The Devil's Harp String: Hexham Chronicles: Book One Read online

  THE DEVIL’S HARP STRING

  HEXHAM CHRONICLES:

  Book One

  Anthony Barber

  Copyright © 2017 by Anthony Barber

  All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in an article or book review.

  All characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  Cover art & design Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Robert Barber

  To Christopher Robert

  Thanks, Brother

  Preface

  I ask your patience for just a few moments. I promise I will not take long. I can’t wait for you to delve into the adventures of Madeline Hexham. She is waiting. Her and a few friends.

  The Devil’s Harp String is the first book in a series of three. The project started for me in the early spring of 2016, after a conversation with a dear friend in Poland.

  Poland is a heavy-duty Catholic country and I have always been fascinated with this taproot institution of Christianity.

  My friend is devout, but she delighted me with several stories of scary nuns she came across from time to time during her Catholic journey.

  At first, I teased Kasia (I’m sure she will not mind me giving out her first name, half the women in Poland are named Kasia.) with made up stories about haunted convents and ghost nuns. She hated and loved the stories at the same time. I was content with these mini ghost stories, frequently sent to her via text in the middle of the night.

  I fell face first into an internet sinkhole of research. Catholicism in general, but nuns specifically. And voilà, Mads was born.

  I’m writing this short preface as a side note and a warning.

  I do not claim to be an expert on religion, specifically Catholicism. I beg the reader forgive the many indulgences I have taken with the church, nuns, and priests as useful tools of fiction.

  Nor do I claim any historical expertise on witches, demons, or Wiccans for the same reason. They are all part of the Olympic-sided swimming pool that is the story, in which Madeline swims.

  There you go, my friends. I hope you enjoy the first steps of Madeline Hexham’s journey. She was a lot of fun to write and has been my constant companion for over a year. It is time for her to leave the nest and entertain

  -Anthony Barber, November 2017

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Prologue

  A foggy morning dawned over Norton Massachusetts. It was still and deadly silent. The fog smothered the small town so completely the only thing that could be seen were the street lamps which glowed dully in the heavy mist. Norton held its secrets and the fog was always a willing accomplice.

  Bale, a demon, sat on the steeple of the now abandoned church which overlooked Timothy Cemetery. He watched the morning fog swallow the hamlet below.

  Bale was formless and dark. If you could see him (it) and some could, Bale would seem a shadow. His form was a black dry socket of evil living in boundless time.

  Bale was awake. His slumber had been long, but a vague understanding of time and space prevented him from knowing how long.

  He did know that the time had come for him to work again and this pleased him. The demon grinned.

  A small dog ran across the country road which paralleled the cemetery. The animal whimpered as it approached the darkened structure. Bale sensed the animal but glared out over the foggy cemetery with indifference.

  The ice melted at the bottom of the glass. Mads lit a cheap hand-rolled cigarette with her left hand and raised her right, signaling the bartender.

  She had been sitting in the back booth of “Gary’s” for three hours, her eyes red and bleary from smoke and cheap booze.

  Sleep was a distant cousin. Her eyes were bloodshot more from lack of sleep than the booze or cigarette smoke.

  Skip, not Gary, brought Mads her double shot of bourbon with a giant rock. There wasn’t a Gary. Never had been, or so she had been told by Skip during one late night bender.

  “Thanks.” she swilled the last of her drink and handed him the glass. The Portland dive was empty except for a lone barfly sitting at the far end of the antique mahogany bar top.

  Madeline’s red-eye flight landed at Portland International Airport at 4 A.M. She caught the first flight she could arrange out of Reno after the exorcism. Madeline Hexham spent two weeks trapped with two priests and the possessed man in the small ranch house a few miles east of town. Unlike the movies, demons did not pick tween and teen girls to possess. Demons didn’t give a shit. This guy was a forty-five-year-old beer-bellied, but successful day trader.

  Her hands shook, and she took another long draw from the cigarette. She wasn’t naïve or stupid enough to say she wasn’t afraid. The thirty-year-old excommunicated nun was fucking terrified. Mads slugged down the fresh bourbon.

  Tim Beauchant, eight, played in the front yard of his family’s New Orleans suburban ranch house. It was Thanksgiving vacation. Although it was drizzling rain and a little bit chilly, he was tired of being inside. School started again soon and he wanted to enjoy it. His parents relented, putting a ridiculously large rain slicker and galoshes on him before he was allowed to go out.

  Tim kicked a soccer ball back and forth in the front yard. Brody, his Jack Russell Terrier, happily chased it. The dog stopped occasionally to sniff out an interesting spot on the grass and raise his leg.

  Brody and Tim were both soaked through, despite the slicker and galoshes. Brody momentarily lost interest in the soccer ball and ran out to the sidewalk stopping short of the street. Tim continued his imaginary match, falling several times into muddy patches covering the yard.

  Brody ignoring the numerous goals scored against him in the imaginary match was looking across the street. His head was cocked to one side. Brody, in fact, looked very much like the advertising dog on the old RCA Albums.

