The Mephisto Club

regard as mentors, even fathers. Sansone and Baum said nothing, but Lily heard Baum’s sharp intake of breath when the first flames appeared in an upstairs window, and she felt Sansone place a steadying hand on her shoulder. She needed no support; she stood with her back straight, her gaze fixed on the fire. Inside, the flames would be consuming floorboards still stained with the blood of Peter Saul, and licking up walls that had been defiled by unholy crosses. Such places should not be allowed to survive. Such evil can never be cleansed; it can only be destroyed.

Now the firemen retreated from the house to watch the final conflagration. Flames crackled across the roof and melting snow hissed into steam. Orange claws reached through windows and scrabbled up tinder-dry clapboards. Heat drove the firemen backward as the flames fed and grew, like a beast roaring its victory.

Lily gazed into the heart of that fire, now consuming the last remnants of her childhood, and she saw, framed in the glow, a single moment in time. A summer’s evening. Her mother and father and Teddy standing on the porch, watching her scamper about on the grass, waving a net. And fireflies-so many fireflies, like a constellation of stars winking in the night. “Look, your sister’s caught another one!” her mother says, and Teddy laughs, holding up a jar to receive the prize. They smile at her, from across the years, from a place that no flames could ever touch, because it was safe within her own heart.

Now the roof collapsed, and sparks flew into the sky, and Lily heard the gasps of people caught up in the primal thrill of a winter’s fire. As the flames slowly died, the spectators from town began to drift down the hill, back to their cars, the excitement of their day now over. Lily and her two friends remained, watching as the last flames were extinguished and smoke curled from blackened ash. After this rubble was cleared, she would plant trees here. Flowering cherries and crab apples. But there must never be another house on this hill.

Something cold kissed her nose and she looked up to see fat flakes fluttering from the sky. It was a final blessing of snow, sacred and purifying.

“Are you ready to go, Lily?” Baum asked.

“Yes.” She smiled. “I’m ready.” Then she turned to follow them, and the three demon hunters walked together down the hill.

AFTERWORD

As an anthropology major at Stanford University, I was fascinated by myths from the ancient world. I like to think that there’s a nugget of truth to stories that have been passed down to us through the ages. The mists of time may have altered the details, but even the most improbable tale could well be based on real people and real events.

A few years ago, while browsing a bookstore in Oxford, England, I came across a copy of R. H. Charles’s translation of The Book of Enoch, and could not resist purchasing it. The Book of Enoch is an ancient text, dating back to perhaps two centuries before the birth of Christ. Though it contains the history of an Old Testament patriarch, Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, the book was struck from Hebrew scripture and discredited as apocryphal by early Christian fathers. It vanished from history, and for centuries, the text was thought to be forever lost.

But it was not, in fact, lost. Hidden in various secret places, The Book of Enoch had survived. In the 1700s, intact copies of the text, translated from Greek, were discovered in Ethiopia. And in 1947, in a cave on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, a Bedouin shepherd made a magnificent discovery: jars containing ancient scrolls. From that complex of caves emerged seven fragments of The Book of Enoch, written in Aramaic.

Within the pages of this long-lost text lies a mystery that continues to puzzle scholars. It is the story of The Watchers, fallen angels who had sexual congress with women, producing an unholy race that would forever plague mankind:

Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called.

These mixed-race creatures, also known as Nephilim, appear in yet another ancient text, The Book of Jubilees. Here, also, they are described as evil and malignant. According to Jubilees, most Nephilim were destroyed during Noah’s time, but God allowed one tenth of their number to survive as subjects of Satan. Through their line, evil would continue to afflict the earth.

Angels and women mating to produce hybrid monsters? This is a fantastical tale indeed, and some biblical scholars suggest quite reasonably that these matings were, in truth, simply forbidden marriages between different tribes. That the “angels” were men from the lofty line of Seth, and the women came from a much lowlier tribe, descended from Cain.

Still, as a novelist, I could not help thinking: What if the tale of The Watchers was not merely allegory but history? What if Nephilim were real, and their descendants are still among us, still wreaking havoc?

Throughout the history of mankind, certain people have committed acts of such appalling cruelty that one wonders if they are truly members of the human race, or if they are a violent subspecies, driven by different needs and instincts. If one believes what was written in Enoch and Jubilees, then the acts of real monsters such as mass slaughterers Pol Pot and Vlad the Impaler can be explained. Nephilim have simply co-existed alongside us, invisible predators among the prey. And when the opportunity arises, when society breaks down during wartime or civil chaos, when the force of laws cannot keep us safe, those predators come out to play.

Only then do we discover who they really are.

Evil has no easy explanation. Today, more than two thousand years after The Book of Enoch was written, we are no closer to understanding why evil exists. All we know is that it does.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TESS GERRITSEN left a successful practice as an internist to raise her children and concentrate on her writing. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the New York Times bestseller Harvest. She is also the author of the bestsellers Life Support, Bloodstream, and Gravity, as well as The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, and Vanish. Tess Gerritsen lives in Maine. Visit her website at www.tessgerritsen.com.

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