Demon Lover

by Fortune , Dion

  Veronica, her senses paralysed, leant up against the window-frame for support. Should she cry out to warn him? Should she snatch up some weapon and go after him? Should she run to the cottages for help? Even as she debated, there rang out upon the night air a cry, wild, appalling, cut short in the middle. Then there was silence. Veronica's knees gave under her, and she dropped in a huddled heap into a near-by chair.

  For a time she lay with her head buried in the cushions. Then she lifted it. Would the dog return? Eyes straining into the darkness, she waited, and she had not long to wait. An uncertain shadow moved upon the lawn, and then a heavy head rose above the steps that led to the terrace, and the dog stood without.

  A rope of dark-coloured foam hung from his muzzle, and his flanks heaved ; he was an old dog, and the struggle had tried him. The eyes of the girl stared into the dog's, those of the animal filled with a strange phosphorescence. He reared up on his hind legs and placed a paw on the window-pane. Veronica watched with a helpless fascination as the crazy woodwork bulged inwards till the catch slipped and the window burst open ; a pair of brindled shoulders filled the aperture and paused, as if waiting for an invitation. Veronica made neither sound nor movement, and the animal entered.

  It came up to her and rested its muzzle upon her knee. Still she made no movement ; the horror of the beast that had killed one of her own kind surged up within her, but a strange paralysis held her motionless. A sense of her feeling towards it seemed to communicate itself to the dog's mind, for the hair upon its neck rose in anger and a low growl came from between its teeth ; then, as Veronica watched, the pupils of its eyes slowly contracted till two disks of greenish-brown, opaque as china, looked back at her. Something in Veronica's brain snapped and then seemed to open ; the face of a man superimposed itself upon the face of the dog ; old, forgotten tales of were-wolves came to her, of creatures, half animal, half human, the bodies of beasts ensouled by magicians, a tangle of fairy tales and ghost stories raced through her mind, till the animal at her knee sat back on its haunches and lolled a red tongue out of its mouth in a grin, as if to say, “So at last you understand.”

  Then Veronica fainted. When she recovered, the dog had gone, but the window still stood open ; with shaking hands she secured it, and then, dazed and numb, dragged herself up to her room. Between sleeping and waking she lay till the dawn was grey against the windows, and then exhaustion supervened and true sleep came upon her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  VERONICA WOKE TO FIND WARM AUTUMN SUNlight streaming into her room and her ears filled with the song of the birds ; for a moment her spirits rose up to greet the bright fresh morning, and then a shadow fell across them, making the sunlight seem pale and cold ; newly roused from deep sleep, she could not for a moment realize what it: was that set her apart from the bright morning about her and enveloped her in cold dark shadow. Then she remembered Lucas.

  Sitting up in bed and gazing with unseeing eyes at the treetops outlined against the blue of the sky, she reviewed her life since she had come in contact with that strange being. Doors had been set ajar in her soul ; a door that led up to the stars, and a door that led down to the underworld, and the denizens of both planes now had access to her ; she had been caught up in currents of fate that mercifully leave most men untouched, and she was being carried swiftly forward towards some goal ; there was no purposelessness, no random eddy in the great tide that set so swiftly, and only the most resolute struggles on her part could enable her to reach the fast-receding shore.

  Lucas was not dead ; she knew that much with a certain inner conviction ; moreover, he had not abandoned his pursuit of her, she knew that also ; somewhere, close to her though invisible, he hovered, and there were certain forms of matter that he could bend to his use and make to serve him, for a few seconds at least, as a vehicle of manifestation ; spirit of outer darkness that he was, he came in the cold eddying wind that, arising out of stillness, tossed up the dead leaves in a spiral dance and died away as suddenly as it had come ; not many seconds could his will hold that fugitive form together, but long enough, and strong enough to burst open the frail fastenings of the French window and cast her papers to the floor as if with the sweep of an angry hand.

  She saw it all so clearly now ; Lucas, the disembodied mind unable to manifest, unable to materialize save in fleeting and unstable forms, yet fully aware of all that transpired, and unchanged by death, was actuated by the same unscrupulous will that had carried him through life ; all his interests and desires being centred upon matter held him earth-bound ; bodiless, formless, he still craved the things of the body, and Veronica was the focus of his desire.

