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  NEXT, AFTER LUCIFER

  by Daniel Rhodes

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  On sabbatical in the south of France, Professor John McTell finds himself oddly fascinated by a bit of local lore—the legend of a renegade Knight Templar, burned at the stake for heresy and black sorcery.

  It is a captivating story—and one that holds a strange power over McTell, driving him to investigate the crumbling ruins of the knight's fortress, the carved and blessed stone that, the villagers claim, imprisons the sorcerer's avenging spirit.

  When that stone is shattered, evil claims the soul of John McTell, and a demon once again stalks the land.

  "Rhodes is a talent to watch, with a strong writing style and a powerful imagination.'' - Library Journal

  "Rhodes neatly conjures an atmosphere of steadily mounting horror."- Booklist

  "Rhodes writes like the devil in this nasty occulter!” - Kirkus

  "A well-turned tale of supernatural terror in which lurks one of the best—or worst—monstrous creations to come along in a month of Black Sabbaths!" - Houston Chronicle

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  Copyright © 1987 by Neil McMahon. All right reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  NEXT, AFTER LUCIFER

  Published by arrangements with St. Martin’s Press

  First Tor printing: July 1988

  A TOR Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  49 West 24th Street New York, NY 10010

  ISBN: 0-812-52505-1 Can. ISBN: 0-812-52506-X

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-4374

  Printed in the United States of America

  098 76543 2 1

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  To the memory of Dr. M. R. James

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Among the many works to which I am indebted, I wish to mention in particular “Count Magnus” and “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” by M. R. James, and “The Book” by Margaret Irwin.

  Special thanks to Ted Ahem for providing the Latin texts herein.

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  Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth

  Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.

  John Milton

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  PROLOGUE

  Crouched in the darkness of a grove of ragged cypresses, Henri Taillou tugged uneasily at his beret and scanned his surroundings with narrowed eyes. He was not accustomed to the forest at night. It was strange how still it all was, how one could hear the tiny rustlings of animals creeping about their secret business, how the light of the moon seemed to magnify things and hide them at the same time. Shaggy clumps of leaves could have been the hair of weeping women, heads bent low. Ancient limbs twisted and gleamed like serpents’ coils. Though not a breath of wind stirred the hot thick night, it was easy to imagine that they moved.

  His gaze traveled up the mountainside. On its peak, the highest for miles around, the thick-walled fortress of Montsevrain had commanded the valley of the river Seyre for more than a thousand years. Now it was nothing but a bleak and crumbling ruin—to the people of the region, hardly more noticeable than the mountain itself.

  But tonight the great fat egg of a moon hovered over it, throwing the walls into sharp shadowed relief so that he could almost feel their coldness, their grim ungiving strength. For the first time in decades, Henri Taillou remembered the stories used to frighten the young of his time, that the castle had once been home to a group of renegade Crusaders who worshipped the devil and drank human blood, that those silent dark stones had once witnessed the frenzy of nights filled with fires and cries.

  He exhaled and shook his head. Such thoughts were for old women. He, Henri Taillou, was a man of practicalities. He had climbed to Montsevrain more than once in his youth, and while it was true that one could see the Cote d’Azur and out across the deep glittering turquoise of the Mediterranean, almost, it seemed, to Africa, he had found nothing of use there—only rocks. And while the long-neglected grove of trees in which he crouched might have fascinated other men with its evidence of centuries-old cultivation, neither was he any historian. To him, the grove had suggested the presence of water.

  He turned his attention to the clearing ahead, where his stupid son Philippe labored sullenly. An hour yet remained before midnight; the moon made unnecessary any light that might have given them away. So far, all was going as well as could be hoped. He took from his vest a flask of homemade Calvados, and let that and the steady thunk of metal against earth lull him. It was good to watch another man work.

  The shoveling ceased. Henri Taillou’s half-closed eyes watched like a cat’s while his panting son took a drink from a jug of lukewarm barley tea. Philippe’s undershirt was dark with sweat. The boy was too thin, he thought—the opposite of himself, a man of substance. Not for the first time, suspicions of paternity flicked through his mind. His Therese had been a bit of a gamine in her day. How could one be sure?

  In a low voice, he said, “It is not my custom to pay a man for standing when there is work right in front of him.”

  “Merde alors,” Philippe said, in a tone that was half defiance, half whine. “This water has been in the ground a million years, but these Americans must have it out on the hottest night of the summer.”

  Henri Taillou fingered his mustache. “There are many young men in Saint-Bertrand who would give much for your job.”

  Philippe made a sound like spitting air, but picked up the shovel. “It would go twice as fast if you’d help instead of sitting on your fat ass.”

  “Salaud! Show respect for your father, who raised you. You know about my back.”

  “Your back, oui. How strange that it acts up when there is hard work to be done, but never makes you miss a game of boules.”

