“Bloody fools,” Bowen muttered.
“Maybe we should’ve gone with ’em,” said Wickliff, as he stomped snow off his boots.
Bowen leered. “Wick, are you bloody crazy?”
“No, mate, did you see the officers’ faces? They got the sickness. The inspector, too.”
Bowen spat tobacco. “Well, I ain’t caught it yet.”
“Me neither.” Wickliff crossed his chest. “Maybe we should’ve left while we had the chance.”
“Yeah, and Hysmith would’ve put a bullet in our backs.” Bowen opened the side door. “Before long it’s just gonna be you, me, and a bunch of crazies running around here. If it comes to that, I’ll be the first to start offing people.” Carrying his rifle, the sentry started walking along the landing toward his perch at the corner tower. Halfway, Bowen turned around. “Oh, and Wick?”
“Yeah, mate?”
“Keep your floor door locked. One of them down there is bound to get hungry.”
Wickliff latched the trapdoor. He lit up the heater and took a seat in the cold, hard chair. He looked out each of the three portals, scanning the woods. The four dogsleds were long gone. Even the distant barking had faded, and now all Wickliff heard was the hollow wind. He looked left toward the open field and jerked forward with his rifle. “Holy shit!” The horse that had been tethered to the post was now missing, and blood stained the snow all the way to the tree line.
168
At the chapel, Father Xavier blessed several containers of water. It took all his spiritual fortitude to keep his thoughts in the light. In his twenty years, he had never performed multiple exorcisms in a single day. Battling a demon inside one person sometimes took days and completely drained him and his assistants. Of the few remaining colonists, at least six were now infected, with Willow being the most in need of an exorcism. He prayed this holy water would weaken the Devil’s Plague inside the others and give Father Xavier time to destroy each demon one by one.
His apprentice looked down at the bottles with the same distraught look in his eyes, as Father Xavier had seen in his previous apprentices. “What’s bothering you, Andre?”
“I fear God is failing us like he failed Father Jacques. It looks as if we are all going to die.”
“Perish such thoughts. An exorcist never gives up on God.”
“But what if Our Lord has no strength here? What if the demon’s legion is stronger?”
“There is no power greater than God. I need you to stay strong, Andre. Keep praying for deliverance.”
169
At the open gate, Anika, bundled in her brown fur parka with the hood pulled over her head, tightened the harnesses of each husky on her dogsled. As Tom approached, the eight dogs snarled and woofed, the fur on their backs spiked.
“Makade, Mushcoween, shush!” Anika looked up at Tom, her face tight with determination. “Come with me. We can reach Otter Island before nightfall. Grandmother Spotted Owl is a powerful medicine woman. She can help you.”
Tom shook his head. “No, your tribe would never let me bring this disease into the village.” Tom’s heart ached at having to let Anika go. He wasn’t comfortable with the native woman leaving the fort, but now every infected villager posed a threat to anyone who stayed behind. Tom had no choice but to stay and help the Jesuits find a cure.
Storm clouds formed over the forest, and the wind picked up.
“A blizzard is coming,” Tom said. “You should leave now.”
They stared at one another for a long moment. He wanted so badly to hug her goodbye, to kiss her lips. It saddened him that he might not ever see the native woman again.
Anika tried to appear strong. “I promise to bring back help.”
“Don’t bother. If I survive the winter, I’ll come find you.” He reached into his pocket. “Here, I want you to have this.” He handed her the flute he and Chris had whittled.
She held it to her chest, and her eyes gave way to tears. She wiped her cheeks, backing toward her sled. “I’m coming back for you, Tom Hatcher. You better still be here.”
Tom started to protest, but the words choked in his throat.
She held up her palm. He held up his.
As Anika drove her dogsled downhill toward the river, Tom felt his chest go hollow. He stepped back into the fort and closed the gate.
“Inspector!” Lt. Hysmith and another soldier approached. The lieutenant looked as if all the blood had been drained from his face. “We found Private Simmons.”
