by Karen Hall
“Did you see anything unusual at all?”
“Yes,” he said. If she wanted details, she was going to have to fish for them.
“Did it have a dramatic impact on your life?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you saw exactly what you needed to see, didn’t you?” He hated her.
She laughed. “Jesus is a very economical guy. He doesn’t waste special effects on people who don’t need them.”
He loved it. The demonologist was going to explain Jesus to him. “Did He tell you that Himself ?” he asked.
She nodded. “He makes an appearance in one of my bathroom tiles on the thirteenth of every month.”
Michael laughed in spite of himself. Charlotte laughed, too.
“I knew I could win you over,” she said.
“One laugh doesn’t prove anything. I’m not that easy.”
“We’ll see.”
“So tell me. What are the universal demon stories?”
“Everything you described in your New Yorker article. The voice, the presence, the smell, the ESP—that’s all textbook stuff.”
“Yeah. I’ve read a few of those textbooks myself.”
“Here it is,” she said, pulling a folder out of the drawer. “Filed under G, for reasons known only to a dead man.” She opened the folder and looked at the contents as she made her way to the sofa.
“I know the story very well,” she said. “I just wanted to have the details in front of me, in case you needed them.”
She sat in an upholstered chair across from him and placed the closed folder in her lap.
“Did you know Vincent?” Michael asked.
She nodded. “I met him through my father, initially. Tom hooked the two of them up when Vincent started having problems. It was strictly professional at first, but they became friends. After my father died, Vincent and I kept in touch. We’d have dinner about once a year.”
“What kind of problems was Vincent having?”
“This was eons ago. Before you were born. First it was a series of physical ailments. Nightmares, headaches, anxiety attacks. Then it moved into sensory assaults. Smells, sounds.”
“And Tom told him a demon was causing it?”
“No, actually it was Vincent who told Tom what was causing it.”
“Why did he think—?”
“We’ll get to that,” she said. She reached for her cigarettes; took one out, lit it, stuffed the matchbook under the cellophane, and tossed the pack back on the coffee table.
“Tom tells me you and Vincent were very close,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I can understand that. Vincent was a real character.”
Michael nodded, not sure how to take it.
“I feel for you,” Charlotte said. “None of this is going to be easy for you to hear.”
“I want to know the truth.”
Charlotte nodded. She took another drag on the cigarette, then continued.
“A few months after the sounds and smells and whatnot, Vincent started having these . . . spells, I guess you’d say. He’d black out and wake up somewhere else hours later, with no memory of the intervening time. And he wasn’t waking up in church, if you get my drift.”
“Where was he waking up?”
“Bars—speakeasies, I guess—brothels . . . places like that. He didn’t tell anyone. Just kept hoping it would stop. Then one night he woke up in a room with a prostitute who was cowering in a corner with a recently acquired black eye and a bleeding lip, and there was no one there but the two of them.” She paused to let him digest this.
“Vincent? ” Michael asked.
She nodded, tapping ashes into an ashtray. “That was what prompted him to go to Tom.”
“No way,” Michael said. Still, in the back of his mind he could hear Vincent’s voice from the tape. “I have to tell you . . . bad things . . .”
“My father and Tom worked with him,” Charlotte said. “Blessings. Prayers. Never a full-scale exorcism. He didn’t need it. He threw himself into the Church so completely, it was obvious his choice had been made and his mind wasn’t going to change. But your father—he was never very religious, you know.”
Michael nodded. His father had apparently been an avowed agnostic—a major source of agony for Vincent.
“So,” Charlotte went on, “that left the entire family vulnerable, and the demon damn near wiped you out.”
“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “You think a demon was responsible for the Winecoff fire?”
“I can’t prove it, obviously. But yes. I do.”
“That fire was set by an arsonist.”
Charlotte chuckled.
“What?” Michael asked, annoyed.
“You know the Eskimo story?”
“What Eskimo story?”
“It’s an old joke. A guy goes up to the priest after Mass and says, ‘This God thing is a bunch of crap. I just got back from Alaska and while I was there, I got stranded in a snowstorm, and I got down on my knees and begged God to help me, and He didn’t do a damned thing.’ The priest says, ‘Then how is it that you’re standing here talking to me now?’ The guy says, ‘Well, luckily for me, this Eskimo just happened to be walking by.’ ”
She stopped to give Michael time to digest it, then continued.
“God works through people. The Devil works through people. We’re all soldiers, for one side or the other. Didn’t St. Ignatius teach you that?”
“But you’re saying all those people died because of Vincent’s demon?”
“What do you think? The Devil’s gonna make sure he doesn’t hurt any innocent bystanders?”
Michael had no answer, but it still sounded insane.
“Tell me something,” Charlotte said. “How much do you know about Vincent’s childhood?”
“Not a lot.”
“What, exactly?”
Michael thought about it. “I know his mother died when he was born. His father was a mortician. Owned a couple of funeral homes. They had a fair amount of money. His father wanted Vincent to take over the business.”