  Finally, urged on by who knows what devils of jealous hate and frustrated longing, he had seized upon and obsessed the body of the dog, Poor brindled brute, and now, velvet-pawed, heavy jowled, went upon his purpose in the vehicle of a lower life, yet one to which his temperament was closer akin than to that of man whose form he aped. There was more of the hunting-hound in Lucas than of the human being ; the gentle spaniel, the wise sheepdog, were nearer humanity than he ; no such vehicle had he chosen, but an older, savager breed had been found to fulfil his purpose.

  In the old days in the Bloomsbury square Veronica had felt the prime horror to be that she could not speak to any human being of the experiences through which she was passing ; she would only have been looked upon as mad ; there were times when she looked upon herself as mad, when she wished with all her heart that Lucas and all appertaining to him were a delusion even at the cost of the deprivation of her freedom ; at least she would know that the world was sane, built to the measure of the three dimensions and solid substance, but she found herself moving in a world that was as mad as a lunatic's dream. The invisible collar that Lucas had put about her neck was a commonplace phenomenon of suggestion, had she but known it ; but what of this dog with the eyes and purpose of a man ? Mediaeval literature is full of such stories, often of a very circumstantial nature, but she did not know that either, and perhaps it was just as well.

  Butler she thought of with pitying horror as a man who had met with a terrible death ; from herself he seemed strangely remote, his love-making she had almost forgotten—that long drawn out second in which she had watched the dog's eyes contract to angry pinpoints had swept her back into the heart of the maelstrom from which she had sought to escape ; Lucas alone she was concerned with, and Lucas filled her horizon. No longer, however, did she think of him as the man towards whom her heart had softened as the time of their brief association drew to its close, rather he was once again the man of dark and unknown purposes who had used her unscrupulously for his own ends. Lucas, the man of the trance-work, Lucas, the murderer of Butler, who would drag her with him to the darkness whence he rose upon his evil work could he once lay hands upon her soul,—and alone in her sunlit bedroom, she shivered as if the chill of that darkness were already about her.

  She did not remain alone long however ; the old caretaker appeared, and by gestures rather than speech intimated that someone was below who wished to see her. Dressing hastily, Veronica descended to the shuttered hall of the old mansion; there she found two men, one of whom she knew, but the other was a stranger. The former was the doctor who had been called in when Lucas was found dead ; but he was also the father of Alec, and from his presence Veronica guessed that the odium of the whole terrible affair would be laid at her door. Powerless to defend herself, to offer any explanation, or to make known the real state of affairs, she fell back upon the tactics of the inquest whereat she had been asked to explain the fate of another man who had been found dead in her vicinity, and now, as then, her interlocutors knew perfectly well that there was more in the matter than their questioning could lay bare. They also felt, and the doctor, for his part, showed it very plainly, that the two deaths were in some way connected, and that Veronica was at the bottom of them, and his attitude towards her could not have shown greater detestation if he had caught her red-handed ; his companion, obviously unco
mfortable at this manifestation of hate, stood switching his riding-boots uneasily with a hunting-crop, and staring at this girl, the subject of so much local rumour, whom he now met face to face for the first time.

  Veronica, for her part, merely stated any facts that were required of her, offering no comment upon them, well knowing that neither of these men could hit upon the hidden links that bound the whole affair together ; Lucas's struggle with the Fraternity, his abuse of its teaching and his execution, the very existence, in fact, of a secret science that dealt with unknown powers, were beyond the ken of these two matter-of-fact Englishmen, save that the father, his wits sharpened for a moment by the shock of his son's death, realized intuitively that this strange outbreak on the dog's part was no more in the ordinary course of events than the stoppage of Lucas's heart, and circumstantial evidence directed him towards the girl who in each case had been the last to see the dead man alive.

  Finally, the cross-examination having elicited nothing save that Butler was a regular visitor at the Grange (Veronica spared her interlocutor the information that his son had proposed marriage), the man, baffled and angry, turned to his companion and exclaimed, “Well, Hargreaves, what do you make of this extraordinary affair ?”

