntly. He looked at her face now, but the shadows flattened her expression. “We talked about demons. You know anything about them?”

  “I know it’s a word that frightened people use,” Abby replied.

  “Is that what Johnny told you? Is that how he sold you on the idea?”

  “Stop. He didn’t...” Her voice was weary, just that fast. “I can’t talk about Johnny.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “You can’t talk about anything. None of you. You took an oath, after all. What else needs water?”

  “Just the impatiens.”

  He sprayed the glowing white flowers for a minute or so while she stood where he left her. By the blueberry bushes, staring out into the street. Then he squeezed off the flow and went to the spigot against the house, turned off the water and coiled the hose painstakingly around the reel. He had to buy her one with a crank—she was always leaving the hose in the grass. Abby came up beside him as he worked.

  “I didn’t take any oath,” she said.

  “No?” he asked in surprise, turning to her. “I thought everyone did.”

  “I didn’t even hear about it until later. Maybe I wasn’t in the room. I certainly wasn’t in my right mind. I couldn’t have sworn to my own name.”

  “Then why won’t you tell me anything?”

  “Because I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember what happened. I can’t make it all...”

  The rest was inaudible. Will put an arm around her while she wept tears of frustration. He tried to recall if she had cried this much before the accident. His anger was subdued. He was finding it harder and harder to maintain, at least toward her. And he was starting to wonder whether she had not always been this scared and vulnerable. The careless, hard-drinking party girl an act from the start. A persona anyone could have seen through, except him. Her lonely, obtuse son.

  “It’s okay,” he said, patting her back. “Let it go. I’m sorry I keep hounding you.”

  “I’ve tried,” she gasped. “I’ve tried to pull it all together. All I get is bits and pieces.”

  “Don’t get mad,” he said as gently as he could. “But were you, like, drunk or high?”

  “I’m sure I was drinking.” She pulled away, rubbing her eyes. “We all were. I don’t remember any drugs. We needed to be clearheaded that night. We were trying out a new way to contact the spirit.”

  “This was something Johnny had come up with?”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “And he was leading the ceremony?”

  “No.” She shook her head and looked at the ground for a few moments, digging deep into her bruised neocortex. “He was supposed to, but he got scared.”

  “Scared? Johnny did?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that didn’t scare you?” he asked.

  “It did. But he said I shouldn’t worry. Somebody else would lead the ceremony.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” she said firmly. Meaning that she knew it was a critical point, but his pressing was not going to help. “He didn’t say. Whoever it was would be there that night and then we would all know. Everyone else wanted to go ahead with it, so we did.”

  “And then what happened,” he asked, still mild in his tone. “I’ll take bits and pieces, if that’s all you have.”

  “My last clear memories are from before. Drinking and talking in the kitchen, with Jenny Duffy and Molly. Then there’s a blank. And then we’re in the middle of the ceremony, holding hands and chanting. But I’m completely out of my mind. I can’t focus, I can’t speak.”

  “Sounds like you overindulged in the kitchen.”

  “I know it does, but I didn’t,” she insisted. “I was being careful. Johnny told me I would need to be alert. He was very anxious about it.”

  “He told you that, or he told everyone?”

  “He might have said it to other people, but I only remember him telling me. He took me aside beforehand. He was very nervous about the whole thing. I can’t help feeling like he knew something bad was going to happen.”

  “Why didn’t you call it off?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “It was your house.”

  “I mean, obviously I should have,” Abby said weakly. “But I had lost control of things. Lost control of the group. Lost control of my life. I couldn’t seem to make decisions, I thought they were my friends.”

  “Never mind. What happened next? After the chanting?”

  “There’s no ‘next.’ It’s a jumble. I’m putting this in the order I know it must go. From what I learned later.”

  “Just do the best you can.”

  “We were seated in the circle, but someone was standing. Wearing a robe.”

  “A robe?” he echoed.

  “Yeah. Like a gray robe, with a hood. Speaking the old words.”

  “The ones Jane used? The Welsh, or whatever it was?”

  “Yes. I thought it was an hallucination, the figure in the robe. Maybe it was.”

  “Did anyone ever wear robes?” he asked.

  “They used to. Generations ago. Some of the families still own them. I remember seeing Doc Chester’s robe once. But nobody wore them anymore, not by then.”

  “Go on.”

  “Someone left the room,” Abby said, blinking. Forcing herself to remember. “Someone else went after the first one. The circle shrank. There was an argument, over by the stairs.”

