The Devil You Know Read online

  Her car was in the little lot right beneath one of the magnificent oak trees that graced the church grounds, and she walked toward it briskly while she reached into her purse for her cigarettes. A big black Lincoln was in the lot, the only other car besides her own, and she saw the driver was getting out as she made her way up the walk from the chapel. She expected to see a parishioner emerge, but stopped short when she saw that it was the same sandy-haired pervert from Piedmont’s. If she moved quickly, she would reach her car before he could, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to get the door unlocked and opened before he was upon her. So she stood her ground as he approached and kept her car between them.

  “Who are you?” she said, making no effort to speak quietly. “What do you want?”

  The man took a few more steps without responding. When he reached the back of the Chevrolet, he held both hands out in front of him, palms open to show she should remain calm and still. “Please. I want to help you. My name is Colin Krebs,” he said furtively, glancing around as if to make sure no one else was nearby.

  “You work for Piedmont?” Marie asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Does he know what happened to my friend?”

  He gave an embarrassed smile. “It’s not so simple as that. I can explain, but…”

  “Then explain,” Marie said, taking a step toward him. Her anger was rising, and the man’s body language and tone of voice told her she had little to fear.

  He put his hands in his pockets. “I said it’s not that simple. And I can’t…here. Can we go somewhere else?”

  Marie scowled and walked the rest of the way to the front of her car, her eyes on him constantly. “Mr. Krebs, I have no intention of going anywhere with you. I’d have to be a fool to do something like that after what I’ve seen you and your friends are capable of. Do you know what they put my friend through?”

  He took a deep breath and smiled nervously. “I do. Not your friend specifically, I mean, but I can guess.”

  She glared at the man. “What happened up there? They gave her something, didn’t they?”

  “Please. I can’t. Like I said. Not here. I’ll tell you everything. Everything I know. I just can’t do it here.” He sounded nervous and afraid.

  Marie’s eyes narrowed. “Why me? What do you want from me? I’m nothing to you. You’re not just going to tell me everything.”

  “I have my reasons. I can explain. Please. You have to trust me.”

  Marie folded her arms across her middle, her car keys held in a tight fist. Think of Elise, she thought. At least this guy might be able to tell me what happened. “All right,” she said finally. “But you better have something good to say, or I swear I’ll call the police.”

  Relief spread across Krebs’ face. “I promise,” he said.

  Marie nodded, not happy to have given the man a sense of hope. “Follow me,” she said coldly.

  “Where to?”

  “Someplace public.”

  A look of panic came across Colin’s face. “I can’t just talk about this in public. You have no idea.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marie said. “No one will pay you any mind.” Without waiting for him to move, she stepped forward and unlocked her car. Seconds later, she turned the ignition key, satisfied to see in her rearview mirror that the man was moving quickly back to the black Lincoln. She had wanted to give him the feeling that she would back over him if he didn’t move, and from the way he hurried to his car, she guessed that she had succeeded.

  * * * * * * * *

  “Do you know what an incubus is, Miss Doyle?” Colin Krebs asked. They stood close together along one of the walls that bounded the courtyard of the Chinese Theater. Ten feet away, tourists with cameras moved from Humphrey Bogart’s footprints to William Powell’s, none of them paying attention to the man and woman who talked beside the wall. Many of them wore sunglasses and brightly colored summer clothes even though rain clouds still filled the sky. A steady line of cars rolled by on Hollywood Boulevard; most of them slowed in front of the famous theater as passengers gawked. The rumble of their engines created enough of a din to keep anyone nearby from hearing Colin and Marie as they spoke in hushed tones.

  In any other situation, Marie would have rankled at being called “miss” even though her wedding ring was no longer on her finger, but Colin’s question came as such a surprise that his address went unnoticed. She had a general understanding of what an incubus was, but could see no connection between the legendary being and what had happened at Julian Piedmont’s. “I think I do,” she said, adding quickly before he could continue, “but if this is some kind of a joke you’re trying to pull, I’m going to the police and turning you in. The lot of you will come across worse than Fatty Arbuckle ever did.”