  For the first time the other man spoke : “If you want my opinion, doctor, there is nothing mysterious about it, it is just a plain case of hydrophobia, and the best thing to do is to dispose of the dog so that he can't infect any others. The only thing that isn't plain is, how a chained-up beast like that got it in the first place ? I suppose you have no objection to my destroying him, Miss Mainwaring ? It has got to be done, and I will do it quite painlessly. I am the Vet. you know.”

  Veronica recoiled till she came to the wall and, leaning up against it, gazed into space with unseeing eyes, the men staring at her in astonishment. To her, Lucas and the dog were one, and, horror though he might be, she could not pass sentence of death upon him.

  Finally she found her voice. “I—I should like time—to think it over,” she said.

  The doctor spoke sharply. “You can't have time,” he said. “The beast is loose, and heavens only knows what he may do next.”

  Here was a fresh horror, the dog, mad or obsessed, was free to range at will, she had forgotten that.

  Then the stranger spoke : “I quite understand your feeling for your animal,” he said. “But I am afraid he will have to be destroyed, and without delay, too ; think of the children down the lane ; it is much the most merciful thing to do, and he is an old dog, any way.”

  Veronica bowed her head. “Do as you please,” she said, “Only bury him a long way off, and deep,” and she turned away into the billiard room.

  For a time she sat alone, staring into space, companioned only by the goggling fish in the glass cases. Lucas, who had drawn so near, seemed very remote at the present moment. She wondered what they would do to him—those men out there, and what would happen to him when they destroyed his dog-form ? Now that he was in danger of attack her sympathies, womanlike, went: out to him. Would he be able to pick up his contact with her again when forced out of this, his present refuge ? Evil though he was, the thought of his loss filled her with desolation.

  Even as she mused, a wild hullabaloo broke out in the kitchen ; someone, feminine, was having violent hysterics, and her shrieks rose high above a chorus of male voices raised in consternation. Veronica ran down the long passage that led to the back premises, and there found the old caretaker laid out upon the floor and shrieking at the full pitch of her lungs ; a number of white-faced rustics drew back at Veronica's entrance, eyeing her askance.

  “What is the matter ?” demanded the girl, confronting them.

  No one replied, and the group faded away through the half-opened door almost invisibly ; the old woman, rising with difficulty, crept into the pantry, where a pop, followed by a gurgling, sufficiently accounted for her activities. Spying the inevitable small boy in the yard, watching proceedings, Veronica darted out and caught him by his ragged jacket before he could escape.

  “What happened ?” she demanded of him.

  “They shot the dog, miss,” he replied writhing in her grasp.

  “I know that, but what are they all so frightened of ? It is no use wriggling, I won't let you go till you tell me.”

  “It—it was the gentleman, miss,” said the boy in a husky whisper. “He's come back.”

  “What gentleman ?” demanded Veronica.

  “The dark gentleman, who was here with you, Miss. He came out of the kennel when they shot the dog, I seed ’un myself, we all seed ‘un ; he came out of the kennel, and he stood up there in the sunlight, as plain as plain could be, grinnin’ at us, and then he faded away like a puff of smoke, a bit at a time, like, till he was all gone. But I seed ’un, and we all seed ’un. Let me go, Miss,” and with a final squirm he shot out of Veronica's hands and escaped.

  Veronica returned to the billiard room in a brown study, but even as she opened the door, she was aware that some one awaited her. Had the doctor or his companion returned to have speech with her ? She looked round for them by the hearth, in the window embrasures, but there was no one there. Crossing the room, she stepped out through the French window on to the terrace, and almost without realizing what she was doing, held it open for the one who followed. There she turned and faced That which was beside her.

  “So you have come back ?” she said.

  She waited, as if expecting a reply, but none came. Then she spoke again. “I cannot forgive what you did to Alec Butler, nor this matter of the dog ; I can forgive what you did to me, that was over and forgotten, but the dog was horrible, and I cannot forgive that.”

