The Devil You Know (11 page)

Marie
gave him a grim smile and followed him up a cement walk toward the house. A
tired old screen door with a wooden frame squeaked open, and Jasper stuck a key
in the heavy wooden door beyond it. Marie saw that the paint on the door was
heavily cracked and peeling in some places; looking around at the front of the
little house, she noticed that the rest of it looked similarly neglected. Jasper
was likely oblivious to the house’s dilapidated state; he seemed happy to be
here and not the least bit self-conscious about bringing a guest into his home.

The
dark house smelled musty inside. Bushes and vines grew up over all the windows,
creating a rather gloomy effect. Marie could tell there were large chairs and a
sofa in the room, but they appeared to be covered with piles of papers and
books.

“You’ll
have to excuse the mess,” Jasper said. When he pulled a cord on a floor lamp
that barely lit the room, he confirmed Marie’s guess about how cluttered and
unlived in it looked. “We don’t get much company, you see.” He moved through
the room, beckoning her to follow. She threaded her way around dusty old
furniture and saw a battered guitar propped against the back wall; it seemed
out of place, and she doubted that Jasper could play it. Ahead of her, Jasper
entered a darkened hallway, and he clicked a light switch on the wall to help
Marie find her way. “We mostly stay in the back,” Jasper added as they rounded
a corner, and Marie suddenly felt as though she was in a different house.

The
room at the back of the house was a combined kitchen and dining room, a large
oak table and chairs dominating the dining area. The wall directly in front of
her formed the back of the house and was made up of windows from just above the
floor all the way to the ceiling. Beyond she saw a well kept flower garden and
lawn; flowering vines covered walls that bound the backyard, and there was a
small white gazebo in one corner. The light from the yard flooded the dining
room and kitchen; Marie could not believe the contrast to the front room. “Oh
my,” she said.

“Nice,
yes?” Jasper replied.

“Very.
With the back like this, I can see why you don’t spend time in front.”

He
waved a hand toward the room they had just passed through. “That,” he said with
a sneer. “Never felt comfortable in that room. Things just got shoved in there
when I didn’t know what else to do with them. I’ll show you the rest in a
minute. Let me see if Tom’s presentable first. Do you mind waiting here?”

Jasper
pulled out a chair, and Marie sat. She watched as the old man went out the back
door onto the little patio and through the flower garden. He went straight to
the gazebo, and Marie noticed a man sitting in it, his back to the house. She
heard Jasper call out to him, and the man looked up quickly. He seemed plenty
alert to Marie as he turned and stood up to greet his grandfather, a book in
his hand. It made her smile to think of Jasper giving his grandson such a
peaceful place and all the time he needed to put the war behind him. Moments
later, the two were heading back to the house. Marie stood and smoothed the
front of her light blue dress when they neared the screen door.

“Marie
Doyle,” Jasper said when they had come into the kitchen, “I’d like you to meet
my grandson, Tom Glass. Tom, this is Marie.”

With
a smile, Marie stepped forward and shook the man’s hand. He was taller than
Jasper and had dark hair and a square jaw. He smiled and returned her firm
grip, something that pleased Marie; it always irritated her when men shook her
hand gingerly, as though it would break if it received a real, honest
handshake. When he smiled, it was not just with his lips, but also with his
clear, blue eyes. He looked pleasant enough to Marie and seemed a bit surprised
to find that his grandfather had brought her home. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“I’m
going to show Marie some books in the library,” Jasper said. “Maybe you could
throw together something for us to eat when we’re done?”

“Oh,
no,” Marie interjected. “I couldn’t.”

“I
insist, my dear,” Jasper said. “It’s the least I can do to repay you for the
ride home. And the stimulating conversation.”

She
smiled. “Has it been stimulating?”

“I’m
sure it soon will be.” Jasper smiled at her then turned to Tom. “Excuse us?”

“Sure,”
Tom said.

