Seduction

Twenty-three

OCTOBER 13, 1855

JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN

I am a rational man. I live in exile because of what I believe: that the church and the clergy are evil oppressors. That they use the fear of the unknown to control those who are uneducated. I believe in the rights of the individual and that the government is corrupt and not dedicated to its citizens.

And yet I am seeing ghosts and am talking to spirits. I believe Lucifer himself is visiting me. I am certain that I have opened a door to another realm where spirits live and somehow are able to speak through me. I write what they say with this ink on this paper, but I hear it first.

I am in dire emotional and mental trouble and do not know where to turn.

I have a responsibility to those who have followed me to this island, who have left behind all that was comfortable. In Paris, I relinquished a library of a thousand books, paintings, sculptures, furniture and money-millions of francs-because of my protest against injustice. It cannot come to pass that I have done all this to myself and others only to lose my ability to reason, to think, to make some sense of existence.

The novel that I have been working on for so long has been abandoned. I stand at my desk to transcribe the conversations I have with the dead. My critics have often said the flaw in my writing is that I use coincidence to provide emotional conflicts. I have always argued with them and asked: Why is that a flaw? Coincidences happen in life. They have always happened in mine.

But there has never been a coincidence as disturbing as the one I am about to commit to paper tonight.

Friends from Brussels have been staying with us this past week. Two nights ago we set out for an evening at the theater. A visiting troupe was performing in St. Helier and we were all looking forward to the entertainment. It was with a light heart that we left our house on Marine Terrace, but as soon as we turned off our lane and into the main thoroughfare downtown, it was obvious something was amiss.

A group of more than two dozen men were gathered in the square. Connétable Jessie Trent stood at their helm, shouting out instructions. The expressions on the men’s faces were determined and concerned.

Excusing myself from my party, entreating them to go on to the theater without me and promising that I would join them anon, I approached Trent. He’d finished giving the crowd instructions and was in conversation with only one other man now. Seeing me, he broke off and gave me the news.

“Monsieur Hugo, the dog has appeared again.”

“The dog is bewitched,” the man with him said. “It’s the hound from hell.”

“But all of you, to corral one dog?” I said to Trent. “It seems extreme.”

“No, not to trap the dog. We are organizing a search for Monsieur Bertan’s daughter.”

“Another child?” I asked, as my stomach turned sour. “How old is this one?”

“She is eleven,” said a man who stepped out of the crowd. I recognized the haunted, glazed eyes, the drawn mouth and the haggard expression. “My daughter,” he continued, “has not been seen since last night. Right after we heard all that barking.”

“The castle?” I asked Trent.

“We searched there first.” He shook his head. “Now we’re splitting up. I was in the process of assigning areas. Would you care to help?”

I thought of the man on the beach I had been talking to a week before. The man who had seemingly walked into the rock formations from which there was no exit. And who had not come out again. A stranger whom you didn’t see. An apparition who left no footprints. Why was he on my mind now? Then I remembered his strange words: “I put the child you found in the castle. You wound up a hero but still bereft. If you’d done what I suggested, you would have been a happier one.”

“Trent, I’ll take the rocky section of beach down by Marine Terrace. There are so many caves there, it’s possible the child was trapped in one during the high tide this morning.”

“All right, I’ll go with you. Let me just give out the rest of the assignments.”

I told him I would go to the theater to make my apologies to my wife and friends and then meet him back there.

Fifteen minutes later, the connétable and I walked down the slipway to the beach, reenacting the journey we had made all too recently.

With at least two hours of daylight left, we hurried in and out of the caverns, some filled with water up to our ankles, but saw no sign of her. And when the darkness settled in, rather than abandon the search, we used Trent’s dead-flame kerosene lanterns, the same we’d used before. The fire in these portable metal and glass globes didn’t blow out easily, but I found the smell foul. Wind didn’t affect the flame, but if the threatening rain arrived, our lights would be extinguished and our hunt curtailed.

“Some of the men think the island is being haunted. That La Dame Blanche has come to claim her child,” Trent said, as we walked the deserted beach. “The legend dates back thousands of years to the time pagans built the rock temples and burial grounds all over Jersey. According to the tale, the Woman in White had killed her own child. As punishment the Druid priests had imprisoned her inside a large stone, where she died. And where her soul remains. At night she escapes to search aimlessly for her child.”

I knew the story but let him tell me again, half listening, half thinking of La Dame Blanche’s visits at Marine Terrace. The last time, when my daughter had been so upset by the spirit’s story, La Dame had tried to comfort her, saying she suffered but did not despair, because she knew one day she would be freed and she and her child would be reunited.