  Tim finally noticed his soccer opponent and friend’s absence. “Come on Brody!” “You’re losing by a mile.” The dog ignored its owner and continued to stare at the house.

  Tim kicked the ball one more time towards the imaginary goal which Brody had given up guarding. “Brody come!” The dog still ignored his master’s call.

  “Brody come!” Tim ran over to his dog, who seemed to be watching a lady with a huge afro smoking a cigarette on the front porch of the house. Tim did not recognize the woman as a relative of Jeremy or Grace Poole. Who knows? Who cares, he thought. He grabbed Brody by the collar and began tugging. The dog whined, gave a low growl, and finally gave in and went with the boy.

  If young Timothy had looked up at the 2nd-floor window of the Poole house, a modest thirty-year-old, but well-maintained home, he would have seen a young woman standing in shadows of the second story window. Her face, pale and twisted into a rictus of a malevolent smile. The woman/thing started to levitate slowly, like a helium party balloon losing its juice. The figure, arms stretched out, began to spin ever faster in a twisted and perverted dervish
.

  Chapter One

  Jeremy woke up before 7 a.m. to start the yard work waiting for him. This was one of his few pleasures and a nice break from ninety days spent on the oil rig in the gulf. Jeremy Poole insisted on using an old-fashioned push mower. After all, he was forty-seven years old and in great shape. It was also part of his southern pride. He was not born in New Orleans, but a transplant. His family moved to the area from Massachusetts shortly after his fifth birthday.

  His co-workers and neighbors continually reminded him of the fact, he was not a true southerner. He maintained his pride nonetheless.

  His wife had protested the push mover and purchased a fancy riding one for him last year. It sat in the garage, untouched. A wave of grief hit him like a blast from a hot oven. He stopped pushing the ancient mower for a moment, looking over at the garage.

  Lilly died of a sudden heart attack six months ago and Jeremy could not entertain the thought of getting rid of the mower, which still eagerly awaited a chance to do the job it was built for. He stopped pushing the old mower and wiped his brow with the back of his tanned hairy hand. A tear trickled down his cheek. “Dammit,” he thought…, “Crying over the fucking lawn mower.”

  He needed to get rid of it. If only for the fact that it was a painful reminder of his wife’s unexpected death. She had only been forty years old.

  “Daddy!” Grace ran across the lawn towards him. He grinned with a bit of wonder if his daughter, now eighteen, would ever stop calling him that. It didn’t matter, he thought, brushing the tears from his eye. No real father would mind it. At least she wasn’t calling him by his first name, as some brooding teenagers do.

  He smiled and waved to her and thought, achingly so, how much she looked like her mother. Her long blond hair tied in a make-shift ponytail and wearing a green, weather-worn, trucker cap. “Hi, sweetie… and sorry.”

  He forgot to wake her up, as promised when he made it home. He did not make it into the driveway until well after two in the morning and, literally, collapsed on the couch with exhaustion.

  “That’s ok.” Grace leaned up and kissed his scruffy cheek and wrinkled her nose. “You need a shave.” She grinned and handed him an ice cold bottle of water.

  Jeremy noticed something slightly different about Grace, Lilly and his’s sole child, but couldn’t place his finger on it. When you’re gone for three months at a time lots of things changed he guessed, shaking off the thought.

  “You look, tired dad, why don’t you let me finish the lawn.” Grace offered. “No way,” he said and flipped the ball cap off of his daughter’s head.

  “I could use the riding mower,” she started to say as she reached down for her cap…and stopped. “Sorry” she sighed and picked up the hat and put it back on.

  Jeremy looked at his daughter closely, took a swig from the ice-cold water, pretending not to hear what she had said.

  “Thanks, kiddo,” he handed her back the bottle and started to push the mower down the long stretch of grass towards the sidewalk.

  Grace was angry at herself for mentioning the riding mower and understood her father’s reluctance to recognize it. It wasn’t a mistake though, she thought. She really wanted him to move on. Especially before she went off to college in the fall.

  She adjusted her cap and walked back up the shallow sloping hill to the house. The late morning sun was growing hot and the humidity was already becoming heavy in the Louisiana summer.

  Jeremy finished mowing the lawn two hours later. No matter what anyone says, you never get used to the stifling humidity and heat of the south. Jeremy didn’t hate it, but it was a constant part of Louisiana life, as much as crawfish and Creole.

  Jeremy sat on the living room sofa in their plain, but functional two-story New Orleans house and sipped lemonade trying to cool off.

  He heard his daughter shuffling about, and doing lord knows what, upstairs. It was summer and a weekend at that. She was probably getting ready to go out with friends.

  He took another sip lemonade and looked down at the newspaper, even though he rarely read it these days. Today the headline caught his attention.

  TWO FAMILIES MURDERED IN FRENCH QUARTER

  POLICE FEAR SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE

  Grace bounded down the stairs, wearing a black tank top with a band name he couldn’t identify on it, a pair of athletic shorts and her ever-present green trucker hat.

