Madeleine handed me the books. She whispered, “What is it doing? Has it said what it wants?”
I shook my head. “It wants you, but I don’t know why.”
Elmek cackled, “You don’t know why? You can’t even guess? Don’t you know what that poor girl Jeanne d’Arc did for the benefit of our help in battle? Can’t you imagine what befell poor Gundrada, the wife of William de Warrenne?”
Sergeant Boone lifted his Sterling machine-gun. But Lieutenant Colonel Thanet raised a hand and warned, “Steady, sergeant. We’re not dealing with the IRA now.”
I called, “What do you want us to do, Elmek? The girl is here now. What do you want us to do?”
The basement trembled and shook again, and there was a low, irritating sound like thousands of blowflies swarming over a dead horse. It was so dark now that we could hardly see at all. One of the soldiers said, “Christ, it’s like a bleeding grave down ’ere.”
“Quiet that man!” snapped the sergeant.
Elmek whispered, in a hoarse, mocking voice, “The girl must open each sack in turn. Only the girl will do. Only the girl has any religious faith. She must open each sack in turn, and say over it the words of the conjuration.”
While Elmek was talking, I was straining my eyes in the dim light to read the pages which the Reverend Taylor had marked in his thin black book. The section was headed The Seven Accurate Tests of An Evil Spirit’s Identity, and it told you what you had to do to discover the true name of a demon or devil. But as I read more and more, my confidence sank. The first test was to ask the devil its name by the power of Sammael, the arch-demon whom they called “the venom of God”. The second test was to burn the devil’s hair or scales and see whether the smoke sank downwards or rose upwards. The third test was to sprinkle various herbs on its skin—borage, fennel, parsley, and dozens of others, because different devils were marked or repelled by different plants. The fourth was to spray a silver spoonful of devil’s blood across twenty-six cards with letters of the alphabet on them, and the blood would fall on every card except those with the letters of its own name. The fifth and the sixth and the seventh were equally impossible, and all of them were obviously devised for a full-scale ritual exorcism. What we had here, in this cellar in Huntingdon Place, was an occult emergency.
“Madeleine,” I hissed. “Madeleine, I can’t do these tests. They’re too complicated.”
She lifted a finger. “Wait,” she whispered back. “There may be some other way.”
“What other way? What are you talking about?”
“You will have to trust me,” she said.
“Well, what do you want me to do. You can’t go around opening up those sacks!”
“I must.”
“Madeleine, I—”
She reached out in the darkness and held my arm. “Trust me,” she said. “As I open up each sack, I will try and discover the name of the devil within it, and I will try to pass that name on to you. These are only lesser devils. They’re fierce and warlike and loathsome, but they’re not wise.”
“And what do I do when you’ve told me their names?” I asked her. “Always supposing that we live that long.”
She pressed her hand against L’Invocation des Anges. She said, “Look up each name in the book, and beside it you will see another name, the name of the devil’s corresponding angel. Invoke that angel by repeating the words of the conjuration.”
I frowned at her. “How do you know all this? I thought that—”
Elmek wheezed, “Come on, girl, open up these sacks for me! Tear open these sacks and release my beloved brethren! Hurry, girl, there is little time left!”
The basement lights pulsed brighter, and then dimmed dark again. I could feel a deep, systematic throbbing throughout the whole room, like the gristly beating of some gruesome heart. Between me and Elmek, Sergeant Boone and his men now stood with their machine-guns raised, and Lieutenant Colonel Thanet was turning towards us with an expression of responsible concern. I suppose they teach them responsible concern at officer school.
He said, “I can’t advise you to do what the devil says, Mademoiselle Passerelle. In fact, I’ll have to order you to stay back.”
Madeleine gave my hand a last, gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant Colonel. But I cannot do what you ask.”
Elmek, in what sounded like eight vibrant voices speaking at once, called, “Open the sacks, girl! Asmorod is impatient!”
Madeleine took one step forward. As she did so, a hideous shape emerged from the shadows at the far end of the basement—a shape like the black glossy skull of a beetle. There was a shivering, rustling, grasshopper sound, the chirring noise of insects. But it wasn’t an insect, because I could make out tentacles as well, and some grotesque shape attached to its abdomen like a deformed Siamese twin of itself.
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet shouted, “Fire!”
What happened next seemed to happen so slowly that I remember every detail of it, like some repulsive action replay that goes over and over inside your mind. I saw the sergeant and his three soldiers raise their machine-guns. I saw Lieutenant Colonel Thanet taking one pace backwards. Then, out of one soldier’s mouth, in a dreadful torrent, came gallons and gallons of bloody chopped-up slush, splattering all over the concrete floor. It looked as if he was puking a hundred pounds of raw hamburger meat, and Madeleine turned her face away with a mewl of anguish. Transfixed, I watched as the soldier’s whole body seemed to collapse like an empty cushion-cover, and he twisted over and lay flat on his face on the gory floor. Beside him, Sergeant Boone collapsed in the same way, his fatigues black with bile and blood, and then the other two soldiers. The sweetish smell was overwhelming, and I had two dry heaves before I could control my stomach.
The darkness, almost thankfully, closed in again. I wiped cold perspiration away from my forehead, and pulled Madeleine back, away from the four dead soldiers. It was silent for a minute or two; but then I heard Elmek’s creaky laughing, the voice of an old crone, but a harshly inhuman voice as well, as if its breath were piping through a throat lined with black hairs.
“They dared to threaten me,” the devil mocked us. “They dared to raise their weapons against me. It’s almost a pity that you couldn’t see, from the outside, the artistry of what I did to them. But then that’s the elegance of such a death. Their bowels and their stomachs and their lungs and their kidneys were sliced up and vomited out, leaving their bodies as empty as their stupid heads.”
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet, his voice shaking, said, “I think we’d better try to make a run for it, Mr. McCook.”
I said, “I don’t think there’s much point, Colonel. We could be minced up like that before we even got up the first step. Damn it, that’s why we were forced to come here in the first place!”
Madeleine interrupted, “It won’t harm us, monsieur le colonel, if we do what it tells us to do. Now, I must open those sacks. We don’t have any more time to waste.”
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet snapped, “I forbid it! I forbid you to take a single step!”
“Then I shall take several,” said Madeleine, defiantly, and pushed past him into the gloom.
Elmek’s husky rustle of approval made me feel as if my shirt had been suddenly soaked in iced water. I tried to follow Madeleine, but she turned round and instructed me quietly, “Stay there, Dan. Please. Stay back. Just listen to the names when I tell you, and invoke their angels.”
Elmek hissed, “What are you saying? What are you talking about?”