  “Please,” Colin said. “Just hear me out. If you want to report me when I’m done, fine. But just listen first, all right?”

  Marie hesitated a moment, but then nodded, a scowl still on her face. She listened as Colin Krebs told her about what had happened after Leonard Piedmont’s wake, leaving nothing out. It sounded unbelievable, but she sensed that Colin clearly believed he was telling her the truth. He spoke quietly and went completely silent whenever passersby got too close.

  “Julian gathered us all together the next day,” he said. “He told us that there were spirits in the house, lustful spirits. They were tormenting him. We thought he was crazy—maybe with grief over his father, or who knows? Anyway, he convinced us.” He looked down at his shoes for close to a minute before continuing. When he spoke again, he was choking back tears. “The things, the spirits—there’s something about Julian that they’re somehow bound to. Even though I was the one who called them. Maybe it’s because of the house or just the same thing about Julian that draws everybody to him. No one ever really has a reason. Regardless, they do what he tells them to. So we’re standing there in the main room—where the band played Friday—and suddenly five of us start to feel, well…sexual.” He looked toward the ground again, but continued speaking. “Myself included. It was like there was someone there, physically doing things to arouse us, but there was no one there. Just ten men standing in the room, no one touching anyone.”

  He looked up again at Marie, and she saw real fear in his eyes. “It was the most intense physical feeling I’ve ever felt, and…well, that’s as far as I’ll go. And then Julian gave the command to stop, and it did.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “And you think these were demons?”

  “It was awfully convincing.”

  “So how does this explain what happened to my friend? I saw men at that party, not spirits.”

  Colin took a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his coat. He offered one to Marie, but she declined. She had smoked one on the way from the church, but even if she hadn’t, she felt reluctant to accept anything from him. He lit one and took a long drag before continuing. “Julian had the book out again, the book of spells. He told me to read the name of every single spell—and this time, to be damn sure of my translation. Most of them were silly sounding, frivolous. But the ones that came before and after the first spell we used…those were all of a sexual nature. There was one for calling a succubus, the female version of the same demon. That’s the one I should have read the first night. There was also a spell for giving the demons physical form. That’s the one Julian wanted.”

  “Why?”

  “Because even though he had some power over those things, they were still tormenting him. What they had done to five of us there that afternoon, they had apparently been doing to Julian since they were conjured. They’re insatiable.” He smiled, apparently taking some joy from recounting Julian’s torment. “If they’d been female, it would be one thing, but they’re male. And you can tell. Julian couldn’t stand it. They had communicated with him somehow, got into his head, and told him to get bodies for them. So that’s what we did.”

  A white Packard convertible pulled up to the curb in
front of the theater. Its wide white wall tires and gleaming chrome immediately drew the attention of almost everyone in the courtyard, and a collective murmur rose up among the tourists as they got their cameras ready. Colin stopped speaking and watched the tourists for a moment. Marie turned in time to see a short, balding man in an expensive suit climb out of the car with a briefcase in one hand. He was not famous—-maybe an executive or someone connected with the theater, Marie surmised. She watched as the tourists’ excitement immediately dissipated, the disappointment on their faces verging on anger at having been cheated out of a celebrity sighting.

  She turned back to Colin, who had been watching the car along with everyone else. “Were you worried it was Piedmont?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Or someone who might know me. I’m taking an awful risk talking to you here.”

  Marie raised an eyebrow. “It’s here or nowhere, Colin. You can head back to your car anytime you want.” When Colin did not move, she said, “So you’re saying those men at the party…the good-looking ones with Piedmont. You conjured their bodies?” She thought about the electrifying touch of the James Cagney look-alike as well as the sweaty brow and engorged penis of the one who had met her at the bedroom door she’d opened. “They certainly looked real to me,” she added.

