Evil Unearthed: Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-five

Stephen's head was spinning, and not only due to the lump which was rapidly swelling and painfully throbbing on it; his mind was in a whirlwind of confusion as well, and as Kathleen fairly dragged him through the house in search of Barrett and The Conjure Woman, he tried to get things clear. If Barrett was really possessed by an evil force, would he kill Vangie? Could this dark thing have the power to make a mild if slightly misanthropic anthropology professor act like a deranged psychopath? All common sense would answer this in the negative, but Maljardin, he reflected, was not a place of common sense. It was a place on the very edge of reality. It seemed to sit on some imaginary border-line between rationality and insanity, and as he could more than attest, that boundary was not a fixed thing. The line had already blurred several times since his arrival, and now, it was rapidly fading away, and he feared that if either Barrett or Vangie died tonight, it would never return again.

"Come on," Kathleen barked in her Ulster brogue. "Don't you faint on me, Father!" He realized that he had been swaying on his feet, and somewhere through the pain in his head and the pangs of fear in his heart, he heard Kathleen's voice, high and strained, and her use of his clerical title. He knew what that meant. She had reverted to her Roman Catholic upbringing and was looking to him as a priest in an hour when he felt as though he was anything but! Still, he thought, he was a priest, even in the face of the enemy, and this had to give him power against whatever was waiting for them, so he stood up a little straighter, walked a little faster and began to pray silently as they went.

There were more cries of pain from Vangie and even some anguished sobs from Barrett which seemed torn from his deepest soul, and by these gruesome sounds he and Kathleen were led at last to the cavernous and unbook-filled library which looked, when they entered it, even more gruesome.

"My God!" Stephen heard Kathleen's sharp intake of breath as she surveyed the destruction, and he thought that she too was praying rather than simply cursing. Tables were overturned, chairs lay shivered in pieces as though they had been used in some ill-conceived furniture-jousting match, and the glass from half a dozen display-cabinets littered the luxurious carpet,

"Your God? Your God? Certainly not, my dear!" Barrett stood in the middle of the room, striking a jaunty pose which was totally unlike him and wearing a smile which looked more like the leer of a mad death's-head. The lines and angles of his skull could be seen through the flesh of his face, and it was only now that Stephen realized the full extent of the illness which must be ravaging his body. Yet, though he looked skeletal, he stood tall and strong, that same force that Stephen had felt so recently still emanating from him in dark, electric waves.

"Welcome to my party, Miss O'Dell, and you too, Father Dawson! I'm glad my little parting shot did not prevent your attendance!"

"Stephen! My God! He's standing just the way the portrait is posed!" Now it was his turn to steady Kathleen when her legs began to buckle.

"You're very observant, Miss O'Dell! No wonder my female descendant has kept you by her side for so long! Come in a little farther, please! Sit down if you like! You both look as though you could use a rest."

Stephen and Kathleen stepped carefully through the debris to where the spirit of Jacques Eloi Des Mondes made Barrett's hand gesture. Here, two chairs were placed with their backs to the library door, and when they peered around their high and heavily-carven backs, the scene that lay before them made them clutch each other frantically for support. Vangie lay on her back just as Stephen had seen her in her cabin on the main island, her face contorted in a rictus of what looked like excruciating pain. Still, she seemed not to be in a trance. Her eyes were able to focus, though with a great effort, and Stephen knew that she saw him as he took the seat which he now understood had been appointed for him. Kathleen tried to go to Vangie, but she was prevented by some exertion of Jacques's will, and Stephen soon found her sitting beside him, just as though the two of them were about to watch the latest Broadway sensation, if, that is, that sensation was going to be the sight of a man covered in honey being bitten by thousands and thousands of fire-ants. Kathleen looked at Vangie with deep sorrow in her eyes, and Stephen swore that he heard the other woman whisper something encouraging, though he could not catch the words. Jacques, however, evidently did, for as he came around to take his place near Vangie, he said:

"That's right, Conjure Woman, keep up your spirits! Do what you can while you can, for it won't be long now. You've stood in my way for far too many years, you and your father before you!"

"You can't make him do it, Jacques," said Vangie through clenched teeth. "If you could, it would be done by now."

"She's right, Old Man," said Stephen, suddenly wanting Barrett to emerge with every fibre of his being. "You've been through too much with her! Don't let him make you do anything!"

"Are you really a priest, Dawson? Surely not! Your vow of celibacy has been broken! What good are you now?" This taunting was making Stephen angry.

"Shut up," he found himself saying. "Just shut up!"

"We can't engage him," said Kathleen in a whisper. "Remember?"

