The Book of Shadows (28 page)

Suddenly Roméo lifted his head and spoke. “I thought he was playing. Making like the scarecrow, which he had not done for so long. I thought he was playing again, and I was happy. But I should have known. He had not even smiled since
Maman's
passing.”

“You'd no way of knowing,” consoled Sebastiana. “From such a distance how could you have known that your father was fighting off those stinging things? Impossible. And had you known, what could you have done? There was nothing you could have done, Roméo.”

“I just stood near the rockpile, watching him flop like a fish washed ashore. Watching him roll in the turned dirt. He was screaming. And I just stood there, even when I heard my name in his scream. I did nothing. Even when I knew this was not play.”

“I tell you again, Roméo, there was nothing you—” But Sebastiana was silenced, for Roméo went on:

“I just stood there. Afraid and stupid. When finally I went to him, it was too late. He lay staring up at the sun, his eyes wide and dry, empty. The last of the pests crawled on his face, on the curve of his nostrils, in and out of his nose, in and out of his mouth until, before my eyes, his tongue swelled and shut that passage off. I
watched
his tongue swell beyond his lips, saw it grow first blue then purple then black till finally it split at the tip and it seemed two tongues pushed from his mouth.

“
This
was not my father, no. His eyes swelled shut; the thin purple lids stretched to contain them, and from under the lids there slid some horrible substance, like turned cream.

“I sat down beside him, not knowing what to do. No one was around. We knew no one; we'd not seen anyone but our creditors for months. What could I do but watch him swell and swell? First his face, till he was unrecognizable; and then his neck went impossibly thick. And his fingers. The blackening nails came off when I took his hard hand in mine and begged him, ‘What should I do? Papa, tell me!'

“But he was already dead.

“I must have wandered then from the field, into the woods and to this place. Somehow I made it past—”

“No!
Attends!
” This from Sebastiana. “Speak not of the woods, not now.”

Roméo shrugged. “I came from the woods. Sebastiana found me standing in the meadow.” He turned from me to Sebastiana and added, “I have not left this place since. I never will.” At this Sebastiana smiled. “They have helped me here. Fed me. Clothed me. Taught me much. They have gained my loyalty and love.”

“It's enough already, boy!” said Asmodei, not unkindly. “Bring me wine to wash down this excess of sentiment!” As Roméo poured the wine, Asmodei placed his hand on the boy's knee; and farther up, to squeeze the muscled thigh. Roméo, before returning to his seat, crooked one finger and seemed to toy with a golden curl that clung to the man's neck. A filial gesture? Something more, something amorous? I cannot say.

Asmodei, raising high his reddened goblet, said, “To your boy!” Sebastiana accepted the toast and drank. “Now,” said Asmo, “tell our omni-sexed guest what
you
are, dearest one.”

Sebastiana was not so easily goaded. With a tiny knife, its handle mother-of-pearl, she peeled a large green apple; the skin curled around her wrist in one piece. We all of us watched Sebastiana, waiting. I drank. Finally, the white flesh of the apple weighty in her palm, she said, “I am the witch Sebastiana d'Azur. And you know well, Asmodei, just how this one will come to know me.” She bit the apple. She looked to me, to Asmodei, and said, “I think it is time to speak of the great demon Asmodei.”

In a single swift motion, which startled us all, Asmodei pushed back his huge chair—a horrible scraping on the stone floor!—and with a giant's stride moved to the fireplace behind me. I thought I heard him speak, mutter something—to himself, presumably. As my chair weighed more than I did and extended a body-width beyond me on either side, it was not easily moved; I did not turn to see Asmodei behind me. I sat still. I
sensed
him there. I heard him stoke the fire. And then I asked Sebastiana, in a half-whisper, “Is he
really
a—?”

Asmodei came up quickly behind me. I looked to my left, to Sebastiana; Asmodei stood to my right. Quite close. I dared not turn. I did nothing. I did not move. Did not speak. He bent down to me; his face was so near mine I could smell the orange pomade in his hair, could smell the wine and the fruit on his hot breath. I reacted
bodily
to his nearness. Finally, following Sebastiana's gaze, I turned—so, so slowly—and saw that Asmodei, with a stick aflame at one end, was relighting several candles in the chandelier. Such
relief
…ah, but it was short-lived, for just then I remembered the silly, showy, lacy cuffs of the blouse I wore. I remembered them only when I realized that they were on fire, had been
set
afire.

