The Devil You Know

by Richard Levesque

  After several minutes, the sobbing stopped, and she rolled over on the bed. The incubus had torn several buttons off her blouse and ripped the strap of her bra. Both garments still hung off of her, and she pulled at the blouse to cover herself before sitting up. Blood ran down both arms from the wounds the creature’s nails had left, and her throat ached from where it had pushed down on her. Thoughts raced through her mind: of Colin Krebs and how he must have betrayed her to Julian, prompting the incubus to be sent to her house; of Tom, whom she wanted at her side now more than ever; and of Piedmont himself and his one remaining demon, and what she must do to destroy it and the book that had brought it forth.

  She heard a car’s loud engine on the street, and when it sounded like it stopped in front of her house, she got off the bed, her adrenaline rushing again at the thought of Julian Piedmont having sent real human reinforcements. A kitchen knife would be her only weapon against human intruders, but before she could leave the bedroom she heard a second car start its engine and drive quickly away, its tires screeching on the asphalt of her quiet street.

  Seconds later, there was a loud knocking on her front door, and she heard Tom calling, “Marie! Marie! Are you okay?”

  “Tom!” she cried and ran out of the bedroom to see him opening the front door and letting himself in. The lights were still on in the front room, and when she saw his face, she knew he could see that something dreadful had happened. He looked angry, frightened and filled with pity all at the same time. They covered the distance between the two doors in seconds and threw their arms around each other.

  “My God, Marie,” he said, bending to kiss the top of her head and turning to rub his cheek against her hair.

  “Oh, Tom,” was all she could manage at first, her own cheek pressed against his chest where she could feel his heart pounding.

  “You’re hurt! What did they do?”

  She shook her head. “They sent an incubus.” She paused, unsure of whether she could describe the rest without crying again. With a deep breath, she said, “They made him look like Ryan.”

  “Did you—?”

  “It’s dead. I had to kill him.” She felt his arms tighten around her.

  “How bad are you hurt?”

  “Not bad. Just scratches. I’m okay.” Still filled with adrenaline, she had not yet slowed down enough to know for certain that she was, indeed, all right. “Oh, Tom, it was so real. They made me think it was him.”

  For a second, a cold wave of fear passed over her, and she pulled her head away to look up at his face. She studied it carefully for a moment before he seemed to realize what she was thinking. He smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay now,” he whispered. “It’s me. Tom Glass. Shell-shocked grease monkey and demon killer.” He touched her hair and then her cheek, continuing tenderly. “And I know more about you than any one of those bastards ever could. You’re Marie Doyle. Your maiden name was Matthews. Your dad died when you were sixteen from a heart attack. Your husband Ryan was killed when a torpedo sank his boat. They never found his body. And you’ve never unfolded the flag that the Navy sent you.”

  As he spoke, tears fell from Marie’s eyes, but she did not start sobbing again. She just listened. With each word he spoke, the fight with the demon seemed more and more like a nightmare that never could have happened.

  “You know the score now, right?” Tom said, lifting some of the tears off her face with the backs of his fingers.

  She nodded. “How did you know to come?”

  “They came to my place, too. Just like before, when Gramps…There were three of them—all human. I think they just wanted to scare me, but I waved the Luger around and used the butt on one of their faces, and they ran. I tried calling you right away but your line was dead. They must have cut your line just in case you weren’t fooled right away and tried to call for help.”

  She clenched her jaw in renewed anger towards Julian and Colin. “They’d have had me,” she said.

  “Thank God they didn’t.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even think to call the police first. I had the Dodge running, so I just came.”

  “Do you think the police would have come?”

  “I don’t know. I could have made something up. I wasn’t thinking.” He swallowed, and then he whispered, “I’m sorry. If you hadn’t been able to stop him yourself…”

  She squeezed his hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “I was able to. That’s all that matters right now.”

  He turned to the door and looked outside, and Marie could see Jasper’s old Dodge parked crookedly at the curb. “There was another car full of Piedmont’s boys parked outside when I got here. Waiting to bring their pet back home when it was done with you probably. They tore out of here as soon as I took two steps toward them.”

  “Funny, I didn’t see them when I came home.”

  Tom nodded and closed the door. “They were probably parked down the street waiting to see you come in.” He glanced around the room and then nodded down at her bookcase. “Your picture’s gone. That’s probably what they used. You know, to make the look-alike?”

  For the first time, she noticed that Ryan’s picture was missing from its usual place. Now it was probably in the car that Tom had chased away.

  “Is it awful of me to want Piedmont to get hurt in all of this?” she asked.

  “Awful?” Tom said. “No. Normal, I’d say. He deserves to get hurt. At the very least.”

  She nodded and then looked at the floor. “Tom,” she said, choking back tears now. “When the Errol Flynn incubus kissed me, you said it wasn’t my fault that I gave in to him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But with this one…I think I gave in to him before he kissed me. I wanted it to be him. I wanted it to be…real. I’m so sorry.”