She was right, Stephen knew, but all he wanted to do was to engage him. He wanted to punch his lights out for using his body and now Barrett's, but then he reflected that if he did punch Jacques, he would only be inflicting more pain on an already overburdened body. No, all he could do was try to get to Barrett the way Vangie had done.

"Resist, Stephen," Vangie now said in a clear voice. "Resist, no matter what happens!" and as though in answer, some new torture was put upon her, so that she screamed again and Stephen saw a terrible spasm not unlike that which had gripped Bill Temple before he died. He felt the goose-flesh begin to creep up his arms and across his back, and he knew that it was not simply the sound of Vangie's screaming which had caused it, for suddenly he knew that he was being confronted by the same dark and chilling presence which had seemed to challenge him at Bill's bedside. What could he do? It was Vangie who had helped him to stand against it the last time, but she was clearly beyond helping him now. He tried to move to make the sign of the cross, but his arm seemed pinned where it was, his hand folded together with the other in his lap.

"Ah," said Jacques in Barrett's voice, " you're unable to move? Very good! I can kill you just as my lovely bride killed your--your uncle, is it? Yes. Poor old Uncle Matt! So sad about his sudden demise!"

Stephen tried to speak, but he felt an impossibly large lump in his throat which prevented him, but there was a sudden voice which said what he had been longing to say.

"Be damned, Jacques Eloi Des Mondes! Be damned to the hell you created for yourself all those years ago!" The voice was strong and assured and had a very pronounced Northern Irish lilt, and suddenly, Kathleen was on her feet and confronting the grinning menace before her, all her former fear and weakness seemingly forgotten.

"This is an interesting turn of events, Miss O'Dell," purred the demon. "Tell me how you've managed it?"

"I will speak," she said in a voice like ice, "but not to you. I speak instead to Robert James Barrett! All is not lost, Robert! Come now and fight this darkness! We are all here with you, and we'll help you if you let us."

"What stirring words, Miss O'Dell! Thank you for your rousing speech, now kindly sit down, if you please," and the creature tried to force her down by another strange exertion of his will, but nothing would make her acquiesce.

"Robert James Barrett," she said again, "come back! Your priestess needs you!" and those words roused something in Stephen, for he found that he too was now able to stand, and he came to stand beside Kathleen and instinctively reached for her hand, which she gave him willingly.

"Barrett," he said, fighting the lump in his throat. "The old words are the true words. Remember?" He himself was remembering Vangie in the depths of ritual saying that very phrase, and he now quoted the rest of her prophecy, while Kathleen squeezed his hand reassuringly.

"The mild zephyr shall conquer the mist, and the cooling wind draw heat; bright light disperse the sirocco, quickening fire burn out the darkness, and clear water blow away the vapours. Remember, Barrett! For God's sake, remember, and come back! I adjure you by the living God, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and now he made the sign of the cross directly in the crazily-grinning face, and he felt a strange force coming from his own hand, and Robert Barrett, all traces of the thing which possessed him gone, crumpled in a heap to the carpet at the feet of the two who were confronting him.

"Help him, Stephen," Kathleen said. "I'll tend to the Conjure Woman myself." Stephen knew better than to argue this plan with the Kathleen who had just been revealed to him, so even though all he wanted to do was to take Vangie in his arms and comfort her, he turned instead to his mentor and helped the sobbing man to his feet.

"Let's go," he told him quietly. "I'll get you a drink and then we'll go to bed."

"Is she--is she alright?"

"Don't fear for me, Robert," said Vangie in a weak but determined voice. "I'll be fine. Go with Stephen, and I'll see you soon."

Stephen took Barrett's arm and propelled him toward the door, but as they left, he could not help noticing a brief look of anguish pass over the older man's face as he looked back at Vangie, still lying on the floor with Kathleen kneeling by her side.

"Well," said Stephen as the two men sat on the terrace outside his room again, Barrett with a drink in his hand, "what do you remember?"

"Everything, Dawson," said Barrett, his voice taut with fatigue and disgust, "everything! It was as you said about your dream or whatever it was. I was just shoved aside in favour of that monstrous thing, and there wasn't a bloody thing I could do to stop it! What if I'd killed Evangeline? What if I'd killed you? How can any of you trust me again?"

"First," said Stephen, "it's not a question of trust. I think you did all you could to fight against that--that thing, and the fact is that you didn't kill Vangie, so there's no point thinking about it anymore."

"But I hurt her, Dawson! He made me hurt her and I couldn't stop him!"

"Do you think she holds that against you, Barrett? Do you really?"

