The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  "My name is Will Jern, Mrs. Fortini."

  "A boy in a man's body! You're too afraid! In order to be a man you must be able to cast aside your fear and make the tough choices." Will began to protest but stopped when he realized she was right.

  "And you are a military man of course," she murmured to Will's father.

  "I'm Commander William Jern of the United States Coast Guard."

  "Yes and one day you wish to be captain, no?" She paused and he simply stared at her. "Captain of your soul perhaps, or do you think that already?" This wasn't a rhetorical question; she seemed to want an answer from him.

  William looked tired but also slightly cross. "I am Captain of my soul."

  With a sad shake of her head she patted him on the arm. "No, you're not. Even with your head bloodied by the looming horror of the shade, you are still an unbeliever. Only those who choose to ignore God believe they are masters of their own souls. It is those of us who have faith in the Lord who know that God is master of all things."

  "Master of the demon as well?" William asked with a touch of vehemence.

  "Yes, even master of the demon." She turned to Father Alba and said, "I would have you ask your friend the Priest about this, but he's even worse off than you." The tiny lady advanced on the plump man and he shrank back. "You profess to believe in an all-powerful God, yet you reek of fear. Great faith cannot walk hand in hand with such great fear." His face grew angry at the words, but the truth in them was undeniable, and he could only sputter impotently for a moment before looking away.

  "And finally you bring this...what do they call the young ones? A cub-scout?" She touched Brian as well, looked into his eyes, and gave another sad shake of her head. "You hide your fear better than others but it's still there, lurking and undermining your confidence, isn't it...um?"

  "Brian Galt...and, yes I'm afraid, but I'm tougher than I look."

  "Oh yes, much tougher and confident too. Confident that you can overcome anything. But these won't be enough to save you or to stop the demon...but..."

  "But what, Mrs. Fortini?" Brian leaned in to hear.

  "But, maybe your love will. You three," she indicated the Jerns and Brian. "You love the same girl, a girl that the demon now owns. Maybe your love will be enough."

  Will felt suddenly hopeful. "You mean we can fight the demon with love?"

  He was immediately embarrassed, when she cackled a long harsh laugh that turned into a hacking wet cough. "Love. Ha! It feeds on love and happiness and life. The demon has none of these things of its own and desires them greatly. At the same time, it hates them with an even greater passion. No, love won't destroy the shade, but it may keep you alive and it may keep you going when..." she stopped talking suddenly and Will was secretly glad she hadn't finished the sentence.

  His father looked at her keenly from his wheelchair. "Mrs. Fortini, can you please tell me how you know all of this?"

  "I am Gypsy," she said simply.

  The four looked at each other skeptically and William retorted, "I'm afraid that doesn't clarify much."

  "I am Gypsy, that is that," she said again acting as though it should be enough of an answer.

  "Oooookay," William said. "Could you please elaborate? Are you a mind reader? Do you have a crystal ball?"

  A laugh barked out of her and she coughed some more. "Crystal ball, ha! You are funny, Mr. Commander. The crystal ball is for the rubes and the cons. You don't know Gypsy?" she asked looking at each. "I'll tell you briefly, ok? Where to start...the word gypsy, it comes from the name of the land Egypt. You see? But the Gypsies, we did not come from there, we came from what is now northern India. In the days of Abraham and Jacob, the Gypsies were wanderers of sorts, but always they go to the same locations, you understand?"

  "They were semi-nomadic. We understand," William answered easily, his fatigue forgotten in his curiosity.

  "So there came the great famine, that so afflicted the Jews of the bible, it was a real thing you know. The Jews all migrated to the land of Egypt and soon after the gypsies came as well. Over time the Pharaohs enslaved the two groups and there was great rivalry between them. The Jews worshiped Yahweh or Jehovah as they later called God. The Gypsies were pagans, but turned to worshipping the false god Ba'al Zubel, to spite the Jews. Ba'al was a demon prince and demanded the sacrifice of children and thousands were burned alive to appease the creature."

