Next, After Lucifer

by Daniel Rhodes

  “How awful,” Linden said. “That poor man.”

  “Yes,” Bertie said, drawing out the word. For a moment no one spoke.

  Then Skip said, “Just goes to show you.” He sounded cheerful; his hand busily shaped more lines on the mirror. “Play with fire, you get burned, just like mama always said. By the way, what time are we leaving tomorrow?”

  “That’s an all-inclusive ‘we,’John,” Linden said.

  McTell glanced up. His imagination had been vividly at work on Bertie’s story. “Again, please?”

  “We’re going to Nice, and you’re coming with us. We took a vote and decided we’re not going to let you be such a recluse.”

  Protest rose to his lips, but Skip said, “Now, come on, John. I’ve been doing all the squiring and Linden all the chauffeuring. Be a sport.”

  “And Bert can go off to the sailor bars without leaving Lin third wheel,” Mona said. Her gaze was bold and cool. Bertie smiled tightly and moved off toward the liquor cabinet.

  McTell shrugged. “I’ll bow to popular opinion.”

  Skip applauded ironically, then held up the glass tube and said, “Next round.”

  As the others gathered at the table, McTell walked quietly out onto the patio. Elbows on the railing, snifter in hand, he gazed out into the balmy Mediterranean night. Can’t fight it and you can’t hide, he thought sardonically.

  When the sliding door opened behind him, he did not turn. The footsteps were soft—the slap of sandals—and a little unsteady.

  “I wanted to apologize for jumping on you yesterday,” Mona said. She leaned a hip against the railing and settled on her elbow, facing him. Her head was tilted so her hair hung in a cloud.

  “Forget it,” he said wearily.

  “I’ve been having bad dreams, not sleeping well. I think that’s what’s got me on edge.”

  He sipped his brandy, gazing straight ahead.

  “Okay, then, I’m just a silly bitch.”

  McTell exhaled. “Mona—”

  She pushed away from the railing, standing straight; her voice was harsher, almost shrill. “Professor John McTell, the great brain trust, patting the dumb blonde on the ass and waiting for her to go away. Christ, I’m not so stupid I can’t see that.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “you ought to take it a little easier on the booze.”

  She drank defiantly, her gaze not leaving his face. “Bet I know something the professor doesn’t. Something about that little twat of a maid you’re so sweet on.”

  He swiveled, and triumph gleamed in her eyes. “Not that stupid,” she said again. “Not blind either. Unlike my dear sister. I see the way you look at that girl, just like I saw the way you looked at my dog—and the way you look at me. You may be a genius, professor, but you don’t know shit about hiding things.”

  Gazes locked, they measured each other. “What is it you know?” he said quietly.

  Mona laughed, a throaty drunken sound. Her lips glistened with liquor. “I know what’s going to happen to her tomorrow.”

  “And what,” McTell said with strained control, “might that be?”

  “What’s it worth to you?” she taunted.

  He said nothing, but held her gaze, forcing her with his will. Her smile faded, and then softly, almost sadly, she said, “What happens to all little girls. She’s gonna get fucked.”

  McTell’s breath stopped.

  She laughed again, a brittle humorless sound. “This trip to Nice? Guess whose idea it was. How about the guy who’s going to beg off sick at the last minute and stay home. Alone with her. All day.”

  He said. “Skip.”

  She nodded, and he realized distantly that the darkness in her eyes was pain. “It’s all he cares about anymore, young girls.”

  “Skip,” McTell said, “is going to stay home tomorrow and rape Alysse?”

  “Honey, you are naive. She’s probably been fucking since she was twelve, and doing it for money since she was fifteen. She’s a chambermaid, not a princess. Besides, when a rich man screws the help in this kind of place, it’s not called rape. Especially when she doesn’t have any father or brothers.”

  Skip’s voice echoed in his mind, cool, disinterested: She’s an orphan, I understand? No other family?

  “And you,” McTell said in disbelief, “aren’t going to do anything about it?”

  Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Why should I?” And then, softly, “Haven’t you ever heard of an understanding?” Her fingers moved to the top button of her blouse. “Sauce for the goose, honey. Grow up.” She undid the button, then the next. “Let’s take a swim,” she said.

  McTell stared at her. She was smiling again. “What’s wrong with that? They can join us if they want.” Her blouse was open to the waist, and her hand moved inside, caressing one breast. Behind her the pool was a black pit, the moon’s reflection a shimmering streak on its surface.

  But all McTell saw was a slow-motion kaleidoscope of Skip and Alysse, writhing in a tangle of limbs.

  “I have to check on something,” he said thickly, and stepped back, stumbling a little.

  Her smile remained, but her eyes were hard. “They’re going to go out for a drink,” she whispered. “Stay here with me.”

  As he reached the door, her voice followed, soft and mocking: “If you’re worried about your little girl, believe me, there’s nothing a few hundred francs won’t fix. It could be a sweet deal for you too, after Skip breaks the ice. They say the French invented the blow job, darling.” She paused, then added, “Just remember, my French is pretty good too.”

  He closed the door, shutting out the sound of her low laughter.

  As he crossed the room to the stairs, Linden said, “So, did you two kiss and make up?” The three of them were grouped around the coffee table; her eyes were bright from the cocaine, her smile almost frantic. Skip gazed at McTell, bland, sly—smirking with secret knowledge.

  McTell stared back. “Yes,” he said.

  “Good,” said Skip. “Then why don’t we all shoot into town for a drink? We’re feeling antsy.”

  “I just remembered a mistake I may have made,” McTell said, “in my book.”

  He climbed the stairs, fist clenched against the deep, powerful thrill in his palm, coursing to his shoulder with each beat of his heart. ”

  Slowly, he crouched and opened the bottom drawer of the desk. Willing his hands to steadiness, he opened the book.

  There were now not two, but three, lines of writing.

  He counted his steps as he walked to the Scotch decanter, concentrating on every movement: lifting out the cut-glass stopper, taking a leather-covered highball tumbler from the shelf, pouring. He drank, paused to breathe, drank the rest. Then he turned back to the book.

  The line read: Solitudo auri viatori pacem tribuit. The golden one’s solitude brings peace to the pilgrim.

  He wheeled and walked to the window, stared out at the silhouetted ruin. The obvious correlation would be with the adept who was using the book—making the metaphorical journey to, say, the philosopher’s stone.

  But another voice was speaking in his mind, a faint prudish whisper in the words of the priest Boudrie: If any of it were true, it would point to the existence of forces we can hardly imagine. The consequences of tampering with them would be beyond comprehension.

  McTell raised his hand before his face and gazed at the mark, half-covered by the fading smear of makeup. How long would his heroes, those men of iron decision and action, have hesitated? Of all the human beings who had ever dreamed of such an ability, how many had actually stood on this brink?

  For a length of time he could not measure, he stood rock-still while the two voices warred within him. When his mind finally cleared, he looked blankly around the room, as if it were a place he had never seen before. Then he put away the grimoire and walked downstairs.

  The others were standing, waiting. Mona had come back in, and was off a little to one side.

  “How about it?” Skip said.
“Up for a drink?”

  “I’m going to stay,” Mona said. “The coke’s giving me a headache.” Her gaze met McTell’s.

  He smiled back at her regretfully. “Since I’m the only one who hasn’t been indulging,” he said, “I suppose I’d better drive.” Her mouth turned down into a pout. He shrugged imperceptibly what could he do?—and with his own eyes said, Soon.

  “Did you fix your mistake, darling?” Linden said as they walked to the car.

  “No mistake,” McTell said. “Everything was fine.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Mona walked back into the empty living room and stood sulkily in its center. The gambit had not worked; now she was stuck here, alone. Her head was spinning with alcohol, cocaine, and a welter of emotions that refused to sort themselves out. She had never met a man who could make her feel so utterly inadequate. The worst of it was, he so obviously did it without trying. But in spite of that—or because of it—he was damned attractive, and all her instincts urged her in the same direction: Get hold of his cock, show him what she could do with it, and things would quickly change. Some part of her wanted his respect, or at least attention, any way she could get it; another, to draw him out in that most vulnerable way and then crush him, the way she had so often felt crushed by him; and still another, to prove to her brainy, condescending, cold-fish sister what the essentials of being a woman were really all about. Especially since her outburst over the dog, Linden had been treating her like a child—as if Mona had dared to trouble an Olympian.

