The Lamplighter (34 page)

“What is it, Evelyn?” McKnight asked, bending forward. “What do you see?”

Her eyes widened.

“Where have they taken her?”

Nothing.

“What are they doing to her?”

Her lips buckled. “I see the little girl…”

“Aye?”

“I see her in a closed room…”

“In the house? The big house that you mentioned?”

“In the cellar…”

“They have locked the little girl in the cellar?”

Evelyn swallowed.

“Are they starving her, Evelyn?”

“There is…much food.”

“Are they beating her?”

“No…” Evelyn shook her head, as though considering the reality to be much worse.

“What are they doing to her, then?”

No answer.

“You must tell us, Evelyn. We still might be able to save her. What are they doing to her?”

Evelyn looked as though she could not believe it. “They are…”

“Aye?”

“They are
indoctrinating
her.”

“I attended to all her needs,” Lessels said, twisting the rag on her knee, “and I saw that she was never without. Dr. Bolan examined her nearly every day. I never hated her. None of us hated her. But she was so hard to control….”

Groves nodded in personal understanding. “She snarled at you?”

“She spat and she kicked, and would not obey.”

“And how did you reprimand her?”

“I was not there to reprimand her.”

“Then what were you doing to her all this time?”

“It was not me, I tell ye. I was doing nothing to her. I was only—”

“Yes, yes,” Fleming interjected, exasperated. “You've made that plain, madam. But what of the others? What do you claim they were doing to her?”

“They were…reading things to her. To him. The one in her mind.”

“What things?”

“The Bible…catechism…it never stopped.”

“They were reading Scripture to her, is that it?”

“Scripture, and other things.”

Fleming shook his head. “Why, by God?”

“They were trying to tame him. Convert him. But he could not be converted.”

“The devil could not be converted?”

“Aye, the de'il.”

Fleming sighed incredulously.

“We never touched her,” Lessels insisted. “Not to begin with.”

“To begin with?” Groves queried, but the woman lowered her gaze.

It is an onslaught: psalms, prayers, missives, adjuration. It is a military engagement conducted on the battlefield of a little girl's mind. And in truth, though they have begun with the ambitious intention of returning Lucifer, as a shining seraph, to God's court, they quickly have no aim but to kill him.

Leerie himself is furious at the apostasy and buries himself deeply in Evelyn's imagination, into the depths of a rapidly expanding and meticulously constructed hell. He throws out hooks and barbs, constructs a stockade, then a fortress, and readies himself for Armageddon. To have been lured into such a trap only proves that he has become too complacent. But now alert to their game, he will not be evicted, and he will never be killed.

His assailants are astounded by his resilience. They paint Evelyn's consciousness—her very soul—with Scripture, and still the lodger will not wilt. They bombard him with fire and brimstone and he will not budge. They judge him and call him to account for his crimes, but he accepts no verdict. The invective inevitably turns on Evelyn herself.

“Do ye protect him, child?” Smeaton screams, his lips white with froth. “Are ye in collusion with him?”

They are careful never to be in the room when the girl is asleep. For when she dreams Leerie sometimes is released into the cellar, shrieking his displeasure and hammering on the walls with the intensity of regimental drums. Sometimes he materializes in Evelyn's former bedroom. On the staircase. In Drumgate Cemetery, which she has glimpsed though the broken shutter. And once even in the dormitory of the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls.

He is no longer the Bearer of Light, however, for the onslaught is beginning to transform him. And since the hunting lodge is no longer adequate as a holding place, a new prison must be found.

“She was a cunning one,” Lessels observed. “It was hard not to think she was in league with him.”

“With the devil?”

“She would pretend to be awake—her eyes would be open—and then in a snap she would fall down and start dreaming, and he would appear. It was lucky we escaped sometimes. Lucky we got out of the room.”

“Did you see him yourself?” Groves asked curiously, still with the afterimage of his own encounter fresh in his eyes.

“Aye.” But she could barely tolerate the memory.

“And it was the same beast that chased you home last night?”

“Oh, no…” She looked up, pale. “'Tis much worse now.”

“But still nothing human?”

“A man…a bat, with wolf teeth…he began that way, and got worse.”

“Then how did you contain him?”

“It was no longer safe at the lodge. But Colonel Munnoch, he had a small island north of the firth, and on the island was a lighthouse.”

They strip the hunting lodge, lay upturned nails and broken glass on the cellar floor, and ultimately incinerate the place, along with the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. They secrete Evelyn in a sloop, secure a black felt bag over her head, and transfer her by night to the isle of Inchcaid. When she protests, she is thrashed. When she squirms and screams, Dr. Bolan administers chloroform.

They come upon the lighthouse at dawn, a pillar of olive sandstone rising out of the fog. They lock Evelyn in the windowless provision room with surplus supplies of cotton wick, coal, castor oil, and oatmeal. She has no sense of the outside world but for the thunder of the waves and the massed shrieks of kittiwakes and gannets. The Mirror Society visits regularly to continue the onslaught, but what has been envisaged as a brief skirmish, and a rapid suppression of the Adversary, has developed into a full-scale war.

There are two permanent lighthouse keepers, whose families live in Arbroath with vegetable gardens and poultry. One, Colin Shanks, is a heartless brute who joins in the battle simply to relieve the boredom. The other, Billy Connor, is a reformed drunkard of faltering spirits. One day, alarmed at what they are doing to the wee girl, Connor sneaks a look at the dreaming Evelyn from the sealed door of the kitchen above. He sees a bedraggled, bloodless urchin curled up in the protecting arms of a winged demon.

“I never went to the lighthouse until…” Lessels could not bring herself to say it, as much as she found it necessary.

“Until what, madam?”

She shifted focus. “We had little time for Papists, all of us, but the wean, she had worn us down. Dr. Bolan, he got the idea that we should call in a Roman priest, a specialist in such things. It was something none of us would have thought of, but seeing as we had no choice…”

“An exorcist,” Groves said, almost delightedly.

Lessels looked up at him.

“Monsignor Dell' Aquila, of Italy,” Groves added, when the name returned to him in a flash.

“Aye, he…he was the one,” she agreed. “Three weeks he was at the lighthouse, they say—I was not there, I saw none of it—and in all that time he did no good. He only made it worse.”

“What was this man's purpose, you claim?” Fleming asked, confused.

“To smite the de'il with his potions and smoke,” Lessels said, and shook her head disdainfully. “To wear him down with his fine Latin words. But the one inside her would not be done so easily. He laughed at the priest through her. He said he was no ordinary foe.”

“And the priest retreated,” Groves said.

“Aye.”

“And the girl? What of her?”

Lessels gulped and fidgeted and tore at her handkerchief. “We never set out to hate her,” she insisted weakly.