I sprang from my seat, waving my arms in macabre mockery of poor Monsieur Rampal. Asmodei reeled back, laughing. Sebastiana stood to chide the man. As for Roméo, I don't know what he did, for two things happened then in quick succession:

First, I tore the flaming cuffs from my blouse and smothered them underfoot in a quite indelicate dance.

Second, I turned to see Father Louis and Madeleine standing before the fireplace, the tall flames burning
through
them as though they were made of mist.

…Oh yes, a third thing happened then: I fainted. Fell dead away.

W
HEN I CAME
to I was lying on one of those fauteuils that bordered the dining room. Overstuffed with down, it was a sort of truncated sofa. I'd been propped up on several lozenge-like pillows, varying in shade from coral-pink to crimson. I detail here the comfort into which I woke for its effect was to heighten my already profound embarrassment.

I'd fainted. This, I tell you, was mortifying.

Roméo sat beside me, urging me to sip from a small golden bowl. Its contents were warm: a curl of steam rose up like a beckoning finger. He'd dribbled a bit of the liquid into my mouth; perhaps that had helped rouse me. Awake now, able to resist, I declined to sip. Roméo insisted. Again, I declined. He persevered, and I gave in…. A long draft. It was dark and viscid, medicinal. (This was, of course, Sebastiana's concoction. A true witch's brew. Had I known its ingredients I might well have fainted a second time; for I would learn that Sebastiana had heated in the bowl the oils of rosemary and van-van, stirring in some walnut liqueur and a touch of hog's lard.)…Disgusting, the taste; but so sweet the way Roméo held my hands in his as we cupped the bowl and I sipped, staring over its rim at his face. That extraordinary face. What
wouldn't
I have sipped then?

The brew had its effect. The fog within me lifted, and I was able to sit up, clearheaded, ready to resume. After all, there remained the questions…

Eventually, we returned to the table—me with my tattered and charred sleeves. Sebastiana, apparently, had exerted herself in rousing me, for she'd removed that fichu of Antwerp lace and now only her blue silk scarf, ever-shifting, concealed her high, pale bosom. (I remember reveling in the brazen
ease
, the openness with which she sat there, so very nearly naked.) Before taking his own seat, Roméo helped me settle into mine. I sat beside him now, for Father Louis and Madeleine sat where I'd sat earlier, across the table from Roméo and me, in front of the fire. They sat shoulder to shoulder on a small, unsteady bench that looked as though it had been brought in from the kitchen. Regarding the sudden appearance of Father Louis and Madeleine…well, I was glad to see them. Of course, would that they had
not
appeared so suddenly, back-lit so eerily by the flames…How long had they been present? I think it safe to trace their advent back to Sebastiana's ringing of the brass bell—the time-honored means of summoning souls—and the resultant chill I'd felt.

As the answering resumed, with Father Louis attempting to tell what little was known of Asmodei—and clearly he'd been chided, but not so well as to take the smirk from his face—I remarked that Roméo, while listening intently, did not look at Father Louis directly. Rather, he looked but seemed not to
see
the priest. It was evident he could see Madeleine's blood, see it as a trickling red fount in the air, falling slowly to puddle and spread over the stone floor. But as for the
corporal
beings (such as they were) of Father Louis and Madeleine, Roméo, the
merest
mortal among us, lacking our powers, could not clearly see them. Only when they were backed by fire, as now, could he discern their shadowy outlines. It was as though the fire seared their shapes onto the very air, just as the outline of a burning witch was sometimes seared into the stake at which she'd burned.

Sebastiana had asked Father Louis to speak of Asmodei. The demon (I use the word for want of a better, more accurate one)…Asmo, I say, appeared resigned to hearing his tale told. Of course, this seeming disinterest was all show; and he bore this out when, in the course of what followed, he spat all manner of remonstrance and reproof at the priest. (Father Louis actually began with, “Once upon a time…” before Asmodei arrested him with, “Surely you know this is no fairy tale,
mon prêtre
!”)

The priest, unruffled, resumed in a rather grandiloquent tone, as if speaking to his parishioners, or the parliamentarians…

“Once, decades back,” began the priest, “there was discovered floating in the Loire, near the foot of the centuries-old château of Angers, a hollowed-out tortoise shell. In it, swaddled in rags, there lay an infant. A boy, beautiful but for this: into his still-tender scalp a tattoo had been burnt. Behind the right ear, just above the base of the skull.”

