‘I don’t know what I can say to you, Rob, except to offer you my deepest condolences.’
‘Father – it’s not your condolences we’re asking for. It’s your help. We need you to come here and exorcise this demon for us. We even know its name, or at least we’re pretty sure that we do. I won’t say it out loud. That’s what seemed to rouse it into killing Francis.’
Yet another silence. Then, ‘I know its name, too, Rob. Francis told me. I know exactly what it is, and it is not the Devil. I sensed that when I came to visit Allhallows Hall, and that is why I was so reluctant to confront it… and why I am exceedingly hesitant to confront it now.’
‘I understand that, father. I fully understand. But we can’t think of anybody else who can get rid of it for us. At some point we’ll have to report Francis’s death to the police, but the police don’t carry out exorcisms. Neither will the local rector. He’s an Anglican, and Anglicans don’t do exorcisms, do they?’
‘It’s not unheard of. There have been a few occasions when an Anglican clergyman has been given the authority to cleanse a home of suspected demons. First of all, though, he must be given permission by his diocesan bishop, and the possession will be thoroughly investigated by the deliverance ministry. They usually send along a qualified psychiatrist to interview the people concerned, and also a medical doctor.’
Rob looked across at Vicky, and then at Portia and Katharine. Grace still had her back turned, staring at the painting.
‘We can’t wait to go through all that rigmarole, father. This is urgent. As far as Francis explained it to us, Timmy and Martin and Ada are trapped in the very second when they disappeared, which means that with every minute that passes they’re further and further behind us in time. It’s like we’ve dropped them off by the side of the road somewhere and driven away and left them there. If we delay it any longer, I’m really worried that it’ll be too late to get them back. It may be too late already.’
Father Salter said, ‘In this case, I may not need to apply to the bishop for permission before attempting an exorcism. I most certainly would do, if we were talking about the Devil – Old Dewer – or any one of his pantheon of demons from the Lesser Key of Solomon. And, like the Anglicans, I would probably have to call in a psychiatrist, too. I would have to purge Allhallows Hall of anything that could harbour evil spirits – paintings, drawings, horror and fantasy novels, mirrors and stained-glass windows. If you had a Ouija board, that would have to be thrown out and burned.’
‘But we’re not talking about the Devil or any of his demons, are we?’
‘No, Rob. We’re talking about something that walked this earth long before Satan was first given a name. Something far more powerful than Satanic demons, although like all demons it obviously had its weak spot, its Achilles heel. That must have been how it was caught and incarcerated in Allhallows Hall in the first place.’
‘So what do we have to do to get rid of it?’
‘We have to release it, do you see? Not exorcise it so much as set it free. I have to warn you, though, that the danger involved in doing that is almost incalculable. It will be like a lion let out of its cage, which has no gratitude for the keeper who unlocked it, but sees only one of the men who kept it imprisoned for so long, and on whom it wants to take its bloody revenge.’
‘Well, you say you know this demon’s name, so presumably you know what it’s capable of.’
‘Yes, I do. And this morning you have sadly witnessed some of its appalling supernatural power for yourself. One of its many alternative names is Bonebiter. Sometimes it was known as the Fluter, because it was said to make flutes out of the shin bones of its victims so that it could whistle for its pack of dogs when it took them out hunting at night. That’s why the locals call them Whist Hounds.’
‘So you know what it is. What I’m asking you is, do you think you’re capable of setting it free? And if you are, will you?’
Rob’s question was followed by the longest pause yet. It was so long that Rob eventually said, ‘Father Salter? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, Rob. I’m still here. But my car’s in for a service. You’ll have to come to Tavistock to fetch me.’
‘You mean you’ll do it? The exorcism?’
‘As a minister of Jesus, who sacrificed His life to save those who begged for salvation, I can hardly refuse, can I?’
‘Thank you, father. Thank you. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.’
