The Devil You Know

by Richard Levesque

  “You’re out of your goddamned mind if that’s what you think,” Tom said coolly, and Marie thought for a moment that he might actually shoot the priest. She was about to put a hand on his forearm to calm him, but then he turned the gun back toward Julian. “The book! Let’s have it!”

  Marie felt herself suddenly grow cold. At first, she thought it was just an emotional reaction to Father Joe’s betrayal of her and everything he had stood for, and to the almost predatory way he looked at her now. But then she realized that there was a presence in the room, and that it had gotten closer to her. “Tom?” she said, suddenly very frightened.

  He looked at her, but did not say anything, and she knew he felt it, too.

  “So you see,” Father Joe went on, “a little gun doesn’t matter much. What matters is getting just the right body.”

  Marie’s eyes were locked on his as understanding dawned on her. The men that Julian had sent to her house had not gone simply to frighten her or to leave her incapable of meddling with their plans. No, she realized, they had been sent to kill Tom and render her immobile so that she could be brought back and made the host for the succubus they had conjured.

  Father Joe saw now that she understood. “Poetic justice, don’t you think?” he said. “You kill our demons, and in retaliation we make you become the next one. It was Julian’s idea, I’m afraid, but I went along whole-heartedly. It’s been almost two years now of imagining what’s beyond all those buttons on your clothes.”

  “That’s enough!” Tom shouted.

  “You’re right,” said Father Joe.

  The cold Marie had been feeling suddenly increased in its intensity, and she felt a tightening in her throat. She remembered how Colin had described his first encounter with the incubi before the ritual that had conjured their bodies: he had said the formless demons had sexually stimulated several of Julian’s cronies. Now, the female entity was pushing against her mouth, and Marie turned away from Father Joe’s stare, gagging as her mouth and nose filled with a foul smell and taste. Tom had lowered the gun, and she could hear him as from a distance calling her name as he tried to take hold of her shoulders and pull her to him. But she couldn’t breathe now, and all she could hear was a loud rushing in her ears. Once, she had been pulled under the waves at Santa Monica and had been sure that she would never come up. This feeling was far worse. As she lost strength and sank to the floor, she could only look up to see Tom, his face all in panic now. His hands had left her shoulders, the gun had slipped from his fingers, and he was tearing at his own throat now, also unable to breathe. The blackness of the curtains seemed to spread out across the room, and then there was nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When Marie awoke, it took her only a moment to realize that she had been tied firmly to the big oak table where Laura had previously lain. She remembered seeing the table in the adjacent room when she’d first come to the mansion. Then, it had been laden with food and drink, and the wealthiest and most glamorous people from Hollywood and Beverly Hills had been here to rub elbows with one another while unwittingly covering for the incubi’s shenanigans. Now, it was to be the site of a greater sin, and Marie struggled to move her wrists and ankles, but thick knots held her fast. They had left her head and neck unbound, so she could lift herself a little to see her surroundings. She saw that Tom was bound to the table as well, his feet just beyond hers so that their heads were at either end. She could not be sure, but she thought he was still unconscious.

  Around the table stood all of the hooded figures, including Julian Piedmont and Father Joe. She recognized several of the men from the party, and to her left stood the James Cagney look-alike, who still appeared disoriented and ill. She could not see Laura anywhere.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Father Joe said. He stood directly beside her and held a book in his hands that could only be the Gelamen Malum Lacuna. It was thick, its covers tattered, and in the corrupt priest’s hands it made Marie think of all the times she had seen him holding a Bible with the same care and reverence. “We could have proceeded without your knowledge,” he said, leaning forward just a bit. “But there’s something…exciting about the panic in your eyes.”

  “Remind me to close them, then,” she said.

  Father Joe laughed. “Marie, all that time you spent in the office with me, and I never would have imagined you had this kind of spunk. A shame I had to wait until now to find out.” He opened the book and began turning the pages carefully. “When we’re done with you here, we’ll conjure another incubus for your friend. Then we’ll have a little floorshow with the two of you. Should be most interesting.”

  Marie strained against the ropes again, but it was no good. Several knots held her, and there was no play in the ropes at all.

  The priest had found the page he wanted and looked it over now for a moment. Then, without any preamble, he began to chant, “Atrum Senior, audite mihi.”

  “You can’t do this!” Marie shouted, trying as hard as she could to pull against the ropes. She wiggled her feet and was able to touch Tom’s toes, but she could still see no sign that he had awoken yet.

  Father Joe ignored her, continuing his chant. “Quo phasmatis adveho pro nos.”

  And then another voice shouted, “No!”

  Marie nearly cried out with relief when she turned her head to see Colin Krebs standing in the same entryway that she and Tom had come through earlier. He looked frantic, his eyes wide and his hair uncombed. He held a small handgun and pointed it at Father Joe.

  “Colin, put that down,” said Julian. He stood directly to the priest’s left and stared commandingly at Krebs.

