I would know soon enough.
*
It was mid afternoon by the time we arrived back outside The White Stag, and I was rather dismayed to find that the sky had clouded over to a dull gray that promised to have set in for the duration. The carriage driver helped me lug the box of defenses into the bar area, but that was the limit of his duties, for, still without speaking a word to me, he left me alone in the gathering gloom.
At least I had the scotch for company, but again I limited to myself to only a small snifter while I smoked a cheroot before getting down to the job. Then I could put it off no longer. I went over to the cellar hatch and carefully went down the stone steps, backwards, easing the box of defenses down behind me.
It was only when I reached the bottom step that I turned to face the center of the room, and the circles. The demon was more solid again now that the sun had gone in. It stood where I had seen it earlier, its gaze still fixed on mine, the leathery wings wafting back and forth, the thin lips raised at the corners in a mocking smile.
"You won't be smiling when I’m done with you," I muttered, with far more bravado than I felt at that moment.
I'd had the good sense to include my small oil lantern in the box of defenses, and when I lit that, its flickering light did much to dispel the image of the demon, leaving it as little more than a hazy outline standing in the circle. I tried to keep my eyes averted from it as I drew circles of my own around the older one it stood inside. Inside that, I transcribed a pentagram as well as I was able, avoiding crossing over the already existing lines.
Then all that was left was to place out the electric pentacle, which I managed to do with no fuss or bother, and thankfully no disturbance from the quiet red figure that watched my every move.
By the time I was finally ready to begin, the light was going from the sky as the sun set somewhere beyond the thick gray clouds. I sat on the second bottom step of the stairs and had another smoke, wishing that I had brought the scotch down into the dark with me. When the small window opposite finally showed there was no light coming in from the outside and that full night had fallen, I put out the small oil lamp and switched on the pentacle.
I had begun.
*
It did not take long for the demon, if that was indeed what it was, to show itself again. It started to come into view almost as soon as I switched off the lamp and the wash of colors from my valves only emboldened it and brought it ever more into solid reality.
I sat on the step and watched it closely, trying to ascertain if it had any sense of purpose or intent, but it was more in the nature of a moving image, albeit a solid one, rather than anything with any degree of intelligence of its own.
The circle in which it stood was another matter entirely. Its lines and daubs, primitive though they might be, exerted a definite opposing force against my valves, and it sent out a darkness that tried to dim the pentacle's brightness and infected the colors with a pinkish-red hue that was almost fiery.
I picked up my small control box and started to modulate the valves, rotating through various pulses and color combinations, searching for one that might defend, and even repel, the red darkness that tried to ooze from the original circle. But in doing so, I almost brought about my own downfall. I discovered that if I used too little blue, or too much red, the strength of the inner circle swelled ever stronger.
It pressed hard against the valves, causing all of them to whine and complain even as I tried to switch to a different modulation. It was as I was attempting to turn up the yellow that I saw the thing that worried me.
The oozing red color thickened inside the original circle, flaring like a raging fire. The demon, no longer quite so static as before, danced in the flame, no longer grinning but screaming soundlessly as if burning in great agony. I felt a blast of heat reach me, even protected as I was by the circles of my electric pentacle. There was also a warm glow on my face, like sun on a hot summer's day, but it was as nothing compared to what appeared to be hungry fires lapping all around the now thrashing red figure that was imprisoned right in the center of all the commotion.
As I increased the power to the yellow valve, more demonic figures in the center circle showed solid form. Indeed, it was soon packed tight with them, a throng, a horde, of cavorting, red figures packed together so tightly that they stood shoulder to shoulder, completely filling the space inside the circle, all screaming as they burned in hellish flame. And even as I had the thought, I knew what I was seeing; I was indeed looking beyond a veil to part of the great beyond I had not previously encountered.
I believe I was being given a vision of Hell itself.
*
Not that I believed in a literal Hell of course, but I knew that old tales, religion and mythology often had their origins in glimpses of compartments or realms of Outer Darkness that the human mind had to try to rationalize to understand them. Perhaps Hell as understood by the wider world was always merely a construct built to make sense of a glimpse of somewhere else, a door through to this burning, red horror I was currently watching.
Wherever it was, the older, inner, circle was still exuding heat and the room was heating up by the second. I was starting to wonder whether the fire that had consumed the cellar ten years before had been intentional at all. I did not have time to dwell on it, for if it got any hotter I was going to have to beat a hasty retreat to avoid ending up in the northern sanitarium alongside the last man to see the same sight.
I pushed the yellow valve to as high a brightness as I dared, and that did seem to bring a momentary coolness wafting through the cellar, but any respite was short lived, and within seconds the red flames lashed harder still against the pentacle. I quickly went through several more permutations of color and modulation as the heat grew almost unbearable and almost cried out in relief when, just as I thought I would have to flee, I set a wave of rapid alternating pulses of blue and yellow washing through the room.
