Evil Unearthed: Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-seven

The great hall was utterly still as Stephen watched his companions walk away, but he knew that he could not relax even for a single instant. Julia's body lay motionless on the sofa, her pupils now fixed and dilated and only her hands clenching and unclenching in some strange spasm.

"Well," he said half to himself, "here we go again," and he picked up his book to repeat the ritual. However, he had not got very far with it when without warning or preamble, Julia's eyes focused upon him and she, not Erica's spirit, began to speak.

"Fr. Dawson? Fr. Dawson, please talk to me!" Her voice seemed devoid of malice or cunning, but he dared not address her. Instead, still feeling the biting chill of the room around him and the even stranger inward chill which seemed to proclaim the presence of evil here on Maljardin, he continued his prayers as though he had not heard her.

"Please, Father! Where is Kat? Is she safe? Please tell me!"

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed bethine
name," he prayed, moving toward her to trace the sign of the cross on her body, and he heard her begin to pray with him. This gave him hope, but this hope was quickly dashed when a mocking laughter came from the portrait, drowning out Julia's voice and causing him to temporarily lose his place. This made him angry, and try as he would to calm himself, he found it impossible in that moment to regain his composure. Despite a part of his mind warning him not to, he turned his back on Julia and addressed the portrait directly.

"You killed my friend, Jacques," he said, "and you killed my uncle!"

"No," said the voice from the portrait. "No, little priest! I did not kill your Uncle!"

"No, Stephen," said Julia's voice now again in Erica's tones. "It was I who killed him, and I'll kill you too!" And all at once, she leapt up from the couch and hurled herself into him, knocking him to the floor and pinning him down by main force.

He felt the breath being crushed from his body but his mind still screamed, though it too was being fiercely assaulted by the maddening sexual ecstasy which her presence always roused in him. Still, somehow he continued thinking the words of the ritual, until after an agonizing moment, he felt even the phrases of the most familiar prayers leaving him and as his eyes and mind grew dim, he felt himself borne from the great hall by strong arms and knew that he could do nothing about it.

The next clear sensations he had were a warm breeze passing over his face and a strong sun beating onto the lids of his closed eyes. Afraid to open them because of the potential brightness of that sun, he lay for a while without moving and tried to get the sense of his surroundings without benefit of vision. The sea boomed some way below him and he could smell the scents of a hundred tropical plants in the balmy air. He thought at first that he was on the balcony which adjoined his room, but soon, above the sound of the breakers, he heard a soft voice speaking, and as the imports of its words became clear to him, he knew at last where he was, and he felt his face drained of all its colour.

"Now we can talk more easily, Stephen," said Erica's spirit with Julia's voice. "I have longed to see you here! This was where I disposed of your meddling uncle, and it is where, no matter how long it takes, I will do the same to you! Now, open your eyes, stand up and dare to face me!"

Was this the end then? Had all the hazards and dangerous encounters, all the dreams and rituals, all the seeking of answers to long-held questions come to this place: the roof of the north tower of the Desmond chateau? Here indeed, according to Vangie, his Uncle Matt had met his end at Erica's hands. He had wished to avoid coming here from the moment he had first set foot upon the island, and now, without his leave or his will, here he was, facing the same evil which had destroyed his uncle and all the rest who tried to confront it. He recalled the words that Vangie had said several times, that it was his destiny to come to the great house and to encounter (and triumph over? Had she said that?) this evil even as his uncle had tried to do.

"You are aptly represented as the fool in the tarot pack, you know," said Erica as he got to his feet. "So was your uncle! He was blinded by love and by his own self-righteousness, and he tumbled to his death when he knew me for who I truly am! What of you? Can you stand against me?"

"We shall see," he said, and holding his crucifix aloft, he began to chant, without the aid of his book, what parts of the ritual he could remember.

The day was bright about him as he prayed and made the slow, deliberate gestures which were associated with the time-honoured rite he was performing, but despite the tropical sunlight, he knew only darkness in his heart. All his words seemed meaningless as he stared into what should have been Julia's eyes but what were instead vast pools of hatred. All that was human in them seemed vanished away, swallowed up in hunger and envy, rage and blind malice. Her voice continued to chide him as he went on with the exorcism, but he was past caring about what it said. Still, as she who claimed to be the spirit of Erica Desmond spoke and spoke, spilling invective and insult out of Julia's mouth and trying to distract him from his purpose, he suddenly realized the truth. She may have done a brilliant job of mimicking Erica's look and manner, but she was not Erica's spirit. She was not even a she! She was only a mask, only a covering pulled over the emptiness he was now seeing, the absence of light, the absence of glory, the null and negative thing which was what had become of that great and ancient archangel when he fell. Yes, he who had once been called the Son of Morning was here now, and threatened to bring endless night upon everyone here in the garden of evil.