  “They’re created.” Colin dropped his cigarette to the concrete and snuffed it out under his heel. “The spell called for blood. So we each made a sacrifice.” He held up his arm. The bandage he had worn on Friday was gone, and Marie saw a freshly healed wound, a long scab that cut across the fleshy part of his forearm just above the wrist. “Julian had a knife that we consecrated, and then we cut ourselves, all of us except Julian. He just watched and collected the blood in a bowl.” His voice trembling, he continued. “I had to make a cup of my hand and scoop blood out of the bowl while I read from the book. Then I spilled it out onto the floor, and it…congealed. It spread out and grew and took shape. In a few minutes it was a man. Most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. I’m still wondering if I’ve lost my mind.”

  Marie nodded. “That makes two of us.”

  “You have to believe me,” he pleaded now. “You have to.”

  Marie shook her head and took a step toward him, pointing a finger toward his chest. Her anger was rising, but she managed to keep her voice as hushed as possible. “You can seriously stand here and tell me that you took a few drops of blood and read some…mumbo jumbo and created a man? Five of them? Who look better than any matinee idol ever dreamed? You must think I’m a goddamn idiot.” She suddenly felt like an idiot for even talking to him, and made a move to turn away.

  Colin touched the sleeve of her coat, imploring her to stay. “Please,” he said. “Please. Just let me finish. That’s all I ask.”

  Marie’s ire wanted her to move, but there was also a creeping element of curiosity that wanted her to stay. Incredible as Colin’s story was, the events of Friday night had also been incredible. The men on the stairs had somehow been too good-looking, too irresistible. She had felt their pull. It would have been one thing to find one man like that at a Hollywood party, but five? Trying hard not to let Colin sense her line of thinking, she nodded, and he went on.

  “I did the same thing for all five of the incubi. They didn’t look like anyone at first. Completely non-descript. But Julian knew what they could do. Like I said, they’d been communicating with him somehow. Julian pointed at Bill Travers, and one of the things all of a sudden had his face and his voice. Julian thought it was terribly funny. Then he explained that they could take whatever form they wanted. He had a movie magazine, flipped through it, and assigned each of them faces. In a few minutes, we had the men you saw at the party.”

  “But they don’t look exactly like movie stars,” Marie protested.

  “Julian’s idea. He didn’t want them to be exact duplicates, just close enough to draw women’s attention.”

  Marie thought about how women had reacted to the men at the party, herself included. “Well, he was right about that one,” she said.

  “So you believe me?” His expression was so hopeful that she found it pathetic.

  “I can’t say,” she said, her anger having abated some. “It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard.” At least, like nothing she’d ever heard outside the pages of Weird Tales, she thought. “But if you’re lying, you’re damn good at it.”

  “I’m not lying. I promise.”

  He lit another cigarette, and this time Marie stayed his hand as he was about to put the pack away. She needed a cigarette and didn’t want to dig in her purse for one. “You still haven’t said what happened to Elise,” she said after lighting up and squinting against the smoke that drifted into her eyes.

  “The incubi are insatiable,” Colin said. “Julian’s had us taking them out to places where they could meet women and…seduce them. Places like this.” He looked around at the courtyard of the Chinese Theater. “At first, Julian had us bring them prostitutes, but that didn’t do the trick. It seems they prefer women who are a bit more innocent. Julian would have them deflowering virgins if he could find a way.” Again he considered the people drifting in and out of the courtyard and stopping on the sidewalk to gawk at the building’s ornate façade. “In this town, star struck women and aspiring actresses are the next best thing. And there’s no shortage of them.” He puffed on his cigarette. “I can’t explain what happens to the women afterwards, but almost all of them are like your friend. Just dazed for a while and then back to normal. Until…”

  “What?” Marie said sharply. Without meaning to, she pointed her cigarette toward him, making him flinch.