  Sharp words hung on Henri Taillou’s lips, but he let them pass and settled back against the tree. To argue with a fool was undignified. Perhaps it was true that his back bothered him less than he sometimes let on, but he believed firmly in the value of work for the young. It built character. He unscrewed the cap of the flask and took a long drink, hearing the liquor begin to speak to him. His wife had done a poor enough job teaching the boy to behave. Philippe had become too big to chastise; but later, a slap or two would do Therese no harm, the brandy whispered—and never failed to ease his paternal doubts besides.

  The summer had been the hottest in memory, with September the worst month yet. Water supplies had been evaporating with the speed of a plague. But to Henri Taillou, drought was good news. He owned the only backhoe and well-drilling rig this side of Grasse, and he had quickly begun to calibrate his price to the desperation he read in faces.

  One of those faces belonged to a realtor, a Monsieur Colet, who listed the villa several hundred meters down the mountain from where Henri Taillou now crouched. The house was beautiful, expensive—and vacant for nearly two months, since the dwindling water supplies had forced the draining of the swimming pool. Now, it seemed, an American couple were interested, a couple for whom money was no problem. But who would rent a villa with an empty pool?

  Although Colet’s proposal was reasonable, Henri Taillou had at first shaken his head. There was no way to get this water but to steal it, and being a man of principle, he was not willing to do this cheap. But the bargaining power was on his side; after a pastis or two, they had settled on a figure half again as much. From there it had been a simple matter of walking the hills above the villa, pretending to hunt birds, until he spotted the grove of trees and confirmed his guess with
the dowsing wand. He was still not sure to whom the land belonged. But he was convinced that the spring must supply dwellings farther down the valley, and that if he tapped the water at its source, one or possibly several households were going to try their faucets next morning and find only trickles. He turned his attention back to his son and considered offering him the brandy flask; but drinking on the job was to be discouraged.

  “Patience,” he said. “I tell you the spring is within a few meters of the surface, and I am never wrong.”

  “And I’m Marie Antoinette,” Philippe muttered.

  Again Henri Taillou checked angry words. Upon one or two occasions, perhaps even three or four, it was true that he had misjudged slightly, causing Philippe a trifle of extra digging. But what did the boy think he was getting paid for? At any rate, this time Henri Taillou was sure. The dowsing rod had plunged downward with a force that nearly tore it from his hands. Water there was, easy to get to and enough to fill the swimming pool for les Americains. And who knows? Perhaps the families down the mountain, dispossessed of their own water, would turn unwittingly to him for help. The idea appealed. Idly, he considered raising Philippe’s pay, enough to allow him to buy the ancient Renault he coveted. But there would be time enough for all that. The boy had respect to learn first. Henri Taillou eased his rump forward, feeling the comfortable stretch of his waistband, and unscrewed the cap of the flask. Life was pleasant enough, he thought drowsily. The young were always in a hurry.

  The shovel rang against something hard. Philippe threw it down, cursing and rubbing his elbow.

  “Calm yourself,” his father said irritably. “And keep your voice down.” He drank again while Philippe probed the outline of the obstacle with shovel and bar.

  “It’s solid,” the younger man said nervously. “The size of a wheelbarrow, but flat.”

  “Impossible.” But Henri Taillou rose heavily, curious in spite of himself.

  Philippe played the beam of a flashlight over the stone’s surface. It was big, his father admitted—a seemingly regular rectangle, set partially upright like a door into the mountain. Further, the stone appeared to be granite, while the cliff’s natural rock was limestone and crumbling shale. And around the edges—

  “Impossible,” he muttered again. It looked disturbingly like mortar. He reached forward with a crowbar and scraped red soil from the stone’s surface. The bar’s point lodged in a groove, then another. He scraped in the other direction.

  And uncovered a carved letter.

  “What does it say?” Philippe whispered.

  “How should I know until you’ve cleaned it?” snapped his father, who could barely read.

  With a damp handkerchief and a pocketknife, Philippe went to work. Henri Taillou stayed by his side, forgetting to drink. The creeping, rustling night moved behind him like a thing with life.

  At last Philippe stepped aside. Henri Taillou leaned close. The top two lines read:

  IN FLUCTIBUS AQUARUM

  ACCLINAVIT ME

  There followed three crosses in a horizontal line. Then:

  QUIESCENTEM NE MOVETO

  “Latin,” Henri Taillou declared. “I have forgotten most of mine since they started that bloody new Mass.”

  “Aqua means water,” Philippe said hesitantly.

  “Any child knows that.”

  “We must get the priest. Monsieur Boudrie will—”

  “Cretin!” Henri Taillou wheeled on his son. “Don’t you understand what we’re doing? Do you want to go to jail? That’s all we need, the priest butting his thick head in here.”

  He turned back to the stone, glaring as if it were an enemy. Again his gaze rose as if pulled to the looming moonlit fortress; again he remembered the old tales of the castle’s human vampires; and he was suddenly touched by the haunting memory of a thousand lonely childhood nights, lying on his attic cot in the old family home while the icy mistral winds howled against his window.

  But an equally sudden anger surged. This buried chunk of rock had destroyed the peace of his night, tried to cheat him of his reward. “Eh bien, my friend,” he told it grimly. “I, too, can play rough.” He turned and strode toward the truck.

