Lucifer's Lieutenant : Part Two
The Books
This is the second of a 3 part supernatural crime story set in the city of Glasgow. You can find part one here.
Last week we met Robert MacLeod, a powerful crime boss, who had been given the simple job of stealing two books from a professors library.
However, he soon discovers there are powers in this world far greater than he can possibly imagine and now there’s hell to pay …
“He’s dead. Ramirez is dead.”
MacLeod took a breath.
“Did you or the boys kill him?”
Devlin had a crew that he always worked with. The two assigned to this job were professionals. If something had went south then that was surprising.
“No!” At least Billy still had the wherewithal to look offended. “He was dead when we got there. Sliced open from balls to throat.”
“Jesus,” MacLeod muttered, gathering his thoughts. “Were there any signs of someone else having been there?”
Billy shook his head, paused for a second, placed the books onto the desk and wiped his shovel like hands on his jeans, as if they were dirty.
“All the windows and doors were locked. No sign of forced entry.”
The big man shook his head and looked up at his old friend.
“Something isn’t right about them,” he said, pointing to the books.
MacLeod glanced at Billy and then at the two volumes. One looked like a simple moleskin note book you could pick up in any stationery store, but the other looked much older. Even though he wasn’t a literary man, Robert could tell it was ancient, with its brittle yellow pages and strange material that enveloped the bindings. What was that? Could it be …?
He found himself reaching out his hand to lift them up, before Devlin spoke again.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
The words shook him from his reverie, and when he looked up Billy was standing next to him.
A flash of anger contorted his face and he was ready with a sharp rebuke, but after a moment he remembered who he was talking to, and nodded.
“Tell me.”
“Ramirez was supposed to be out at some function last night. That was from a good source. However, when we saw that there were lights on, we knew it’d be trickier. Sure, folks leave lights on when they go out, but you can never tell. Anyway, when we got in, there wasn’t a sound, so we headed for the study, and that’s where we found him. Sitting in his chair. Torn apart. It was some mess.
The heating was on full bung. Even had a fire burning in the grate. The rest of the house was roasting, but in that room, it was freezing cold. Could see our breath. Weirdest damn thing I’ve ever felt.
You asked me if anyone else was there. You know, we couldn’t see anyone, but it felt, just for a second, as though someone was in that room with us. I don’t believe in ghosts and all that shit, well I didn’t …Christ, I don’t know.”
Devlin shuddered and that was when MacLeod began to feel the first trickling of ice cold fear down his spine, and the churning of excitement in his guts. Whatever had scared Billy was something worth being wary of.
“The two books were sitting on the desk and his hand was resting on them, like he’d just been reading before someone sliced him open. The boys wouldn’t go near him. They were beginning to get the heebie jeebies as well and wanted to get out of there.
Anyway, they looked like the ones you’d send us in the picture, so I grabbed them and we got the hell out of there.
It was weird. Nothing else seemed to have been touched either. Whoever killed this professor wasn’t after anything apart from killing him it seemed.”
Billy shook his head and Robert knew there was more to come.
“I dropped the lads back home and then headed to my gaff to get some kip. Of course I’m always buzzing after these things so couldn’t get to sleep. I had a couple of drinks and settled down to watch a movie, but I’d brought the books in with me and put them on the coffee table. And …I don’t know how to say this Robert, so I’m just going to say it. I felt like they were ordering me to pick them up.”
He laughed, but there was no humour in it. Sweat stood on his forehead and his eyes flitted about the room.
“I tried to leave it. The work is none of my business. But, I just couldn’t help myself.
The old one, the one with the funny cover, is completely blank. All the pages. Which I thought was random. But, anyway, I couldn’t wait to put it down. It felt dirty. I’ve a fair idea what that cover is made of, and it’s manky. The notebook is written by Ramirez and, reading it, you’d think he was an absolute madman.
He talks about trying to translate the book and how it contains some powerful magic that he doesn’t understand, but, again, it’s completely blank so what was he talking about?Did the words just disappear? Then, there’s some real garbled writing that makes even less sense. Letters and words scrawled across the pages. Ramirez made a note and said that he had written these in his sleep which I thought was also a lot of nonsense. Who the hell writes things in their sleep?”
There was a long pause and MacLeod could only wonder at what was going to come next. This was like something out of The Twilight Zone or Tales of the Unexpected, but he trusted Billy with his life, so he would trust him here.
“Anyway, after flicking through it, I began to drift off, so called it a night. Left the books in the living room and went to bed.
I woke up a few hours later. It was bitter cold and pitch black. That’s when I knew someone was in the room with me. My hand was hurting like hell, but I managed to turn the light on. There was a dark figure standing in the corner watching me. That book was open on the bed, my palm was cut down the centre and I had placed a bloody handprint on one of the blank pages.”
Devlin laughed again, but this time it was like a sob.
“I couldn’t remember doing any of that. The figure began to move towards me. It didn’t look real. Just darkness and shadows. Nothing living looks like that. Anyway, I got my shit together, and used my other hand to slam the book shut. Then, I closed my eyes, and began shouting the Our Father over and over again. It’s about the only thing I can remember from Sunday School. When I opened them again, whatever it was had gone.”
He shook his head.
“Something isn’t right about them,” he repeated, then fell silent.
MacLeod let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, walked across to the drinks cabinet, and poured them both a glass of Glenmorangie.
The clock read just after eleven in the morning but MacLeod had discovered long ago that, no matter what the time, some issues could only be resolved with a glass of whisky.
Devlin downed his and collapsed into the chair on the other side of the desk. MacLeod sipped his drink and considered his ragged looking old friend.
“You’re sure it wasn’t just a dream.”