  “No, Julian. No,” said Colin, as tears began streaming down his face. He swallowed hard. “You never thought I’d say that to you, did you? No.” He laughed sardonically. “The rest of you should try it. It just takes a little balls. He never really cut them off of us; just made us think he had. Or would.” Marie watched as he moved the muzzle of the gun just a little, and she thought he must be pointing it at Julian now. “Untie the girl, Julian. Let them go.”

  Piedmont made no movement. Instead, he said, “Colin, you put that gun down and turn around. You walk out that front door and never come back here. And leave your keys. I should have taken them from you already. We will shun you. The new religion needs no part of you.”

  “New religion!” Colin barked back at him. “New religion? You’re out of your mind, Julian. You think this is a religion that you’re founding? It’s his.” He nodded toward Father Joe. “And when he’s done with you, he’ll cast you aside. He won’t need you for long, you know. Not now that you’ve given him the book.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Colin,” Julian said forcefully.

  “Don’t I? Don’t I know how he used me in that confessional to find out everything about you? About her?” He nodded toward Marie. “I’m going to hell, Julian. And not just because of what I’ve done, and not just because of what you made me do, but because of him. Can’t you see?”

  “All I can see is that you need to get the hell out of here, Colin,” said Piedmont. He was losing his temper, Marie could see, and he stepped out of the ranks of hooded men around the table, making a move in Colin’s direction. “We’re through with you!”

  “You’re through all right,” Colin yelled and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was deafening inside the room, the sound echoing off the walls and high ceiling for several seconds. Marie cringed when Colin pulled the trigger and watched him for a second as he stood there with the gun in his extended hand, smoke rising from the barrel. Then all was chaos. The hooded men began to run in every direction, most of them yelling in fear. Then she felt something hit the table, and she turned her head away from Colin just in time to see Julian Piedmont’s face inches from hers. He had fallen forward seconds after being shot, and now he slipped off the table and onto the floor.

  Over her shoulder, she heard Colin shout, “And you, too!” Another gunshot followe
d, this one much closer to Marie. She closed her eyes involuntarily at the roar of the gun, and when she opened them she saw Father Joe still standing at the head of the table, Tom’s smoking Luger in his hand and a satisfied smile on his face. She did not need to turn her head to know that Colin had been shot.

  The gunshots had brought Tom back to consciousness, and he began shouting, “Marie! Marie!”

  “I’m here,” she called back. “I’m okay.”

  “For the moment,” Father Joe said.

  Colin lay on the floor beside the entryway to the immense room, and Julian Piedmont was on the floor beside the long table. Father Joe stood at the head of the table, and the James Cagney look-alike stood off to the side. All the other men had fled in a panic. With their leader dead, they had no stomach for Black Masses and demons. Without Piedmont, the center had dropped out of their devotion, and they had run off into the night, directionless.

  “Don’t need them anyway,” Father Joe muttered. “Let’s begin again.” He cleared his throat. “Atrum Senior , audite mihi. Quo phasmatis adveho pro nos. Ita is somes adveho pro nos.”

  Marie’s knowledge of Latin was limited to what she was used to hearing during the Mass, but she was able to piece together enough of what Father Joe chanted to know he was talking about the succubus and about Marie’s body having come before his dark lord.

  “Iam beatus nos ut nos suo duos,” he continued, and as Marie tried to decipher the words, she began to feel a weight upon her. It was the same presence she had felt earlier, just before she and Tom had lost consciousness. The female demon was now lying on top of her body, waiting for the remainder of the prayer and its final joining with her.

  Terrified, Marie did the only thing she could think of. Her voice trembling, she began the prayer for exorcism, starting with, “Creature of Satan, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. I command you to leave this body.”

  Father Joe began to laugh, but she continued. “We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects.” There was no change in the weight she felt upon her body. The demon still lay on her, its essence bearing down on her, waiting to penetrate and form a union with her.

  “What’s wrong, Marie?” Father Joe asked. He bent down closer so she could see his face above her. From where she lay, his face was upside down, and he looked frightening with his eyebrows below his eyes rather than above them, his mouth at the top of his head. “Have I caused you to lose your faith? Or did Colin do that? Maybe it was never so strong to begin with.” He chuckled again and then straightened up, turning his attention back to the spell.

  He started over yet again, no doubt wanting to cast the spell perfectly. And as he chanted, Marie felt panic rising in her. She darted her eyes back and forth, terrified of the weight of the demon on her body. She could sense Tom near her and thought she heard him calling out to her, but his voice had a dreamy, distant quality to it. The idea of faith seemed far away as well, and she realized that she no longer believed that the exorcism prayer would do any good, or that there was a God in heaven to hear it. Ever since Ryan had died, it had been Father Joe who had helped her to keep her faith, to take comfort in the promise of the afterlife and the eventual end to all her suffering and sorrow. And now he had shown her that his every prayer and good wish for her had been hollow, a mask behind which his perversion and monstrosity had perfectly hidden. She did not even consider that the exorcism prayer had worked before; all she knew was that now it would not work.

