The Devils of D-Day by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

uncontrollable. It was like standing at the entrance of a
hall of mirrors, trying to resist the temptation to walk inside and find out
what those distorted figures in the darkness were.
    I pressed the tape-recorder’s ‘stop’ button. The gloomy room
was silent.
    ‘Sit down, Father Anton,’ I asked him. ‘Now, let’s play that
tape back again, and we’ll see how much of a trick it is.’
    The old priest said: ‘It’s Satan’s work. I have no doubt.
It’s the work of the devil himself.’
    I gently helped him back to his armchair, and picked up his
snuffbox for him. He sat there pale-faced and tense as I rewound the tape back
to the beginning, and then pushed the ‘play’ button once again.
    We waited tensely as the tape began to crackle and hiss. We
heard it laid down on the turret again, and the dog barking. Then that voice
began once more, and it seemed colder and even more evil than ever. It sounded
as if it came from the throat of a hoarse hermaphrodite, some lewd creature who
delighted in pain and pleasure and unspeakable acts.
    ‘You can help me, you know,’ it repeated. ‘You sound like a
good man. A good man and true. You can open this
prison. You can take me to join my brethren. You sound like a good man and
true.”
    Father Anton was sitting rigid in his seat, his knuckles
spotted with white where he was clutching the frayed upholstery.
    The voice said: ‘‘Father Anton can take away the cross that
binds me down, and cast away the spell. You can do
that, can’t you, Father Anton? You’d do anything for an old friend, and I’m an
old friend of yours. You can take me to join my brethren across the waters,
can’t you? Beelzebub, Lucifer, Madilon , Solymo , Saroy , Then’, Ameclo , Sagrael , Praredun ...’
    ‘Stop it!’ shouted Father Anton. ‘Stop it!’
    With unbelievable agility for a man as old as ninety, he
reached out for the tape-recorder, held it in both hands, and smashed it
against the steel fireguard around the grate. Then he sat back, his eyes
staring and wild, snapping the broken pieces of plastic in his hands. He
dragged out the thin brown tape, and crumpled it up into a confused tangle of
knots and twists.
    I sat watching all this in total amazement. First, I seemed
to have a tape-recorder that said whatever it felt like. Now, I had a priest
who broke up other people’s property. I said: ‘What’s wrong? Why the hell did
you do that?’
    The priest took a deep breath. ‘It was the conjuration,’ he
said. ‘The words that can summon Beelzebub, the Lord of the
Flies. There were only three more words to be said, and that demon could
have been with us.’
    ‘You’re not serious.’
    Father Anton held up the smashed fragments of Sony
tape-recorder. ‘Do you think I would break your machine for nothing? Those
words can bring out of the underworld the most terrible of devils. I will buy
you another, never fear.’
    ‘Father Anton, it’s not the tape-recorder I’m worried about.
What concerns me is what goes on here. If there’s a creature inside that tank,
can’t we do something about it?
    Exorcise it? Burn it out. Blow it up?’
    Father Anton shook the smashed-up tape-recorder out of the
skirts of his cassock and into the waste-paper basket. ‘Exorcisms, my friend,
are woefully misunderstood.
    They are hardly ever performed these days, and only in very
serious cases of possession. As for burning the tank, or blowing it up, that would do no good. The demon would still haunt Pont D’Ouilly , although he would be more like a fierce dog on a
long leash instead of a fierce dog inside a locked kennel. He cannot finally
get away until the holy cross is lifted from the turret, and the words of
dismissal erased.’
    I opened the cigarette box on the table and took out a Gauloise . I lit it up and took a long drag. I was getting
used to this pungent French tobacco, and if it didn’t have as much tar in it as
a three-mile stretch of the Allegheny Valley Expressway, I think I