The Devil's Bed

by Doug Lamoreux

  “Of course they're ringing.” Ray hesitated, listening. “We can all hear them.”

  “The castle grounds were vandalized ten years ago. The perpetrators were caught and convicted and, how would you say, given a slap on the arm. They got into the chapel and into the tower. They tore the bells out, threw them down, broke them. The Gendarmerie allowed me to take one following the trial. It sits in my study; been there for nearly a decade.”

  Ray nodded, remembering the bell behind the priest's desk.

  “They cannot be ringing,” Trevelyan said. “There are no bells in the tower.”

  And yet the somber rhythmic tolling of the chapel bells continued.

  Madness…

  Father Clive Trevelyan had never given it much thought. He had, of course, heard parishioners over the years confess to feeling they were “going crazy” but that wasn't the same as crossing the boundary into insanity. He'd spent his entire adult life pontificating on the subject of religion. But only in the last few days had he discovered true evil; the murders of the Socrates family and the death of the American girl, her return from the dead and her necessary but awful immolation, the courtyard below teeming with resurrected Templars and undead gendarmes. Still, in all that, he'd given no thought to madness. Then the missing tower bells rang. Trevelyan was traumatically affected. Now the priest feared he'd lost touch with reality; that he was going mad.

  But his companions heard them too. They heard! What power governed them, the priest didn't know, but the bells were real. Which meant he was not insane.

  It also meant the Templars were real.

  If his marbles were all there, Trevelyan wondered, what about his companions; particularly Blanc? The priest was considering whether or not the agitated Colonel could take the situation much longer, when he got his answer. Blanc suddenly screamed – a long insane bleat. Then he pulled his pistol from its holster, reloaded it (ignoring their questions), and started firing.

  The gunshots were deafening. The muzzle flashes blinded.

  Several blasts ripped through the Templars' bodies. The result was laughable; a hole blasted through the rotted fabric, a puff of dust and dried flesh, a dull look as the creature realized he'd been hit, then the inevitable red-eyed glare from the completely unharmed knight.

  An undead soldier, once Bernard Sigismund, took a bullet to the chest. The impact knocked him down. A moment later he made it back to his feet showing little effect. A second shot struck him in the head. He dropped over… dead again.

  Trevelyan and Ray both watched in bizarre fascination.

  Another shot barked and hit the thing that once was Petit just above his right eye. The walking corpse wobbled, rotated his hands in a failed fight for balance, and toppled into an unmoving heap.

  Trevelyan turned away; the fleeting fascination gone.

  Blanc fell forward, aghast and struggling to breathe, and would have plummeted to the cold stones had it not been for the rail. He let himself slide to the floor. “He… He was…” he spluttered, crying. “He was best man at my wedding.”

  Ray and Trevelyan looked from the heap in the courtyard that once was Petit to the heap on the balcony that once was a Colonel. There was nothing to be done. Neither could find any compassion. Ray felt only anger, Trevelyan overwhelming despair.

  “Why are they coming back…? Rising?” Ray fought to get it out. “It took Vicki days…”

  Trevelyan hesitated having already considered the question. He knew he had no choice. “Forgive me, Ray,” the priest said. “Your sister was… badly mutilated. It took a day for the police surgeon to perform the autopsy and… put her back together…”

  Ray felt the tears and looked away. His eyes fell on Blanc, still on the balcony floor, dumping spent cartridges from his weapon. He dropped them, tinkling and useless, and wound up with a live bullet in his shaking fingers.

  “One round left,” Blanc whispered as he slid it back into the chamber. A rivulet of spittle trickled from the corner of his mouth. He seemed not to notice.

  “You're wasting your time,” Ray said, turning away in disgust. “What are you going to do with one bullet?”

  A thundering report followed.

  Fifteen

  Ray closed his eyes knowing what had happened. He steeled himself and opened them again. The crumpled body of the gendarme Colonel lay on its side on the cold floor. Blood gushed from his mouth and a pool grew beneath his head.

