Southern Gods (21 page)

“Lupa? I thought your name was Andrez.”

“Yes. Andrez Lupa, at your service.” The man raised his chin and cocked his head at her like some black-clad little king until she laughed.

He laughed too.

“So, how long have you been here? I mean in America?”

He picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth and fingers. “Eh… twenty years now, I think. I am just recently beginning to dream in English. And you? You mentioned your family library. Do you have a large family?”

Sarah paused and sipped her tea. It was very sweet.

“No, just my mother and my daughter. It was a bigger family years ago, but my brother was killed in the war, and my father died… well, during the war as well. Heartsick, I guess.”

“Ah… this is not good. Will you take back your family name, since your… eh… divorce?”

“Rheinhart? I haven’t thought about it—”

Andrez’s face turned white, and he dropped the thigh he had been eating. He stood up and carried his plate to the counter. He rinsed his hands in the sink, then dried them on a towel, silent but clearly thinking. From his black shirt pocket he took a cigarette and lit it, hands shaking.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

Andrez stared into space, unconsciously bringing the cigarette to his lips.

“Eh? Oh, you just startled me. I know of a Gregor Rheinhart. I must think on this.”

Sarah stood. “My uncle? Gregor? I don’t know what could be—”

Andrez shook his head and waved her to sit back down. “Eh… this makes things different. You are a Rheinhart, yes? Then there are things I must speak to you of. But first, let us look at this. This
Opusculus Noctis
. Then we will speak of Gregor.”

Puzzled, she brought forth the translation from her purse and set it down on the table in front of Andrez.

He read
Opusculus Noctis
in silence, smoking, holding his cigarette away from the pamphlet so as not to get ash on the paper. His expression grew dark at times. Finally, after he had read quite a bit, he looked at Sarah and gave her a pained smile.

“Sarah? What do you know of this piece? What do you think it is about?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like a legal document, sometimes it seems like poetry, sometime like recipes. I can’t figure it out.”

“Have you read it aloud?” Andrez face became very serious. He leaned closer, eyes wide. “Have you spoken the Latin aloud?”

His intensity startled Sarah.

She shook her head. “No. I’m doing the best I can to just understand the words.”

Andrez exhaled, relief washing through him. His shoulders slumped.

“This is good. This is a good thing.”

“What is going on here? This whole conversation is starting to get me worried.”

He sighed again and got up, went into the kitchenette. From a cabinet he retrieved a bottle of claret and two short glasses.

“In Montenegro, we do not use wine glasses. We use these,” he said placing the smaller glasses on the table. “No stems.” With precise movements, he popped the cork, placed the glasses on the table, and poured each a full measure.

They both sipped at their wine. It was good. Sarah had become used to the sharp, sweet tang of the toddies that Alice made for her. The wine had a body and depth to it that reminded Sarah of meat, smoke, and spices.

“Sarah, this book is not what it seems to be. Its title is misleading, and it misleads on purpose. To all prying eyes, this pamphlet looks like a religious document from the Quattrocento… eh, the fifteenth century. And it
is
a religious document from the fifteenth century, though it is not Christian. It is written in Ecclesiastical Latin for… how do you say this… protective coloration. Eh, what do the hunters call it? Camouflage. That is what this is. It seems harmless; the title indicates it is a ‘little book.’ It is not.

“Here is what the first page says: ‘
The Little Book of Night
, a labor of… or the work of… Beleth, wrought by his great hand with instruction from the Prodigium beyond the cold silences. If one would like to make covenant with the entities locked beyond the stars, in the abyss, you must be willing to enter shadow. A warning to all: Do not call up what you cannot put down.’”

As he spoke, Sarah grew puzzled. “But what does that mean? I don’t understand.”

Andrez nodded and placed a finger on his temple, looking at her seriously. “I will read a little more, so that you might come to understand more fully, then you can ask questions.”

He cleared his throat and took another sip of wine. “‘Any summoning or compact with the… here the author uses the word
prodigium
again, which we’ve changed over the centuries to become ‘prodigy’ but what it really means is ‘vastness’ or ‘omen’ and even ‘monster’ but… really something huge and unknowable. So the sentence reads, ‘Any summoning or compact with the Prodigium must be first consecrated with blood and a willingness to sacrifice the innocent as sign of one’s intent.’”

He shut the pamphlet and sniffed, showing a hint of his own revulsion to the text. “This text is mentioned in some ancient tracts and at least two Papal missives. When you mentioned it on the phone, I didn’t… how is it said? I thought I had heard you wrong.”

Andrez held up the pamphlet with an unsteady hand. “Earlier this century, it was stolen from the protected vault in the Vatican where it was stored. And that brings us to your uncle. Of course, all of this was unknown to me before you came here. The fact that you have come here, the blood of the man I’ve been looking for… I don’t know what to think. Did someone send you? Can I be so fortunate?”

“Andrez, please tell me what you’re talking about. I don’t understand.”

He reached forward and grasped Sarah hands in his own. They were warm, soft.

“I know you don’t. This will be hard to understand. I need you to try to keep your mind open. Things are not as they seem. They never were. This
Opusculus Noctis
, it is a very evil book. It outlines, for someone with the knowledge to read it, ways to summon and make bargains with… other things.”

“You can’t be telling me that… that you believe this? You’re a priest!”

He looked pained for a moment, embarrassed, the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes deepening. He looked out the kitchen window, and he sighed. Then he turned back to her. His eyes searched her face.

Sarah felt a building urge to release his hands and leave, just grab the pamphlet and her translations and run, run back to her car and haul ass back to the Big House. Andrez looked at her as though trying to detect something that might be hidden in her composure, her features.

