Evil Unearthed: Chapter 41

Chapter Forty-one

Kathleen sat in her chair, a book of island lore and legend opened but barely perused on her lap, and pondered the day's events. It was a calm night outside. The stars were coming out and the sea breathed peacefully as though it slumbered even as her friend, now freed from the supernatural forces which had almost consumed her also slept in the bed nearby. Suddenly, all seemed to be well. Suddenly, the evil was no more, and yet this house was not safe. Even if every light were burning and every window were open to admit the fresh trade winds and breezes of this island, there was still something awry, something unquiet about this place. As she sat alternately glancing out the window and watching Julia sleep, she thought she heard the seductive and treacherous heartbeat, faint now it was true, but still audible to any who had once been touched by it. However, behind it there was another rhythm, a rhythm more ancient and more elemental, as though the island itself were a living thing with a heart of its own, and as the hours ticked by and the night came on in earnest, that pulse seemed to beat more strongly and finally seemed to drown out the strange and uncanny beating of that other heart.

She liked this rhythm better. It seemed to move more in tune with her blood and with the blood of all living creatures. Though it spoke sometimes of death, it spoke of it in a way that made it seem a part of the cycle of life, the wheel of days and nights which must come to all things on this earth. She wondered if the mysterious rites Vangie and Stephen must be performing in the temple had somehow intensified it,. A part of her longed to be with them, to share in the mysteries which they were experiencing, but even as she voiced this thought to herself, that other more practical part of her shunned it violently. Never again would she traffic with things she did not understand. Now that sanity seemed restored to this place, she wanted to forget what she had learned here. She wanted to go back to her old life. However, even as she thought of this, she knew that nothing could make her forget the events of this past month, no matter how much she might want to do so.

Just then, her reverie was broken by a sharp cry of pain from Julia and all thoughts of mystery and magic were driven from her by her habitual pragmatism and her concern for her friend.

"Oh Kat," Julia said, sitting up in bed, "I need the stuff, Kat!"

"Alright," she said, trying to sound reassuring as she retrieved another ampule of the pain medicine from her bag and got the syringe ready. Soon, as the drug began to do its work, she was able to sit quietly again and to listen to the sick woman's breathing which began to deepen and to slow once more as sleep claimed her again, and all at once, she too began to feel drowsy. A part of her wondered why this need to sleep had not been apparent for the past several hours, but she did not dwell on this riddle for long, because within a few minutes, she found herself nodding where she sat.

At about three in the morning, she was awakened by someone lifting the book gently from her lap and when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find Vangie standing before her. Again, the Conjure Woman seemed made of light, but her presence felt undeniably human as she gently touched Kathleen's mind in a mental whisper so as not to disturb Julia.

"Kat O'Dell," said Vangie's voice in her mind, "wake up! There is much to do. Wake up now and follow me!"

Not daring to speak and feeling that this must be a dream, Kathleen stood up and followed the radiant priestess out of her office and down the tower stairs to the main part of the house.

Through the back parts of the chateau and out the kitchen door they went, and Kathleen was suffused with half a hundred fragrances of the various night-blooming flowers which grew wild and unkempt in the long-disused kitchen garden.

"Where are we going?" Her curiosity had finally gotten the better of her awe.

"To the headland," said Vangie, "where the wife of Jacques Eloi Des Mondes met her untimely death."

Within a few minutes, the two women stood side by side on the high point, looking over its precipitous edge to the open sea below.

"Stephen has given me the power to come to you," said the Conjure Woman, and though she was clothed in what looked like unfading glory, yet Kathleen could see the fatigue of years in the depths of her eyes. "Were it not for him, I would not be able to do what I am about to do."

"What will you do?"

"I must leave Maljardin, Kat, and I must leave it now. Its true powers have been awakened once more now that the false and fatal ones have departed, and as I am by my calling a vessel for such elemental forces, if I remain here longer in my weakened state, they will consume me by their very vitality. I do not know if we will meet again, and I did not have the heart to tell Stephen about this. I need you to take what power I can give you and go into the temple. He is in a deep state of trance, Kat, and I cannot remain to help to recall him. Will you help me?"

Kathleen felt Vangie's hand slip silently into her own and it was as though she was holding the hand of a corpse, for the hand of the Conjure Woman, though fair and radiant to look at, was chilled beyond anything she had yet felt. So all at once, though she hated the very thought of the temple and though she feared to touch this kind of power again, she knew that she could not deny this woman her help.

