Salome: Episode 17
Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.
Welcome to Episode 17 of Salome. This is a Gothic Horror novel set in the 1880s and introduces Sister Salome, a young Italian nun who will appear in the 3rd Muldoon book. I started this serial to help you get to know her before the events of the next novel.
Salome wakes from the dream, but the reality is far worse.
17
The sun was coming up when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my face off the blanket. I’d collapsed on Catherine’s bed. The sawmill whirred outside, a light breeze moving the closed curtains, casting waving shadows on the wall in front of me.
“She must rest now.” Father John stood over me.
“Father—”
“Shh,” he said, holding a finger to his mouth. He offered me his hand and helped me up. “Come, leave her.”
I looked once more at her face. Catherine’s face again, her chest rising and falling peacefully. The fiend had left us in the night.
We left her in the silence of her room. Father John closed the door behind us with a gentle click, the fabric of our clothes the only sound as it rustled with our retreating movement. We stood on the landing together, Father John bending his knee and making the sign of the cross to the small statue of La Madonna on the table outside Mother Hildegard’s room. He stood up again and turned toward the stairs wordlessly.
I followed him downstairs. We retreated to the private dining room where Sister Bridget brought coffee and toast. I tore into it like a stray who hadn’t eaten in days. Bridget stopped to inspect my face, tutted, and insisted I went back to bed. Father John persuaded her that it was all in hand, and he would ensure I was able to sleep for some of the day. Satisfied, she left us to talk in peace. I told him of what had happened, and how the floor threatened to fall from beneath my feet. He listened intently.
“This will get worse before it gets better,” he said, massaging his tired eyes. I watched him, wondering why he did not sleep. Where did he go all night? I never asked. My trust in him was unconditional, and I had never questioned it until now. He poured milk into his cup and stirred it. “What did it sing to you?”
“Lucciola.”
“The firefly song? Can you tell me the words?”
I switched to English as best as I could: “Firefly, firefly, yellow, yellow. Bridle the uh… a horse. A mare. The king’s son wants her. Firefly, firefly, come with me.”
His face paled. “A song from your childhood?”
I nodded. “She spoke to me in my mother’s voice, Father.”
He sat upright, folding his arms. “And what did you say? Did you talk to it?”
I shook my head. “I said a prayer for the dead… in case she was… in case she was suffering.”
“Your mother was a Christian, yes?”
“Yes. She is buried in the churchyard of my village.”
He gave a guttural sound of recognition, and pensively sipped his coffee. “I did not know what else to do,” I said. “So I prayed for her.”
“And the demon did not like that?”
“No. It attacked me.” He raised an eyebrow. I elaborated, “Well, it used its powers to attack me.”
“And what did you do?”
I shook my head. “I pushed it back. I know not to where, but Father. It had to shield itself… from me.”
He stared for a moment, puzzled. He spoke again with a lowered voice. “From you?”
“For a split second, while it was all unfolding, and I remembered. I caught my reflection in the washstand mirror. There were no witnesses to confirm what I’d seen… but I saw…”
“Go on,” Father John said. “You can tell me.”
“My eyes, Father. My eyes were glowing.”
He dropped his spoon.
BREAK
Mother Hildegard did not hide her dislike for Mr Muldoon. Any time he entered the house, she made excuses to be indisposed, sometimes for the entire day. I learned that she was incredibly prideful; a sin she wrestled with often.
“It is not easy for Mother Hildegard,” Father John said. “She has given her life to God, to the Order, and so when she meets someone who hasn’t, someone who possesses powers greater than hers, she has difficulty accepting them.”
“Mr Muldoon is very powerful?”
“Very.”
“Why is he not a priest?”
“Several reasons, but you must remember that being a member of the clergy is not a requirement to join this order.” He saw that I wasn’t satisfied with his answer and gave a patient smile. “Suffice to say that he does not want to be. His reasons are his own.”
“When he entered my dream, the vampyre was not there.”
“Yes,” Father John said, leaning back. “I suppose he had to mention that to you?”
“He did.”
Father John shook his head. “I hoped that he could help us hunt down this vampyre. If he is no use, you must tell me, and I will dismiss him.”
“He asks a lot of questions.”
“That’s his job.”
“He is quite certain of everything.”
Father John lowered his shoulders. “Mr Muldoon has had a run of… shall we say, luck? A long one. As much as it pains me to admit it to him, he is seldom wrong.”
I frowned. “Why is this the case?”
“There is a long story I will tell you one day, but when he was much younger, he resided for a time in The Vatican—for his training, you understand. There was an incident. Quite serious. Beneath all of our noses. Let’s just say… a lot of favours are owed to Mr Muldoon.”
Before I could ask any more questions, we were interrupted by the door knocker, and the muffled voices of Sister Bridget and a man.
“Speak of the Devil and he shall appear,” Father John said, raising an eyebrow. I narrowed my eyes. “Another English idiom, my child,” he said, smiling.