*
Father Salter was waiting for Rob on the steps outside Our Lady of the Assumption when he came driving up the hill. It had started to rain again, so the priest was holding up a large black umbrella. In his other hand he was carrying a flat black leather briefcase. Obviously the exorcism that he intended to carry out didn’t call for three-headed cats or Celtic shields and swords, or Tupperware boxes full of white ghost slugs.
Rob climbed out so that Father Salter could stow his umbrella in the boot.
‘I can understand how much you don’t want to do this,’ he said. ‘Believe me – if I could have found anybody else to ask, I would have.’
Father Salter eased himself into the passenger seat and fastened his seat belt. ‘There are times in our lives, Rob, when all of us have to face up to what we fear the most. I have no fear of Satan and his demons, because I have been fighting against them all my life, and I know their many tricks and deceits, but I also know how much they fear God, despite all their mockery and their bravado.’
Rob turned the Honda around and started to drive back across the Tavistock Canal to Sampford Spiney. ‘But this malevolent force? Now we’re so far away, can I mention its name?’
‘It would be safer if you didn’t. Dartmoor and all its surrounding area was the land in which he was dominant since time immemorial, and it’s quite possible that even in his captivity he can hear every whisper and every branch break from miles around. He was known by that name in the days of the Druids, and the Druids’ human sacrifices were made to appease him. I call him a “him” in the same way that I call Satan a “him”, but they are both abstract forces of pure evil that have no human identity.’
‘But he’s not Satan – or Old Dewer, as they call him round here?’
‘Ah, but that’s exactly who he is. When Christianity took over from Druidism and all the beliefs that had gone before Druidism, the clergy taught the local people that this malevolent force that rode around the moors with his pack of hounds must be the Devil as he was recognised by the Christian Church. But of course he wasn’t. He was still the demon whose name we are being cautious enough not to speak out loud.’
‘And did he really ride around the moors, hunting for unbaptised babies?’
‘Well, something or somebody did, and this continued until the late seventeenth century. The parish records show that, over the years, scores of mutilated children were discovered on the moors – bodies that appeared to have been brutally cut open and then savaged by feral dogs. The way they had been killed was consistent with Druid sacrifices. And as it happened, very few of the babies were unbaptised. That was an embellishment added by the clergy in order to encourage the local people to have their children christened. Although I say it myself, the clergy can be notorious liars when it suits them.’
They were driving past the Moortown junction now, and it was raining so hard that Rob could barely see the lane in front of them.
‘But when did you say the killings stopped? The late seventeenth century?’
‘That’s right. Quite abruptly, from what I’ve read about it, and the demon and his hounds were never heard around Dartmoor again, although of course he continued to live in legend. Even his original name survived among the few locals who still practised Druid magic. And this is an interesting fact: when he visited Plymouth, William Blake, the poet and artist, was told the legend by an old fellow from Tavistock, but probably because of the old fellow’s thick Devon accent he misheard the name as “Jesus”.
‘Blake mistakenly assumed
that Jesus had walked around Dartmoor, seeking out unbaptised babies, and that was when he wrote “And did those feet in ancient times, walk upon England’s mountains green?” What he didn’t realise was that his poem was inspired not by the Son of God but by one of the most malevolent forces in all human history.’
They reached Sampford Spiney and turned into the driveway of Allhallows Hall. Rob switched off the engine and sat quiet for a moment before he opened the door.
‘You’re sure that you’re up to this?’ he asked Father Salter.
Father Salter laid a hand on his arm and said gently, ‘Probably not. But if I can chase out this demon, I shall know that I can beat any other evil spirit that ever comes my way, and that includes the Lord of the Flies himself.’
37
Vicky opened the front door for them and pressed her hand to her chest in relief.
‘Thank you so much for coming, father. I was petrified that you wouldn’t.’
‘As I was telling Rob, my dear, we don’t call ourselves “Christian soldiers” for nothing. There are times when we have to gird our loins and face our enemy, no matter how fearful we are.’