  “Who?” Will asked eagerly.

  “A man and a woman. I think the man was Johnny. I don’t know what they were talking about it. But it wasn’t long after that, you know, that it happened.”

  Johnny had headed upstairs for some reason. Why? And the woman had pursued him. They had argued. And then the bolt
from the sky.

  “I thought something exploded,” Abby went on. “It was so loud. And deep, like it happened inside your body. No one said anything. I felt like I was screaming, but no sound came out. We were all in shock, I think.”

  “Did you feel anything just then?” Will asked. Remembering Molly’s words, about the evil presence that arose at that moment.

  “Panic,” said Abby forcefully. “I felt panic, for you. Like the blast woke me up. I tried to get to the stairs, but they held me back. So I wouldn’t see Johnny. They pushed me into the kitchen. I never saw you come down, but some of the girls were yelling your name. I started yelling too. Jenny said you weren’t in your room, so I ran to the window and shouted. But they wouldn’t let me go, they kept holding me back. Jenny, and Molly, and Nancy. All crying. Poor Doug screaming his brother’s name. Eddie went flying out the door. I thought maybe he was going to look for you, but he was just running away.”

  “Did he come back?”

  “No, I think he kept running all the way home. Doc went and found you.”

  He dimly remembered that. Doc Chester, the oldest person there, and the only one to keep his head, carried Will back to the house. There was a blanket wrapped around him, and Doc spoke calming words. Will couldn’t remember what had happened to Sam. Did she come back to the house? Go home? He couldn’t recall the others except as one grieving mob. He was sure he remembered Muriel holding him, comforting him. But why would she have been there? And Eddie Price running out the door like that! Which presumably meant he wasn’t there when they settled down enough to take their oath of silence. In the middle of these ruminations he noticed that his mother was shivering. She wore only a short-sleeved T-shirt and the evening had gotten cold, but it likely had nothing to do with the temperature.

  “Come on, let’s get you inside,” Will said, taking her cool arm in his hand. She resisted at first. Eyes fixed on nothing, on that night long ago. But then her feet were shuffling along behind him toward the broken concrete steps to the kitchen door. The door he imagined escaping through that night. But she had been in the kitchen. How did he get out of the house? Did he go out his window? He started doing that in high school, when he didn’t want to wake her with his nocturnal comings and goings. He had been tall and strong enough by then to make the jump off the kitchen roof. He could not have done that at five. His mind veered away.

  “Do you remember a name?” he asked her then, stopping short in the darkness. “Do you remember using a name to summon the spirit?”

  “No,” she said softly, after thinking a moment. “No, I don’t remember any words that I actually understood. I’m sorry, Willie.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry for the whole thing. I’m sorry I let it happen, I’m sorry it troubles you.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  “Don’t blame Johnny either. He wasn’t the devil you make him out to be.”

  “What was he, then?”

  A far streetlight caught her face as she turned to him. For just a moment he thought she might tell him. But the moment, like all the previous ones, passed.

  “Don’t blame anyone,” Abby said. “Just try to let it all go. Can’t you?”

  He gave her a tight grimace, knowing she could not see his expression. Then he took her arm once more and guided her up the treacherous stairs. No, Ma. No, I can’t.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Every box he opened released a cloud of dust, until his sinuses ached from the onslaught. Sneezing didn’t help much. There were four small windows and two naked bulbs, but the light was still bad in the cluttered attic. Yet there was enough to determine that the contents matched the black marker headings on each box. Old volumes of Lucretius, Petrarch, Goethe, Emerson in the one marked POETRY. Just like Tom Hall to prefer the philosophical poets. Will could picture his large hands holding De Rerum Natura. Gently turning brown pages, intelligent blue eyes scanning the familiar text. He opened the next box, BIOGRAPHY. Boswell on Johnson; Franklin on himself; Ellmann’s fat volumes on Joyce, Yeats and Wilde. He did not remove every book, only enough to see the bottom of each box. Sam had said the grimoire was large. Of course she had been small when she last saw it. There was, alas, no box marked ARCANE or BLACK MAGIC.

  He slapped dust from his jeans pointlessly, hearing the phone ring far below. There were old dressers, desks, cabinets tucked into every corner or standing in the open. He had been through them, but not carefully. Each time he could sense Samantha there before him, seeing all he would be likely to see, and more. This was a fool’s task, as she had told him two hours ago. Will turned off the lights and clomped down the narrow stairs.