The fires inside the circle dimmed and faded as if doused by water. The demons screamed soundlessly, threw their limbs around in a jerky, almost comical, dance, then they too dimmed and went quiet, leaving only the original, winged beast standing in the center. It looked at me and it appeared to be smiling as it too finally faded and dissipated before disappearing entirely, leaving me alone in a room awash with blue and yellow and a cool, almost chill breeze that came through the wall off the river beyond.
I sat still, watching, for the length of time it took to smoke two cheroots, leaving the pentacle running. The only sound was the hum from my battery and the thin whine that came from the valves as they dimmed and faded. The washes of color splashed across wall, ceiling and floor, but that was the only movement to be seen. There was no reappearance of any demon, dancing or otherwise, in the inner circle.
After my smokes, I lit my oil lamp again and switched off the pentacle, ready to switch it back on at the first sign of any redness or flame. The cellar remained quiet and cool. And I realized something else. It felt empty, and somehow I knew for a fact that I was the only presence here.
I switched on the pentacle again and stepped inside, over both my own circles and into the inner where I scuffed and dragged with my feet until The Clavicle of Solomon circle markings were completely erased and scuffed into the ash and dust.
*
I sat there on the steps most of the night. I had the scotch for company now, having taken enough time to fetch it from the bar upstairs, plenty of cheroots left in the case to accompany it, and I had the foresight to have included some dry biscuits and an apple in my kit before leaving Chelsea earlier. I watched the blue and yellow washes of my pentacle play on the walls, felt cool air on my face, and did not see a single sign of the red figure again the whole time.
In the morning, I spent another hour sitting there with the pentacle switched off, to reassure myself that I had indeed been successful. I felt no presence in the room, and there was no sense of any heat, nor sign of any red,
flickering, flames.
By the time I packed away my kit and lugged it back upstairs into the bar, I was feeling rather pleased with myself, and ready to go home for a few hours of well-deserved sleep.
It was not to be. I had reached the door to the bar when I met Churchill's man, the carriage driver, on the way in. He had a startled, almost panicked look on his face as he spoke the first words I had heard him utter in our short acquaintance.
"Come quick, Mr. Carnacki. His Lordship is in trouble. He needs you."
*
I sat in the back of the carriage with my box of defenses in my lap as we headed north across the river, clattering at an almost alarming speed over cobbled streets. We sped past several frightened gentlemen on their way to work that had had to dance out of our path to avoid being trampled.
I wondered what Churchill could possibly need me for now. I did not make any connection to the affairs of the night, for I was content in myself that I had quite rid the cellar of any manifestation that had been there. More than that, I was tired and cranky enough to be prepared to tell Churchill what I thought of him to his face should he query my judgement in the matter.
But all such thoughts were blown away when we reached Knightsbridge, the carriage came to a sudden halt, and I was bundled into a tall handsome terraced house and up three flights of stairs to be almost thrown into Churchill's bedchamber.
Churchill sat upright in his bed, still dressed in his nightclothes. He grimaced as if in great pain, rolled his nightshirt sleeve up as high as it would go and held up his right arm as I entered. The palm of his hand was still blackened, as with soot, but the flesh of his arm, all the way up as far as I could see, was red and raw.
It looked for the world as if it had been burned in a great heat.
*
"You cannot tell me that this is a coincidence, Carnacki," Churchill said through gritted teeth after he had dismissed everyone else but myself from the room. I walked over toward the bed and sat in a bedside chair, not wanting to loom over him, and not really knowing what else I could be about.
"It's not me that you need here, man," I said. "It's a bally doctor."
He ignored that, and showed me his blackened palm.
"I got back here last night after a debate in the House, and saw that I still had the bloody black spot. I scrubbed at it for near an hour with soap, a stiff brush, and several towels. I even thought about taking a bally knife and cutting the skin off when it started to itch like buggery.
"At least a few snifters before I retired to bed managed to take the edge off it and I got some sleep. But in the early hours, I woke, too hot, burning up all over. The bally sweat was lying in a pool under me, and my arm felt like it was on fire."
He showed me the red, inflamed limb again.
"And it's still spreading," he continued, grimacing as fresh pain hit. He had a bottle of scotch at the bedside, and he'd already consumed a third of it since my arrival mere minutes before. He raised it to his lips and took a hefty slug.
"Let me fetch a doctor, man," I said. "This cannot go on."
He grew angry, almost as red in the face as his arm.
"There will be no damned doctors," he replied. "I will not have anyone else seeing me like this. I have a feeling we did this together, Carnacki, you and I. I picked up something from that dashed cellar, caught something off that damned, grinning, red devil. I know that's what it is. And you know it too; do not pretend that is not the case."
I nodded.
"I'm afraid so, old chap," I replied, and spent five minutes quickly relating to him the events of the night, and my, premature as it turned out, thoughts of success.
"Hell?" he said in almost a whisper. "I don't believe in the bally place."