She chuckled. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“What’s funny?”
“Your grandfather grew up in Charleston, South Carolina,” she said, ignoring his question.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Beautiful place. All those antebellum homes and huge old trees with Spanish moss hanging down. So peaceful looking, you’d never suspect the things that go on . . .”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t mention it in the Chamber of Commerce brochures, but Charleston has a long history as a hotbed of Satanism. There are cults there now that go back to the Mayflower, and beyond. Transgenerational cults, passed down in families for centuries.”
Michael nodded as if he believed her. He had some vague memory of Vincent talking about Charleston and Satanic cults and Freemasonry and other related issues. Vincent had always been paranoid about cults and secret societies—convinced they were highly organized and poised to take over the world. It was a side of Vincent that Michael hadn’t liked very much. A pocket of unsophisticated weirdness.
“Do you know anything about Satanists?” she asked.
“I saw Rosemary’s Baby.”
Charlotte didn’t smile.
He tried again. “I know as much as the average person, I guess. They’ve been getting a lot of press lately—”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Let me give you a clue,” she said. “One way to tell a die-hard Satanist is that you’ll never see him on Oprah with the word ‘Satanist’ superimposed on his chest while he chats it up with the housewives.”
She stubbed out her latest cigarette, reached for another. She lit it, took a slow drag.
“The word ‘Satanist’ is misleading to begin with. There are all kinds of Satanists.”
Michael shifted in his seat, annoyed by the digression. C
harlotte plowed ahead, unfazed.
“You’ve got your self-styled individual weirdos. You usually hear about them when they get arrested. That ‘Night Stalker’ character, for example. They make it up as they go along and then blame the Devil. Not that the Devil isn’t involved. But Satanism, like Christianity, was always meant to be a group activity.
“Then you’ve got the dabblers. People who think it’s cute. I’ve seen more than a few heavy-metal teenagers who’ve conjured up something they don’t know what to do with. I’d be willing to bet that’s what happened to your Danny Ingram.”
“How did you—”
“New York Times. You look better than your picture, by the way.”
Thanks?
“Then you’ve got your pop Satanists,” she continued. “The Anton LeVey crowd. They’re basically dabblers with enough money for robes. They think they’re bad, but they’re mostly silly.
“The gang to worry about are the traditional Satanists. You’ll rarely hear about them, and very little has been written. But they’re out there. They’ve been out there for a long time. They’re very quiet and very careful. They have to be, or they’d all be in jail.”
“So you’re one of those people who believes they’re out there in organized droves, killing people and throwing them into portable incinerators?” Michael asked. Vincent had been one of those people, too. They’d had several fierce arguments about it.
“Michael, I’ve been studying this stuff for decades. And things are becoming clearer lately. The baby boomers are starting to remember, and a lot of them are starting to talk.”
“Yes, about their ‘recovered’ memories that they’ve discovered with the help of expensive therapists.”
“You asked me to tell you what I know.”
“I meant what you know about Vincent.”
“I am talking about Vincent.”
Michael chuckled. “What? Are you going to tell me Vincent was a transgenerational Satanist?”
“Not exactly.” Her face didn’t change.
“What does that mean?”
“Your great-grandfather, Andrew Kinney, was a transgenerational Satanist. He was the high priest of a Satanic cult.”
Michael stared at her. She might as well have said his great-grandfather was a hyena.
“That’s absolutely insane.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, Andrew Kinney was a militant Catholic. Vincent told me he went to Mass every day of his life.”
Charlotte nodded. “They do that. They go out of their way to look like pillars of society. It diverts suspicion. I’ve even heard of priests who were Satan worshipers. The cults love infiltrating the Church, because then they can steal relics and consecrated hosts and defile them in every way imaginable.”
Michael didn’t know what to say. It was all too incredible to take in.
“Vincent was raised in the cult,” Charlotte continued. “He received the standard treatment of children raised in Satanic cults—he was ritually abused, emotionally blackmailed, made to participate in all sorts of atrocities, and then they convinced him he’d be killed if he told anyone. Meanwhile, he was being groomed to take Andrew’s place. If it makes you feel any better, he hated it from day one. He went along because he had no choice. He thought they’d kill him if he resisted. He was probably right.”
Michael shook his head. “It’s just not possible.”
“Michael, why are you sitting in my living room?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who sent you to me?”
Michael thought about it. She was right. Tom Graham was not only Vincent’s friend. He was also Vincent’s confessor. There was nothing about Vincent that Tom wouldn’t know, which was why Michael had gone to Tom in the first place.
“Monsignor has been known to embellish the truth,” Michael offered.
“I didn’t hear the story from Tom, for the same reason you didn’t.”