I stole a glance at Asmodei and, as I knew he must, he touched himself,
there,
where this tattoo lay hidden beneath his long blond curls. “Is
that
tale still being bandied about?…Father, I suppose you believe in the boy from the bulrushes, too?”

Father Louis resumed: “This child's tattoo was identified as the seal of Asmodeus. No priest of Angers would baptize the child. No church would claim him. Neither any family. And so the child was consigned to the care of the crazed women of La Défense.”

“Fabrications! Every word fabricated, you fool!” Asmodei would have further berated the priest had Sebastiana not then cued the cleric: “La Défense,” said she, “speak of La Défense.”

Father Louis nodded. “For centuries,” said he, “the crazed and criminal women of Angers and its environs had been hidden away at La Défense. It was there, in the dark, airless catacombs of that secret asylum, that the city elders placed ‘the demon child.'”

“They shared me, those women,” said Asmodei, quite calmly, too calmly. He sat staring at his left hand, twirling its jeweled rings with the fingers of his right. “I grew, and they trained me to please them. And please them I did.” He looked at me, long and deep. “Only among the prettiest and most crazed did I sow my seed. There, in the depths of La Défense, I begat a race of devil bastards!…Or so it is said.” His laughter rang through the room.

“Finally I escaped, and made my way to Paris. The rest, as they say, is history.” Asmodei sat back in his seat, sated and gross, and belched. “More wine,” said he to Roméo.

“Let the priest tell it,” said Sebastiana. She motioned to Father Louis to continue, and he did, telling how Asmodei was reputed to have killed the Taker of the Dead, the man who descended monthly into the depths of the asylum to gather up the deceased women in their varying states of decay. More was said, but so thoroughly disgusted was I with it all that I recall none of it, remember only that Sebastiana pointed at Asmodei and said, to me, “He is, we think, somehow descended from the demon Asmodeus.”

Father Louis explained: “In old Persia,” said he, “Asmodeus was associated with Aeshma, one of the seven archangels.”

Hah!
said Madeleine; the sound burst in a blood bubble from her throat.
An archangel as forebear? Him?

“Oh, the pleasure I'd take in making you bleed, if only you weren't already awash in—”

Father Louis interrupted Asmodei: “Among the Hebrews Asmodeus attained an even higher place as part of the Seraphim, the very son of Naamah and Shamdon. Still other Hebrew legends hold that he is the son of Adam and Lilith—Lilith being Adam's first wife, the Demon Queen of Lust. She, made from filth before the birth of Eve, objected to Adam's lying atop her and sought to procreate side by side. Denied, she mated with the Luciferians, the fallen angels, and spawned a race of sex-crazed spirits.”

“Rather more to the point,” added Sebastiana, “among Christians, Asmodeus was said to be the Devil's agent of provocation—the demon of lechery, anger, and revenge, charged with preventing coition between man and wife, wrecking new marriages, and winning men to the ways of adultery.”

Sebastiana was describing his avatar as the chief demon of possession when Asmodei interrupted to say, disdainfully, “Yes, yes, yes! And be sure to tell this he/she witch that the great Asmodeus was said to have three heads—those of an ogre, a ram, and a bull—and also the claws of a cock, and wings as well! Give it the
grand
details! Tell it of our great good friends Astaroth, Baal, Beelzebub, Belial…Or shall I simply recite from the fool Barrett, and tell our double-sexed fledgling of Oriax, ‘who, with his lion's mane and serpent's tail, rides upon a horse mighty and strong, serpents in both hands.' Or Agares, ‘who saddles crocodiles and carries a goshawk on his fist.' Or maybe it will fancy Apollyon, ‘overlord of demons and all discord, who looks for all the world like the simplest of merchants till he spreads his great black wings and…'” He glared at Madeleine, for no reason I could discern. “Correct me if I am wrong, sweet spectral bitch, but has not Apollyon ridden dragons down through time, breathing fire all the while? You ought to know, old as you are.”

Madeleine, seemingly unmoved, looked to Sebastiana, who said:

“We agreed to all this before rescuing the witch.” She spoke in an imperious tone, cold as the roseate marble on which her hands rested. Suddenly it was as though I were not in the room. “You will abide by these rules or you will leave this table.”

