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By Root 851 0

to him, a flare burst directly above us and I found myself staring right at his eyes. You couldn’t look into them. They were dead. They had the sly sparkle you see in the glass eyes of a ventriloquist’s doll. But they were quite deprived of proper life. I pulled up, still with the field dressing in my hands I’d torn from my pack to treat him with in the event there was anything left of him to treat. In the fading light of the flare, you could see his movements becoming smoother and more convincing. More human, if you will. I was still rooted to the spot by the sight of him. And then, as he brushed mud and ash from the rags that were all that was left of his uniform, he cocked his head with a jerk that made me jump and smiled at me. And the smile was the smile of a man deprived of his soul. I can’t put it more truthfully than that. And I can swear to you on a Bible I had not taken a drink. I remember the word from Sunday School. The word is abomination. What I saw that evening at the front was nothing more or less than an abomination.’

‘When my colonel showed me this statement, I was intrigued by it,’ Lascalles said. ‘Its contradictions were odd. Here you have a corporal who is clearly a veteran of combat, bravely attempting to assist his officer in the middle of an enemy bombardment. He is experienced and he is courageous. And something makes him insubordinate.’

‘And terrified,’ Seaton said.

Mason sipped water.

‘Forgive me,’ Lascalles said to his guests, smiling. ‘Allow me to offer you something stronger to drink.’

The British requested Lascalles because they needed an expert in magic. An authority in the subject was required to dispel the rumours circulating about the artillery officer it was said had bartered his soul for survival in battle. Soldiers were superstitious. Stories like the one about the Angels of Mons were encouraged, even fostered by the High Command because they suggested that the Almighty fought on their side. But this business was different. Officers were there to lead by example and to be believed in. They could not very well sacrifice this one to appease a single unit of uneasy men. But the fortunes of the war made it difficult in 1917 to end a mutiny at the end of rifle barrels. Firing squads were bad for morale and the planned assault at Passchendaele was going to be difficult enough, without further damage to the spirit and commitment of the troops.

The Jesuit Lascalles had gained his expertise in the subject as part of his studies. He had researched witchcraft in rural France. He had witnessed an exorcism performed in Madagascar. He had studied apparent accounts of demonic possession in Suez and French Equatorial Africa. He knew enough to suspect that the occult was both pernicious and widespread. But he was agnostic about its authenticity. He did not believe in the miracles of God. So he could hardly believe in the miracles of Satan.

His meeting with the English officer took place in a dugout about a mile behind the line. It was November of 1917 and the afternoon, like every afternoon, was spent under the dark pallor of the bombardment. He went there unescorted. The duckboards were treacherous under his leather-shod feet as he tried to pick his way through the labyrinth of support trenches with a hand-sketched map guiding him. It was raining and the map was limp and wet in his hands and the ink on it ran as he tried to navigate. He was half-lost and very conspicuous in his grey French field uniform and blue-trimmed cape amid the vigilant sentries and well-drilled teams and toiling packhorses of the British rear. This was the idea, of course. His arrival was well-witnessed. And he could see from the expressions on the men’s faces that they all knew why he was there.

He found Wheatley alone, turning over a tarot pack, his quarters lit by a paraffin lamp artfully hung so that Wheatley’s features were mostly concealed in shadow. He saw that the English officer wore a greatcoat with the collar up and a muffler and leather gloves. It was cold, of course. It was a raw November, cold and always