He didn’t even have to frame it as a question. They knew each other so well, after nearly thirty years of friendship, that there was no bullshit barrier. Whatever he saw, it was real to him. And that made it real to Macleod.
Billy shook his head and looked into the empty glass and then said something that set them on the path to what would happen next. “I’m so scared, Robert.”
And he did look terrified. Terrified and old. They had been doing this gig together, every day, for so long that sometimes you forgot time was passing. Sixteen year old tearaways were now men in their forties. It took it out of you. MacLeod now understood why the old man had aged the way he had. It was a battle just to stay alive. But they had done it, and he wasn’t going to let anything take that away from them.
That was when MacLeod began to feel anger swelling in his chest. Not at his friend, but at whatever was causing him to feel this way. Either the Americans who had asked him to do the job, or whatever was in these books turning Billy into a frightened child, he would make sure they paid for this.
He finished his drink and placed the glass gently on the desk.
“Don’t worry, Billy. I’ll take care of it.”
Billy got back to his feet and MacLeod walked him to the door. His step already seemed to be lighter, as if he got rid of a heavy load. Of course, Robert was very much aware that load had now been passed to him.
“Be careful man.”
“Always.” MacLeod clapped him on the shoulder and shut the door.
He walked back to his desk and, as he got closer, he could feel the change in temperature. It was an early spring day outside and the room was pleasantly warm, but around the corner where they had been sitting was now a pocket of icy air.
Looking at the two books, he picked up his glass and filled it with another slosh of whisky. Sunday morning be damned.
He needed to figure out what the hell was going on here.
“I don’t like your tone, Mr MacLeod. Perhaps we have to send over Mr Dumfries earlier to take care of this problem.”
MacLeod tried to stop himself from grinding his teeth together in frustration. He did that too often in his sleep as it was. Or so his wife and dentist told him.
“Listen, when I take on a job I never ask questions, but I expect to be informed of all the variables. If there’s something else you need to tell me about the work, then you tell me. And don’t be sending some guy over who thinks he’s Scottish cause his long lost granny once lived here for five minutes a few hundred years ago. I haven’t got time for all that pish.”
There was silence at the other end of the line and MacLeod briefly wondered if he’d overstepped the mark, and then immediately decided he didn’t give a shit.
“There is nothing else to tell. Mr Dumfries will be over tomorrow to collect the package. You will be paid thereafter. Good day, Mr MacLeod.”
It had been a long day.
From the meeting with Billy this morning, to the call with the US this afternoon, and then all the usual pieces of work to take care of, MacLeod was just about done in.
His mind began to drift. He was glad Geraldine and the kids were over in the house in Ibiza for the Easter holidays. The original plan had been for them all to go, but this job had come up and he had to handle it personally. It was just as well he had. Once this Dumfries asshole got over here tomorrow, and he got rid of these cursed books, he would be on the next flight out and diving in his pool before his feet barely touched the ground.
The music from the club below began to reverberate through the floor of his office and he opened his eyes and looked up at the clock. Christ! He must have drifted off. Was that the time already? He should get home. His head was banging. That’s what happens when you drink whisky in the morning, he thought ruefully.
It was then that he caught sight of the moleskin notebook open on his desk and his eyes widened in surprise. What the hell?
He had put both books in the safe on the far wall. Not that he was superstitious in any way, but after what Billy had told him … Plus when he had done it, the room had warmed back up almost right away. They were damn weird right enough. He hadn’t moved either of them from there. And now, somehow, the notebook was right in front of him with his scribblings all over two of the pages.
His headache was getting worse. He slowly leaned forward and looked in wonder at what he had written.
knave fool blood is the key the power mine is glory forever and ever ….
MacLeod rubbed his eyes. This was crazy. His first thought was somebody had come in whilst he was sleeping and wrote the words, but, as garbled and scrawling as they were, he recognised his handwriting.
Billy’s voice rang in his head. “Who the hell writes things in their sleep?”
He picked up the notebook and walked over to the safe.
The sun was setting behind the hills as MacLeod turned into his long gravel driveway that lead up to the large converted farm house.
His eyes widened in shock and it took all his effort not to swerve off the road into the trees. Slamming on his brakes, his heart hammering in his chest, he looked frantically side to side and then in the rear view mirror.
How in God’s name had he got here?! The last thing he remembered was putting the notebook back in the safe. And, yet, when he looked at the passenger seat, both of the books sat there. He touched them briefly with a trembling hand and then wiped the sweat from his brow. The headache was gone but something else stirred in his mind. An image. Flame. A roaring inferno and a dark figure standing in the middle of it. No, not standing. Walking towards him. Implacable. Inevitable.
Taking a deep breath, MacLeod tried to get a grip, and glanced once again at the two volumes. Billy Devlin didn’t get scared. MacLeod didn’t write in his sleep. And he certainly didn’t drive more than twenty miles from the east end of Glasgow to the outskirts of Kilmacolm, with no memory of the journey, unless there was something really strange going on. It was time to find out exactly what that was.
One thing was for sure. Whatever was happening here, be it ghosts or spirits or whatever, they had messed with the wrong pissed off Scotsman.
“OK,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The empty house was waiting for him. It was time to do some reading.
Well, I did say the story was going to pivot!
When I first thought of this tale, I said I would like it to be a combination of George Pelecanos and M.R. James. Odd bedfellows maybe, but two genre writers that I greatly admire.
Pelecanos writes noir fiction about damaged men trying their best despite the life choices they’ve made.
James writes horror stories, but quiet, scholarly and atmospheric horror.
Both are masters of their craft.
Hopefully I’ve managed to do them justice in this week’s chapter.
Thanks for reading. Until next time.
Absolutely love this pivot! Looking forward to Part 3!
Glenmorangie is a particularly good choice. This is great, keep it coming.