I Know Who Did It (A Jack Nightingale Short Story) by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page A

fifty-pound notes. Always a pleasure doing
business with you, T-bone,’ he said. He shoved the gun into his pocket then
tried to raise the garage door. It seemed to be stuck and he couldn’t get it to
budge.
    T-Bone chuckled
and forced it up with one hand. ‘You take care, Birdman,’ said T-Bone, as
Nightingale walked back to his MGB.

 
    * * *

 
    According to the
book, Paimonia was best summoned during the day. There were other peculiarities
of the ceremony. The candles had to be a mixture of black and blue, and among
the herbs and compounds that had to be burned were mercury and bindweed, both
of which he managed to find in storage jars in a display case in the basement.
The book also emphasised that the summoner had to look to the northwest during
the ceremony and he had used a small brass compass to check which way that was.
He put everything he needed into a cardboard box and carried it upstairs. He
chose a large bedroom that had been stripped of all its furniture and furnishings.
He closed the door behind him, placed the box on the bare floorboards, then
used consecrated chalk to draw a circle in the middle of the room, about twelve
feet in diameter. Then he used a birch branch taken from the garden to slowly
outline the circle. Then he used the chalk to draw a five pointed star on top
of the circle, with two of the five points facing northwest. So far it was a
standard pentagram. Nightingale sprinkled consecrated salt water around the
perimeter of the circle before studying the diagrams in the book. They were a
pretty close match to the page he’d copied from Mercer’s notebook. In a
standard pentagram the letters MI and then CH and then AEL were written around
the circle, spelling out the name of Michael, the archangel, but for Paimonia
the letters were replaced by complex symbols. Nightingale spent more than an
hour making sure he drew them perfectly, then he went through to the bathroom
and stripped off his clothes.
    He had already
filled the claw-footed cast iron bathtub with water and he slid into it. He
held his breath and slid down under the water, holding his breath until he felt
his lungs start to burn, and then he pushed himself up and scrubbed himself
clean with a small plastic brush and a bar of soap. He washed and rinsed his
hair twice, then climbed out of the bath and towelled himself dry. He put on
clean clothes and a pair of new trainers. Finally he combed his hair, checked
himself in the mirror over the sink, and went back into the bedroom.
    He picked up five
candles, three black and two dark blue, and placed them at the five points of
the pentagram. He lit them with his lighter, picked up the cardboard box, then
stepped inside the circle.
    He took a couple
of deep breaths then used the birch branch to go over the chalk outline again.
He sprinkled consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle, then
set fire to the contents of a lead crucible. The herbs and spices and bits of
wood hissed and spluttered. He added bindweed and mercury salt and the room filled
with cloying smoke.
    He took the book
out of the box and opened it at the chapter on Paimonia. He began to carefully
recite the words that would summon the demon. They were written phonetically , they
weren’t English or Latin, they were something in between. The candle flames
flickered as warm wind started to blow through the room, even though the
windows and door were shut. The air was getting thicker as the fumes billowed
up from the lead crucible. He tried not to think about the damage the mercury
might do to his lungs and he concentrated on the words he was saying. His eyes
began to water and he blinked away the tears.
    There were
flashes of light above his head, like lightning strikes. He ignored them and
kept his eyes on the book. It was getting harder to see, his eyes were tearing
and the smoke was getting thicker by the minute.
    He reached the
end of the incantation and closed the book. He peered through the smoke.