Dark Debts (33 page)

The look on Graham's face told Michael the rest. Whatever it was, Vincent had told Graham under the seal of confession.

“Fine,” Michael said, his cool voice matching Graham's. He stood up. Graham didn't.

“Then I guess there's no point in asking you why Vincent might have pulled strings to get me to Barton?” Michael asked, unable to resist one final attempt. Graham just stared at him, having already answered the question.

“All right,” Michael said. “Good night.” He headed for the door in a huff.

“Michael? When was the last time you made a retreat?”

Michael could feel his blood pressure rising. He stared at Graham, unable to think of an answer that wasn't objectively sinful.

“You don't have to answer,” Graham continued. “Just something to think about.”

Right. My entire life is imploding, my future is a train wreck waiting to happen, the only relative I had in the world just died and left behind some horrible secret that you won't tell me, but a couple of weeks in the woods with the Spiritual Exercises ought to fix me right up.

“Tom,” Michael said, relenting, “things have been happening to me . . . like at the funeral, when I couldn't speak. You knew. You said the St. Michael prayer. Who is going to help me if you don't?”

Graham didn't reply. He opened a drawer in his desk, and took something out. He walked over to Michael and handed him a business card.

“Call this person,” he said.

“Who is it? The retreat director who could save my misguided life?”

“Just take it and call the number.”

Michael took the card and stuffed it in his pocket, though he didn't know why.

He was in his car before he took the card out of his pocket. He would have torn it up on the spot, except he couldn't help wondering who Tom Graham thought might be wily enough to save even Michael.

He turned on the map light, held the card under it, and read it.

CHARLOTTE DUNNING

210 Shorter Avenue

Rome, Georgia 30125

(706) 555-9212

The first surprise was that it was a woman. He'd been convinced Graham had in mind some wizened priest who'd come out of retirement long enough to whip Michael into shape. It was hard to believe that Graham even
knew
a woman.

Below the name, in the left corner, was a job description that left Michael equally puzzled:
Author/Lecturer.
Really? Graham thought a lecture would do it? A lecture on what? His eyes finally registered the word in the right-hand corner: across from Charlotte Dunning's job description was a more specific title. He stared in disbelief. All by itself, chilling in its simplicity:

Demonologist

M
ichael called Charlotte Dunning shortly after sunrise. She told him she'd been expecting his call for “years,” offering no explanation. She said she had a full schedule for the day, but could see him anytime after five p.m. At 5:05 he was sitting in her living room. He hadn't expected Laura Ashley and needlepoint, but Charlotte Dunning's living room was like something from a childhood nightmare. The walls were adorned with an assortment of African tribal masks and other less recognizable but equally sinister items. Grimacing gargoyles peered out from every nook and cranny; tables and shelves displayed everything from statues of winged demons to a collection of genuine Haitian voodoo dolls. Michael expected a Santeria priestess to step out of the shadows at any moment.

Charlotte herself seemed reasonably normal. She was in her midsixties, with weathered skin and silver-gray hair, wore faded jeans and a Duke sweatshirt. She chain-smoked without apology as she rummaged through an oak filing cabinet on the other side of the room. Michael sat on her sofa with a cup of coffee that would kill a horse and a copy of her latest book,
Hell on Earth: Real-Life Encounters with the Demonic.
Under normal circumstances he would have been interested, but he couldn't concentrate on anything right now except to wonder why Tom had sent him here. (He'd posed that question immediately upon crossing the threshold, but Charlotte had just laughed and said, “Patience, Father. The Baptists tell me we've got at least three more years until the Rapture.”)

She closed the file drawer she'd been searching through and opened another one.

“My father's filing system,” she said. “Sheesh. He died ten years ago and I have yet to figure it out. From what I can tell, the alphabet was in no way involved.” She smiled. “I know I could refile it all, but I seldom need any of it. I keep it around mostly out of sentiment.”

“Was your father . . . in the demon business, too?” Michael asked. She laughed.

“You're uncomfortable with the term ‘demonologist,' Father?”

“I'm not uncomfortable. I'm just not sure what it means.”

“It's not complicated. A person who studies demons.”

“Does that mean you believe in demons?”

“If I didn't, I'd be wasting time studying them, wouldn't I?”

“You could study other people's beliefs,” he said, trying to sound as condescending as she had.

“That's true,” she admitted. “That's how my father became a demonologist, actually. He began his career as an anthropologist. He went all over the world, studying various cultures' concepts of evil, until he started to realize there was a lot more to it than just legends and superstitions.”

“What happened to convince him?”

“The same thing that happened to all the near-death scholars. He kept hearing identical stories from people all over the world who'd never laid eyes on each other.”

“I had a near-death experience when I was a kid and I didn't see a tunnel or a light or any of that.” Which had nothing to do with anything, but Michael felt the need to announce it.

“Did you see anything unusual at all?”

“Yes,” he said. If she wanted details, she was going to have to fish for them.

“Did it have a dramatic impact on your life?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you saw exactly what you needed to see, didn't you?” He hated her.

She laughed. “Jesus is a very economical guy. He doesn't waste special effects on people who don't need them.”

He loved it. The demonologist was going to explain Jesus to him. “Did He tell you that Himself ?” he asked.

She nodded. “He makes an appearance in one of my bathroom tiles on the thirteenth of every month.”

Michael laughed in spite of himself. Charlotte laughed, too.

“I knew I could win you over,” she said.

“One laugh doesn't prove anything. I'm not that easy.”

“We'll see.”

“So tell me. What are the universal demon stories?”

“Everything you described in your
New Yorker
article. The voice, the presence, the smell, the ESP—that's all textbook stuff.”

“Yeah. I've read a few of those textbooks myself.”