Rob led Father Salter into the middle of the hallway. ‘We’ve left everything just as it was when Francis was killed.’
Before he looked around at anything else, Father Salter went across and stood in front of the silhouette of Francis on the bricked-up cellar doorway. The blood was beginning to soak into the plaster and it was already turning brown. He reached out and touched it with his fingertips and then he made the sign of the cross and murmured a benediction. ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…’
After that, he turned away from the wall and surveyed the scattered remains of Francis’s attempt at spiritual decontamination.
‘I can see that Francis was trying to carry out the ritual we call Mala omnia expurget, but with the addition of some strong Druidic symbolism, such as this cat with three heads, and this horrible grey sheepskin. He told me that he would be. I’m extremely surprised that it wasn’t effective.’
‘After he had shouted out its name, the whole house started shaking,’ Vicky told him.
Father Salter unclipped his briefcase and took out a white fringed stole, which he kissed, draped around his neck, and then again made the sign of the cross.
‘From the way in which poor Francis was pulled through the wall here, there’s no doubt at all in my mind that the force is located here, behind this blocked-off doorway. But even though it’s confined down in the cellar, its evil influence is clearly strong enough to have permeated the foundations and the very stones of the walls themselves, all the way up to the tiles on the roof. Its great supernatural strength was obviously the reason that it was hunted down and caught and brought here. Its presence here in the house gave the Wilmingtons the power that was needed to convert the priest’s hide that Nicholas Owen had crafted for them into a witching room.’
‘Who do you think caught it? And how?’ asked Rob. ‘I mean, how the hell do you go about catching a thing like that and bricking it up in your cellar?’
‘As I said before, Rob, every demon has its weak spot, just as the purest among us are susceptible now and again to temptation. Whoever caught it must have had an intimate knowledge of the moors around here, and of the stories associated with every tor and every leat. You said that you’d met John Kipling. He’ll be the man to ask about it. He’s likely to know the date when dead children stopped being found on the moors, and he may even have a census of who was living in Sampford Spiney at the time, and who was acquainted with the Wilmingtons.’
He approached the cellar doorway again, and stood there silently for a few seconds with his head bowed. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I can actually hear it. At the Pontifical University in Rome they teach you how to listen for the malevolence that sometimes radiates from demonic possession. I have heard it several times before, but I have never come across anything like this – never. This has a completely different pitch to it, if you follow me. Satan’s demons almost always sing sweetly and seductively, to cajole us into doing wrong, but this is so jarring and discordant. It’s like some wind instrument being played in all the wrong keys. The Fluter.’
Rob came and stood next to him. ‘I could sense something myself. I don’t know… I couldn’t hear anything, not like you, but I could certainly feel something. It was like static electricity, like when you rub a balloon and it makes your hair all stand on end.’
‘Then we must get to work, Rob, without delay, and exorcise it. But before we begin the ritual of exorcism, we should go up to the witching room and offer prayers and words of encouragement to those who are trapped there. We may not be able to see them, but they will be able to hear us, I’m sure, and if any souls are going to give us moral and spiritual support, they will.’
‘If you do manage to exorcise it, will they all be set free?’ asked Vicky.
‘I would be lying to you if I said that I knew,’ said Father Salter. ‘I am hopeful, though, and I am placing my trust in the Lord.’
‘But some of them have been trapped in that room for decades, or even longer,’ Portia put in. ‘If we manage to set them free… won’t they be incredibly old?’
‘Again, I don’t know. This is completely unknown territory for me, spiritually speaking. As I say, I am familiar with the ways of Satan and his legions, and the modern ways of dealing with them. They made several fundamental errors in that film of The Exorcist. If I had been there, instead of Father Karras, I would have dismissed that petty demon in a matter of minutes. I certainly wouldn’t have allowed him to screw that poor girl’s head around in a circle like that.
