Southern Gods (27 page)

“Of course.” Sarah blushed. Ingram stared at her, and Andrez moved to the kitchen table. He sat down, a spill of light washing over his black suit and Roman collar, illuminating his hair. Ingram sat down next to the smaller man.

A knock came from the backdoor. Through the window, a bald man with a head like a speckled-egg stood in overalls, hand upraised, waving to the odd crowd in the Big House kitchen. Fisk moved around the man and opened the back door, an expression of amused exasperation dancing across his features. He looked at Ingram, cocked his thumb at the bald man, and rolled his eyes.

“Come on in, Reuben. I need you to rustle up some shoes.” Alice pointed at Ingram. “For that man. You hear?”

Reuben bobbed his head in acknowledgement, up and down, his long wrinkled neck bunching and stretching. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his weathered overalls and examined Ingram.

“You got any paper? A big sheet?” Turning to Alice and Sarah, he held up his hands making a square with thumbs and index fingers. “Yay big?”

“Sure.” Sarah walked out of the kitchen. She returned with large tabloid sheets of yellow parchment and a thick, knife-trimmed pencil.

Reuben went to Ingram, knelt before him, and put a piece of paper on the floor. He gently lifted Ingram’s foot and placed it in the center of the paper, then traced around it.

He winked at Ingram. “This is just so we know bout how big your foot is. I’ll get you something to wear, though it might not be pretty.”

Ingram shrugged.

“Reuben, I’m taking the kids swimming. While we’re gone, get one of your boys to clean up the mess in the yard,” Alice said, and for a moment, Ingram thought she might add, “You hear?” But she didn’t.

Reuben excused himself and left. The children tromped into the kitchen wearing bathing suits, excited at the prospect of swimming, the carnage in the yard forgotten. Alice finished packing sandwiches, pulled off a crock of potato salad, and placed it in the picnic basket along with a capped jar of lemonade.

“That’s it. Let’s go, kids. We’ll be back this afternoon. And don’t forget your momma.”

Sarah went to the table and sat down with Ingram and Andrez. Once they heard the car pull away, Sarah said, “I think we need to tell Father Andrez everything, Bull. Everything you told us. He already knows most of my story, but I’ll repeat mine too, just to be clear.”

“Not ‘Father,’ Sarah. Just Andrez.” He blinked, looking at her with steady eyes. “I wear that name for them, the congregation. But not for you. We know too much, you and I.”

Sarah got up and refilled their cups from the pot of coffee on the stove, then sat down between them. The light spilled from the large window across her features, showing lines of care and worry. But her skin was bright, her eyes were clear, and Ingram found himself thinking how beautiful she was, especially in the morning light.

Ingram began, telling his story from the beginning as he did before for Alice and Sarah, slowly speaking, leaving nothing out.

Andrez’s eyes remained focused on Ingram’s broad features. When Ingram began speaking of the scene at Ruby’s, he interrupted.

“You mean, you were present at that?”

“Yes.”

“And you say that this Pale Man left on a river barge, the
Hellion
?”

“That’s right.”

“This is… troubling, to say the least. That there’s a human agent mixed up in all of this.” He remained silent for a bit, then waved his hand. “Continue please, Bull.”

After he finished, both Sarah and Andrez sat silent for a long while, Andrez looking out the window, face to the streaming light.

“So that brings us to me,” said Sarah. When she got to the point where Gregor had told her about his brother, Wilhelm, she paused and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her index and forefinger.

“I thought he was crazy. Really I did. But Gregor said I needed to know because I was the last of the Rheinharts, except for Wilhelm.”

Ingram raised his eyebrows. Andrez just listened, unblinking, light on his face.

“I came home to take care of Momma and found myself drawn to the library. After a while, I began translating
Opusculus Noctis
. It’s funny, but I thought I was just doing it for myself. Franny’s growing up. Growing away from me, I guess, now being here with Fisk and Lenora and Alice—having family for the first time—I realized how much I’ve been living through her. How much I kept her from experiencing anything. I realized I needed to find something for myself, something just for me. I’d always enjoyed Latin in college, though I wasn’t that good at it. So as best I could, I started translating
Opusculus
. I picked it because it was so small. Like a brochure.”