“Do the men really believe a spirit is behind these disappearances?” I asked Trent. “Are they as superstitious as all that?”

“They are. We’re a beautiful island in the daylight, Monsieur Hugo, but when the sun sets, it casts dark shadows. Cut off as we are, our imaginations are left to roam as wild as La Dame’s ghost.”

The tide was coming in now, and angry waves crashed on the rocks not far from where we walked. We were going to run out of time. There were hundreds of caves up and down the coast, and soon many of them would flood with water and be impenetrable.

We decided to split up and each take a different cave so we could cover more ground.

I had only examined a few of these caves. Fascinated as I am with rock formations, I have drawn them, trying my hand at capturing their majesty and mystery, more than explored them. These giant hulking rocks have stood here for all time, seen all things, watched silently as men used them for shelter, religious rituals, burials, for crimes, trysts, for hiding places. I have heard some were covered with fantastic drawings, others filled with treasure troves of prehistoric utensils, jewels or bones. All I’d seen were barren. Damp and cold. Shallow and unadorned.

Those I examined that night, with Trent and then on my own, were no different. And then I noticed a small opening, so narrow I had to go sideways to get through it. I would have ignored it, but it was of a size that would be tempting to a child.

On the other side of the crack in the rock, I found myself in a stone tunnel. I followed it to what appeared to be a dead end. There a slight breeze coming from the rocks themselves beckoned me to continue. Impossible!

It was of course an optical illusion. Because of the rock’s striations, crevices and coloration, it wasn’t obvious that one section receded a bit and left an opening wide enough to walk through.

Once inside that deeper, cooler space, I followed the path to a more articulated entranceway that led to a large chamber and a startling surprise. The walls were completely covered with murals. The painted cave’s artistry astounded me.

The ancient artwork was as sophisticated as anything I’d seen in the studios of Delacroix or Corbet. I stared at the half-human, half-animal figures, the colors as fresh as if they had just been painted. What fantastic creatures they featured: bulls with men’s faces, men with hooves and tails, women with birds’ bodies, cats with women’s faces, necks, breasts.

I was so caught up in the paintings, I didn’t even notice the sound at first. When I did hear the angry crunching under my feet, I looked down. I expected to see shells, which were everywhere in Jersey, but these were not the pretty things my wife and daughter collected on the beach. I was walking on bones. A path of fish, bird and other small animal bones was leading me down an incline and deeper and deeper into the cave.

Finally the path brought me to a cathedral-like cavern. A double row of monolithic stones, each at least three to four meters tall, created a center aisle. At the end was a wide, heavy slab resting on three upright rocks. Like an altar, I thought.

Swinging the lantern to the right and left, I was able to make out niches carved in the walls. Upon closer inspection they appeared to be some kind of primitive seating alcoves for the participants in whatever rituals or services must have once been enacted here.

I walked the perimeter of the temple, examining each stone throne and the bits of dried leather, strings of beads and fetishes I found around them. What were these things?

My footsteps echoed in the hollow emptiness, and somewhere in the distance water dripped. And then I heard the whisper of a moan. Was it my imagination? I listened harder. It seemed to be coming from across the cavern. I looked but could see nothing but darkness until I reached the far end of the cave. There, my lantern illuminated the most lurid tableau I’d seen since those bloody days in Paris during the worst of the uprisings.

The child’s clothes were ripped into shreds. Long bleeding scratches crisscrossed her exposed flesh. There was an ugly gash on her forehead, dripping blood that had seeped into her blond hair and turned it almost black. Her lower lip had swelled and was crusted with blood.

The child appeared unconscious. I put my ear to her chest and listened to her heart. Its beat was faint and her skin was cold. She was near death, whether from blood loss or the blow to her head, I did not know. But either could have the same effect. I’d witnessed death before. The signs were no different in the Paris streets or the opulent homes of loved ones.

This girl’s time was near.

If she’d fought ferociously to hold on to this world, she was not putting up any such fight anymore. Her body had given up and resigned itself to the end.

I knew the moment was upon us.

And then, in that forlorn quiet, in that underground cathedral built by pagans thousands of years before, a long, low growl rose from the darkness behind me. I turned, held my lantern aloft, and searched the emptiness for glowing eyes or flashing teeth. I saw no creature. It was only my imagination now, playing with me. But I could ill afford the distraction. Time was slipping away, and with it the child. There was a slim chance I might save her still, if I could just stanch the wound and stop the bleeding. I stripped down and took off my shirt. Using my teeth, I ripped at it, then made bandages with the linen. These I tied around her little head as tightly as I could.