"She could, you know. This has been going on for weeks, months even, and I--I never told her."

"Well? What of that?" Stephen was puzzled. he would have kept something like this from someone he loved, even if that someone was Vangie herself, he thought.

"You just don't understand," Barrett continued, reaching beneath his shirt and withdrawing something which hung suspended from his neck by a leather thong. "Look at this!" and slipping the thong over his head, he handed it to Stephen.

"This is magnificent!" Stephen was looking at a pendant in the shape of a coiled serpent which looked to be wrought of fine gold and had tiny rubies for eyes and what looked like a pair of wings jutting out from behind its head. Indeed, as Stephen turned it in his hand, he realized that it bore a strong resemblance to the serpentine fountain down in the garden.

"Surely you know what this is," said Barrett.

"Well," said Stephen, "I suppose that it's an emblem of the serpent priesthood."

"That's putting it with an anthropologist's usual sense of understatement!" Barrett rose to his feet in his agitation, assumed one of his trademark lecturing poses and continued speaking. "The thing which you're holding in your hand is one of the last surviving and continuously used symbols of a faith which dates back at least hundreds of years before Christianity and perhaps longer. It may even have links to the Minoan serpent faith of Crete! It's not something to simply be dismissed as a mere emblem! It means something! The only other person to bear this emblem is Evangeline, and it was Evangeline who deemed me worthy to share the office of which that pendant is a sacred and secret sign!"

"Should you have shown this thing to me?" Stephen was alarmed. He did not want to intrude upon the mysteries of this faith too far, but he kept being drawn into them at every turn.

"That doesn't matter now," said Barrett. "I have the authority to name my successor, and it is only him to whom I may relinquish the pendant. It's yours now, Stephen. Evangeline will need a priest, and I have shown myself unworthy of her trust. You see, I should have told her when I first felt the presence hovering around the edges of my mind. We could have stopped it together. Maybe none of this would have happened if I had told her."

"Look," said Stephen. "We're going a bit too fast here! How can you just give all this up?"

"Because I'm too old, Stephen. I don't have Evangeline's gift of youth, and this latest incident has damaged something fundamental inside me. I can feel it both in my mind and in my body. If the presence comes again, I won't be able to stop it. I can't be a priest anymore, and I won't put you all in danger again."

"But what will getting rid of this thing achieve?"

"Nothing, exactly," said Barrett, sitting down and rummaging in the breast pocket of his shirt, but this will rid you of my vulnerabilities so you can accomplish your goal," and Stephen now saw that he held a small pouch in his hand, and from it, he now poured a bunch of dried herbs into his brandy glass, and before Stephen could question him further, he downed the glass's contents in one swallow and then leaned back, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

"Barrett, what was in that pouch?" Stephen absently put the pendant into his pants' pocket and moved to his former professor's side.

"Get your oil, Father Stephen," was all Barrett's reply, "before it's too late."

"But surely there's some way to stop this! Vangie must know--"

"It was Evangeline who gave me this poison, Dawson. She gave it to me as a last resort if the pain of the Cancer I've been fighting got too bad. Did you wonder why I made you wait so long when you first came down here before I took you to see the Conjure Woman? The truth was that I was recovering at that time from what the doctors call treatment, which amounts to nothing more than a general chemical assault on the body in order to kill a few specific rogue cells. The day I came to take you to see Evangeline, I told her that they felt that there would be no point in continuing the chemo any further, and she never said a word, but only held my hand while I raged, fed me tea, and then presented me with that pouch of herbs and explained their use. She assured me that once I took them, there would be no way of turning back. So, I say again, go and get your oil and ask your questions. I'll answer them."

Stephen felt very odd, both admiring what Barrett was doing and despising him for proving that he was, after all, simply human, but he knew what he had to do, so he went into his room and quickly dawned his cassock and returned to Barrett with the necessary equipment.

"Robert James Barrett," he said softly, "are you sorry for having offended God by all the sins of your past life?"

"Yes," Barrett said, "I am."

"Then I anoint you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," said Stephen, tracing the sign of the cross in oil on Barrett's forehead, eyes, lips and chest. Barrett crossed himself in return, and then he got Stephen to help him into his own room where he lay down and closed his eyes.

Stephen had no way of knowing how long it would take for the poison to take effect, and pretty soon, Barrett was past enquiry, lying very still, his breath slow and shallow and his face now bearing no trace of the physical and spiritual struggles which had haunted it for so long. So he simply sat by the bed, alternately praying the rosary and fingering the strange pendant which Barrett had given him, and wishing fervently that he was not alone.