  But in fifteen minutes alone with him, she thought grimly, she could ruin him for Linden forever.

  There was also the fact that Skip had not touched her in months, and in spite of their understanding, neither had anyone else. Her mouth twisted at the thought of Alysse.

  The girl made even her feel old, and she had lied to McTell: Alysse was a virgin if ever she had seen one.

  She folded her arms and began to pace. She had tried to stop it at first, of course, this fixation of Skip’s; but it became clear that the alternative was divorce, and she could not bear the thought of being alone. Besides, it would not exactly be rape—call it high-pressure seduction—and Skip would be more than generous in smoothing things over afterward. Offered more money than she could hope to make in months, even a year, the girl was sure to accept, and that would be the end of that. Anyway, it was bound to happen to Alysse sooner or later, that loss of innocence, just as it had happened to Mona herself, at the age of thirteen. An eighteen-year-old neighbor home from college; a summer of furtive passion, playing games on hot afternoons in the empty rooms of her family’s rambling summer house; and at the end, an abortion, and never seeing him again. A vague, distant regret touched her, a pang for another way it might have been, another person she might have become. She shook it off and finished her drink.

  Well, this business with McTell was not over yet. She had seen the look in his eyes as he was leaving. He was thinking about it, and one thing she knew: When a man got to that point, it did not take much—a few well-placed touches—to push him over the edge. She could waylay him when he came home; Skip would undoubtedly stumble drunkenly to bed, and Linden was too naive to wait up and chaperone. A whispery voice in Mona’s mind clucked its tongue, reminding her that McTell was, after all, her sister’s husband. She shrugged petulantly, said “half-sister” aloud, and walked to the bar. Her head really was beginning to ache. She poured another drink, inhaled another line of cocaine, paced the room. The jazz on the stereo was suddenly irritating. She went to turn it off.

  As she walked back, she saw that the television was on.

  She frowned; it was odd that she had not noticed it, but then, no sound was coming out. The picture on the screen seemed to be an old black-and-white movie, a horror film from the looks of it. The scene was a nighttime landscape, lit by a nearly full moon; on a mountaintop in the background was a silhouetted ruin that looked vaguely familiar. Nothing was moving; either the shot was still or, in typical French fashion, something had gone wrong with the transmission. Yes, now there were words across the screen, an apology about technical difficulties, no doubt. But they were written in an odd Gothic script. She bent close, making them out as Qui est celui qui vient?

  “Who is this one that comes?” she said. The sound of her voice made her suddenly conscious of the silence around her, of her aloneness.

  And now there did seem to be a shape moving on the screen—small, dark, barely visible, scuttling through the brush high on the mountainside. There was something about the way it moved that she did not like at all, even on film. Abruptly, the dreams that had been haunting her nights flickered in swift sequence through her mind. She straightened up uneasily and reached for the on-off button. When she touched it, she received a tiny shock, the way she might from a wall switch when in stocking feet.

  But the set was already off.

  She looked quickly back at the screen. The picture was gone.

  Some sort of satellite ghost, then, creating a static electricity. Who knew what they were doing these days, with all the different kinds of waves? She laughed nervously and went again to the bar to freshen her drink, ignoring the ever-weaker voice that warned her to quit. The lines of cocaine waiting on the mirror were irresistible. She prowled the room aimlessly, examining coffee-table books, toying with a backgammon board, flicking through the record collection. Dancing couples in smoke-filled rooms intertwined on the album covers. A stunning black woman, her nude body adroitly shadowed by the photographer, appealed with gazellelike eyes to a silhouetted clarinet player. The image brought a powerful charge of pure raw lust: the ache for a man who would not just fall into bed with a mumbled good-night, but hold her, talk to her, fuck her. She thought again of McTell by the pool, how close they had been. Wet, slippery bodies brushing in the dark water. Secret touches, whispers, quick and sudden heat, the urgency in the fear of being discovered . . .

