Father Lucas held out his hand, but Boofuls, without looking at him, moved his own hand away.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Father Lucas asked him in a gentle voice.
Boofuls’ eyes remained fixed on Grover. ‘My name is Lejeune,’ he said.
‘Lejeune? Is that French?’
Boofuls shook his head. Father Lucas waited for him to say something else, but when he didn’t, he rose to his feet and said, ‘He’s a relative of yours?’
‘He’s my –’ Martin began; but Mr Capelli immediately interrupted.
‘He’s a friend of Emilio’s; a good, good friend. Best buddies. His parents had to go away for a week or two. So – well – he’s staying with us. With me and Mrs Capelli.’
Boofuls didn’t make any attempt to deny this fiction; but kept on smiling.
‘Well …’ said Father Lucas. ‘I’m not too sure what it is you want me to do.’
Mr Capelli grasped his arm and spoke to him racetrack-confidential. ‘I want you to tell me if that mirror is a good mirror or an evil mirror. I want you to tell me what you feel when you touch it. Also, I was hoping that maybe you could think of some way to get Emilio out. Some
holy
way, do you understand what I mean by holy? Just so that nobody gets hurt. You see Lejeune here, well, I wouldn’t want
him
to get hurt, for instance.’
‘Why should there be any danger of him getting hurt?’ asked Father Lucas.
‘Father,’ Mr Capelli replied, ‘I just don’t know. But maybe prayer can help. You know – maybe you can ask God.’
Father Lucas tried to look benign. ‘God isn’t exactly an agony uncle on some local radio station, somebody you can call up just whenever you feel like it.’
‘I know that. He’s better. Look at His ratings. God has better ratings than anybody you can think of, on any station.’
‘Mr Capelli,’ said Father Lucas, ‘let’s just take this one step at a time. You’re asking me to tell you whether the mirror is good or evil. Well, let’s find out. There’s a little test we can do. I suppose you could call it a litmus test for blasphemy.’
‘Litmus?’ frowned Mr Capelli, as Father Lucas took a small phial of silver and dark blue glass out of his coat pocket.
‘Didn’t you do any science at school?’ Martin asked him. ‘Litmus is a powder that turns red in acid and blue in alkali. They make it out of moss.’
‘And this is litmus?’ Mr Capelli asked, pointing to Father Lucas’ phial.
Father Lucas smiled and shook his head. ‘Not quite, Mr Capelli. But it has a similar effect. It is water from the Holy Shrine at Lourdes, mixed with salt from the Sea of Galilee. It is said that if it touches any evil or desecrated object or person, it will burn them, like acid.’
Boofuls looked across in interest when Father Lucas said this; but after a while he returned to the television.
Little House on the Prairie
seemed to entertain him more than foolish priests who sprained their ankles playing baseball.
Father Lucas unscrewed the cap of the phial and lifted it up in front of the mirror. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ he intoned, and cast drops of holy water at the surface of the mirror in the sign of the cross.
To his astonishment, the holy water
flew right through the surface of the mirror and splattered onto the floor in the reflected sitting room
.
Father Lucas stared at the image in the mirror, then touched the glass of the mirror itself, then stepped back to stare at the real floor.
‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘It’s
there
, in the mirror, but it’s not
here
.’ He licked his lips anxiously. ‘It went right through. How could that happen? It’s solid glass.’
Martin said, ‘Now you know why we called you.’
Father Lucas waited for a moment, plainly unsure what he was going to do next. ‘There could be some scientific explanation,’ he suggested. ‘I always look for the scientific explanation before I start imagining that I’m face-to-face with something demonic. Well, it’s only right. Science in itself is a wonder of the Lord; and if a phenomenon eventually turns out to
defy
science, well then, it’s all the more wonderful for that.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Mr Capelli. ‘All you lost in there was some holy water. I lost my grandson.’
‘Well,’ said Father Lucas. ‘This isn’t really my bag, so to speak. I’m not an exorcist; and I’m not too sure that an exorcist is what you need. You may be better off with a physicist.’