  “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.” He reached out and touched her chin to lift her face up. When she looked him in the eyes, he smiled at her. “It’s okay, Marie. He was your husband. If he really did come back…” He shrugged. “You’d want your old life back. With him.”

  “It wouldn’t be that simple,” she said, returning his smile. She felt tears welling up in her eyes again. “I loved him. I still do. But I’m not the same person I was when I married him. Or when I lost him.” She shook her head. “And if he really came back today, I can’t say what I’d do. He’s not…he’s not the only one.”

  “The only one?” he asked.

  Her heart pounding from a mixture of excitement and fear, she said, “The only one I love,” and stood on her toes to kiss him.

  “Marie,” he whispered and kissed her back.

  She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him for a moment before tilting her head up to meet his lips again.

  “I want you. Please,” she whispered in his ear.

  He drew his face back from hers for just a moment, his eyes looking questioningly into hers. Neither spoke, and when Marie withdrew further and slipped her hand into his, he let himself be led to the couch where they lay down side by side, kissing each other sweetly and peeling away their clothes as though it were the most natural thing in the world. They did not rush or pant or tear at each other in a frenzy; they were not overcome like victims of the incubi. Instead, they touched tenderly, fingers tracing lines on each other’s skin as more and more of it became exposed. It was not until later, with sweat on her brow and the strength going out of her legs, that Marie held tightly to his back, digging her nails into his skin without meaning to as their bodies shuddered together and then were still.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was after eleven before they were dressed again and going out the door. Fog had rolled in once more from the sea, already leaving a thin sheet of condensation on the hood and roof of Marie’s car. When she stepped out her door and felt the bite of the cool night air, she wanted nothing more than to turn around, go back into the house, and take Tom into her bed. But she knew that was impossible.

  After making love, they had remained on t
he sofa for a long time, talking on and off. Finally, their conversation had turned back to the incubi and what had transpired earlier. Julian Piedmont and his crew had wanted to scare Tom at his house, but they had wanted Marie completely incapacitated. Using the incubus to achieve that was an insulting method, and one that had not been effective. Now, Tom reasoned, Piedmont and his followers might try a more human and more deadly way of keeping Marie away.

  “We can’t wait for them to come back,” Marie had said, still lying with him on the sofa.

  “What do we do?” he had asked.

  She had sat up and pulled an afghan over her shoulders. “We have to go there. Go after them before they come back at us again. They know we’re the ones who’ve been killing the demons. They won’t give up until they’ve gotten rid of us one way or another.”

  “So what are you saying?” He had sat up beside her. “We can’t kill Piedmont and his boys the way we’re killing his demons.”

  “No. But we go up there. We find a way to stop them. We say the prayer, exorcise the last one. Bless the house. I don’t know. Colin said that Julian was starting to act strangely. Maybe we can take advantage of that.”

  After talking a bit more, they had decided it would be best to start by going to St. Lucy’s. Marie knew that Father Joe kept holy water in a storage room next to the vestry, along with candles and prayer books. If those things were imbued with any kind of power, Marie thought, it could only add to their advantage over the remaining demon; at the very least, they might intimidate an already disturbed Julian Piedmont. When she got dressed, the first thing she slipped on was Jasper’s little wooden cross, telling herself that if nothing from the church helped with the last incubus, the St. Lucy cross had already proved its potency.

  Now, arm in arm, they walked out the door, and Marie locked it behind them. She was glad to let Tom drive her car, the old Dodge still seeming a bit unreliable for their errand. Once they were on their way, Tom grew quiet, and when Marie asked what was on his mind, he responded, “Krebs. If things had gone any different, you’d have been in a bad way, thanks to him.”

  She nodded in the dark. “I know, Tom. But I don’t want you to hurt him. Promise?”

  After a silence, he said, “All right. But it won’t be easy to hold back if he’s there.”

  “I’m worried about him. I think in a way he’s as far gone as all the women those things have gotten to. He’s sick, Tom. They’re all sick. That book and what it can do, it’s twisted Julian Piedmont and all his followers into monsters themselves.”

  “But don’t you think they had to be just a little twisted beforehand to be susceptible to it?”

  “I do.”

  As they drove, she thought about the characters who had met bad ends in Weird Tales and all the other pulps she read. Almost always, they were flawed in some way—either too curious, or too greedy, unable to control their impulses and led down a dark path that was satisfying in a dangerous way but ultimately destructive. Piedmont’s men must all be like that to a degree, she told herself, and in other ways Elise and her fellow victims could say the same. But what about herself, she wondered, and Tom, and Jasper? Was it really righteousness that spurred them, the need for revenge, the knowledge that they could right wrongs and prevent further misery? Or was it simple curiosity?

  She put her hand on Tom’s forearm as he turned onto the next street. St. Lucy’s was just around the corner. “Tom,” she said, “should we just go to the police? Is this crazy what we’re doing?”

