As she spun, her candle snuffed, plunging the kitchen into gloom. A faint sliver of light like the blade of a knife stole in from the ambulatory. By it, through the rope of smoke climbing from her extinct candle, Aimee saw a blur of motion in the far corner.
One of the doors in the upper kitchen cabinet had burst open. The hinges were snapped and the door blown across the room. With a shout, a man in shadow jumped (fell?) from his hiding place inside the cabinet. He landed on his feet - and growled.
Aimee screamed.
The man crouched, claws flexing, swaying on the balls of his feet, staring. Aimee stared back; breathless and unmoving. They faced off for what seemed an eternity. As the time elapsed, Aimee's fear began to melt beneath a comical impatience. What kind of monster was this? She was about to ask when a yellow-white glow arose and Father Trevelyan appeared in the door. “Aimee!” His candle revealed the strange man was handsome, young and no stranger at all.
“You are…” Aimee stiffened the tremor in her voice. “You are Luis Socrates.”
Recognition dawned on the priest's face as well.
“Who are you?” Luis asked in French. “How do you know me?”
She answered, also in their native language, and added, “I covered your trial… and your conviction.”
A commotion at the door announced Brandy's arrival, and soon after, Ray's. They pushed in behind the priest, Brandy's fear spurring her curiosity, Ray's spurring his anger. “What in hell…?” Ray began, trying to catch his breath. Brandy cut him off with a tug on his arm, “What's going on?” She saw something in the gloom at her feet and picked it up without taking her eye off the stranger.
Ray, irked by Brandy's abridgement, demanded, “Who the hell are you?”
Luis drew himself to his full height, several inches shorter than Ray, and met his stare. Clearly he had no intention of answering the question as posed.
“His name is Luis Socrates,” Aimee said.
“Luis Socrates! He's the one Blanc was…”
“Ray,” Brandy said, “that can wait.”
“Stop interrupting me! What do you mean it can wait?”
“He's obviously human. We have bigger fish to fry right now.”
“She is right,” Aimee said. “The Templars must concern us now.”
“Fine,” Ray said, turning. “If he cuts our throats, I'm blaming you.” He angrily disappeared through the kitchen door.
Brandy held out a little worn black book. “This was on the floor,” she told Luis. “Is it yours?”
“I do not think he speaks English,” Aimee said.
Luis looked curiously at the reporter. Then he smiled. He repeated the smile to Brandy and nodded as he slid the book, his beloved Shakespeare, into his back pocket.
Aimee found a pail in the island tub, jacked the rust from the old plumbing, with Luis' assistance, and collected Felix's water. Then she and Luis followed Trevelyan back into the chapel.
Brandy lagged behind. She flicked her lighter and searched the lower cabinet drawers. She found plenty of grime, an assortment of junk and, to her delight, a butcher's knife. She slid it into her boundless purse, reconsidered, and instead concealed it in her belt with the handle in the small of her back. Ray wasn't, after all, stupid. And Luis, despite his nice smile, was still suspected of murder. Better safe than sorry. Brandy left and the kitchen was dark again.
A semblance of order was initiated. The kitchen was quiet, Felix had water for Eve, and the others were making sure of the chapel. The banging, scratching and chanting outside, while still a harbinger of danger, had become a sort of white noise. Though fear and dread remained they began to find panic too exhausting an emotion to maintain. One by one, with the exception of Loup, a strange calm settled over them.
Father Trevelyan followed Aimee as she slipped into the work room and began digging among the tools.
“We should find weapons in here, n'est-ce pas?”
“Is that what we're doing?” Trevelyan asked. “Looking for weapons?”
Aimee grunted a response and lifted a monstrous wrecking bar; literally a threat fashioned from iron. Trevelyan, wide-eyed, gulped comically. He found the nearest tool box and selected a large screwdriver for himself.
“That… little thing,” Aimee said, shaming him, “is your weapon of choice?”
“You must forgive me, my dear,” the priest said. “Forty years in the church makes you either a full-time bludgeoner or takes all the bludgeoning out of you. There's no middle ground. I'm afraid I've nothing but a stab or two left in me.” He awkwardly flourished the screwdriver as proof. “Besides, silly me, it may work as a tool.”