‘This force, though, this presence… he’s a different kettle of fish altogether. If he predates the Druids and the Romans, he may not have a grasp either of English or of Latin. It is no good trying to dismiss a demon who can’t understand a word you’re saying to him.’
Vicky held on to Rob’s arm and said, ‘I’m frightened.’
Father Salter gave her a wry smile. ‘So am I, my dear. More than you can imagine.’
*
They climbed the stairs and walked along the corridor to the stained-glass window. Rob now knew that the figure in the black cloak with his back turned wasn’t Old Dewer, but he tried hard not to think of his real name, or even the fact that William Blake had misheard it as ‘Jesus’. Instead, he tried to recite Jerusalem in his head: Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire.
He lifted the window seat and pulled up the crucifix. Father Salter watched apprehensively as the pulleys beneath the floor clicked and whirred and the dado panel swung slowly inwards.
‘This is remarkable,’ he said, bending sideways so that he could peer underneath the dado rail into the witching room. ‘I have never seen a priest’s hide as enormous as this. Forget about a single Jesuit, you could fit half the diocese in here!’
Rob glanced at him, and realised by his expression that he was only trying to sound light-hearted to hide his fear.
Rob ducked down and went in first, followed by Father Salter and then Katharine and Vicky. Grace came in, too, to stand by Rob and Vicky.
Portia held back. ‘My heart’s pounding like a hammer,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and lie down for ten minutes and give myself ten minutes of intensive vipassana meditation.’
The witching room appeared to be empty, although the blankets were still lying in untidy heaps on the horsehair flooring. Rob couldn’t be sure if the blanket that he had taken downstairs was back here now, because they were all the same colour and equally filthy.
Father Salter walked slowly down to the end of the room and back again, his hands pressed together in a gesture of prayer. Now and again he hesitated, as if he had bumped into somebody, and once he stopped dead and looked around, as if somebody had called him by name.
‘My goodness,’ he said under his breath, when he came back to join the rest of them. ‘It’s crowded in here. Crowded with soul
s! I can’t even guess how many. They’re here, of course, but they’re not now.’
‘You can actually feel them, can’t you?’ said Vicky.
‘Only faintly, but yes… and I can sense so many different feelings among them. Some of them seemed to be resigned to their fate, and have accepted that they could be here for as long as this house remains standing. There are some others, though, who are still filled with pent-up rage because they’ve been imprisoned. Perhaps the more recent captives.’
He frowned, and closed his eyes, and lifted his fingertips to the lobes of both ears, and when Grace started to say something he said, ‘Shh! Quiet, please, for just a moment!’
They waited, and then Rob asked him, ‘What? What can you hear?’
‘I believe that I can hear a child crying. It’s very indistinct, and I can’t tell for sure if it’s a boy or a girl. But, yes… it is a child, and it sounds as if it’s crying in its sleep – as if it’s having a nightmare from which it can’t wake up.’
‘Oh my God, it’s Timmy!’ Vicky gasped. ‘It’s Timmy and he’s here and he’s still alive! I knew it, Rob, I knew it, I knew it!’
She clasped her hand over her mouth and started to sob.
Father Salter touched her shoulder and said, ‘Have faith, my dear. Have courage. When they lifted Our Lord down from the cross you can imagine what Mary felt, and how she must have wept. But her son rose again, did he not? And if God is willing, your son, Timmy, will reappear to you in just the same way.’
For the first time since Timmy had disappeared, Rob had a blasphemous thought. If God is willing? He’d better be fucking willing. I’ll never forgive Him if we don’t get our son back.
Father Salter went over and stood between the two stained-glass windows that overlooked the garden. It was still raining and the rain tipped and tapped against the windowpanes. Rob thought the rain sounded as if there were beggars outside, persistently trying to catch their attention, beggars walking on stilts so that they could reach the first floor. He didn’t know what had conjured up such a bizarre and disturbing image in his mind, and he kept glancing at the windows to reassure himself that it wasn’t real.
The House of a Hundred Whispers Page 26