  She paused and her body gave a little shudder. "Then in the time of Moses, the Gypsies pretended to turn from Ba'al and they fled Egypt with the Jews, and it was to the semi-nomadic Gypsies that the Jews turned to for help. Forty years they wandered in the desert, and that was partly due to Ba'al and the Gypsies who wished to keep them astray. During that time, many Jews were converted and committed unspeakable acts. It was the Gypsies that pushed the Jews to rebel at the waters in the Desert of Zin. In return, God punished the Gypsies by showing them Ba'al Zubel's true nature; they were cursed by the sight and all their children were cursed as well."

  She stopped momentarily and took a long, wheezy breath. "The legacy of the curse lives on to this day. Every Gypsy carries it about in them. Like all things, it is stronger in some than in others."

  Commander Jern looked skeptical. "A Gypsy curse? Is that why the demon is here? A Gypsy did this? Is this demon, Ba'al?" The others nodded along at the questions.

  "First, I don't know why the demon is back and I don't know if it is Ba'al," Adrina answered. "I do know that it's an ancient and powerful shade called forth by a Gypsy."

  Brian looked interested and asked, "When you say, shade, is that the same thing as a demon?" Adrina nodded solemnly. After a quick look at the others, Brian asked a second question, "You said the demon was back. How do you know the thing at the Jern's home is the same demon?"

  "I feel it on these two...especially the Commander. It's the same alright."

  "Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the term curse," William added cautiously. "But you seem ok."

  "I'm cursed with clairvoyance and foresight...I can sometimes see or know when things are going to happen or that have already happened. Like..." she trailed off and her mouth went slack. After another shiver, she continued. "Like I knew you were here about the demon." She coughed again and went on, "It's not what you think, I don't get the winning lottery numbers, or who'll win the World Series. It's never a good thing. There always has to be pain associated with it."

  "As far as a curse goes, that still doesn't sound that bad," Father Alba put in.

  "It doesn't sound that bad because you've not lived it! I see terrible things but I can't do anything about them. If I ever try to change what I know is going to happen, I make it worse. When I was much, much younger I owned a cat, she was so sweet...anyway one day I had a vision that she'd be killed by a hunter who would shoot her, mistaking her for a rabbit. I loved that cat so much...and this was before I fully understood the ramifications of my curse, so I decided to keep her in all day. She kept prowling about moodily until I decided to go to the cellar to get some peaches. As I opened the door, she shot under my foot and I stepped down on her and broke her back."

  She paused and coughed her cough. "I fell down the stairs and broke my wrist and the cat crawled off howling in pain. Somehow she got wedged under the house where I couldn't get to her and it was two days of screaming and moaning before she finally died."

  Father Alba looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

  "And that's only a little thing! It's far worse if I ever try to look into the future."

  "What happens then?" Will's voice was a hushed whisper.

  "Pain...always pain and death. And I get guilt too as a bonus for causing it."

  "So if you see something involuntarily and you don't do anything about it then no one gets hurt...I mean nothing more will happen?" Will asked.

  "Yes that's right," she replied ruefully. "Then I'm the only one who gets to enjoy it. When my husband passed away, I knew from the moment I woke up, that he would die that day. I di
dn't know when or even how, only that he was to die...this is the demon's sick joke you see. I couldn't say or do anything that would let on that I knew. I walked about the entire day with a great big fake smile on my face, while inside my chest hurt so bad... I was so afraid that by doing anything I would cause him more pain or misery."

  She paused again and her eyes were wet now. "He finally had a heart attack. It was after dinner and I still didn't know what to do. I worried that by calling an ambulance it'd get worse somehow and I was forced to sit there and watch, as he crawled about in pain, begging for help. He took a long time to die." She stopped talking and stared at the beat up wood table.

  Will was aghast at the idea of having to watch someone die like that without the power to help in any way. "I think it sounds awful. It seems so unfair to be born with this curse."