Boofuls laughed out loud, but it wasn’t at all clear whether he was laughing at the television or at Father Lucas. Mr Capelli gave him a stern look, and he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Stiffly, Father Lucas got down on his hands and knees and patted the floorboards where (in the mirror) they were wet. Martin had done the same thing when Boofuls’ ball first bounced into the reflected room; and with an equal lack of success.
‘I can see myself touching it,’ he said, ‘and yet my fingers aren’t wet. It’s quite astonishing.’
He held out his hand to Martin to help him back up again; but just as he did so, something came flying
out
of the mirror in exactly the same parabola as the holy water had flown
in
. It splattered onto Father Lucas’ forehead and down the side of his cheek.
He cried out ‘Ah!’ in surprise, and lifted his fingers to his face. He had been hit by several white glutinous droplets, which dripped onto the floor, and hung from his fingers in thin sticky strings.
‘Here,’ said Mr Capelli, taking out a large clean handkerchief and unfolding it. ‘Here, Father, wipe yourself with this.’
‘What in God’s name is it?’ Father Lucas asked in disgust. He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Then he sniffed again. Then – his horror so strong that he almost panicked – he snatched the handkerchief from Mr Capelli’s hand and wiped and wiped his face until it was bright scarlet all down one side.
‘Semen!’ He quivered. ‘Semen!’
Mr Capelli crossed himself, and then crossed himself again. Martin helped Father Lucas to climb to his feet. Once he had steadied himself, Father Lucas stared at the mirror in anger and frustration. ‘This is the work of the devil, you must have realized that from the very start.’
‘But what can you do?’ Mr Capelli begged him. ‘The work of the devil is something that priests are trained to handle, eh? So you can do something for us?’
Father Lucas was about to say something when he turned unexpectedly and looked at Boofuls. Boofuls was staring at him with one of his triumphant, expressionless faces.
For a moment, their eyes engaged in a silent, careful game of question and answer. Then Father Lucas walked over to him and said, ‘What do
you
know about this mirror?’
Mr Capelli caught hold of Father Lucas’ arm. ‘Listen, Father, he doesn’t know nothing at all. He’s only been in town since yesterday.’
Father Lucas continued to stare at Boofuls in the way that a confident man stares at a dog which has a reputation for being vicious and mad. ‘Lejeune,’ he said. ‘That’s your name, is it? Lejeune.’
Boofuls smiled fleetingly and said nothing, but he didn’t take his eyes away from Father Lucas, not once. Martin didn’t like the look of that smile at all. It made him shudder, as if somebody were stepping on his grave.
They went downstairs to Mr Capelli’s apartment, leaving Boofuls on his own. ‘Come in and have coffee,’ Mrs Capelli begged Father Lucas. ‘I have some beautiful polenta.’
Martin said, ‘Go ahead, Father, please. There’s something I want to show you.’
‘All right, all right,’ Father Lucas agreed. He took out his handkerchief and gave his reddened cheek yet another rub. ‘But I can only stay for a quarter of an hour.’
‘It won’t take any longer,’ Martin assured him.
While Mr and Mrs Capelli took Father Lucas through to the parlor, Martin ran downstairs and out into the street. He unlocked the trunk of his Mustang and carefully lifted out the black-tissue package that he and Ramone had discovered at the Hollywood Divine. Then he returned to the house with it and carried it upstairs.
Mrs Capelli was setting the table with plates and cups. She looked fretful and unsettled, and her braided hair was coming loose on one side. Father Lucas was talking to Mr Capelli about the mirror. They obviously hadn’t told Mrs Capelli that it had ejaculated in Father Lucas’ face. But Father Lucas looked extremely worried.
‘You always associate this kind of demonic event with the Middle Ages,’ he was saying, ‘but the truth is that the devil never rests, any more than the Lord Almighty.’
‘Amen, amen,’ put in Mrs Capelli, clattering coffee spoons.
Martin came in and laid the black-tissue package on the lace tablecloth. Father Lucas shifted his chair around to examine it. ‘What’s this?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is it anything to do with the mirror?’