  Silence fell again. Veronica had said what she had to say, but no reply could reach her senses. She turned, recrossed the gravel path, entered the French window and shut it quickly behind her. Then she stood watching. The day was still and sunny, a true day of the Indian Summer, but presently, as she expected, the dead leaves lying in the angles of the steps began to be stirred by a little breeze ; they rose up in the grip of a miniature whirlwind and smote upon the pane ; the window bulged inwards, the crazy catch slipping, but Veronica put her hand on the frame and thrust it home again, then she set a heavy arm chair against it. The leaves, tossed all over the terrace by the last indignant gust, slowly settled down again, baffled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  FROM THAT TIME ONWARDS VERONICA SELDOM knew what it was to be alone. It was just like the old days, Lucas was somewhere about. The vividness of the impression varied however ; during bright sunlight, especially if she herself were in the direct rays of the sun, she would be immune from his influence, but on a grey day, and especially as dusk crept on, the presence would grow increasingly tangible, till, with the onset of darkness, Lucas himself was beside her. She could see nothing, hear nothing, no shred of communication reached her from beyond the grave, yet she felt the very moods of his temperament. Sometimes there was a delighted Lucas, an angry Lucas, or a Lucas striving his hardest to bend her to his will and finding the medium in which he functioned too tenuous for his purpose. Then sometimes would come the quick transition from an unseen, disembodied mind to the only material form that he could command, a fugitive vortex of ice-cold air that tossed the fallen leaves about her in its impotent endeavours to clasp her form with its formless arms. This, she knew, was the manifestation of an angry Lucas, and she could quite understand why spirits are always regarded as being either devils or angels, for it is only under the impetus of a strong emotion, whether of hate or love, that the majority of them can manifest themselves upon the material plane ; the man, in his ordinary state of consciousness, can only be perceived by those few unfortunates we call sensitives.

  Having at last succeeded in making her aware of his presence, however, his powers seemed to be increasing. Whether she was growing more psychic, or he more adept at bending matter to his will, cannot be known, but the fact remains that a rapport had been set up between the mind of t
he dead man and the living girl, and that telepathy was in full swing between them.

  To the living, the return of even the beloved dead is apt to be something of an ordeal, but to Veronica, knowing Lucas to be evil, and feeling herself in his power, the manifestation of that dark presence was the consummation of all the horrors of nightmare and childhood's phantom terrors. Though she knew his moods, she could not divine his thoughts, and it was some little time before she discovered that hers could be read by him with the greatest readiness. If she allowed her thoughts to wander to Alec the atmosphere in her immediate vicinity filled with a menacing anger, and time and again the whirlwind dance of the leaves would toss themselves up in their impotent displeasure. But if, on the other hand, she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the few short hours of companionship and sympathy that had preceded Lucas's death, if she sent out a questioning wish into the darkness, seeking to know if it were well with her friend, then the room glowed with a strange warmth that seemed to wrap itself about her form in a mantle of invisible light.

  Veronica gradually learnt to know the moods of her unseen visitor, and soon the presence, which at first had had for her all the horror of the unknown, became familiar and was accepted more or less as a matter of course ; though she still dreaded it, she feared it no more than she had feared the man while he still dwelt in his habitation of flesh, and as time went on, his old uncanny fascination began to assert itself again ; she found herself watching for his approach as the light faded, and in some curious, subconscious way, lending herself to his manifestation. She dreaded him, yet she would have missed him had he not appeared, and so, in her old state of repulsive fascination, or fascinated repulsion, the days passed by, and with the passing of each, darkness fell earlier and Lucas's period of power lengthened.

  It was towards All Hallows Eve that he at last succeeded in crossing the boundary of the unmanifest and gaining his footing upon the plane of life. A bright frosty day had tempted Veronica to a long walk, and coming in as dusk fell, she had been glad to fling her weary body into a big arm chair by the hearth and doze in the fire-lit room till such time as the old caretaker should bring the lamp. There, every muscle relaxed, she lay back among the cushions, her mind questing out in the long daydreams of youth. Lucas, as an entity, seemed remote that night ; she had shaken off his presence when she passed in her wanderings beyond the range of his manifestation, and he had not yet re-discovered her. So, for once, she was alone.