  She shook her head slowly as if to clear it of the awful memory. "Fair? Life is not fair. But you...look at you! You should be happy life isn't fair. Look how big and handsome you are. If life were fair we would all look the same, think the same, be the same, and the world would be boring. No, Will. I hate my curse and sometimes I hate myself, but life is the way the Lord made it and who am I to complain?"

  William cleared his throat and asked, "Mrs. Fortini, can someone cursed like this, call or summon a demon? You would think there would be a lot more of them running about if they could."

  "No, this is something else, witchcraft perhaps. I know it's a Gypsy; the scent is all over you. How she managed to call a demon, I don't know." She sat down in one of her shaky wooden chairs. "Perhaps if you told me your story, I could figure something out."

  Will looked to his father to proceed, but the man appeared haggard in his exhaustion, so he told the story. It was nearly identical to the one the Commander had told the priest only two hours before. The old lady seemed exceptionally keen to Will and he felt she could almost see inside him at times. When he was done, she sat back thoughtfully and except for the wheeze in her breath, she was silent.

  After a minute, however Adrina began to pepper him with questions:

  "Was there anyone else in the house last night?"

  "Not that I know of," he replied with a look to his father, who shrugged.

  "Does your sister own a Ouija board, or know anyone that does?"

  "We don't have one...and I don't know anyone who does."

  "What about witches? Is she friends with any?"

  "Real witches?" Will asked incredulously.

  "Real or phony, either one."

  "No," he said with a laugh.

  "What about enemies? Do you know anyone that hates her or was intensely jealous of her?"

  Will shook his head, but Brian spoke up, "There's Doug; she's always ripping him apart."

  "No! It has to be a girl, the curse runs strongest through our women."

  "I don't think so, she really is very nice."

  Adrina put her face in her bony little hands and rubbed at her eyes. "We'll need to find the witch if we're going to help your Talitha."

  "We?" William began. "Mrs. Fortini, we came here just to ask you a few questions concerning what happened to your son and granddaughter. We're looking for information about the exorcism that Father Menning performed. Can you tell us what he did wrong?"

  "That's funny..." She cackled her old lady cackle and her dentures slipped down as she did. "What he did wrong! He didn't really do anything wrong, he just wasn't prepared and he didn't...I should say we didn't know."

  "Know what?" William asked and they all leaned in towards her.

  She breathed a tired sigh and the phlegm rattled loosely in her lungs. She told them of the night twenty-one years before. It was a long story with frequent hacking coughs but the four men listened with rapt attention. She told of how her granddaughter Emily had, out of the blue, been possessed or at least that is what they thought at the time. And the similarities between her story and theirs were glaring; from the cold deep coma and the nasty feeling of her touch, to the description of the demon.

  "Your Talitha, she was virgin, yes?" Adrina asked.

  Everyone looked at Brian, who blushed mightily and said with a complete lack of his usual confidence, "Ah...we, ah yeah, she was a, you know... a virgin."

  Adrina nodded expecting this. "Emily was one as well. That was part of the reason I was thinking it was an exorcism that needed to be performed. A virgin is the perfect receptacle for a demon."

  At this statement Father Alba, small, pudgy, balding, and sweating hugely despite the coolness of the air-conditioned apartment, began to interrogate the old lady with questions concerning the exorcism. To Will, her memory of the night so long ago, was astounding, especially for someone her age. She rattled off answers to the oddest questions, some concerning Father Menning's attire, some concerning the order in which he did things or said things and Will was quickly lost. The priest kept at it though, until Adrina became angry.

  "I answered that already...twice! I tell you, he went by the book. He did not make a mistake!"

  "And I'm telling you, Mrs. Fortini that unless you've been to the seminary, you're unlikely to know the differences between certain of the rites."

  "In this case, you're wrong Father, I said..."

  He interrupted loudly, "Tell me! Tell me! How am I wrong? Did you attend the seminary?"

  "No, but I've been present at four other exorcisms and this was exactly like the others..."

  With exaggerated incredulity, he interrupted again, "Four exorcisms? Four?"

  "Yes, Father. It is sad, but true."