  She stepped out into the sultry night. The water in the pool lapped faintly against the sides—a sexual, seductive sound. She kicked off a sandal, dipped her foot. It was blood warm.

  In a few seconds her clothes lay on the deck. She stood posed in the icy, silvery moonlight, breasts thrust forward—filled with the awareness of her own sensuality. Not McTell, not any man, could resist her like this. A sudden breeze sent a rush of cooler air against her skin, stiffening her nipples. She gripped her hair, twisted it into a knot atop her head, and with slow steps descended into the pool. The water slid tantalizingly up her thighs. She pushed off, glided silently, dreamily into the night.

  Then, from far away, came a faint haunting whistle. She twisted to face it; it was like nothing she had ever heard—soft, piercing, infinitely mournful. Her gaze moved over a barren knoll perhaps a hundred yards away.

  A figure stood on it.

  She sucked in her breath. Her movement splashed water in her eyes; she shook her head to clear them.

  The figure was gone.

  She continued to stare, treading water. Moonlight fell full upon the bare knoll. Where could he have gone? The impression had been so clear: a big, tall man, legs braced wide apart, both hands clasped upon some sort of staff.

  Her breath was coming quick and shallow. The water was no longer welcoming, but chilly, black, caressing her obscenely. She paddled hurriedly to the edge, pulled herself out. The rising wind gave her goose bumps, lifted the fine hairs on her arms. Clothes clutched to her breasts, she hurried inside, locking the door. There were other doors, several, never locked—in her confusion she could not even remember them all. She started for the main one, but the hallway was suddenly endless and dark, the whole house vast and empty.

  She stood still, calming the pounding of her heart. Well, what if it had been a man? He would probably not even have seen her, and in any case, there was no violence around here. Someone taking a shortcut home, or at worst, a poacher. She started for the stairs; she was cold and wanted a big fluffy towel. Abruptly she paused, swallowing hard at the image th
at had leaped into her mind, the television screen with its Gothic script: Qui est celui qui vient?

  A gust of wind rustled the shrubbery outside. She climbed on, bare feet making only a whisper on the thick carpet. Moonlight streamed through the octagonal panes of the French doors opening onto the second-story deck. From there she would be able to see the knoll again. Slowly, reluctantly, she moved toward the doors. Leaving them open, she stepped out into the wind. It blew her hair, tossed the dark treetops.

  Who is this one that comes?

  Timidly, she gripped the iron railing and peered around the building’s corner.

  Her mouth opened in an O. The man was back.

  The moonlight glinted off the stick he leaned on—not a stick, but a sword as tall as his chest. He seemed to be wearing armor and a headdress of mail. His stance held an indescribable menace. Wind wrapped suddenly around her body like grasping fingers. Something clicked behind her. She whirled. The doors had blown closed.

  She spun back. The man’s head was turned to the side, strong profile clearly silhouetted. He was watching something. Dazed, she turned her gaze to follow his.

  A choked cry broke from her lips.

  The shape was squat and dark, moving with impossible speed—not directly toward her, but in a zigzag,, as if following a spoor. It appeared briefly in a clearing, became a rapid blurred ink spot against the foliage, appeared again. At the sound of her cry it stopped instantly and straightened up. She choked off her breath in her throat. It stood waist-high, wrapped in some sort of hooded cloak. For seconds it cast its small head about, like a weasel sniffing the wind, stubby arms held rigid before it; and at last came the distant understanding of what the television had been showing her.

  Then a shriek tore through her mind, soundless, awful, the cry of an unappeasable thirst to destroy. It echoed and swelled within her, blackening the world around until all fell away and she was plunging into a vast plain of fire. Shapes—thousands, billions—rose from the flames, reaching for her, joining the creature’s scream until it was bursting her skull.