170
Father Xavier and Andre, now dressed in their exorcism robes and carrying black cases, entered Willow’s bedroom. All the shattered dolls had been removed, the floor swept. The curtains had been torn away, and gray morning light filtered through the windows. Every picture had been taken down and all the furniture removed, except for the four-poster bed that sat in the middle of the room.
Lady Pendleton lay in bed, her arms and legs still tied to the bedposts. She appeared to be asleep. Her porcelain face was cracked with blue veins. Her hands looked like an old woman’s, the bones prominent beneath a thin layer of skin.
Father Xavier nailed a crucifix on a wall. He noticed Andre standing at Willow’s side, gazing down at her. “Andre, there’s no time to waste. Perform your tasks.”
“Oui, Father.” His novice began drawing chalked lines across the floor. This would create a barrier that evil could not cross.
Father Xavier prayed at the foot of the bed and gesticulated. He then opened his black case and pulled out his holy instruments. He placed a violet sash around his neck. He pulled out a black book with a red cross painted on the cover—the ancient text of The Roman Ritual of Exorcism. On a shelf, he unraveled a cloth bundle, rolling out a set of silver crosses. The center cross had a daggered tip. He hoped it wouldn’t come to using that one. He raised one of the blunt-edged crosses, kissed it then gesticulated. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I claim this chamber as a sanctuary of God.”
171
Tom followed the lieutenant and private to the French voyageurs’ corner of the village. The shacks were all nestled together. The private stood post, while Tom and Hysmith entered the long, rectangular-shaped cabin known as the Skinning Hut. In the back room, the missing night guard, Private Simmons, was hanging upside down from the rafters, gutted like a hog. On the floor were more than a dozen buckets of blood and paintbrushes.
Tom shook his head. “Damn it, we never should have let Bélanger’s crew leave.”
“They were performing some kind of Devil worship,” Hysmith said. “Look at this.” He raised his lantern. All across the walls and ceiling were red spirals and strange words painted in blood.
Tom felt his skin tingle, as if some kind of force emanated from the inscriptions.
At the back wall was a shrine. Tom struck a match and lit five black candles. There was a large bowl filled with coils of hair, nail clippings, bones, and teeth. The altarpiece was a large animal skull, from a giant grizzly bear, Tom suspected, only the jaw seemed human-shaped, with fangs that ran the full length of the bones, like a crocodile. Painted on the skull’s forehead was a red spiral.
172
Dr. Coombs rode through the woods in the lead dogsled with Bélanger cracking his whip at the barking huskies. Behind them followed three more dogsleds packed to the hilt with families and luggage. Their decision to leave had been made with haste. They had no plan, except to get as far away from Fort Pendleton as possible.
“Where on earth are we going?” Dr. Coombs asked.
“Upriver,” was Bélanger’s only answer.
Dr. Coombs gripped his shotgun and held on tight as the sled barreled through the pines. He felt guilty for abandoning his mission to quell the disease. But with no visible virus in the blood, how could he save the infected? Mother Nature had won this battle, and now it was survival of the fittest.
Something moved through the trees off to his left. What appeared to be a four-legged animal with grotesquely
long bones disappeared behind a wall of fog. “Did you see that?” he asked Bélanger.
“I saw it.” The Frenchman brought the sleds to a halt in a field that was surrounded by thick spruce and pines. All across the clearing, half-buried in the snow, were bones and carcasses. A feeding ground. The huskies barked at a pack of animals moving inside the white mist. Dr. Coombs’ scrotum tightened as he felt like a deer being circled by wolves.
He prodded his sled driver. “Keep moving!”
“This is as far as we go.” Bélanger hopped off the sled and began singing in French. Several other men joined in, including the women, singing like happy churchgoers.
“What is bloody wrong with you people?” Dr. Coombs asked.
Bélanger continued singing as he pulled out a large knife and cut the throats of each of his dogs.
Dr. Coombs felt his heart drop into his belly.
Women screamed as the other men began to slaughter their wives.