“Here it is,” she said, pulling a folder out of the drawer. “Filed under
G
, for reasons known only to a dead man.” She opened the folder and looked at the contents as she made her way to the sofa.

“I know the story very well,” she said. “I just wanted to have the details in front of me, in case you needed them.”

She sat in an upholstered chair across from him and placed the closed folder in her lap.

“Did you know Vincent?” Michael asked.

She nodded. “I met him through my father, initially. Tom hooked the two of them up when Vincent started having problems. It was strictly professional at first, but they became friends. After my father died, Vincent and I kept in touch. We'd have dinner about once a year.”

“What kind of problems was Vincent having?”

“This was eons ago. Before you were born. First it was a series of physical ailments. Nightmares, headaches, anxiety attacks. Then it moved into sensory assaults. Smells, sounds.”

“And Tom told him a demon was causing it?”

“No, actually it was Vincent who told Tom what was causing it.”

“Why did he think—?”

“We'll get to that,” she said. She reached for her cigarettes; took one out, lit it, stuffed the matchbook under the cellophane, and tossed the pack back on the coffee table.

“Tom tells me you and Vincent were very close,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I can understand that. Vincent was a real character.”

Michael nodded, not sure how to take it.

“I feel for you,” Charlotte said. “None of this is going to be easy for you to hear.”

“I want to know the truth.”

Charlotte nodded. She took another drag on the cigarette, then continued.

“A few months after the sounds and smells and whatnot, Vincent started having these . . . spells, I guess you'd say. He'd black out and wake up somewhere else hours later, with no memory of the intervening time. And he wasn't waking up in church, if you get my drift.”

“Where was he waking up?”

“Bars—speakeasies, I guess—brothels . . . places like that. He didn't tell anyone. Just kept hoping it would stop. Then one night he woke up in a room with a prostitute who was cowering in a corner with a recently acquired black eye and a bleeding lip, and there was no one there but the two of them.” She paused to let him digest this.

“
Vincent? 
” Michael asked.

She nodded, tapping ashes into an ashtray. “That was what prompted him to go to Tom.”

“No way,” Michael said. Still, in the back of his mind he could hear Vincent's voice from the tape.
“I have to tell you . . . bad things . . .”

“My father and Tom worked with him,” Charlotte said. “Blessings. Prayers. Never a full-scale exorcism. He didn't need it. He threw himself into the Church so completely, it was obvious his choice had been made and his mind wasn't going to change. But your father—he was never very religious, you know.”

Michael nodded. His father had apparently been an avowed agnostic—a major source of agony for Vincent.

“So,” Charlotte went on, “that left the entire family vulnerable, and the demon damn near wiped you out.”

“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “You think a
demon
was responsible for the Winecoff fire?”

“I can't prove it, obviously. But yes. I do.”

“That fire was set by an arsonist.”

Charlotte chuckled.

“What?” Michael asked, annoyed.

“You know the Eskimo story?”

“What Eskimo story?”

“It's an old joke. A guy goes up to the priest after Mass and says, ‘This God thing is a bunch of crap. I just got back from Alaska and while I was there, I got stranded in a snowstorm, and I got down on my knees and begged God to help me, and He didn't do a damned thing.' The priest says, ‘Then how is it that you're standing here talking to me now?' The guy says, ‘Well, luckily for me, this Eskimo just happened to be walking by.' ”

She stopped to give Michael time to digest it, then continued.

“God works through people. The Devil works through people. We're all soldiers, for one side or the other. Didn't St. Ignatius teach you that?”

“But you're saying all those people died because of Vincent's demon?”

“What do you think? The Devil's gonna make sure he doesn't hurt any innocent bystanders?”

Michael had no answer, but it still sounded insane.

“Tell me something,” Charlotte said. “How much do you know about Vincent's childhood?”

“Not a lot.”

“What, exactly?”

Michael thought about it. “I know his mother died when he was born. His father was a mortician. Owned a couple of funeral homes. They had a fair amount of money. His father wanted Vincent to take over the business.”

She chuckled. “Yeah. You could say that.”

“What's funny?”

“Your grandfather grew up in Charleston, South Carolina,” she said, ignoring his question.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“Beautiful place. All those antebellum homes and huge old trees with Spanish moss hanging down. So peaceful looking, you'd never suspect the things that go on . . .”

“What do you mean?”

“They don't mention it in the Chamber of Commerce brochures, but Charleston has a long history as a hotbed of Satanism. There are cults there now that go back to the
Mayflower
, and beyond. Transgenerational cults, passed down in families for centuries.”

Michael nodded as if he believed her. He had some vague memory of Vincent talking about Charleston and Satanic cults and Freemasonry and other related issues. Vincent had always been paranoid about cults and secret societies—convinced they were highly organized and poised to take over the world. It was a side of Vincent that Michael hadn't liked very much. A pocket of unsophisticated weirdness.

“Do you know anything about Satanists?” she asked.

“I saw
Rosemary's Baby
.”

Charlotte didn't smile.

He tried again. “I know as much as the average person, I guess. They've been getting a lot of press lately—”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Let me give you a clue,” she said. “One way to tell a die-hard Satanist is that you'll never see him on
Oprah
with the word ‘Satanist' superimposed on his chest while he chats it up with the housewives.”

She stubbed out her latest cigarette, reached for another. She lit it, took a slow drag.

“The word ‘Satanist' is misleading to begin with. There are all kinds of Satanists.”

Michael shifted in his seat, annoyed by the digression. Charlotte plowed ahead, unfazed.

“You've got your self-styled individual weirdos. You usually hear about them when they get arrested. That ‘Night Stalker' character, for example. They make it up as they go along and then blame the Devil. Not that the Devil isn't involved. But Satanism, like Christianity, was always meant to be a group activity.