She glanced from Andrez to Bull. “Finally, when I knew I needed help, I called Father Andrez—I’m sorry, Andrez. And he told me… he told me—”

Andrez reached over and patted her hands, smiling. “Maybe I should start, eh? This might be a good time for me to tell my tale.”

She nodded, eyes going to Ingram.

The little man looked at them both, his hands in his lap. Then he began to speak.

***

“I was born almost sixty years ago in Podgorica, Montenegro, in the shadow of the Black Mountain. My mother was a great lady, and men from all over came to court her despite her having two sons. Her beauty and wealth made her attractive to men, even when her charming wit and personality did not. She had bright eyes, I remember, and jet black hair with a streak of white on the left side.

“When I was around twelve or thirteen, she began acting strangely. She spoke in tongues and performed horrible acts with men, commoners and nobles alike. She was… how do you say… wanton. Blatant. Doing things in the open, doing things no son should see his mother do. But she was enraged as well. Angry with everyone, wild. Nero and I began to fear her. Fear for her. She was insane, maybe. Alienists from England came to try and help her at the behest of my Uncle Marko Knežević, a minor official at the court of Nicolas I. Nero, my brother, was quite taken with these men and their rationale for her behavior. He was always the neat one and loved order. He spent hours closeted with them, speaking of her condition, her possible chemical or mental imbalances that might cause her… wicked—it cannot be denied—behavior. But the morning we found a laborer dead in the courtyard, his pants around his ankles and his head wrenched around backward, Uncle Marko sent away the alienists and called a priest.
“The priest who attended my mother was accompanied by a man dressed in a modern suit, not the ornate clerical robes of the Orthodox Church but those of a Western Catholic priest, with Roman collar. I remember being struck by his demeanor and appearance. He had silver hair and shockingly blue eyes. He was clean shaven while his companion had a big, bushy beard. As the two men stood together, it occurred to me that our very own priest seemed little more than a… how do you say it… a witchdoctor. A shaman. And the other man, the Western priest seemed like a medical doctor. A man of science. Montenegro, at this time, was going through great changes, industrialization—the great god of industry had come to Montenegro. The old ways weren’t as valued as before. And I was mad to go west to Italy, to England, to America.

“While Nero planted himself firmly at the knee of reason, a sycophant to the alienists, I became a follower of Father Guisseppi. I remained at his side. He became my mentor and… in some ways, my surrogate father.”

Andrez swallowed and closed his eyes.

“My mother’s health seriously declined. She broke her leg jumping from a second-story window. I was told she attempted suicide. But I believe she was trying to fly. Minutes before, she stormed through the house, ranting about ranks of angels swarming around her, stinging like the furies. She attacked me when I came into her room.”

He traced a scar at the corner of his eye that Sarah hadn’t noticed before. “She did this to me. Nothing horrible and quickly healed, but it’s never really gone away.

“When it was decided my mother needed an exorcism, I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I intended to join the church.”

Andrez drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell.

“She died. Whatever possessed her, they couldn’t expel it. The exorcism lasted four days, and by the end, her heart gave out. When she stopped breathing, her body began jerking and she vomited up a black bile that, despite all reason, pooled like oil and screamed obscenities at us. It took on the form of an infant… a horrible obsidian child, cursing and pulsing. When Father Guisseppi came toward it and spattered it with holy water, it laughed and hissed at us and changed its form into a long rat-like thing, fleeing out the balcony door and into the Podgorica streets. Gods save whoever it found next. Of course, Nero had been absent at the end, and when he returned, he struck me and cried and ripped his clothes. He blamed me for Mother’s death.

“My uncle gave me permission to accompany Father Guisseppi back to Rome. Nero cursed me as a superstitious fool and disappeared into the mountains with a sack of books and a rifle and whatever else he could carry. He turned feral. It wasn’t until many years later that I saw him again, and by accident at that. He’s become quite an unpleasant man.