  Another scream demanded their attention at the balcony doorway. Aimee, shaking and crying, stared at Blanc's corpse. It was clear she'd seen the whole thing. “C'est fini. We are all going to die!” Aimee screamed. “There's no hope.” Babbling and crying, the girl disappeared back into the chapel. Though they knew they should, neither Trevelyan nor Ray followed her. Both were too exhausted; too numb.

  Ray began to shake as well. He fell to his knees at the Colonel's feet, threw his clenched fists into the air and screamed, “You coward! We needed you!” His voice trailed to a whisper. “We needed you…”

  Again the priest found himself thinking of madness. He put his hand on Ray's shoulder. “Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen and guide you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

  “Words, Clive,” Ray said, crying. “Just words.”

  “Good words. True words, Ray. Only believe them.”

  The noise was driving Brandy crazy. The screams. The gunshots. The bells. The shrieking, skittering and infernal scratching of the vampires trying to get in, the insufferable pleas to the demon world through the infuriating chanting of the Templars and their constant whacking away at the timbers of the chapel, the deafening sound of her own relentless thoughts. It was all too much.

  Then, on the balcony, Aimee screaming. Now, on the steps, what must be Aimee running. Brandy stood in the doorway to the ambulatory hallway fighting the fear rising within her.

  Luis ran past her to the bottom of the stairs and met Aimee as she reached the ground floor. She was in hysterics. He grabbed her face and tried calming her, telling her, Brandy imagined, that he was there with her. He pushed her head to his shoulder and cooed to her in their native language.

  Aimee cried in a jumbled mix of French and English, “C'est fini. We are all going to die! There's no hope. We're never going to get out of here. C'est fini.”

  Brandy turned away, angry and unsure why. She was horrified as well, but Aimee's public display of those fears rubbed her the wrong way. She was tired.

  Behind her, Brandy heard splintering wood. She turned from the hysterics in the chapel to look the hallway up and down. Though it was painted with the warm glow of candlelight from the nave doorways and the kitchen, at the far end, the hall seemed suddenly longer, darker and colder. But there was nothing to see.

  Then she heard it. The clawing, the scuttling, something making uninvited entrance. Brandy opened the work room door and saw nothing. Then localized the sound to the office locked earlier by Father Trevelyan. The room where the Templar had grabbed her. Brandy stepped to the door; saw the hasp lock firmly in place. Then someone banged from the inside. The door vibrated. Something had crawled in and was fighting to get through.

  The banging stopped. Brandy stared, wide-eyed.

  A hand exploded through the door. With a tremendous crack, the wood panel flew past, missing Brandy's head by an inch, and slammed against the hallway wall. The talons flexed, reaching for her, clawing at her face, while the creature's other hand grabbed at the hole for leverage. The vampire wanted in.

  Through the jagged hole in the door, Brandy saw a yellow-green eye with a wide black pupil deep enough to fall into. Then it was gone, replaced by the flash of a screaming, blood red tongue. She was mesmerized.

  “Brandy!”

  Luis and Aimee were in the ambulatory and he was calling her. Brandy shook herself out of it, knowing Luis didn't need two hysterical women on his hands. She felt for one of the ossuary cruciforms in her pocket, drew it out an
d stuck it in the grasping hand of the vampire. Hell erupted.

  There came a shriek of pain as if she'd handed the monster something molten. It dropped the crucifix, smoke curling up in gray puffs between its fingers. The air stunk of putrid burning flesh. The hand disappeared back through the door.

  Brandy fitted the crucifix neatly into the hole and looked past it into the office. The vampire, one of the transformed gendarmes, leaned with his back against the broken window shrieking and spitting hatred back at her. It clawed madly as if the air were full of acid and like some awful spider skittered backwards out the window. Its scream followed it back out into the dark.

  To Brandy's surprise, the others were there. Aimee was still crying in Luis' arms, everyone else merely looked stunned. Father Trevelyan had all he could do to simply stand upright. Ray, flexed, fists clenched, ready to offer his physical strength, but unable to lend any emotional consolation.