Utterly disappointed, Aimee walked out with her wrecking bar. The priest, an expert at disappointments, smiled weakly. He took a last look around and, confident the room was secure, followed after her.
Now armed, the reporter and priest passed the alcove and found Brandy checking the lone window in the second room off the ambulatory. It was an office, empty, save for stray clutter in the corners, eerily lit by her candle on the floor by the door.
“Do you need a hand?” Aimee asked.
Behind Brandy the shutter slats exploded in. Brandy screamed as the razor sharp tip of a halberd punched through the window missing her head by a fraction of an inch.
Aimee and Trevelyan fell back, alarmed, then were startled again as Ray ran into the room behind them. Hearing Brandy's scream, and with no time to search, he'd grabbed the nearest 'weapon' he could find, a heavy iron candelabrum, and hefted it now as he charged. He saw the priest and the reporter back on their heels and followed their gaze to Brandy.
His fiancé was hunched beside a shattered window with glass at her feet and a spear rammed through the broken shutters. The tip bounced, the shutters splintered, as the weapon was maneuvered from outside. “Look out!” Ray yelled.
A skeletal hand shot through the opening. It grabbed Brandy at her shoulder and clutched her blouse. She shouted in surprise and disgust and tried to pull away.
“Hold still!” Ray barked.
He stormed forward and, drawing the candelabrum up and over his shoulder like an axe, chopped at the Templar's wrist. The parchment skin tore, the radial and ulna bones snapped like twigs and the disembodied hand fell to the floor. Outside the window a hellish shriek erupted.
It was a fair guess this situation had never arisen before. It's also a fair guess that most freed from such a menace would run like hell. Not Brandy. She searched the floor, calmly asking, “Where is it?”
They followed her eyes down. The hand was gone.
Brandy scanned the shadows for the boney claw, finding instead splintered wood, glass shards, shoe prints in the layers of dust and dirt. Aimee joined her in looking. Ray shook his disbelieving head and stepped back with Trevelyan. Together they watched the women.
Aimee gasped. She tugged at Brandy's sleeve and excitedly whispered, “There! In the corner.”
The gray tips of the fore and middle fingers were barely touched by a ray of moonlight through the window's smashed wood slats. Straining her eyes, Aimee could just make out the lifeless silhouette of the boney claw and a thin rivulet of liquid whatever trailing from the severed wrist. As she drew near, to better see the horrid thing, the hand hopped onto its fingertips and 'ran' at her.
Aimee screamed, jumped up and backward, all but bowling over Brandy who'd grabbed her candle and was returning. Still the reporter kept her eye on the damnable thing moving along the floor. She tried to stomp it as it passed, but missed, and like a grotesque spider from the eighth level of hell, the hand scurried away. It skittered across the hardwood on ticking phalanges and shot between the priest and Ray at the door. Trevelyan screamed, “Dear God!” Ray simply screamed. The hand vanished into the ambulatory and the dark chapel beyond.
In a flush of anger and embarrassment, Aimee got around the bewildered Brandy and took chase. Brandy recovered, and raced from the room on her heels, calling for the others to help as she passed.
<
br /> “Not a chance!” Ray shouted, as another of Grandma's ghosts went through him. “I don't touch small living things… especially when they're dead!”
Trevelyan, unable to secure the window, ushered Ray from the room and secured the door instead.
“It's over here,” Brandy screamed. Ray and Trevelyan returned to the nave to see the hunt for the Templar hand was on in earnest. “It went over here.”
Aimee darted after Brandy. Both hit the floor, on hands and knees, searching. Ray watched the commotion, through the gloom, until he couldn't stand it anymore. “Leave it alone,” he yelled in exasperation. “What's it going to do; give us the finger?”
Something grabbed Ray and he all but had a heart attack. He spun around loading a fist but, before throwing it, recognized Felix in the candlelight. The tour guide had both hands up. “I am sorry, Ray,” he said.
“Jesus! You scared hell out of me! Where'd you come from?”