As I worked, I began to sense another with me in the grotto. My departed daughter’s presence hovering close by. Even now I cannot explain how I knew it or how it felt to know she was there. Nor can I explain how such a thing might happen. Until that evening, in the ten years she had been gone, I had never felt her with me in that way. In any way really. Yes, her memory had been with me. Yes, she had spoken through the table tapping. But this was not a feeble ephemeral recollection. This was Didine’s essence, her very soul, there with me, watching, hoping and waiting.

What was I thinking? Were there strange fumes in the cave that acted like a drug? I had heard of such things before. Perhaps the stale air was poisoned and had worked on my brain in some unknown way. My mind raced for any explanation as I continued to work on the child, but I came up with nothing.

I knew Didine was there. She was in the plinking of the water drops falling onto the stone, in the whisper of the wind whistling through the rock rooms, in the soft shallow breath of the child whose life I was trying to save.

This is the moment, Hugo.

I heard that same voice I’d always heard in my mind during the séances when one particular spirit was visiting. It was the disembodied voice of the young, beautiful man on the beach. I did not turn. I didn’t need to. I knew who was speaking to me. The Shadow of the Sepulcher was here.

“What moment? What do you want?” I asked, shouting out loud like a fool into the blackness.

If you stop your ministering to her and let her go, let her die, I will bring her back to life with your daughter’s soul.

“That’s nonsense. It’s not possible. And even if it were, I could never do such a thing.” I was horrified. I should have refused from the start. That I had first said it was impossible spoke volumes and made me afraid. Was I tempted by his offer? Sacré bleu!

You believe the soul lives on, don’t you?

“Yes, yes, I believe that, but-”

And that souls are reborn?

Was he really engaging me in a philosophical debate here and now? Concentrating on what was most important, I kept the pressure against the child’s wound. It seemed to me the bleeding had stopped. If I could be sure, I could move her, take her out of here and into the fresh air. Take her to get help.

You do believe souls are reborn?

“Yes, that they are reincarnated. But no child is being born here. Leave me alone!”

This is another form of reincarnation. Upon death a soul departs, leaving the body empty. In that single moment another soul can enter. An errant soul. A lost soul. A departed soul who yearns to return. And when the body is reenergized, it awakens with that other soul inside. You have heard of people who suffer illnesses and accidents so severe that when they recover, people say it was as if they came back from the dead? And that they seem different?

“Why are you telling me this?” Even as I asked, I knew what his answer would be.

I tried to engender this exchange in the castle but you saved the child before I could make you understand. Don’t make that same mistake tonight. I have put this young girl in your path. Am offering you that which you most want. All you have to do is take away your hands. Let her blood flow. Let her die.

“No!” I shouted and pressed harder on her wound. Watched her face. Saw the first blush of color returning to her cheeks. Saw her pulse beating steady in her neck.

“Live, live!” I screamed at her.

You are making a mistake!

Suddenly he was standing in front of me, the same young man I’d seen on the beach with silken black curls and deep, penetrating topaz eyes. Lucifer was here with me in this cathedral of rock, while under my hands a young girl’s soul fluttered in her body, half ready to fly away, half determined to remain. His image flashed, then faded.

“Hold on!” I shouted to her even louder this time. “You’re getting stronger. You’re coming back.”

Now she was fighting. Now she was winning. The child was going to live.

You can have your daughter back! Why are you shunning this opportunity?

I did not respond. What he spoke of was blasphemy and impossible. And even if it weren’t, the price was not one I could pay. Allow some other father’s daughter to die so I could have mine back?

I am ashamed to say that in that moment when I framed the thought that way, my mind leapt ahead and I imagined it.

What would it be like for this creature to open her eyes and say Papa and throw her arms around my neck and whisper that it was she, my darling, my Didine? An agony of pleasure and regret surged through me.

You are a coward. I am offering a respite from your suffering.

“I cannot… will not take it.”

While I stood there continuing to stanch the child’s wound, I suddenly wondered what I should have been curious about long before this.

“Why are you making me this offer?”

I have been maligned, and you can help me change that. Through your writings you can educate the people and redeem me. Explain that I shine the light in the darkness and explain great mysteries. That being different is not being evil, and change is not poison. You can remove the specter of evil from me. I am Lucifer. All I want is for man to have the same knowledge as God. And in exchange for your cleansing, clarifying poetry-your daughter’s soul will be reborn.