"Did you think," the voice which was coming again to sound less and less like Julia's own said as though divining his thoughts, "that Jacques was the master here? Did you think that I was merely a malicious woman out for some kind of revenge? You do not know what happened to Jean Paul Desmond! You do not know that I bound him to me with the Mark of Death! I turned him from a simple man into a bringer of woe and chaos. The fact that he eventually outwitted me is immaterial, for I have found a better weapon now!"

"What do you mean?" The question was out before he could stop himself.

"Well, I certainly do not mean you, little priest! You are nothing to me! You see how effective your words and spells have been, don't you? I'm still firmly in control of this body, and I plan to stay here until it serves my purpose!"

"I know what you want! You want a child!"

"That is one of my plans, but this body is weakening. I shall have to find a new one if I am to maintain a true foothold in your mortal world."

"Still, this plan to have a child seems an odd choice!"

"Really? Him whom you serve chose it, did He not?" As it spoke these words, the voice grew deeper and more resonant, and it seemed to shake the earth and to cause the very sun to tremble in the sky, and all at once, Stephen knew that this was what his Uncle Matt could not bear to face. This naked evil had been too much for him, and it was becoming too much for Stephen as well.

As the voice began again to speak words in a strange and unknown language, each syllable seemed to press upon him until he found himself driven to his knees. However, with what strength he still had, he began, even kneeling there on the tiled roof, to banish the evil presence with all the words and gestures at his command. Now Julia's body towered over him, not the least hint of the drug-induced stupefaction about it any longer, and he reproached himself for falling prey to the demon's deceptions yet again. It had tempted him in his dreams and it had raped him in reality. It had caused Barrett to go mad and finally to kill himself, and now it had tricked him and had trapped him here in the place where his uncle had met his ultimate doom. And what about Kat? What about Vangie? He found himself weakening under the power of the demon now standing unmasked before him, and if he fell, what would happen to them?

"God help me! Please! Help me!" he screamed, and then, as though he had received a killing blow, he suddenly fell prostrate at Julia's feet and lay motionless, his body racked with pain and his mind cracking under the weight of the ageless evil now pressing upon it from the place of dark despair whence, he now knew, the demon drew its strength.

"Help you? Why on earth should your God help you? You may be dressed as one of His soldiers, but can you truly be loyal to a God in whom you have only ever half believed? What do you know of your God? I know Him! I know His wrath and I know how He too despaired as he died, spread-eagled upon the cross of His failure!"

"Failure?" Stephen now heard another voice above him, and its calm words went to his heart like falling rain. "Can even you truly live in such a delusion of madness? What you really mean is that you thought that the cross would be His undoing, but what you never counted upon was the fact that even though He was mortal, He was always in command of that mortality. He may have had a moment of despair, but in His death was His triumph, and in His risen body He showed us the way to defeat you and your hold over us! Stephen, stand up!" A soft but strong hand was slipped into his own as the new voice said this, and soon, he felt the pressure on his mind and body ebb as the hand helped him to his feet, and when he turned, he saw the eyes of Kathleen O'Dell, clear and strong, confronting those dark pools and facing the madness in their depths with unwavering resolve.

"Too long you have tormented this island," she said, "and I stand here now to see that these torments are finally brought to an end! You've taken my friend and I cannot permit it to continue!"

"Kat! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Stephen could feel the power coming from her, but he could also see a gleam of covetousness dawning behind the emptiness in the eyes of the demon-possessed body of Julia Desmond.

"I'm doing what has to be done, Stephen," said Kathleen, and with a sudden spasm of both her and Julia's bodies, the world seemed to turn upside-down. Stephen heard again the heartbeat pounding in his ears, and then he saw Kathleen, whose eyes still burned as green as glass but which would, he knew, soon become vacuous and demented under the demon's influence, take a small vial from her pocket and pour some of its contents into a bottle of water she had with her. Then, remembering Barrett's sudden suicide and fearing the worst, he tried to wrestle the bottle away from her, but she was able to use the demon's strength to fend him off, and while he lay breathless and unable to move for the pain in his head, he saw her down the water in silence.

"Kat? Fr. Dawson? What's happening?"

"Don't worry, Jule," said Kathleen with a great effort. "You won't be hurt anymore," and while the demon seemed to struggle within her, causing her to spit and to scream obscenities, Kathleen managed to sit down, and as the pain in his head fully engulfed him, Stephen saw her eyes slowly close and heard her laboured breathing.

"It's alright," she said as the demon-part of her was lulled to sleep. "It's what had to be done!"

"No! No!" Julia was at Kathleen's side in a moment. "This can't be the way! How did this happen?" This question was also being echoed in Stephen's mind as he lay looking up at the sun where it began to dip toward the horizon. How could this have happened, and where in all this chaos was Vangie? He feared finding the answers to these questions, but even as he feared, his mind slid away from him and plunged him beyond all fear and beyond all love into the depths of utter darkness.