Dr. Coombs screeched and gripped his shotgun.
The children cried and ran off into the woods. Their fathers chased after them.
The mist closed in and swallowed the four sleds, until all Dr. Coombs could see was swirling white smoke and falling snow. Terrible shrieks rattled his ears. Gunshots fired. People screamed.
Bélanger and three of his backwoods brethren circled the doctor, holding up bloody knives. “It’s feeding time, Doc.”
“The hell it is!” Dr. Coombs fired his shotgun. The blast opened up a red hole in Bélanger’s chest, knocking him backward. The others retreated into the fog. One man lurched upward into the trees. Some unseen thing tore him in two and hurled the bloody torso and legs in opposite directions. The other men’s death cries were cut short, until the only sounds were of predators crunching sinew and bones.
A beast roared behind Dr. Coombs. He twisted around. A set of broad elk antlers jutted from the smoke. And then he saw it walked on two legs. Its face defied nature. He marveled at the bloodstained fangs—the long talons. The doctor stared with both awe and terror as the beast ripped him from his seat.
Part Seventeen
Demon Storm
173
Tom led Father Xavier and Brother Andre back into the Skinning Hut. Master Pendleton, Lt. Hysmith, and Walter Thain were already gathered here, wearing shocked expressions.
“Dear God in heaven,” Father Xavier said, staring at all the red spirals and strange words painted on the walls and ceiling.
“Do you recognize these words?” Tom asked.
“It’s The Goetia.” Father Xavier touched the strange name written in blood-red ink above the altar.
“You’ve seen this before?” Pendleton asked.
“I first came across this in my demonology studies,” Father Xavier said. “The Goetia is the first book of a series called the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, also known as the Lesser Key of Solomon. Legend is that King Solomon sealed seventy-two demons inside this book. Each leads its own legion.”
“What does all this mean?” Tom asked.
The priest ran his hand along the passages. “The walls read like a grimoire. A book of black magic. The phrases are ancient incantations used for conjuring demons.”
Tom looked at the three officers. “It was Bélanger’s men who painted the red spirals on all the doors.”
“Those bloody savages,” Pendleton kicked over a bloodstained bucket.
“We never should have let them leave,” Hysmith grumbled.
“They didn’t give us much choice, now did they?” Pendleton snapped back.
“By the looks of their shrine,” Tom said, “they were performing some kind of Devil worship. I’ve never seen a skull quite like this.”
“It’s clearly a grizzly bear,” Pendleton said.
“Looks more like a gorilla,” Thain added. “Except for all the teeth.”
“No, it’s not an animal.” Father Xavier picked it up and examined it. “It’s a demon.”
Andre said, “Like the one you showed me back in Montréal.”
Tom stared down at the massive skull, the broad jaw full of jagged teeth. “You two have seen this before?”
The priest nodded. “In the mid 1660s, Jesuit missionaries found a similar beast mummified in a bog in Quebec. Even dead, its bones have a power that resonates pure evil.”
Tom could feel evil emanating from every part of the room. “What do the red spirals mean?”
“They symbolize doorways to the spirit world. They… Oh, Dear God…” Father Xavier’s eyes met Tom’s, then he looked to Andre, Pendleton, Thain, and Hysmith. “This building acts as a gateway for demons to cross through.”
174
Tom watched as the soldiers torched the Skinning Hut. The demon skull, the buckets of blood, and Private Simmons’ disemboweled body were all left inside. The rectangular cabin caught fire quickly, and soon it was nothing more than a frame with orange walls. Black smoke drifted up to the sky.
A hell mouth, Tom thought, as he pieced together all the times he’d seen red spirals: the cellar wall at Manitou Outpost, outside Kunetay Timberwolf’s hut, at Doc Riley’s house, as well as a shrine within Hospital House. The French Canadian voyageurs, the men who had canoed Pendleton to Montréal, had been conjuring demons inside their skinning hut.
