Madeleine turned slowly towards me, slowly, slowly, like a woman in a dream. I tried to say: “Madeleine…” but my voice came out as nothing but an endless blur of whispered sounds. She shook her head, and half-smiled, and turned away again.
“Adramelech usthul! Adramelech hismarad! Adramelech ghuthil!” called the devils.
And then their dark membrane-like wings lifted wide and stiff, and their eyes glared through the darkness, and I saw with my own eyes the first manifestation of Adramelech, the Grand Chancellor of Hell, since Patton and Montgomery had raised him during the war.
The vision was so terrifying that I went cold with wave after wave of shock. In the middle of the reptilian circle of devils, huge and hideous, stood a dark thing that looked like a giant deformed donkey, rearing up on its hind legs. It had a monstrous head, and a chest covered with shaggy hair, but its stomach and its hind quarters were afflicted with some kind of crusty excrescences, like tumours. As it appeared through the darkness, there was a screaming sound all around it, a thousand decibels of feedback, and the air itself was distorted like heat rippling from a road. For endless minutes, the eighth demon of the evil sephiroth stood there, turning its head to gaze with stately malevolence at his thirteen acolytes, and the noise was so overwhelming that I thought it was going to deafen me for ever!
Madeleine went down on her knees, and I followed her. She shouted, unheard by the devils in the howling noise, “This is Adramelech! He takes on the form of a donkey to mock Our Lord’s ride into Jerusalem!”
“What the hell are we going to do?” I yelled back. “Even more to the point—what’s Adramelech going to do to us?”
“Wait!” she told me. “When the moment comes—we’ll act!”
There was a deep rumble, and then the feedback noise dropped off to a low howl. The basement walls began to rematerialize, and within a few moments the awesome Adramelech was standing amongst us in the cellar, slowly taking in his surroundings, and waiting for the subservient rustling of his devils to subside.
I was aware of such evil in the air that my pulse refused to calm down. It was more terrible than I could have imagined possible. It was a hundred times more scaring than being jostled by hoodlums on your way home, or waking up in the night to hear someone breaking the window of your back door. It was absolute high-pitched fear that went on and on and on and never subsided.
Adramelech turned towards Madeleine and me. I heard a clear, cultivated whisper say, “Who are these?”
“They are mortal disciples, converted to the ways of hell by Elmek,” responded Umbakrail.
There was a pause, but I didn’t dare to look up. Beside me, Madeleine stayed on her knees, her hands clasped together as if she were praying. I didn’t blame her. In the face of the demon Adramelech, there didn’t seem to be much else you could do.
Adramelech said, “I am pleased, Elmek. You have brought us together again at last, as the Nine Books of Hell have always predicted. Does it not say in the Third Book that we shall help in a mortal war which shall divide us, but that we shall come together in time for yet another mortal war?”
“Those are the words, master,” said Umbakrail, in a subservient tone.
Adramelech turned his attention to Lieutenant Colonel Thanet, who had been forced to kneel in front of him by two of the devils.
“And which is this?” he asked.
Cholok said, “This is one of the mortal war makers, who has been attempting for years to discover the words which could summon you up, O master, but also those words which could send you back,”
Adramelech laughed. “Only a blood-bargain can send me back, little war maker,” he said. “And each time I am summoned, the blood demanded must be more. You are even more ignorant than those war makers of times gone by.”
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet raised his bruised face and looked up at the demon Adramelech. “Would you really help us?” he said, unsteadily. “If we struck a blood-bargain, would you really help us, like you did during the war?”
“Which war?” demanded Adramelech. “We have fought in many wars! We fought at Agincourt, and we turned the Romans back at Minden! We fought in South Africa, with the Boers; and we fought best of all on the Somme, and at Passchendaele, and Ypres, where we did what you wanted us to do, and exterminated a whole generation of your young men.”
“I know that,” said Lieutenant Colonel Thanet. “But will you help us now?”
“You want to exterminate more?” asked Adramelech. “Then you have a lust for destruction and violence which pleases me. There is a close bond between the hierarchy of hell and mortals like you, and it pleases me. One day, perhaps, when mortals finally understand the purpose for which they were created, they will destroy themselves no more, and despair no more; but I trust that we can stay that day as long as we can.”
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet, for one rare moment, looked up at Adramelech like a man, instead of a soldier. “You know?” he asked the demon. “You know why we’re here? Why there are humans on earth?”
Adramelech’s sardonic laugh sounded like a thousand tons of rock dropping down a thousand empty mineshafts. “Know? But of course I know! But why should that trouble you? Your purpose is infinitely tinier, yet infinitely more exciting! To destroy, and to have in your hands the power of destruction! To inflict pain on yourselves! To pull down everything that the works of man and God between them have created! Why should you concern yourself with philosophy when you have such pleasure at your disposal?”
Clustered around Adramelech like fawning courtiers, the devils hissed and whispered. There was a pause, and then Lieutenant Colonel Thanet said, “We need your power for NATO. Do you know what NATO is?”
“Of course, little war maker. Adramelech is omniscient.”
“Well, it’s been my brief to summon you up, and ask for your help.”
Adramelech looked down on Lieutenant Colonel Thanet with indulgence. “You do not have to ask for my help. But you do have to bargain for it. Tell me what destruction you desire to be wreaked, and I will tell you what price you will have to pay. The price, I warn you, is always blood.”
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet looked disconcerted. “I don’t want any destruction,” he said. “I simply want to have you on hand as a defence unit.”
Adramelech laughed. “Defence is nothing more than latent destruction! Why pretend that what you are arming yourselves for is defence, when all you wish to do is destroy those who you believe to be your enemies? Show me the difference between a weapon of attack and a weapon of defence! Do they kill differently? Is one less dangerous than the other? You are even more of a fool than I thought!”
Lieutenant Colonel Thanet tried to get to his feet. “Now look here!” he snapped. “It was my work that brought you here, and it’s about time you appreciated it!”
Adramelech, for a moment, was quiet. Then he said: “I appreciated the work of Patton and Eisenhower, little war maker. Patton had me summoned through the circle of my thirteen acolytes, and he came to me as a man bent on destruction. He wanted the Germans killed, and killed quickly. I admit that he was frightened of us, and that he kept us in check with his priests. But he desired death for his enemies, and he paid us in blood, and we were satisfied. Patton and Eisenhower were both men that I could be proud of. But you? What are you saying? That you don’t want to kill after all?”