  Brandy, despite Luis' reluctance, took over comforting Aimee; admitting, to herself at least, that she needed the contact as much as the reporter did.

  Luis floated alone into the work room and peered out through a crack in the plywood. He watched the blood drenched Templars while he moved from one foot to another, vibrating with pent up energy, but unable to discharge it in any practical manner.

  Brandy led Aimee, still crying uncontrollably, into the nave. Her eyes fell on a lit candelabrum and she stared, listening to Aimee, “It is over. There is no hope. No hope.” Aimee's voice seemed to fade while Brandy continued to stare at the candle. There was something about the flame…

  “There is no hope!” someone said, far away.

  The flame… searing red, yellow and orange… crackling with rising heat…

  The heat of the flames fanned by a sudden gust of wind was so intense Fasset, the executioner, had to turn away. It was a hell of a night, he thought, for the death sentences to be carried out. Eight men, tied to stakes here and now, beneath the shadow of Notre Dame. Seven of them already alight. Drowning in sweat from the heat, squinting against the brilliant orange, red and yellow fingers of flame, breathing through his mouth to stave off the odor of charred flesh and carrying a torch on top of it, the executioner looked beyond the row of dying convicts to the glorious cathedral still under construction. A monument to God, a thing of beauty, towering over this sacrifice of Satan's beloved. And on a night like this; with the gusting wind. It would be a hell of a thing, Fasset thought, to burn these miserable bastards to death and burn the new church down before they've even finished building it. Eh bien, it was not his problem.

  With his torch, he moved to the last of the convicted; Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of this Order of the Devil. Fasset looked to the Archbishop of Sens, hoping he'd receive the signal soon. Sacré, the heat was incredible. The noise, too, was incredible. The crackling of the fire, the gusts of wind, the shouts, cheers and jeers of the crowd looking on, and the screams of the condemned roasting like pigs beside him.

  Officially they were Geoffrey de Charney, Henri Ethelbert, Louis Godenot, Jules Lefebvre, Gaston Morel; knights Templar all, Benoit Lambert; their chaplain, Francois de Raiis; commander of the Château de la liberté, and Molay; their Master. Their names meant nothing to the executioner. They were the condemned. He, Fasset, was being paid to make them the dead.

  The Archbishop nodded, thank God, and the sweating executioner put his torch to the last pile of fagots, the last Templar. Like the others, in this wind, it erupted in flame around the prisoner's feet. Fasset backed away and descended from the platform. The crowd shouted; having the time of their lives. Behind him, at the stake, Molay was screaming. Nothing unusual about that. But he wasn't just vocalizing searing pain. He was still forming sentences, trying it seemed, to deliver a final message to the world.

  Why not, Fasset thought. What the hell do I care!

  “I will hope in the resurrection,” Jacques de Molay screamed as he died. “I will hope in the resurrection.”

  Brandy ushered Aimee to Trevelyan. He cleared a chair for the reporter and took her off her hands. Then the American girl was gone.

  She hurried away to the front of the sanctuary looking for something. She circled round the altar slowly, almost reverently, staring at one of the decorated palls hanging above the communion table at the apse.

  “Brandy?”

  It wasn't reverence exactly. She ignored Ray… and jumped atop the table.

  “Brandy!”

  She grabbed the cloth banner and, holding her breath, yanked it down. Her guess was right as a cloud of dust erupted. What she hadn't anticipated was the storm cloud from Ray.

  “Geez! What are you doing?” Ray wasn't a churchgoer. But damn… He also wasn't thinking of swimming laps in the baptismal font.

  He was worried about his fiancé - body and mind. When he voiced his concern, Brandy gave him the hand to silence him. She rolled the ceremonial curtain into a manageable wad and jumped from the table, nearly landing on him. Then she hurried away with her prize across the nave.