At the opposite corner of the fort, the pounding of a hammer echoed off the stockade walls. Father Xavier and Brother Andre watched as Tom and the stout blacksmith nailed a large iron cross to the logs that made up the wall. Like the Jesuits, the blacksmith had not caught the sickness. He claimed it was due to his love of eating garlic and rabbit stew. He indeed reeked of garlic, but he had done fine work, making four iron crosses. The blacksmith backed away, looking up at the cross that now hung at the center of the stockade’s back wall. “That good enough for you, Father?”
“That will do fine,” said Father Xavier.
The blacksmith picked up three more crosses in his massive arms. “And these?”
“The same as this. Two nailed at the center of the side walls, and one at the gate.” Father Xavier hoped that with God’s blessings, these holy symbols would be enough to defend the fort against evil spirits and keep the demons in the woods at bay. As if Satan were mocking him, two black birds landed on the spiked-tipped fence and cawed at the exorcist and his apprentice.
Brother Andre said, “Father, are you sure these will be enough to protect us?”
“They have to. With our prayers, we will turn this fort into a holy sanctuary and exorcise the evil that haunts every cabin.”
Lt. Hysmith and another soldier approached. The lieutenant’s face looked more gaunt than before. “This Catholic superstition is a bloody waste of time.”
Father Xavier said, “Only faith in God will get us through this. I urge everyone to keep drinking holy water.”
“Bugger that,” Hysmith scoffed at the suggestion.
Hysmith said, “Master Pendleton has ordered that everyone meet for supper at Noble House within the hour.”
Father Xavier nodded. “We’ll be done by then.”
There was a flutter of wings, and all the men turned their heads, looking up. Several more ravens landed atop the stockade wall, lining up like sentries.
175
At the fourth-story balcony of Noble House, Avery Pendleton played Heinrich Biber’s Mystery Sonatas on his red violin. He stopped occasionally to drink Scotch mixed with holy water. The throat-burning concoction tasted like kerosene and made him wince with each sip. He continued to play the melancholy sonata with tears in his eyes.
The village below looked like a ghost town as a careening wind blew snow across the rooftops of the empty cabins. A skeleton crew of a dozen people now remained within the fort. Willow, the last of the women, was still bedridden. When Avery got the news that Anika had left, he’d felt angry and then remorse. For the past two years, the native woman had been his mistress, and despite the fact that she was an ill-mannered heathen, Anika had been a better lover than his frig
id wife.
Avery coughed, covering his mouth with a handkerchief. He felt the disease coursing through him like glacier water inside his veins. The boreal wind whispered in his ear, tempting him to do leap off the balcony. Death will end your misery, the gale promised. With us you will be free. He looked over the railing, feeling vertigo. The drop would land him on the front steps, sure to snap his spine.
“Not like this.” He spoke back to the wind. If it came down to suicide, he would leave this world the same way his father had.
Avery stepped back inside his study and set the red violin gently on the shelf with a dozen others his grandfather had crafted.
His Cree butler brought another glass of Scotch and holy water on a silver tray. Avery smiled. “Charles, you have been more loyal to me than anyone. I don’t believe I pay you as handsomely as I should.”
The butler bowed and walked away.
As Avery sipped the fiery drink, calming the beast within, he heard a screech in the distance. Turning, he noticed a dark cloud approaching over the forest, then, as it exploded into a thousand black pieces, he realized the cloud was a swarm of ravens.
176
A massive leviathan swam across the sky, blotting out the light. Hundreds of ravens stormed the fort in a black cyclone of dark-winged chaos. The ungodly cawing deafened Tom. “Run!” he yelled at the other five men. And then they were running through the cemetery.
Tom felt a sudden wind at his back. The birds swooped down between him and the Jesuits, attacking with beaks and talons.
Whirring wings. Running legs. Burning lungs.
Tom fought his way through the maelstrom, getting pecked and scratched. He reached the front steps of Noble House, climbing up to the second story. Lt. Hysmith ran a few steps ahead. He opened the door. Behind Tom raced Father Xavier.
Dead of Winter Page 33