“Eve is asleep. What is going on?” He watched as Brandy and Aimee squealed at each other. “What are they looking for?”
“A disembodied hand.”
Felix jumped as Trevelyan appeared from the dark.
“It's on the loose,” the priest continued, “crawling under its own power. They are looking for it.” He disappeared back into the shadows.
Ray saw the startled Felix staring wide-eyed after Trevelyan. “Are you all right?”
“A priest ought not do that; come and go from the dark so.” Felix swallowed air. “This is like… le cinema fantastique.”
Ray breathed deep, air in, frustration out, trying to slow his heart rate.
Somewhere in the dark, Brandy yelled, “You aren't going to believe this when you see it!”
“I saw le film de terreur,” Felix said, caught up in the excitement. “There was a hand… with no body. It crawled and gave people… the strangle.”
“Felix!” Aimee hollered. “Shut up!”
Felix's English, it occurred to Brandy, was less clear now than on the tour. Obviously, his speeches were by rote. No wonder he seemed bored delivering them.
“Where did it go? Where is the hand now?”
“It's gone.”
Eyes darted everywhere about the chapel; from one deep shadow to another.
“Are you done playing?” Ray shouted. “Yes? No? Maybe? Is the building secured? Do we know? Or are we just going to see who gets grabbed next?”
Seven
They'd made a good work of securing the chapel. All that remained, according to Felix, was the second floor viewing area; accessible by the stairway in the ambulatory. This gallery in the north wall offered a bird's eye view of the chapel and opened, through a door in the wall, to an exterior balcony overlooking the courtyard, stable and countryside to the north.
This door had a hasp and padlock already in place. When Ray borrowed Trevelyan's screwdriver, and slid it in the lock, Brandy came unglued. “What are you doing?”
“We're blind here,” Ray explained. “The balcony will give us a vantage point to watch those things.”
“Yes… and give them an entry point. I've got the place secure and you want to open a hole in it?”
“If the hasp is intact, we can use the balcony and still secure it.”
“Do you want to risk that? Think about Vicki.”
“What are you…? What about Vicki?”
“She reached our balcony at the hotel. Five stories in the air.” He stared vacantly. “How did she get there, Ray? Did she climb? Did she fly?”
“Fly?”
“She got up to our balcony somehow.”
“Jesus, Brandy, don't get crazy. It was her apartment too. She had a key. Or she could have dropped down from the roof. Or climbed from a neighbor's balcony.”
“She was buck naked. She didn't come through the neighbor's room or the lobby. So how did she…”
“Nobody saw anyone climb the sheer side of a building and, sure as hell, nobody saw her fly. Besides, you can't compare them. These things may have killed Vicki, turned her into whatever the hell she became, but they're not the same. They're seven hundred years old, for Christ's sake, and weighed down with armor. They aren't going to be climbing any buildings – or flying. And if they can… we'll put the hasp back on.”
Ray wrenched down on the screwdriver and ended the debate. And, whether the Templars could fly or not, the padlock did. Ray opened the door, smiled at Brandy and said, “See, no monsters.” Then he stepped into the cool night air.
Brandy, Trevelyan and Aimee hesitantly followed Ray onto the balcony. There wasn't much to it; six feet wide, fourteen feet long, with three pillars, extensions of an outside wooden rail, rising up to support a wooden roof.
Thwack. “Geez!” An arrow hit the eave with a startling crack, and lodged there, just above Ray's head.
A Templar, bathed in moonlight in the courtyard below, shrieked. He nocked a second arrow into a long bow and raised the weapon. Three more knights, two on horseback, rounded the chapel to join him as he drew on the bow.
“Watch out!”
The arrow ricocheted off the chapel wall. Fear rushed them all back inside.
And now the Templars (at least one) were at the balcony door.
There was no need for new panic. They were already, intermittently and in varying numbers, at the other door and windows. It was just another straw. Trevelyan's screwdriver, slipped through the hasp loop as a makeshift lock, bounced and rattled. The door shuttered but held. Swords and daggers it seemed, while lethal, made poor tools for prying and chopping wood.