I echoed his words of the day before back at him,
"I don't think it cares, old man," I replied.
*
"So what do we do?" Churchill said after he had digested the information. I saw with some alarm that the red, burning area of skin had spread. I could see it above the collar of his nightshirt; it had started to encroach on his neck.
"It may be that I can replicate what I did with the electric pentacle if we got you back down into the room below the bar," I replied. "But I do not think you are fit to move."
"If Mohammed will not go to the mountain…" he said, with a smile. "Fetch your box of tricks. We'll get it done right here in this room. But keep it as quiet as you can, will you? Can't have any idle chitchat about this spreading among the staff. Their opinion of me is low enough as it is without them thinking I'm some kind of warlock or Satanist."
I left him with the scotch as I went back downstairs to fetch my box of defenses. When I returned, the level in the bottle had dropped considerably, but at least Churchill had some color in his cheeks, and he appeared to be in less pain than before.
"Anything you need from me before you begin, old boy?" he said but I shook my head. I wasn't even sure what I was about to attempt would work, and I did not want to get his hopes up unduly.
I was already clearing an area of floor of rugs. The room was large enough that I had no trouble laying out a full pentacle, chalk first then my valves and wires, with inner and outer circles and plenty of room for a chair inside. That was as well, for I doubted that Churchill would be able to stay on his feet for long. I took the chair from the bedside and placed it on the center of the pentacle, then had to help the man out of bed and across the floor to get him into it.
He felt far too warm to the touch, blasts of heat radiating off him in waves as if he ran a mighty fever. He had brought the scotch bottle with him, and took another hearty swig from the neck after sitting down. There was less than a quarter of the bottle remaining now.
"You had best move bally quickly, Carnacki," he said. "When the scotch is gone, I have a feeling I might be going with it, so whatever it is you are planning, you should do it now, before I slip away completely."
I hooked up the pentacle to the battery, and made sure that the control panel was connected up correctly. My last act was to draw the room's drapes tight and extinguish the lights at the bedside. It was gloomy now in the bedchamber, although not full dark. There was, however, plenty of light to see that Churchill appeared to be sitting inside a fiery red haze that swirled and danced like flame around him.
By this time it was most definitely warmer in the room. Beads of sweat ran from my brow as I finally picked up my small control panel, switched on the pentacle and once again set the yellow and blue valves pulsing in waves in an attempt to beat back the rising, strengthening, influence of the hellish redness.
*
Churchill groaned, then let out a stifled scream as fresh pain wracked his body. Flames cavorted and danced around his bare feet. There was no scorching noticeable on the chair legs, and although he was clearly in a great deal of pain, the pale flesh of his feet and ankles did not burn or char.
He took another long swig of scotch. The pain was etched all across his face, his eyes wet with tears as he looked out at me from within a furious swirl of red fire.
"If there's anything you can do, do it now, for pity's sake, man," he shouted as the flames started to lap higher, covering his whole lower torso.
I pushed the power up to the yellow and blue valves, and set them pulsing faster.
The redness pushed hard against these new waves of color, then, slowly, but definitely, the redness began to retreat. As it did so, the fires solidified, and gained form. A figure stood, bent over Churchill's slumped body. It was the red winged thing again, leathery wings flapping slowly. If it wasn't the same one as I'd seen down in the burned room below the bar, it was its blasted exact double.
The thin, too-red face looked straight at me, and it smiled. It grabbed at Churchill's red, burned arm, and squeezed, hard. Churchill screamed mightily, then slumped, head down on his chest, almost falling out of the chair. I heard someone, one of his men, pound hard on the bedroom door, but
I had no time to look that way. I pushed the yellow and blue up to the limit.
The room felt like an oven. My skin tightened on my face as the heat grew, and I tasted burnt flesh in my throat as the demon squeezed and Churchill screamed. At the same instant, the yellow and blue valves both blazed, bright as the sun. A wash of dazzling light fell over Churchill and the chair, a wave that blew the red figure apart and dispersed it into dust and a fine, black, ash that fell and coated the floor at Churchill's feet.
The bedroom door banged open and two of the burly chaps leapt in, ready for action. I do believe they might have felled me there and then had Churchill not raised his head and spoken. His voice was cracked and feeble, but he maintained all of his power of command.
"Leave him be," he said to the two guards. "This man has saved my life."
*
It was only when the guards left the room that I noticed it; all of the burned redness had gone from Churchill's arm. His skin was clear and unmarked, and when he rubbed his right hand flat against his nightshirt, the blackness came off, leaving his palm clean and a dark, greasy streak on the material.
Churchill rose slowly from the chair, and, being careful to avoid both the ash and the circles on the floor, stepped over toward me out of the electric pentacle. He handed me what was left of the scotch bottle.
"You look like a man who could use a drink," he said, and I noted that his voice was strengthening even as he spoke.
Carnacki: The Edinburgh Townhouse and Other Stories Page 20