  Ray watched her go, following but no longer chasing. His shouts as she disappeared into the vestibule diminished to a quiet, “Brandy?” Then came a tumultuous smash and a splintering of wood and he was shouting again. “Brandy!”

  Ray got an eyeful when he found her. The small table that lived near the holy water font was overturned and lying in pieces on the floor. Brandy crouched over it breaking off one of its legs.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Brandy pointed at the barred door. The chanting of the Templars, the incessant scratching and banging of their vampire offspring continued unabated. “We can't keep holding them off. And we can't just sit here – waiting to die.”

  “Okay. So… what are you doing?”

  She wore a look Ray hadn't seen in a long time, one he'd seen frequently back when she confided in him; sincerity. “I am… hoping… in the resurrection.”

  Brandy set the table leg on the floor, unrolled the banner she'd liberated from the sanctuary apse, and began tearing it into strips. She paid Ray no further mind but went about her business. She wrapped the torn fabric about the end of a table leg and tied it securely making a crude but serviceable torch.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I will hope in the resurrection.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Brandy didn't answer. The candlelight glinted off something in the dark corner. It caught her attention and she picked it up. It was a lighter; Vicki's lighter. She tossed it to Ray then grabbed the batten on the chapel's front door, apparently, intending to open it.

  Ray laid a hand gently but firmly on her shoulder. “Brandy, what are you doing?”

  She turned with fire in her eyes. “Let go of me!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Father Trevelyan was right. This is about good and evil.”

  “Okay,” Ray said, nodding. “I'm with you so far.”

  “Don't try to stop me. I have to do this.”

  “I'm not trying to stop you.”

  Brandy looked deep into Ray's eyes. “What did you say?”

  “I'm not trying to stop you. I just want to know what you're thinking.”

  “What I should have thought a long time ago,” Brandy said, looking far away. “There is another grave in the Templar cemetery.”

  Sixteen

  Ray talked Brandy out of it.

  Not the idea; not in a million years. She would go through with her plan and he knew it. But he talked her out of the rush which, in his opinion, was the part that was going to kill her. It had been no small feat. He circumvented her anger, fear and stubbornness by appealing to her intelligence… and her vanity. It's one thing to be smart, another to be told you're smart. Regardless of her determination, Ray knew, an intelligent woman could appreciate the courtyard was no place for anyone to be… alone.

  “I think I know what you're doing,” he said, “and I think you're right.”

  Brandy reacted as if s
he'd been slapped. Then the tension drained from her body; her defenses melted. She stared uneasily into his brown eyes watchful for deception.

  “Yes,” Ray nodded, “I believe you're right. But that doesn't change the fact that the courtyard is no place to be alone. I'm not saying you can't do it alone. You've proved you can do anything you put your mind to. But maybe… you could use some help.”

  Brandy nodded slowly.

  “You'll let me come with you?”

  She nodded again, relieved, almost happy.

  “Great.” Ray laughed and shook his head. “This is… absolutely insane.”

  “I thought you said you believed me?”

  “I do… and I'm with you. That doesn't make it sane.”

  She conceded his point and her smile returned.

  “So,” Ray said, “what do we tell everyone?”

  “Can we tell them the truth?”

  “We can tell Clive the truth.”

  “The others?”

  Ray shook his head. “They might believe us. But they'd never let us go. Not without an argument.”

  “So what do we tell them?”

  “The best kind of lie; one with a big chunk of truth in it.”

  Father Trevelyan was back on the balcony keeping watch on the courtyard; what Ray indelicately referred to as 'standing ghoul watch'. Though the Templar archer was still firing arrows it was, the priest admitted, a safer task with the ossuary crucifix in place. Thank heaven for it, for Brandy, and for the others.

  Thank God too for the caretaker's workroom and all of its collected equipment. Including the tarp now covering the body of Colonel Blanc. It had been dragged into the corner and the tarp laid over. Trevelyan was in the opposite corner as far away as possible from the dead officer. Could anyone blame him?

  Brandy and Ray seemed nervous when they joined him.