This door too had brackets on the inside for security (no doubt, compliments of Luis' late father) and Trevelyan was sent in search of a batten to fit between them. Ray, meanwhile, sat sentry on the gallery floor watching the screwdriver dance and wondering when Brandy was going to say, 'I told you so'.
Brandy stood at the gallery rail; listening to the door rattle and biting her tongue.
The wait became intolerable and Ray struck preemptively. “It doesn't make you right.”
“I didn't say a word.”
“Anybody can climb onto a second story balcony.”
“Even seven hundred-year-old knights?”
“It doesn't mean a thing. And doesn't prove a thing about Vicki.”
Brandy watched the others move in and out of pools of light below. Loup was still rocking on the altar steps. The Father interrupted his search for a crossbar to check on Felix and Eve then vanished again. Luis stepped from the vestibule and shouted in French. Then Aimee appeared from beneath the gallery and shouted back.
When they met in the shadows between, Brandy called down, “What's going on?”
“Nothing. Luis says they are still… bashing… the front door but it is holding. It is the same in the tool room. The window is secure.” She traded words with Luis, then added, “For the moment.”
The balcony door rattled again, emphasizing their 'momentary' safety, as the Templar thumped away.
Brandy'd had it. Needing to change the subject or go mad, she said, “They make a cute couple.”
“What?” Ray asked, looking up.
“I said they make a cute couple.”
“I heard you. I meant, what are you talking about?”
“Aimee and Luis. They're cute together.”
He shook his head. “Don't you think it's strange his appearing from nowhere?”
“What do you mean strange?”
“Strange. He just drops out of a cupboard?”
“He didn't just drop out of a cupboard. He was hiding.”
“You say it like I'm nuts. It isn't strange, hiding in a cupboard?”
“If you haven't noticed, Ray, we're all hiding. Those things outside inspire it.”
“I'm concerned about who or what we've let in with us. What the -”
“I, eh, didn't plan to eavesdrop.” Father Trevelyan, on the stair landing, panting and red-faced, wrestled a heavy wooden chair up the second flight. Brandy and Ray relieved hi
m of his burden and lifted it into the gallery.
“A bar will, eh, have to be cut for the door,” the priest said, fighting for breath. “There are, er, ample materials. I'm just not much, ah, with a saw,” He pointed at the chair. “Perhaps, eh, this Deacon's chair would serve, oh, for now. I wouldn't think of such an abomination. But it was in the work room therefore, I assume, was taken out of service. I am normally opposed, I must tell you, to the irreverent use of God's property.”
Ray fought the urge to salute. Instead, with Trevelyan's help, he tipped the heavy chair and jammed its high back beneath the knob on the balcony door. Then he yanked the screwdriver from the hasp. The Templar was still rapping but the rattling stopped.
“Bless me,” Trevelyan said. “Wonderful.” He brushed the dust from his clerical suit. “Ah, Ray, er, on the other, eh, subject. I'm sorry to eavesdrop, eh, and I, ah, don't mean to cast aspersions, but you insisted Loup come with us. And you invited Felix, who is also a known criminal. You've surrounded us, ah, forgive me, with those who've proven they're, eh, not above villainy.”
“And you have a police record,” Brandy added.
“Thank you for that up-date.”
“Uh, to suggest…,” Trevelyan said, reclaiming their attention, “that, er, Luis carries more guilt or needs sharper scrutiny than the others seems rather, uh, incoherent.”
“I didn't expect we'd be under siege together.”
“My point is, concern is good, excessive concern is unfruitful. Before the night is out we may need each other… more than we know.”
“All right. But, out of simple concern, what can you tell us about him?”
“Very little, I'm afraid.”
“You've been the parish priest here his whole life.”
“Yes, but Luis was not a churchgoer. I know…” pain played across the priest's weary face. “I knew… his mother and sister. Both were devout parishioners. Neither Luis nor his father ever were.” He chose his words carefully. “Anibal Socrates was a larger than life character with no use for religion. He was friendly but never receptive. It was very much… what do you say in the States?… like father like son.”
The Devil's Bed Page 18
