The Mephisto Club

this? Who knew you killed him?”
    Lily paused. Outside, a couple walked past, heads bent against the wind, shoulders hunched inside winter coats.
    “Did Sarah and Lori-Ann know?”
    “They were my best friends. I had to tell them. They understood why I did it. They swore to keep it secret.”
    “And now your friends are dead.”
    “Yes.” Lily shuddered and hugged herself. “It’s my fault.”
    “Who else knows?”
    “I never told anyone else. I thought it was over with.” She took a breath. “Then Sarah received that postcard.”
    “With the reference to Revelation?”
    “Yes.”
    “Someone else must know what you did. Someone who saw you that night, or heard about it. Someone who’s now having fun tormenting you.”
    Lily shook her head. “Only Dominic would have sent that postcard.”
    “But he’s dead. How could he?”
    Lily fell silent for a moment, knowing that what she was about to say would surely sound absurd to this coldly logical woman. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Detective?” she asked.
    As Lily could have predicted, Jane gave a snort. “I believe we get one shot at life. So you can’t afford to screw it up.”
    “The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife. They believed that everyone has a Ba, which they depicted as a bird with a human face. The Ba is your soul. After you die, it’s released, and can fly back to the world of the living.”
    “What’s this Egyptian stuff have to do with your cousin?”
    “Egypt is where he was born. He had books and books from his mother, some of them quite old, with incantations from Egyptian coffin texts, magical spells to shepherd the Ba back to life. I think he found a way.”
    “Are you talking about resurrection?”
    “No. Possession.”
    The silence lasted for what seemed like forever.
    “You mean demonic possession?” Jane finally asked.
    “Yes,” said Lily softly. “The Ba finds another home.”
    “It takes over some other guy’s body? Makes him do the killing?”
    “The soul has no physical form. It needs to command real flesh and blood. The concept of demonic possession isn’t new. The Catholic Church has always known about it, and they have documented cases. They have rites of exorcism.”
    “You’re saying that your cousin’s Ba has hijacked a body, and that’s how he’s managed to come after you, how he’s managed to kill your two friends?”
    Lily heard the skepticism in Jane’s voice, and she sighed. “There’s no point in talking about this. You don’t believe any of it.”
    “Do you? I mean, really?”
    “Twelve years ago, I didn’t,” said Lily softly. She looked at Jane. “But I do now.”
             
    Twelve years underwater,
thought Jane. She stood shivering at the edge of the quarry as engines rumbled and the cable groaned taut, tugging against the weight of the long-submerged car. What happens to flesh that’s been steeped in water through the algal blooms of twelve summers, through the freeze and thaw of twelve winters? The other people standing beside her were grimly silent, no doubt dreading, as she did, their first glimpse of Dominic Saul’s body. The county medical examiner, Dr. Kibbie, lifted his collar and pulled his scarf over his face, as though he wanted to disappear into his coat, wanted to be anywhere else but here. In the trees above, a trio of crows cawed, as though eager for a glimpse, a taste, of carrion.
Let there not be any flesh left,
thought Jane. Clean bones she could deal with. Skeletons were merely Halloween decorations, like clattering plastic. Not human at all.
    She glanced at Lily, who stood beside her.
It must be even worse for you. You knew him. You killed him.
But Lily did not turn away; she remained at Jane’s side, her gaze fixed on the quarry below.
    The cable strained, lifting its burden from the black waters, where chunks of fractured ice bobbed. Already a diver had been down to confirm the car was there, but the water had been too murky, the swirling sediment too thick to clearly view the interior. Now the water seemed to boil, and the vehicle surfaced. The air in the tires had caused it to flip upside down when it had fallen in, and the underside emerged first, water streaming off rusted metal. Like a whale breaching, the rear bumper broke the surface, the license plate obscured by a decade’s worth of algae and sediment. The crane’s engine revved harder, the piercing whine of machinery drilling straight into Jane’s skull. She felt