‘I think so, but I don’t know what. Let me tell you something, Father, before you open it. A man was killed yesterday, helping me to find this stuff. Whether it was an accident or not, I can’t say. He might just have hemorrhaged. But I don’t really think so.’
Mrs Capelli crossed herself. ‘Holy Mother of God, what is it?’
Father Lucas untied the braided hair and teased open the tissue paper. He lifted one sheet up, and the black claws tumbled out onto the table with a rattling sound.
‘God protect us,’ Mr Capelli said hoarsely.
‘Where did you get these?’ Father Lucas asked, picking one of the claws up and turning it over.
Martin said, ‘Just at the moment, I don’t want to tell you. Well, I want to tell you, but I can’t. It’s all to do with protecting Emilio. But they
do
seem to have some connection with the mirror. A very strong connection.’
Father Lucas wrinkled up his nose as he took out the piece of dried scalp. Then he found the key.
‘Do you have any idea what this opens?’
‘A safe-deposit box, I think, in the same place where we found all this stuff. But there are dozens of them, and we don’t know the number.’
‘What was the number of the box you found these in?’
Martin dug into the pocket of his jeans and took out the key that Sister Boniface had given him. ‘Here it is, 531.’
Father Lucas examined it carefully. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘I know only a little about occult numerology, but I know enough to recognize the Number of the Beast when I see it.’
‘The Number of the Beast?’
‘Satan’s number, 666. Don’t you remember that film
The Omen
? They made great play of it in that.’
‘Oh, yes …’ said Martin. ‘Wasn’t it tattooed on Damien’s scalp or something? I mean, is that real? Is that really the number of the devil?’
Father Lucas looked almost embarrassed. ‘The story was fiction, of course, but the number was real. As far as I know it came from biblical times. But, you know, it used to be disguised by Satanists … split into quarters or tenths or halves or whatever. This is one of the things they taught us at Bible college. You see – what is the
reverse
of 531?’
Martin said without hesitation, ‘135.’
‘Quite right … but if you add them together? 135 and 531?’
Martin said nothing. Mrs Capelli stood in the doorway with a dangerously tilting plate of polenta with pine nuts and stared at Father Lucas openmouthed, even though she didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on.
Father Lucas gestured toward the claws. ‘It would appear to me that what you have come across here is
half
of the artifacts used in the satanic Sabbat. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that the other half can be found in locker number 135.’
Martin slowly sat down. He picked up one of the claws and held it up to the light. It was jet black, opaque, and extraordinarily heavy. ‘So what are these things? What are they used for?’
Father Lucas said, ‘I’m not an exorcist.’
‘But?’ asked Martin, catching the implication in his voice that he probably knew more.
‘Well,’ said Father Lucas, ‘they used to tell us at St Patrick’s that there were relics of Satan, just as there were relics of the True Cross, and the Holy Shroud, and the crown of thorns.’
‘And that’s what you think these are? Relics of Satan?’
‘Well, now, who can tell? It could all be nonsense.’
‘But it isn’t nonsense, is it?’ said Martin. ‘You saw that mirror for yourself. You threw the holy water and it went right through. You know that something evil is going down here, just as well as we do.’
Father Lucas sat and stared for a long time at the scattered claws. Then he said, ‘They taught us at St Patrick’s that the beast had been beaten, years ago, and that his body had been torn to pieces and scattered to the ends of the earth.’
‘And?’ asked Mr Capelli impatiently.
‘And that’s all,’ said Father Lucas. ‘Except that what you have here – these claws, this skin, this hair – they are all pieces of the beast. And whoever left them in that locker was obviously determined to bring them back together again – all the pieces, no matter where they were scattered – and re-create the creature that the Bible calls Satan. The
true
Satan, the very core of all evil – in the flesh.’
Martin rearranged the claws by nudging them with the tips of his fingers; but he didn’t feel like holding them as tightly as he had before. Satan may be an old-fashioned concept, but it was still frightening.