Jasper
led her through another door on the right side of the room, and Marie realized
that the “library” he had mentioned was actually the converted garage she had
seen from the street. The big doors that had likely once rolled aside to admit
a Model T were now sealed shut, and while the building looked rickety from the
outside, its interior was as clean and solid as the inside of her own house.
Wooden bookcases with glass doors lined the walls, and two other rows of
bookcases took up the middle of the room. Jasper had filled each shelf with
books over the years he had lived here, and Marie stood awestruck in the
doorway, staring at row upon row of fine leather bindings, crumbling antiques,
and colorful dust jackets.

“What
is all this?” she asked.

Jasper
walked into the room, clearly pleased at her reaction. “My vice. My addiction.
The one real love of my life.” He turned back to look at Marie, still standing
in the doorway. “My wife and I never really got along after the first year or
two. These, though…” He raised his hands to take in all of the shelves around
him. “These never change on you. Never betray you. Never leave. You can always
count on books. These are the ones I won’t let myself sell. Little gems that
come into the shop tucked in between volumes of dross that just fly off the
shelves once I price them. You’ll find first editions of Poe and Hawthorne,
Henry James and Washington Irving. And older things, too, much older. And
you’ll be pleased to know that books on the occult are a particular favorite of
mine. I’ve been chasing
Gelamen Malum
Lacuna
for a long time now. Gets me all tingly just thinking there’s a copy
within ten miles of here.”

A
huge smile spread across his face, and he sighed heavily. He looked to Marie
like someone who has just finished a huge and satisfying meal, and she could
not help but smile at the change in him. He had always been pleasant enough in
the bookstore, but never as animated as he was here among his treasures.

“But
I’m getting away from myself,” Jasper said. “On to your problem now. Come
along.” He turned and led her to an area in the back corner of the converted
garage. Marie saw that the spines of many volumes on the shelves he pointed
toward had ornate gilt writing in Latin and German. Some of the books looked to
be in awful shape, as though they would crumble upon being read, but many
others looked pristine. Jasper pulled open one of the glass doors, scanned the
shelves for a moment, and then pulled out a thin volume covered in simple
cloth. “Read French?” he asked her.

Marie
smiled, a bit embarrassed. “I’m afraid not. Just Catholic school Latin for me,
and that just barely.”

Jasper
waved at her as though he were swatting a fly, a gesture she took as one meant
to discount her self-effacement completely. “Never apologize for what you don’t
know, my dear. The ones who make you feel like you should be sorry almost never
know half of what they think they do.” He began moving along the back wall.
“Come. Sit.” He pointed to a wooden chair in the corner of the room. It looked
like it had once belonged to a dining set and was perhaps the last survivor. It
was the only chair Marie had seen in the room.

“What
about you?” she asked.

“Hmm?”
He looked up from the book, only half-listening to her. But then he grasped her
question before she had a chance to repeat it. “Don’t worry about me. I prefer
to stand when I’m pondering. And the damned French don’t make it easy.” He
turned his eyes to the book again as Marie sat down. She felt self-conscious
just sitting here as the old man read, and she tried reading the titles on the
shelves beside her to help pass the time.

“All
right,” Jasper said before long. He closed the book and began pacing back and
forth in front of her like a teacher lecturing a student. His tone remained
conversational, though, and not at all pedantic. “It’s about as I remembered
it,” he began. “I didn’t want to try to explain it back at the store without
being positive, though. The traditional Christian mythology is that an incubus
is a demon of hell, a minion of Satan. Some say the first incubus was cast out
of heaven before Lucifer. But that’s just all piffle. Most cultures have
similar creatures in their legends, the upshot being that it’s a demon driven to
have sexual intercourse with its victims. The female version is the succubus.
She targets men, the incubus women.

“Because
they’re spirits, non-corporeal you see, they can’t just have sex with whomever
they please. They come to their victim in dreams—which is a way we can
account for all sorts of scandalous behavior in our sleep—or they can
find a way to get human form. One version has the two working in concert, the
succubus taking semen from her male victim—” He stopped short and looked
at Marie. “I’m sorry if this is indelicate. Please stop me if I offend you.”