  He slowed the car to a stop in the middle of the street. There were no other cars about, and no one seemed to be out around any of the nearby houses. “We can go to the police if you want. But what are they going to say? They’ll keep us there till dawn and maybe send a squad car around to your place and mine. At mine, they won’t find a thing. At yours, they’ll find an empty suit of clothes on your bedroom floor with what looks like ashes around it. And they might figure they’re human ashes; they’re going to keep us for a good while. The more we tell them what’s been going on, the more likely they are to order psychological tests. And maybe, just maybe, they let us out—or at least you. I’m likely getting kept for observation with my history, once they find it out. And what’s been accomplished? Julian Piedmont gets another whole night and day to recover from the damage we’ve done.”

  “You’re right,” Marie said with a sigh. “There’s no other way. I was just…worried that maybe we hadn’t thought all of this through yet, that maybe we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Maybe being a little foolhardy and overconfident. You know, riding in on a white horse and all to save the day?”

  “I got no horse, Marie. Just you. And I want to keep you. We can run from them, or we can fight. I’ll run with you if that’s what you want, but I don’t think you can stand to have that on your conscience.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not running. Let’s go.”

  The church parking lot was empty, and Tom quickly killed the Chevy’s lights lest anyone in the neighboring homes be compelled to report suspicious activity. Marie left her purse in the car and took only her keys, tucking them into the pocket of her coat. The fog had only grown thicker since they had left her house, and the area was almost completely silent. As they walked the short distance to the main building, all they could hear were crickets in the bushes and the distant sounds of faraway cars.

  Marie didn’t have a key to the main doors, so they walked around the far side to a single door that only the church staff and altar boys used before services. The grounds were completely darkened, with no lights on in any of the buildings, so it took her a few seconds to find the right key on her ring and slip it into the lock. When she did, it clicked more loudly than she had expected, and she cringed. Neither of them moved for a second; then she turned to Tom, who nodded to her in the dark, and she pushed down on the handle to open the door.

  Once Tom was in behind her and the door was closed, she felt along the wall for the light switch. When it clicked on, Marie gasped. Someone had been here before them. They were standing in a small chamber near the altar; a door to their right opened onto the main floor of the church while another led into the vestry. The room also held a portable baptismal font as well as shelves with bottles of holy water, candles, unblessed wine, collection baskets, and other supplies, but Marie had no intention of taking anything from those shelves. The door to the vestry was open, and she could see that the priest’s robes and vestments had been scattered across the floor. They looked torn, and the red stains all over the clothes and floor could only be from spilled sacramental wine.

  “Oh my God,” Marie gasped.

  Tom hushed her quickly, putting his finger to his lips. His eyes shifted to the other door that opened onto the main chapel. With one hand, he pulled Marie away from the door, and with the other he pulled out the Luger. Then he nodded toward the light switch Marie had first flicked on. She understood what he meant and moved to turn the lights off on his signal. Clearly, Tom did not want to open a door into the darkened church with light blazing behind him, thereby making himself an easy target if the vandals were still there. He put his hand on the faded brass doorknob and nodded to Marie. As soon as she turned off the lights, she heard him open the door, and gritted her teeth in anticipation.

  Nothing happened. There were no gunshots or sounds of a struggle. She heard Tom say, “I’m armed, and I’ll shoot if you force me to. We know what you’ve done, and we’ve already called the police, so don’t give me any trouble.” There was no response, and after a few seconds she heard him say, “I think they’re gone. I don’t hear anything. Are the lights at this end?”

  “Yes.” She followed him into the church and felt along the wall beside the altar for one of the light switches. Dim light came through the stained glass windows, not enough for her to be able to make out anything clearly, but just enough for her to tell that the main part of the church had not been spared. When the lights came on a few seconds later, she was shocke
d. Missals and hymnals had been torn to pieces, the pages tossed across the tile floor of the nave. Some of the Stations of the Cross had been knocked down from the walls, the bas-relief sculptures smashed among the pews. Other statues, including one of the Virgin and another of St. Lucy, had been knocked to the floor.

  But it was the walls around the altar and the raised area of the chancel that shocked Marie the most. Someone had used lurid red paint to write words across the walls in letters almost three feet high. “Defiled” said one, and “Unclean” another. Painted right across the base of the crucifix was the word “Unholy.”

  When she had turned on the lights, Tom was still standing slightly crouched with his gun pointed into the nave, ready for any unseen attackers. Now he stood up and surveyed the damage before making a quick walk around the perimeter of the pews, waving the gun in front of him as he made each turn, as though he was sweeping the air with it. Marie could easily imagine him having done the same thing in empty buildings in the French countryside. Satisfied that they were alone in the church, he relaxed his posture and lowered the gun, saying, “This is terrible,” as he walked back toward the front of the church where Marie waited. “Who would have done this?”

  Marie shook her head and quietly said, “Colin Krebs.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow. “Why him?”

  “He’s lost his mind,” she said. “He’s been in fear for his soul since this whole thing started. I told him to confess to Father Joe, and he did, but I think he expected it to cleanse him, to save him.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to?”

  “Not if he isn’t truly repentant.”

  “Or if he doesn’t think Father Joe really absolved him.”