  “What’s the game plan today kiddo?” He asked his daughter as she grabbed a smaller hiking pack from the closet under the stairs.

  “Dammit,” she muttered and tipped the bag upside down.

  “What is it Grace?” Jeremy walked into the living room.

  She ignored him and sifted through the contents of the pack which were now spilled out all over the floor. Grace either ignoring her father or not hearing him became very still. She looked like a performer on a New York street Jeremy had seen once. A young black man painted completely silver and standing deadly still. The perfect imitation of a statue.

  It was eerie, so much so that Jeremy started walking towards his daughter.

  “Gracie?” Jeremy became a little frightened, his vision narrowed a bit.

  “Found it!” Grace said with excitement, breaking the mime’s pose.

  “Daddy, are you ok?” he heard his daughter say. He was standing, but barely. He was swaying on his feet and felt flush.

  Grace was holding a silver Saint Christopher medal on a long heavy linked chain. Everything after that felt like a hazy dream.

  The light was blinding and formless. Jeremy thought he must be dreaming. Of course, he was, he thought. The blinding light shifted to gray and then to black. Darkness. Nothingness.

  Jeremy Poole felt movement as if he was floating backward on his back. Brightness and darkness trading places. He heard voices, but could not distinguish words. Jeremy tried to speak and did actually feel his lips move, but nothing came out. He attempted to shout. He thought, if I shout loud enough I can wake myself. Nothing. That disorienting, but not entirely unpleasant feeling of floating backward.

  This felt a little like that except now he could not move. Frankly, he could not feel his body at all.

  The light was getting brighter and the voices louder. He could hear Grace, but not what she was saying. Then nothing. Jeremy slept for a long time.

  When he woke up two days later, Grace’s worried face was hovering over him. “Dad?”… She reached down and touched his arm.

  “Waa … waa…” His mouth felt like a desert. “What happened?”

  Jeremy had been released from the hospital four days ago. His doctor refused to give him a clean bill of health to return to work. They were awaiting the results of several tests. Jeremy’s doctor, a man roughly the age of Grandpa Jones from Hee-Haw, assured him everything appeared to be fine but wanted to be sure of it.

  Good health followed Jeremy his entire life, outside of a broken leg during Army basic training over twenty-five years ago.

  The doctor had few ideas as to the cause for the episode last week.

  “Could be stress or overwork,” the doctor surmised. “Take it easy for a couple of weeks and we will sort it out when the results come back.”

  Jeremy was not used to ‘taking it easy.’ He was scheduled to be back on the rig in ten days. If he missed this deadline he would be replaced as the foreman for the rotation.

  Grace left earlier in the day to go shopping and insisted he give her a grocery list. She was going to make dinner for him. Her world famous spaghetti and crawfish. He begrudgingly gave her the list and had noticed as she sat across from him this morning, she was wearing the silver St. Christopher’s medal.

  A loud rap on the front door shook Jeremy from his daydream. A rumble of distant thunder signaled a storm that would be on them soon.

  “Hi, Jeremy.” “How are you?” Carrie Mythsol, his neighbor and childhood schoolmate, stood in the doorway holding a casserole filled with something brown and clumpy.

  “Hi, Carri
e.” Jeremy waved her in as he ran to his recliner to grab a t-shirt. His normal around the house mode was usually shirtless. In this smothering humidity and an air conditioner on the fritz, it made sense.

  “I’m fine, why?” Jeremy said as he pulled the shirt over his head.

  Carrie had already walked into the kitchen with the casserole, clearing a spot on the counter for it.

  “Grace told me you made a trip to the hospital the other day.” “And not under your own power.” Carrie, a handsome brunette in her mid-forties, looked over her shoulder at him as she opened the fridge. Jeremy grumbled a bit but said nothing.

  Carrie sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Thanks for the grub.” Jeremy reached into the fridge and grabbed a small carton of milk and took a swig.

  “Going to offer a girl a cup of coffee?” Carrie shuffled her feet a bit and blushed.

  His daughter had been trying to set him up with Carrie for some time now. Grace Poole fancied herself a matchmaker, apparently.

  “Sure.” “Instant ok?” Jeremy asked as he took the tea kettle from under the sink. It looked older than Methuselah with rust spots and water stains dotting the surface. Grace stood up and took the kettle from him.

  “Here, let me.” Before he could protest, Carrie took it, first washing then filling the kettle before putting it on the stove.

  Jeremy took a jar of instant coffee from the cupboard, two spoons, instant creamer and few packets of sugar.

  “How long before you return to the gulf?” Carrie asked. Her breasts lightly brushing his back as she walked behind him to the stove. Jeremy felt a little dizzy and had trouble thinking about an answer. It had been some time since he had been touched by a woman, even by accident.

  “Uh.. ten days or so.” He pulled two coffee cups from the cup hanger next to the fridge. One pink cup with bold black letters on it: ‘Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler’ roughly translated, Let the good times roll. The other, a plain white cup.