She began to draw away, but he held her hands firm, his fingers clasping like stone traps, not hard, not rough, but immovable.

“I wear the garb of a priest. I was a priest once. But I have eaten of the fruit of knowledge. I have learned things I’d rather forget—”

Sarah shook her head. “It’s,” she hesitated. “It’s…
absurd
!”

She laughed, and watched as Andrez’s face grew somber.

He bowed his head. He remained that way for a long while.

He took a large breath; his shoulders rose and fell, and raised his head to look at Sarah with pained eyes.

“I need you to believe what I’m about to say. It will go against everything you’ve ever known or believed.” He looked at her, thinking, an interior dialogue that she couldn’t fathom going on inside his head. “The Catholic Church, Gods forgive me for what I’m about to say, has waged a war that has been going on for centuries. This war is not with Satan, or the Devil.”

Sarah remained silent.

“It is a war against the other gods.”

He’s crazy! Unbalanced. Or a drunk. Something.

“Other gods?”

“Yes, the other gods. Baal. Cybele. Mithras. Hastur. Chernobog. Rakshasa. Ahriman. More names that, I can see from the look on your face, you have never heard before. And why should you? This is secret knowledge, handed down through the years by scholars. The war waged by law and aided by the ascendancy of the Church.

“In the Church we call them devils because it makes them easier to understand the story that the Church—that
we
—created. But they are gods. They are petty and small-minded, these gods. They are… what is the word? Capricious. Yes. It’s easy to mistake them for devils.”

He stopped and bowed his head in thought.

“They can enter you, if you’re weak, or invite them by mistake. People do invite them. Believe it.”
Beleef hit.
“They can shatter your mind and inhabit your flesh. It’s how they move through the world. But even killing the body doesn’t kill the god. They can travel without flesh. They’ve always been here. And there are new gods, new entities. They can die, and they can be born. From the ones that came before them, their parents, the Old Ones. The Prodigium.

“The church needed to protect itself! And out of all of these gods, never was there evidence of the only God that we are desperate to exist. Yahweh.

“But the Church has its own weight, its own momentum, its own plan, and an absence of proof that the entity that it worships does not exists is ignored, suppressed. Even with a multitude of real gods to choose from. The Church protects itself, first and foremost. And like anyone, or any nation under attack, we did our best to destroy those that threatened us. Strange things possessed our brethren, members of the church. We killed them… We did it through the destruction of knowledge. By destroying the liturgy of these gods, by destroying what we could of their books, their scrolls and tablets, by gaining ascendancy in the Roman Empire so that the full force of law could be brought to bear on their followers, the Christian Church effectively eradicated their worship, and so, to a certain extent, eradicated the gods themselves. Some. Not all. There are entities that do not depend on believers to exist. That is why this ‘little book’ does its best to seem like something harmless. To hide itself. But it is not harmless.”

“You’re pulling my leg, right?” Sarah laughed. When his expression didn’t change, she said, “You should be in a padded cell. This is insane.” She pulled at her hands, trying to release them from his grip.

“Sarah, listen.
Opusculus Noctis
was written not to summon the gods that the Christian church has warred against for centuries, but it was written to call up the… the Prodigium. The Old Ones. The parents of these gods. And if that should happen, there’s really no—”

“You can’t be serious.” Sarah yanked her hands from Andrez grip, startling even herself. It couldn’t be true. She snatched
Opusculus Noctis
from the table and shoved it roughly into her purse, and pushed away from the table. “It’s 1951, for crying out loud, and this mumbo jumbo—”

“Sarah, please listen to me.
Opusculus
is very, very dangerous. You can’t just—”

She stood. Andrez stood as well, holding up his hands. “Sarah, I didn’t want to frighten you. I know it might seem crazy, but—”

“No,” she said. “No. It’s all right. I’m sorry I wasted your time. Thank you for the tea.”

She slowly backed to the door, not willing to turn her back to him. Andrez wrung his hands.

“
Sarah, do not translate any more of it!
”

When her hand touched the doorknob, she whirled and pulled the door open. Stiffly, she walked around the dilapidated church to the Plymouth. She kept her back straight, fearing any moment to feel his hand on her arm, jerking her around. She fumbled with her keys at the car.

Later, sun in the west, Sarah drove with the windows down, smoking and thinking.
The Prodigium! Gods and devils. He must be off his rocker.

Only when she turned the Plymouth into the graveled, pecan-lined drive of the Big House did she realize that she had left the priest before learning what he knew about Uncle Gregor. Gregor Rheinhart, whom she’d loved. Gregor, who brought her presents, Russian dolls and dresses, from Paris. Fat Gregor. Itchy Gregor, all beard and belly. Always smelling of cherry tobacco and wine.

Darkness had fallen by the time she pulled up at the Big House.

A police car waited in the drive.

Chapter 13

S
he sat in the car, gripping the wheel, looking at the Big House. For a moment, blood filled her vision like a shroud.

It was horribly clear—the giant had risen while she’d been gone and painted the walls of the Big House in her family’s blood. In her mind’s eye, Alice lay bleeding in the kitchen, her head nearly severed. Fisk and Lenora lay beside her, bathed in sticky, blackening blood. And on the kitchen table…

On the kitchen table was Franny, splayed open like the carcass of some animal.

She shook her head, trying to clear the horrible vision. It clung, as sticky as blood, and flashed behind her eyes every time she blinked.

She left the car and approached the Big House on trembling legs. She paused at the door, terrified at what she might find beyond.

Wouldn’t there be more police cars? Wouldn’t there be ambulances?

She turned the knob and swung open the door.

Sheriff Jay Wocziak stood in the atrium of the Big House, hat in hand, speaking with Alice in hushed tones. They both turned as the front door opened.