"Alright," she said, and the two embraced, and even as they clung together and as Kathleen felt the light entering her own being, suddenly and with no perceptible movement, she found that she held only air clasped in her arms and Vangie Abbott, the woman for whom she had given her life long ago and from whom she had received a second chance at her own life in this present day, was gone, had melted away to become a part of the night.

"Our revels now are ended," she said to herself.

"Perhaps not yet a while," came Vangie's voice upon the wind. "Perhaps not yet a while, Kat O'Dell!"

As a solitary bird began to sing, she turned her face from the expanse of sea and sky before her and walked slowly back into the house. The silence of it filled her being, but it was not now a lonely silence. That feeling of wrongness or awryness which she had perceived earlier seemed to have been driven away, and as she walked through the great hall, stepping over shards of glass and bits of marble as she went, she knew, by both her outward and inward eyes, that the way to the temple lay open and unhindered by any barrier, whether physical or supernatural. It beckoned her welcomingly, and though she still felt its danger, she no longer felt that seductive call to evil which she had felt when last she had come this way.

As she began to descend the stairs to the crypt, she suddenly thought of the darkness of the secret tunnel which led to the temple, and reaching into her bag which she had brought with her without thinking, she found the flashlight that she always carried. Turning it on, she saw the vaulted ceiling of the crypt and the coffins lying peacefully in their carven niches along the walls. How many of Julia's ancestors were buried there? All hers, she reflected, had been buried in graves around St. Michael's church back in Ulster. Where would she at last come to rest her weary bones? Hopefully not in a place like this, she thought. This was a stone monument to pride, yet another way for the Desmond family to claim some kind of false immortality for themselves, and she found as she gazed at the roes and roes of coffins ranged around the room like some scene out of Stoker or Poe, that she wanted none of it, and she found herself hoping fervently that Julia would want nothing to do with this place ever again.

"Oh for Pete's sake, Kat!" she said aloud to the empty vault. "There's work to be done which won't be accomplished by all this wool-gathering. Now hurry on!" And she turned away from the mortally immortal remains of the Desmond dynasty and entered the open door which led to the passage to the temple.

She could hear the drum-beats as she slowly paced along the rough-hewn floor of the tunnel, and as she approached the temple itself, the odours of bee's wax and incense mingled in a wild and sweet riot, making her think strangely of Easter vigils she had attended as a girl, singing in the church choir and reliving again and again the joy of Christ's resurrection. However, this image was soon driven from her by the sight of the guttering candles and the sound of Stephen's slow breathing as his hands moved unbelievably quickly across the head of the drum which he held in his lap.

"Stephen," she said now. "Fr. Dawson! Come back," and with all her might, she sent that same message from her mind into his, and in that instant, she felt the last vestige of Vangie's power leave her, and all at once, it was though a light had flickered and been extinguished in her mind. She and the world were as they had been before all this, or perhaps almost as they had been.

Coming to himself, Stephen stopped drumming and turned to her.

"She was here," he said frantically. "She was here! What are you doing here?"

"It's alright, Stephen," she said, coming to kneel beside him. "It's alright. It's time for us to go now. I'll blow out the candles. Take that pearl if you would. It's a sign that Julia needs to see."

"They found it in her hand," he said as he sobbed violently, "that other time, that time when they thought she had--she had--Oh Kat! Don't you see what this means?"

"Whatever it means," she said, trying very hard to be calm and not to give into the tears which were threatening behind her own eyes, "we can't stay here anymore. You've got to come with me and get some sleep."

"Sleep? Sleep? Where did she go, Kat? I can't sleep!"

"You'll sleep," she said deliberately, "if I have to beat you over the head with that staff lying beside you. Now let's get going!"

The threat of potential bodily harm seemed finally to get through to him, and as he stood up, she gave him the staff as a support. Then, she went around the room and extinguished the candles while Stephen went to the altar and picked up the flawless pearl.

"Why is this here do you think?" He was facing her across the altar as he asked this, and she saw a frightened look in his eyes as he clutched the jewel with rapidly whitening knuckles.

"I really don't know, but I know where it came from and I know where it belongs."