  He went to the kitchen to wash his face and hands, then to the study. Sam was hunched over the desk, in a circle of lamplight. Interrogating Evelyn’s old tome, with the faithful dictionary at her elbow. She was going to teach herself Latin by way of reading that damned demonology.

  “Satisfied?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, dropping into the chair across from her. “Just defeated.”

  “I told you, I’ve been through this place.”

  “It’s a large house, with more closets, alcoves and secret cabinets than anyone—”

  “I would feel it,” she declared. Massaging her left shoulder with her right hand. “I would feel it here, and I don’t. Anyway, I think I know where it is.”

  “Where?”

  “The name, William.” She looked hard at him. “The name. Without it, we’re nowhere.”

  “I didn’t think you believed that.”

  She continued staring for few moments, then put her head down on the book.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” she mumbled into the pages.

  “Sam,” he said, rising and walking around behind her. “You don’t have a bibliophilic bone in your body, do you?”

  “What?” she asked, without moving.

  “You’re supposed to touch the corners of the pages,” he said, lifting her head off the yellowed book. “Preferably with gloves. Not bury your face in it.”

  “Books are for using. That’s what Grandpa always said.”

  “Well, yes.” Her muscles from shoulder to shoulder were a knotted mass. He pressed down with the heels of his hands on either side of her neck. “Use and care are not mutually exclusive. Relax, I won’t hurt you.”

  Her shoulders sank, her resistance giving way slowly. And then so completely that it seemed she would collapse if his hands released her.

  “Too hard?” he asked, easing up a little.

  “No, it’s good. It feels good. Keep going.”

  She started turning pages idly. Will looked over her shoulder at the archaic script and ghastly illustrations. Seeing only the bolded names.

  Halphas, Havras, Hermus.

  “Who was on the phone?” he asked. She hesitated before replying.

  “Eddie Price.”

  “Seriously? The same Eddie we’ve been talking about? What did he want?”

  “What he always wants. This house. And every other one on the street.”

  Will’s mind stumbled.

  “Wait, what does Eddie Price have to do with houses?”

  “He builds them.”

  “I knew that,” Will said, only just remembering. “But what does he want with... Do you mean to tell me he’s the one behind Lucy Larcom?”

  “He owns Price Construction. He’s in with a developer and some other people. They’re putting up houses all over Cape Ann, as fast as they can build them.”

  She kept turning pages. Labal, Lamia, Leraie.

  “Why is he calling you directly?”

  “You can go harder on the right,” she said. “Yeah, there. Because I’ve said no to Lucy twice. And Eddie doesn’t like no. He was pretty, um, rude just now.”

  “What, like, h
ostile?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” he said, thoughts banging about anxiously. “It does matter. Because if he’s harassing you, he may be doing the same to my mother. And if he is, I’ll—”

  “Will. You cannot let this distract you.”

  Malphas, Marchosios, Merihem, Murmux.

  “What?” Samantha asked. She had felt the shock in his hands before he registered it. “What is it?”

  “Turn back one page,” Will said, his own voice sounding faraway. “There.”

  Murmux, also known as Murmus or Murmur. A cloaked figure riding a giant vulture. Where had he read of him before?

  “Summon...” Sam’s shoulders tensed again and she moved quickly from the page to the Latin dictionary and back. “Summon souls...”

  “Can conjure the souls of the dead to answer the questions of the summoner,” Will said. Partly reading and partly remembering. “He teaches philosophy, and his name is a whisper.”

  His bronchial passages constricted, and his vision spotted. His hands slipped from her shoulders, and Sam turned sideways in the chair to look up at him.

  “That time you saw it,” she said urgently. “In New York, when you looked on its face. It spoke a word.”

  “I heard a word in my head,” he replied, his mind veering away again and again from the memory. Refusing to have dealings with it.

  “Murder,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Will agreed. “It sounded like that.”

  “Could it have been Murmur instead?”

  He had to sit. He went across the room and collapsed on the threadbare couch, ignoring the discomfort of the blown springs. Sam came over and sat next to him.

  “You recognize the name? Like, from the Bible or something?”

  “No. I mean, yes, it could be Christian mythology. But I think I read it in folklore. English, or American.”

  “Okay.” She nodded quickly, as if expecting that answer. “So, if we can say...”

  She paused. Asking silent permission to conjecture in his field of expertise.

  “You can say whatever you want, Sam.”