“No,”
Marie said quickly. When she thought again of what she had seen and felt
upstairs at Julian Piedmont’s, the idea of anything being indelicate now struck
her as absurd. She had received the sanitized version from Father Joe earlier
today, and now the unvarnished truth was what she had been hoping for.
“Please,” she said, hoping to appear worldly, but not without morals. “It’s
fine. It’s what I asked you to tell me about, after all.”

“True
enough,” Jasper said. He resumed his pacing. “She collects the semen from her
victim and then has intercourse with an incubus, transferring the semen during
the act. When the incubus then couples with a woman in her sleep, he
inseminates her with that same semen, which has somehow been transformed in the
unholy process, and the resulting child is called a cambion. Merlin was
supposedly one of these. The cambion apparently has no heartbeat for the first
several years and is possessed of all sorts of powers when it grows up.” He
stopped again to look at Marie. “I find this version of things to be completely
ridiculous. A nice fantasy useful for explaining nocturnal emissions and erotic
dreams about forbidden love and, of course, unwanted pregnancies.”

Marie
smiled at this. It was almost exactly what Father Joe had told her, but coming
from Jasper it seemed far more honest.

“Of
course,” he went on, “the more interesting version has the demon acquiring a
physical body of some sort. Your friend said they used blood?”

“He’s
hardly my friend,” Marie said. “But yes, that’s what he said.”

“Makes
perfect sense according to this.” He waved the book around. “It says they can
reanimate a corpse or simply create an entire body out of just a bit of flesh.
Once they have a body, they can take on any shape they want. This, too, is a
part of the legend used for the convenience of some. There’s one story here
about a medieval monk who was accused of fornicating with the nuns. He claimed
an incubus had taken his form and gone into the nuns’ chambers. And the courts
believed him.” He laughed briefly. “Wonderful thing, religion.”

Marie
smiled a bit uneasily and said, “Does that book say anything about what happens
to the victims of these…things once they’ve taken bodies like that?”

“You
mean your friend or this woman up on Ivar, yes?” Jasper nodded without waiting
for Marie to respond and hummed a bit as he turned his attention back to the
book. “No,” he said after a few minutes. “Not here. Not in this one. But, uh…” He
looked a bit sheepishly in the direction of the bookcase he had drawn the book
from. “As you can see, there are a few more experts to consider. It would take
some time to sift through the varying opinions and accounts and such.” He
looked back at Marie, and she realized that she must have worn a look of
disappointment, as Jasper immediately changed his tone. “Don’t be discouraged,
though. I’ve been needing a little project to keep me busy around here. Give me
an excuse not to clean up that front room, you see.”

Marie
waved a hand at him, saying, “No, Jasper, really. I never expected you to—”

“Nonsense.
If those animals have really found a way to do this, then they need to be
stopped. And you’re not going to get much help from the authorities, I’m
afraid. Even if the principle figure in this situation wasn’t one of the most
powerful men in Hollywood, I don’t think the police would be much help.
Demonology isn’t something they teach at the Police Academy.” He turned again
to the shelves. “No, what we need is here. And you’re welcome to come back here
anytime. In fact, I’ll need you to come back and help separate the bunk from
the hokum. You up to it?”

She
did not hesitate. “Of course, if it’s really not a bother.”

“It’s
just reading old books. One of life’s greatest pleasures.”

Marie
stood up, considering what Jasper had said about stopping Julian Piedmont and
his followers. “So, you believe they’ve really done it—conjured these
demons and created bodies for them? You don’t think Colin was making it all up?
Or that I am?”

“You?”
Jasper shook his head and smiled broadly. “I think I know you well enough to
see that you’re still the same rational being you’ve always been. I believe
something unexplainable happened to you and your friend. And I think this Krebs
fellow has a possible explanation. The story he told…well, it’s not the kind of
thing you could just make up and have the details so accurate without already
being a scholar on the occult. Which you don’t make him sound to be.”