As she said this, she thought back to that far-off sleepless night when she had read the journal of Matthew Dawson from cover to cover. In it, he had described Jean Paul's dismay at not finding in that dreadful and blood-stained locket belonging to his wife the pearl which he had put there as a symbol of their perfect love. Then, in a further entry, he had written how that pearl had been found in Vangie's hand upon her supposed death. He had not been able to trace its whereabouts from that point, but he had overheard Raxl telling Quito that they must take it to the temple to determine why it had come back and what its return might portend. After that, no other mention of the pearl was made and until now, and in fact she had forgotten about it completely.

"I think," she said slowly, "that things are coming full circle at last. This must be the pearl that belonged to Erica Desmond."

"Oh no! That's what I was afraid of," and Stephen let the translucent thing fall onto the mosaic-work of the temple floor.

"Stephen, I think there's still something that Vangie never told us about the night of her departure from this house. I met her, you know. She told me to come here tonight."

"You met her? What do you mean?"

"She seemed to be with me in the flesh, but her hand, Stephen. It was so cold!"

"That--that fits," he said, pausing to control the sobs which she knew he had just barely mastered. "So is she still here? Where did you leave her?"

"She left me, Stephen. She melted away. I don't know where she went."

"But you could find her, couldn't you?"

"Not now," and she was surprised at the overwhelming sadness she now felt. "I think that part of my mind is closed to me now. I think she may have closed it, and I think, Stephen, that I now understand why. I think that when she was overcome by the evil presence at that last séance, she was battling the demon for Erica's soul. I think she lost the battle, but the pearl came to her as a sign that the war might ultimately be won. I think that actually, her pretending to die was not only her attempt to flee the situation. I think it was a courageous act, one which foresaw and accepted evil consequences in return for a better outcome later."

"You know," he said, bending down to pick up the pearl again, "I think you may just be right about that. Where's the locket now?"

"I put it in my desk drawer when I helped Julia to bed."

"Alright then. Let's get out of here," and taking the flashlight from her, he led the way down the tunnel and into the crypt.

"There's something I promised that I would do before--before Vangie went away," he said as they pushed together at the heavy secret door and closed it behind them. "I'm supposed to look in Jacques's coffin."

"Whatever for?"

"I don't know. She just made me promise to do it!"

"But we have no tools!"

"It's not nailed shut," said Stephen. "Look!" And as she did so, she saw him raise the lid of the coffin bearing that accursed and hateful name, and in the silence which followed the whining shriek of rusted hinges she gazed in disbelieving awe at what the beam of the flashlight revealed to be its contents. An ancient-looking conjure doll lay there with a silver pin transfixing its temples. As Stephen replaced the lid, he stood back to look at some writing on the stone of the niche wherein the coffin rested. First, there was Jacques's name and his dates, but below this was something she had never read before. In lurid crimson, with what looked like some of the paint that the workers had used, a message was written in a clear and steady hand.

"This coffin must remain sealed," it said. "Seek not to disturb the rest of the one who lies within, for what this coffin contains should never be released. Many have died to ensure its capture. Let it lie unmolested! The Devil is eternal! I, Evangeline Abbot, High Priestess of the ancient faith of the people of these islands, have warned you!" Today's date, the year included, was written below the text, and below that again was drawn a representation of the Great Serpent whose spiraling coils formed the centre of a cross.

"When did she do all this?" Stephen looked as amazed as she felt.

"There's no way to know now," she said, "but it must have been last night, before I found her near the laboratory.

"But that doesn't make sense! Surely the doll wasn't there then?"

"Perhaps she wrote it in hopes of a positive outcome. Perhaps she needed you to look into the coffin because she dared not do so herself."

"Yes," said Stephen wearily, "I suppose that's true. One thing's for sure though. As soon as I get some sleep, I'm coming back here and nailing that lid down for good!"

"That sounds like a good plan to me," said Kathleen, and together they made their way upstairs to the kitchen, where Kathleen found some fixings for a very early breakfast, and soon, the two parted company at the door of Stephen's room.

"Thanks, Kat," he said, handing her the pearl. "Thanks for everything!"

"Just get some sleep," she said, and leaving him to his thoughts, she made her way slowly back to her little office and the waiting Julia. What the next day would bring she did not know, but she knew that Vangie had spent herself to ensure the island's freedom from the evil chains which had bound it for so long, and with that knowledge she was comforted, so comforted in fact that the moment she sat down in her chair, her eyes slipped closed and her mind floated free and drifted slowly in a deep dream of peace.