“But I learned many things with Father Guisseppi. He was the curator of a special archive at the Vatican, a minor part of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the forbidden library, known as
Bibliotheca Occulta
. I touched on this with you, Sarah, when we spoke yesterday. The
Bibliotheca Occulta
is the most comprehensive collection of black magic and lore ever assembled by man. I became an initiate into the order of curators because of my experience. Because of my mother.

“After seminary, I returned to Rome and took up my duties there with Father Guisseppi, indexing, collating, and protecting the library. Protection was one of the main missions of my order. One of my co-initiates, a brother by the name Gord Fuseli, abandoned the order and fled with many of the most dangerous and, consequently, valuable books. Father Guisseppi and I were at a loss; we never suspected. But when we looked into his rooms, we discovered this man Gord was a slave to the poppy. An opium fiend. He’d been injured in the First World War—though we didn’t think of it or call it that at the time—and apparently, he’d been keeping his addiction hidden ever since, even when he was in seminary and joining the order.”

Andrez paused and reached forward, taking a cigarette and the box of matches from the center of the table. He tapped the cigarette on the back of his wrist, tamping down the loose tobacco, then crimped the edges and matched the end. He inhaled deeply.

“Not all evils are ancient,” he said, smoke expelling from his mouth around the words. He held up the cigarette and looked at the burning tip. “Some evils are man-made. Such was the case with Gord. But evil calls to evil whatever the source, and the books he stole from the library made their way here. To this house.”

Sarah placed her hand on the table, palm down, and stood.

“Yes. I read something about it,” she said. “Wait a minute.”

She left the kitchen and returned in a few moments with a stack of yellowed papers.

“These are letters from my Uncle Gregor to my father. He says,” she ruffled the stack, searching. “Here he says, ‘I’ve been contacted by a priest recently, who says he has some volumes of interest,’ and he goes on to mention
Opusculus
and a volume named
Book Eibon
.”

“Yes, these are two of the books he stole from the
Bibliotheca Occulta
. And the only ones that weren’t restored to the library.”

“It looks as though Uncle Gregor acquired them when he was on a book-buying trip. And brought them back here.”

“It does indeed.”

Ingram remained silent. He didn’t quite understand how these books could be dangerous, but he didn’t understand how music could be dangerous either until he took this job.

Andrez nodded toward Ingram, his lips twitching with a small, remorseful smile. “Let me continue, for Bull’s sake, so he can know everything. And there are things you should know as well.

“Father Guisseppi and I searched all of Italy looking for Gord. Despite his addictions, he was quite a resourceful man. He eluded us for many years, until we found him, not in Italy but living in Munich, married and quite reformed. His wife had broken him of his addiction to opiates and replaced it with another, food. The man had become quite fat. But we rejoiced to find him in good health and coherent. He told us what he could of the book buyers, but he didn’t remember much and your Uncle Gregor had been circumspect in his payment and correspondence. When we learned of the advertisement placed in periodicals around Europe, we discovered they were purchased by a G. Rheinhart. Your uncle, Sarah.

“How much time and effort could have been saved if only your uncle had not possessed such a gift for languages? I cannot say. But Gord didn’t realize he dealt with an American. He told us this Rheinhart—a common name—was German. So we searched in Germany for many, many years with no results. Then Austria. Then northern Italy. Hungary. Switzerland. Searching ever outward.

“Father Guisseppi grew ill and died. I was crushed. I spent nearly twenty years with this man, with the exception of my time in seminary. He was as close to family as I had ever known. After his death, I became lead curator of the
Bibliotheca Occulta
. It was then I discovered the Prodigium and the other gods. Before this, I had only thought of them as devils or demons. Father Guisseppi left me his writings, and through them, he outlined his years and years of study of the Prodigium. He kept this knowledge from me. I was shocked and not a little angry, at myself, at Guisseppi. Angry? Yes, Sarah, angry. Angry with Guisseppi because I blamed him for my mother’s death. The knowledge of the Prodigium sapped his faith. How can someone have faith in a god with countless rivals? He kept this knowledge from me so that I might keep
my
faith. He had lost his long ago. But by his death, my knowledge expanded. My faith in
one
God failed.