  In an almost hallucinatory way, Jasper’s words echoed in her head, as though he were here in this room and speaking in her ear: “But rather the right actions—often words—along with absolute, unbending faith, Marie, faith can draw these energies together and effectively create something out of nothing.”

  And if they can be created, they can be destroyed, she thought. But only with faith. And she suddenly had none.

  Tears ran down her cheeks, and the weight of the demon on her was becoming unbearable. She felt as though it was about to split her open, and she feared that in seconds she would literally feel it enter her. And when it did, she knew, it would take complete control of her. The thing in her would do everything Father Joe asked of it, and Marie would be powerless, trapped within and able only to look through her own eyes at the unspeakable things the succubus would make her body do.

  And then her eyes opened wide, and she gasped. Only faith could save her, she realized. And while she had no faith in God right now, she did have faith that the thing bearing down on her was real, had been called forth by men who did believe in something, if only the devil, and that it could be sent away if she made it believe her faith was stronger.

  Clenching her jaw and trying to resist the force of the thing upon her, she concentrated on all that she had left to believe in—the knowledge she had gained from Jasper. Her mind raced, thoughts bouncing from one bit of information to the next as she tried to recall all he had taught her about these spirits. Even as the thing began to press harder at her loins, causing a stirring of desire unlike anything she had ever felt in spite of a growing sense of revulsion, she remembered that the being had no body, no physical existence at all. It couldn’t be pressing on her. It was impossible.

  In a moment of revelation, she understood. In this state, the succubus could do nothing but work on its victim’s mind, invading her thoughts, making her believe what it—and Father Joe—wanted her to believe. It had not choked her and Tom into unconsciousness earlier, but had only made them believe that it was. And now it was not physically touching Marie, but it was working on her mind, making her think she was being sexually stimulated and letting her brain and her nerves do the rest. It was all hallucination, made manifest by Marie’s belief that it was real.

  The only way she could think to fight it was to turn her mind to other things that she knew were real. While the thing kept making her think something was lying on her and now grinding against her, muting the monstrous priest’s intonations and Tom’s distant shouts, Marie made herself concentrate on other things—on real things that could not be denied. She pictured Tom on top of her as he had been just hours ago on her couch, recalling the feeling of his weight upon her, of his kisses, of how it had felt to wrap her legs around him as they writhed together. Her memories combined with the stimulation the succubus was forcing on her, and her body lurched with an orgasm that shook her to the core. It seemed to last forever, the intensity of it opening her mind even further to the things she knew were real, a multitude of images and memories flooding her brain simultaneously—thoughts of Elise, the incubi, every moment with Tom, Jasper’s corpse, the feeling of old books in her hands, Jasper’s painting of the woman bound to an altar.

  Suddenly, in a moment of complete clarity, Marie knew what she had to do, believing with all her heart that it would work, and knowing that her faith alone would be strong enough to cast the succubus out and away. But it was not belief in God, or exorcism, or even St. Lucy. She did not have to try to remember the words from the Lovecraft manuscript. She had only to open her mouth, and the words came out.

  “Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa,” she said. She could hear her own voice loud and strong enough now to make Father Joe look up from the book of spells. As she said the words, she thought of Jasper and all he had taught her about evil entities and negative energies and the ways they could be called together and dispersed.

  No longer so entranced by the demon, she could hear Father Joe say, “What’s this?” with annoyance. “You’re hoping to distract me, Marie. Kindly be still. You’ll only make this worse on yourself.”

  She ignored him. “Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa,” she said with conviction. Nothing was happening. The priest continued to read from the book, and the terrible weight pressed down on her with renewed force, but she fought back against rising terror, refusing to let herself think that the spell would not work.

  “Namon dagoreth
ashtakar sa,” she repeated, imagining some other, dark god hearing her and being bent to her will. With the weight still pressing on her, she pictured herself leaving her body, or rather her body becoming insubstantial and offering no resistance against the demon, giving it nothing to press against. It was as though she had slipped into a trance; she could hear herself repeating the words, chanting them now in a way reminiscent of chants in Latin she had heard Father Joe make over his flock a hundred times or more. And though she heard herself chanting, she could not physically feel her mouth making the words, nor was she conscious of having decided to start chanting at all.

  Fully hallucinating now, she saw the succubus—a fiercely beautiful, ghostly figure with wild hair floating all around her head and a predatory, hungry look in her eyes. It looked at her with the same lust as the incubi had had, but Marie recognized something more in that look. It was also the same expression she must have worn when she was casting out the other demons—a look of desire and satisfaction at knowing she was about to best her enemy.

  “Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa,” she chanted, now louder and louder. Distantly, she could hear Tom shouting, but she could not tell what he was saying.