  “I don’t know if it happens every time, or with every woman.” He shook his head in agitation. “But I know a lot of the time, the demons go back. Find them. Have them again. The women they have down here in town, the incubi go back to where they live. The ones who’ve been taken out of the mansion…we take them home when the incubi are done with them. That’s what I was doing Friday night when you saw me there—what I was going to do with your friend. I didn’t know you’d be there with her.”

  Marie raised an eyebrow. She thought of Elise, a sense of alarm rising in her. Immediately, though, she realized that Elise was safe. No one from the party knew where she lived. “Why the same women over and over?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And it does the same thing to them afterward?”

  Colin nodded.

  “What happens then?”

  He shrugged pathetically. “I don’t know. It hasn’t been going on long enough to know. And Julian…doesn’t tell us everything.”

  “Can’t you ask?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “You don’t ask Julian. You just…wait till he tells you what he needs you to know.”

  Marie shook her head in disgust. She could not understand the hold that Piedmont had on his followers, but it had been clear on Friday that there was no shortage of young men willing to hang on his every word. Surely a few would do his bidding as well. “You’re disgusting!” she said with a sneer.

  Colin looked at her sharply. “I don’t want to do it!” he hissed. “Don’t you see? But I can’t go against Julian. None of us can.”

  “Why? What kind of hold does he have on you?”

  Colin shook his head. “I can’t explain it. There’s just something…irresistible about him.”

  Marie narrowed her eyes. “Are you…in love with him?”

  “No! It’s not like that. He just…takes care of us. None of us would be anything without him. He’s helped every one of us make it in this town in one way or another.”

  She thought about how Colin had initially described Julian’s followers. “I thought you were all a bunch of frat boys from USC. Rich men’s sons. What do you need him for?”

  “Rich men’s sons who couldn’t find their asses with both hands. Growing up with money in Hollywood is something of a curse, you know. Everything’s handed to you. You don’t have to work. You e
nd up a rich idiot with other people telling you how to spend your money. Except Julian. He was lucky enough to hate his father, and for the feeling to be mutual. He had to figure it all out by himself. Now he’s got everything.”

  “More than he wants?”

  “Maybe.”

  Marie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Okay,” she said. “So why now? If you’re so damned loyal to Julian, why are you betraying him to me? What good can I do you in all this?”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, his lower lip trembling. When he spoke again, tears fell onto his cheeks. “It’s my soul, Marie. When I read from that book and called those…things. When I cut my arm and helped create their bodies. I committed sins I don’t know if I can be forgiven for. I don’t want to go to hell.”

  “That’s why you were in the church.”

  Colin nodded. “I need to talk to a priest, and that place is so peaceful. But I was scared.”

  “And I scared you more.”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t have done it anyway. But then when I saw you the same night—the woman from the church there at that party trying to help your friend. I thought it was maybe a sign. God was opening one last door for me through you.”

  Marie raised an eyebrow. She had never thought of herself as an instrument of God before. “It couldn’t have been just a coincidence?”

  “I choose not to think so. I still have my faith, you see.” He smiled wanly, then went on. “I was hoping that if I told you everything, maybe you could act as an intermediary. Talk to the priest for me. See if he thinks there’s any hope for me, if God will let me back into the fold.”

  Marie thought about it for a few seconds, then shook her head. “You’re telling me that you’re helping these…monsters, that you don’t have the backbone to stand up to Julian Piedmont and tell him you want out? But you want me to help you? Out of what? The goodness of my heart? My sense of Christian duty? No. I’m not going to make it that easy for you, Colin. That’s your problem, anyway; things have always been too easy for you. Not this time. You want absolution? Go see Father Joe yourself.” When she had started speaking, Colin had looked afraid but hopeful, and she had watched his expression slowly become more pathetic and devoid of hope. “He’s a good man,” she added. “He’ll listen. That’s the best you’ll get from me.”