  “Wait,” Philippe said, sounding troubled. “We should find out what it says.”

  “It says water. Now shut up and set the grappling hook.” Henri Taillou hauled himself into the driver’s seat of the old flatbed truck. The noise was a risk they would have to take. Mouthing the mixture of wheedling and threat that passed with him for prayer, he pushed the starter. The engine cranked reluctantly and loudly into life. By the time he had maneuvered into position, the hook was set behind the top lip of the stone. Henri Taillou engaged the power takeoff for the front-end winch and slowly began to reel in cable. The line went taut. As if he were playing a giant fish, the truck began to jerk, then cough. Cursing, he put the accelerator to the floor. The engine leaped with a roar that must have been audible all the way to Grasse. For seconds machine and stone fought each other, until he was certain the cable must snap. Philippe stood gripping the crowbar, gaping, useless.

  Rage lent youth to Henri Taillou as he leaped to the ground. He tore the bar from Philippe’s hands and shouldered him aside. Again and again he drove the bar into the mortar that held the stone, hissing like a madman crushing the life from an enemy.

  “Give it some gas, you clod!” he shouted, and as Philippe ran to the truck, he planted the bar with a last vicious lunge. The engine’s rumble rose again to a roar. Henri Taillou threw his weight against the bar.

  The stone burst from the ground, spraying earth and shattered rocks, and a wall of cold black water slammed into him, carrying him backward into darkness.

  ** ** **

  He was moving through a corridor cut into the earth, black but for a faint phosphorescent glow that seemed to rise from the stone walls themselves. The only sound was the distant dripping of water. How long he had been walking, he had no idea, but he was suddenly aware that he had never in his life wanted anything so much as he wanted to turn back from whatever he was approaching.

  But something was behind him: something he felt more than saw, a creeping dark blur. From it emanated a sense of anticipation, of lust, that brought a hot wave of dread crawling across his skin. His strained breathing rose in his ears to join the hammering of his heart. He took step after agonized step, fingers trailing the cool damp stone of the wall.

  The dripping grew louder. The corridor was opening into a vault. In the center of the floor was a depression, filled with water that was absolutely black; and he understood that what he dared not approach lay in that pool. Now there was a rustling sound behind him. Moaning softly, helpless to resist, he took a final step and leaned forward.

  On the floor of the pool lay a skeleton, bones still glistening from the draining water. He stared at the ferocious grinning rictus of the skull, the blank dark sockets of the eyes—

  Blank and dark until the right one opened.

  It stared back at him with a calm, knowing evil. The grin widened.

  The skeleton began to rise.

  He stumbled back, arms flailing for the support of a wall. But what his fingers touched was not rough stone. It was soft and wet. He hung, paralyzed, while his mind registered what it was:

  A mouth, with teeth in it.

  ** ** **

  The distant sound in Henri Taillou’s ears began to separate itself into syllables—“Papa! Papa!”—sharp and staccato, like the blows that stung his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered, but closed instandy at the bright light that shone into them. “Papa, wake up!” the voice chanted. Henri Taillou found his right hand and made it move clumsily to push the light aside.

  “Papa! You’re alive!”

  He opened his eyes and inhaled in a gasp. A white orb of a face hung before him, suspended against the blackness of night. But then his clearing vision assured him it was all right. This face had flesh on it. It resolved itself into someone familiar, and at last he understood that he
was staring at his son.

  “I thought you were dead,” Philippe whispered.

  When Henri Taillou opened his mouth, the sound came out a snarl of fury and fear. He heaved himself upright and found he was soaking wet, sitting in a stream of water that flowed from a dark cavelike opening in the mountainside ahead.

  “You must stay here, I’ll go for help,” Philippe was saying. “Your face is the color of wine—”

  Words finally exploded from Henri Taillou’s mouth. “Stay here? Are you mad? Help me!” Hesitantly, Philippe gripped his outstretched hand and pulled him to his feet.

  “Home, for God’s sake,” Henri Taillou groaned, and moved with a heavy half-run to the truck.

  “But the water—”

  “Leave it! Just get me out of here!”

  Philippe moved quickly, rewinding the winch and throwing the other tools on the truck. As he drove, he glanced in wonder at his shaking father, whom he had never known to be anything but blustery in the face of fear. There was nothing in the clearing—only the moonlit grove of trees, the shadowed brush, the gleaming trickle of water.

  But there had been a moment, when he had first knelt beside his fallen father, of a strange, sinister tingle. Almost as if something, or someone, most unpleasant were suddenly there at his shoulder. It was not unlike stepping over a log and feeling something rubbery twist beneath your foot.

  And had he imagined a whisper of laughter in his ear?

  He cut the engine and let the truck coast down the slope in darkness, “Put on the lights,” his father growled. Philippe shrugged and obeyed. Henri Taillou shifted restlessly, staring out one window, then swiveling to another. “You must come back tomorrow and connect the pipe. You’ll just have to take your chances on being seen.”

  “But—what happened?”

  “My lifetime of hard work has caught up with me, thanks to your useless help.”