Sister Bridget welcomed Mr Muldoon into the private dining room. He held his hat in his hands and bowed slightly. I froze. The smugness he wore on his face in the dream was nowhere to be seen. I caught myself staring, comparing the versions I’d met.
“Please, come and sit with us, Daniel,” Father John said, rising. I did the same. Sister Bridget retreated from the room to make tea and coffee for us.
“Good morning, Salome,” Mr Muldoon said. I straightened. Was he allowed to call me by my first name? I didn’t know. It felt improper. Too familiar. I felt myself blush. He seemed oblivious to his conduct, or to the fact that he had offended me.
“Good morning, Signore Muldoon,” I said, my tongue unable to address him as either Mr Muldoon or Daniel Muldoon. English formalities were confusing to me, and this was not a regular situation. Signore came naturally. It was proper. He laughed slightly, nodding. I wondered if he was going to pat me on the head.
“Signore. I like it.” I must have been the colour of pickled beetroot, for Father John smiled too.
Father John cut up a fruit cake for us, handing the wedges out on small plates. I chewed on the infused fruit, wondering why the man rendered such a ceremony. Sister Bridget returned with the tea and coffee, pouring it out for him, beaming. She finished her business quickly, insisting that we should call if we needed anything else. She took Muldoon’s hat for him without prompting, and closed the door. Why did he have this effect? They either loved him or despised him. I didn’t know what I thought overall, but my hackles were still up from our first meeting.
“I can solve this case in days,” he’d said. “If that. It’s just a vampyre.”
Just a vampyre. He hadn’t caught it yet. What did he think I’d been doing? Dreaming of knitting in my parents’ cottage every night? He’d wanted a closer look at the statue of Lilith. I stewed on it, picking at my nails. In all fairness, I hadn’t seen it before he came with me to the church. But why did the hooded man hide from him and not me?
I brought my hand to the cheek where he hit me in the dream. I was forced to remain there, helping him find more answers to this mystery. I sank back into my chair and watched them make what Father John called ‘small talk’. I learned from Father John that this shallow, polite conversation was a necessity in our line of work. A prelude to all serious conversation, especially if the door has not been closed yet. I chose to keep my responses very short. That was all I could bring myself to do. I was busy studying Mr Muldoon; the man who’d come to my dream, just because he could.
For a dreamwalker, he was not what I expected. Dare I say it, he reminded me of a beggar.
The blurriness and soft edges of the dream had shielded a lot of his features from me at first. Barely cleanshaven, I could see where he’d missed parts of his face while I studied the faded scars across his lean cheeks. Pockmarks. I looked at his suit, coming away at the seams, some of the threads hanging out of the shoulders and the cuffs. The wool of his jacket, shiny in parts, worn away through long wear. I wondered who cared for him? Who provided his clothing?
I realised I was frowning and looked away until I could regain my composure. I was being cruel.
I looked at Mr Muldoon again in the cold light of day. He was slightly unkempt, but remained handsome, his keen features overriding the remnants of his childhood illness. And he certainly did not smell like a beggar. A faint aroma of tobacco lingered on his clothes, perhaps, but his fingernails and teeth were clean. He was so real, and to my annoyance, felt his voice to be so soft it could put even a hissing cat at ease. I could not imagine him as a priest. He smoothed his dark hair down with a hand. It was so dark, I was unable to tell if it was black or very dark brown. But it was sleek and slightly wavy. When they were talking, he looked at me with sad, blue eyes. I cast my face downward. I could feel—what? It gripped my stomach and dragged it down. An overwhelming sense of loss. A chasm in the wanderer’s heart. Once, a voice there longed for a home, but it had since filled with ash. The unwanted. I despised myself for judging him. I did not know him, and I had no right.
I asked God to forgive me. And yet, I could not stop looking at him.
Studying the other sex was fascinating. Of course, Father John was a man, but not a young man. He made me feel at ease, and safe, cared for. A grandfather, and a tutor. This was not the case with Muldoon. He was strange to me. All I had to go on was the dream, what Father John had told me, and some gossip I heard in the corridor about how Daniel Muldoon was “the apple of Father Nugent’s eye,” whoever that was. Father John clearly liked him, and I was surprised by my own jealousy; like that a sibling feels when a parent shows an apparent preference for one child over another.
I did not trust him, but I found his arrogance intriguing. I wanted to know his history, and why he was so powerful. A thousand questions crossed paths in my head, each and every one wanting to burst out of my mouth and interrupt their conversation, but I fought for silence and chewed my cake in thought. Cake seemed incredibly inappropriate for the substance of our conversation, the fruit seeming more bitter with each bite. I washed it away with the coffee, content to listen to their conversation for the moment.
They were speaking about murder.
“It’s the same one, Father,” Mr Muldoon said, pushing the cake aside. I realised I did not have much of an appetite either.
“Are you certain?”
Muldoon nodded in response, and no further questions were asked.
If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.
My books are now available at Tiny Worlds
It's interesting to read of Salome's description and reaction to Muldoon.