  "I don't believe you." Father Alba said angrily.

  "Stop it right now." William demanded coldly from his wheelchair. "Mrs. Fortini, why do you think the exorcism failed if it was done correctly?"

  "I think..." she paused a long time, which seemed odd to Will after she was able to shoot out answers so quickly before. "I think it is because we performed it on the wrong girl. Remember I told you about the girl who was supposed to spend the night with Emily, but who ran out of the house? I think she was the witch and it was she, we should have done it to."

  "But that doesn't make any sense," said Father Alba irately. "There's no literature anywhere that states that two people can be possessed by the same demon at the same time."

  Adrina nodded her head. "You're correct Father, however when it comes to demons and their capabilities we know almost nothing."

  William rubbed his eyes in a tired fashion. "Nobody knows much about demons—that's just great! How about this, we know that both Emily and Talitha were virgins, is it possible that they were maybe sacrificed to Ba'al or another demon, like you mentioned earlier? Would their virginity be a contributing factor?"

  She was nodding her head excitedly even before he had finished his sentence. "Yes! Yes...damn it! I always assumed it was a possession gone wrong and that was why..." She suddenly quit speaking midsentence, got up and walked to the refrigerator. She peered in for a moment and the appliance light turned her skin almost translucent. Will could see the veins of her forehead standing out and an artery jumping at her temple.

  "Uh, what would a Gypsy or a...you know a witch hope to get from sacrificing Talitha? To get rich or powerful?" Will asked hoping he wouldn't sound stupid.

  Adrina shut the door and looked back at him with a grim smile covering her face. "Whatever she gets out of it, I can tell you, is not what she was expecting. A demon will twist your words around so they are beyond recognition. Ask to never die, or to stay young forever and chances are you'll end up in a block of ice for eternity. Ask to be beautiful and the demon might grant it but make it so that only you see the beauty and everyone else sees a hag. It would be that sort of thing." There was silence as they considered the ramifications of dealing with a demon.

  "The Gypsy, is it likely the same person who did it to Emily?" William asked. "Would this person have to live nearby? I mean should we be looking for someone who lives on the island? If it's the whole of New York, we may never find he
r."

  "More than likely yes to the first question, the demon is the same, the house is the same, the coma is the same, everything is too similar. It's very likely the same Gypsy using the same incantation. Now for where she lives, it is likely she lives on the island or has access to it."

  "What do we do if we can't find the girl? And what do we do if we can?" the priest asked, ineffectively hiding his anxiety over the second possibility. "I mean the exorcism didn't work the last time and people died needlessly."

  "We'll find her..." Adrina started to say but the priest cut across her.

  "How do you know? Maybe we'll get the wrong girl."

  A terrible thought occurred to Will then. "Don't answer that! It might affect things. You saw something when we first walked in and...it looked pretty bad. I don't want it to get worse for you."

  "Thank you. That is sweet of you to think of me like that." Adrina smiled genuinely, a large fake-toothed smile, and Will seeing those over-sized dentures in her small wrinkled head was instantly reminded of a human shark. She added to the priest, "Don't worry we'll find the right girl, or I should say woman. She will have grown up by now. You'll perform an exorcism on her."

  The priest glanced around at the others and Will could see the fear plainly all over his features and Adrina did too. "You won't have to worry, Father. The demon will be preoccupied with us. In fact, you won't have to set one foot in the house, as long as the witch is in the doorway this will work."

  Will's father wanted to mollify the priest as well. "It's true, the demon can't seem to come out of the house. However, Mrs. Fortini, I don't want you to come with us. I'm sorry, but your power...or curse will either be useless, since you can't do anything about whatever you might see, or it will make things worse and we can't afford that."

  "Excuse me, Mr. Jern?" Brian raised his hand as if he were still in school. "If we believe Mrs. Fortini about the curse, then logically we must bring her along. She obviously saw something connected to the demon and therefore, if we keep her from fulfilling her destiny, we will logically make it harder if not impossible for us."