I watched the bandage. There were no telltale blood spots seeping through. I had stopped its flow. Now to get her out of there.

Carefully I lifted her. She was small and weighed so little. Her bones felt as fragile as the birds’ bones I’d trod over when I walked through the passageway.

I am only trying to give you what you want!

The Shadow’s voice was plaintive and laced with sadness. From the sound of it, I knew he lived in his own hell. And I felt a momentary pang of guilt that I was condemning him to remain there.

Do I not even tempt you?

Of course he did, but I could never admit that to him. A spirit as strong as he was could use that against me, turn it back on me somehow.

“No, I am not tempted to allow this child to die so that my daughter might be reborn.”

But even as I protested, I felt dizzy with desire at the idea of her-of Didine-of my wondrous daughter, my light, coming back to me. What would the cessation of such mourning be like to experience?

But to take one soul in exchange for another?

As I carried my burden out of the cave, stumbling over the debris underfoot, I tried to recall the steps that had opened the doorway to this strange place, the irrational world I had become involved with since arriving in Jersey and now found myself thrust into. What had I brought upon myself? What portal had I opened? And how to shut it now that it threatened me with such a heinous and tempting offer?

I thought back to the evening when I had first sat down at the table-tapping séances two years before. I recalled the questions we had asked of the spirits in the room. One by one over the last twenty-four months these beings had paraded in front of us, communicating, teasing, titillating. When had we first summoned this Shadow of the Tomb? How could we put him back where he belonged? For we had unleashed a terrible thing. Only a true monster would put these children in my path and make it seem so easy. To arrange it so I would never have to kill them, only allow them to slip away. How easy it would be for me to succumb and take his offer.

The way up and out was long. The girl, so light at first, now grew heavier with each step. The Shadow continued talking to me, keeping up his philosophical diatribe. Tempting me by plumbing my memories and reminding me of moments I’d shared with Didine.

Do you remember when you taught her to read? The time she read one of your poems out loud? The day she wrote her own first poem and showed it to you, and how her eyes grew bright with tears when you praised her? How she would challenge your ideas, do you remember? How she used to argue philosophy with you into the night? How you used to tell her she was your brightest self… your wonder… your Didine-

“Stop!” I clutched the stranger’s child tighter to my chest, in fear he might grab her now and plead his case with even more fervor.

Hurrying as best I could, I continued my climb out of the rocky passageway. I’d had to leave the lantern behind, as I needed both hands to hold the little girl. In the dark, shadows took on malevolent shapes. I was indeed in the underworld.

I know you are curious. I can hear you wondering what it would be like to speak to her again. To engage with your daughter and enjoy her company. To have your heart mended.

“Impossible. You are no more real than the witches in Macbeth. As the ghost who visited with Hamlet. I am a writer. I know you are a literary trope, a metaphor. Men tell stories to distract and to entertain, to teach lessons, to give people moral compasses. We scare our readers and make them afraid of the dark so we can save them from the brink of evil and be their heroes.”

The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese believed. Even you say you believe in the transmigration of the soul, how it travels from one body to another as it makes its trek though eternity, ever growing, ever changing. Why wouldn’t that be a story to write about? Think of how it would sell! A tale of how a soul returned. Think of the wealth you would amass. The fame. Think of it!

“I have the ideas for my novels already. I have my themes. I write about injustice and freedom. Let me be.”

Admit it, you have lost the ability to write your novels since coming here. We spirits are now your obsession.

I finally reached the mouth of the cave and stumbled out into the fresh night air. I could hear the ocean again and the far-off sounds of men farther up and down the beach, still searching, still calling out to each other as they covered more ground.

I turned to my invisible companion, but could sense he was gone.

Shouting for Trent, alerting him that I’d found the child, I was suddenly filled with a bone-crushing fear. Anxiety flooded my body and pushed through my veins. I had seen men who had gone mad. Was that my fate?

If it wasn’t, if I wasn’t going mad, then the possibility of what had been offered me would surely make me go mad. How could a man live knowing the creatures of our nightmares were real? That we could be haunted and possessed by devils and demons? What if God was not a heavenly being but only a choice between dark and light, good and evil? What if there was a power but it was man’s own power to choose?

Trent was running toward me now, with a man by his side. The expression on his face needed no interpretation. He was the child’s father, staring at the bundle I carried.

“She’s hurt,” I said to him as he reached for her, “but alive. She has a wound on her head but it has stopped bleeding.”

He didn’t say a word. I didn’t imagine he could have. He simply nodded, and when he raised his head, his eyes were shining with tears.