Of course not. She had to have heard it from Vincent. Jesus . . . He sat back, bracing himself. “What else did Vincent tell you? Is Rebecca a part of all this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Rebecca lived in Charleston. I don’t know whether Vincent knew her before it all happened or not. They were in such different social classes that I seriously doubt it. She was one of about thirteen children; her parents were sharecroppers. She was apparently very beautiful, but fragile. And she was only thirteen when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“Rebecca was abducted by a couple of the men from the cult. They took her into the woods behind Andrew’s house. Andrew had built a barn way back in the woods, which was where they held all their rituals. The two men locked her in a room of the barn and waited until around three in the morning, when they all convened for the ritual. There’s a specific ceremony for the purpose of consecrating to Satan the heir to the throne—to Andrew’s throne, so that meant Vincent. They do all the usual stuff. Black Mass, animal sacrifices, they drink and eat things you don’t even want to know about. The rest of the ritual involves a mock wedding between the chosen heir and an unwilling virgin. In this case, Rebecca. Drugs and alcohol are often involved, and between that and the ritual itself it’s a very frenzied thing. At the end of which, the marriage is consummated.”
It took Michael a moment to recover enough to speak. “You’re telling me . . . that Vincent raped a thirteen-year-old girl?”
“Well, he was only seventeen himself, if that makes any difference.”
“Hell, no, it doesn’t make any difference.”
“Then yes. That’s what I’m telling you.”
Michael looked at her. She was dead serious. She was real. He wasn’t going to wake up, and no one was going to tell him this was someone’s idea of a sick joke.
He stood up. “I need some air,” he said, and made his way out the front door.
After a moment, Charlotte came out onto the porch and sat on the stoop beside him.
“I realize this is horrible for you,” she said, “but there’s more. You need to know why Tom sent you here.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’d better care, Michael. This is all a lot more personal to you than you realize.”
“It feels pretty damned personal.”
“I mean, there are consequences for you. More than just having to live with the knowledge of what happened.”
He looked at her. She went on.
“Rebecca got pregnant—”
“I figured that much.”
“—and Vincent helped her escape the cult and the two of them ran away. Vincent wanted to marry her and try to start a decent life. But she ran away from him the first chance she got. It took him years to find her again. Meanwhile, he married your grandmother, settled down, tried to leave it all behind him. Except he didn’t have that luxury. And neither do you.”
“He ran away with Rebecca?”
“Yes.”
“So he could have run away before that.”
“Michael, he was right about the danger involved. These people don’t kid around. But there was finally something that scared him more than what they might do to him.”
“Which was?”
“He knew what they’d do to the baby when it was born.”
He looked at her. “They’d kill it?”
She nodded. “As a sacrifice to Satan. They probably would have made Rebecca kill it, as these things go. And then they would cut it open, take out its heart—”
“Stop,” Michael said.
“—chop it up, and eat it.”
“Stop.”
“The reason Vincent knew they’d do that is he’d seen them do it before. He’d been forced to participate—”
Michael stood up. “I can’t hear any more of this—”
“You have to hear it. You have to know that you’re in danger.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The reason Vincent knew what wa
s happening to him is he’d seen Andrew do it before. He’d seen the consequences.”
“Of what?”
“Andrew’s cult had a ritual where they would conjure a demon and attach it to someone. The demon’s job was to destroy the bloodline.”
“Oh, please,” Michael said, turning to walk away.
“Michael, think about it. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that you ended up involved in the Danny Ingram thing? He was trying to get you then. He wanted you when you were unprepared—before you knew the story. You saved yourself by calling Father Curso in, because as long as he was the exorcist, you were sheltered. But he’s not going to give up.”
“I have to go,” Michael said. She was still saying something to him as he made his way to his car, but he didn’t hear her. He refused to hear another word.
He tried to take a shortcut and ended up lost on a country road that might have worked had he wanted to get to Atlanta by way of Egypt. The fuel tank and his nerves were both on empty by the time he finally saw the light of a two-pump gas station and convenience store.
When he got out to pump gas, he could hear the sound of the interstate, so he figured he should be able to find it without compromising his manhood and asking for directions. He listened to the ticking of the pump and tried to calm down.
Why was he having such a hard time believing what was happening to him? He was a priest, for God’s sake; it wasn’t like the Devil was a new concept. And as for Andrew Kinney and his cult—look at Nazi Germany. If people could throw women and children into gas chambers and then skin them and use their skin for lampshades, why was it unthinkable that they’d kill a baby and chop up its heart and eat it? People were capable of doing inconceivably despicable things, and in an organized and ritualized manner.
But Vincent . . . not Vincent, not even Vincent as a teenager . . .
He heard a noise and looked up to see a lanky kid in a blue uniform with RUSTY stitched on the pocket. He had matching coffee and tobacco stains down the front of the shirt and looked like he hadn’t drawn a breath through his nose since the third grade.
“Need me to check under the hood?” he asked.
“I’ve got it, thanks.”
The kid looked disappointed but didn’t argue. Didn’t leave, either. He stood there, staring at Michael.