“This table…” spat Asmodei, standing.

“And this house.
My
house.” Her measured, steady words had immediate effect: Asmodei sat, adding only, in a controlled tone, “You'll tell the witch about the idiot Weyer, won't you? Now
that's
rich!”

It was in concession that Sebastiana added, “Christian demonologists, through centuries past, have cataloged demons into hierarchies of hell, ascribing to them attributes and duties, even ambassadorships to various nations. Johan Weyer was such a one. He claimed—”

“He
claimed,
” took up Asmodei, “that hell held no more and no less than 7,405,926 demons, all in the service of seventy-two princes! The math alone must have been a life's work! Such
fantastic
idiocy!” And Asmodei, in imitation of the demon Apollyon, set then to flapping his arms as though they were the very wings of the merchant/demon. Sebastiana could not help but laugh; I remarked a fondness in Sebastiana's eyes as she looked down the length of the table at Asmodei. Vainly, she tried to hide a smile behind her hand. “Asmodei, dear,” she asked, “what supper would be complete without your particular style of…of
discourse
?” There was laughter, I recall—it was not mine; but this levity was short-lived, lasting only until our talk turned to incubi and succubi.

“The objective here, as I see it,” said Asmodei, coolly, “is to teach this young witch about this
family
into which he, she, or it has been flung. Correct?
D'accord
. And so let us speak now about our incorporeal fiends, or rather
friends
. Succubus and incubus, paramour and priest. Where, oh where, to begin?

“Of course, they'd like us to pity them as they swirl unseen through their spheres of illimitable sex? I think not. Pity the desirous living, not these oversexed souls!” He was taunting them. Taunting us all.

Asmodei sat back in that throne of a chair. His legs lay over a corner of the table, crossed at the ankle. They seemed impossibly long, his legs, entwined, tapering to his bare feet. Tightly curled hairs, like shavings of gold, gleamed on his muscled calves. His large feet were all bone and sinew, callused and crooked. Oh, how he reveled in the attention (such vanity I'd never seen!). Finally, he tipped the heavy chair back, rocked it on two legs, and slowly, slowly brought his index finger to his lip, furrowed his brow, and said, absently, “Yes, yes, yes. Where to begin?” We all of us waited out his charade. Finally, he began, addressing me:

“They shape-change, as you know.” Leaning toward me, his arm stretching toward me till it seemed he might touch me, touch me though he sat impossibly far away, he added, “You'd best beware. All they'd need is a strand of my hair,” and slowly he ran his hand through his hair, finally, suddenly pulling free several strands, causing himself pain and obvious pleasure—“that's all they'd need to take my shape upon you. To touch you. Kiss you as I would. On your open mouth, on your
strangeness
. To tug at, suck on your—”

“Asmodei!
Ça suffit!
” This was Sebastiana.

“Ah, but no. It's not nearly enough. Is it not my turn to talk, to teach the witch?”

“Teach then, do not terrify.”

“Oh, but it's not scared. Is it?” He looked into my eyes. How I hated him then. Hated that simple word,
It
. “In fact, I think it fancies the idea of a night visit from me. Do you? Do you want me to come to you, to work
my
ways upon you?
Answer!
”

I sat back, startled. He'd lulled me; and now his shouting stirred me terribly, so terribly I thought I might cry.

It matters not
, said Madeleine,
for we will not oblige you.
Neither of us will take your shape upon the witch. Never!
Madeleine turned to me.
We vow it
.

“Ah,” resumed Asmodei, “the blood-dripping bitch speaks! Tell us, succubus, righteous one, why it is you disdain
my
shape?”

Madeleine could not continue. She was overexcited; she'd spoken too quickly; she began to choke on the blood. I watched helplessly as the blood was blown out and sucked back into the mouth-like gash that ran the length of her throat. Long moments passed…. Staring, aghast, I had this horrid thought: that, I said to myself,
that
is what it must mean to die of the Blood. To die as a witch dies, drowning in her own blood.

Father Louis succeeded in calming Madeleine, and she continued:

Louis said we had a lesson to teach you. I had only to take form, and come to you; then you would believe.

Sebastiana spoke. “We are ahead of ourselves here, Mademoiselle, don't you think?” The succubus made to answer, but Sebastiana overspoke her again: “Asmodei,” said she, “I wonder: can you be trusted to speak—
sans
theatrics—of the succubi and incubi.”