Collected Stories (4.1)

by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

  Next morning she smiled sweetly at her father over the breakfast table and said: “He’s come back.”

  Newton reached for the marmalade pot. “Has he! Who?”

  “The little thing. There he was, perched on top of my wardrobe when I woke this morning.”

  “Indeed! How did he… it get in?”

  “Through my window. I left it open.”

  There was a silence of some three-minute duration, then Newton began to frown.

  “Look, I’ve been half-serious about all this up to now, but I’ve been thinking. There’s something—I don’t know— something unnatural about that damned thing. After all, we don’t know what it is or where it came from. I’m of the opinion it escaped from a zoo or some private menagerie. Perhaps we ought to report…”

  “No.” Celia got up, her eyes blazing. “It’s not doing you any harm. If it did escape from some zoo, I’m glad, and I’ll be damned if I’ll see you or anyone else take it back again.”

  “Now, see here,” Newton pushed his chair back. “Don’t use that tone to me. I’m not one of your pansy boyfriends. This happens to be my house, and if 1 say that miniature horror goes—it goes.”

  “And I’m telling you—it won’t. I’m not a kid for you to order about.”

  They were interrupted by the sound of flapping wings; in the gradually increasing rustle of disturbed air, the winged creature flew into the kitchen, glided round the ceiling and finally settled on the table. There it sat with folded wings and looked at the two antagonists with gleaming eyes. Newton’s anger drained away and was replaced by a feeling of utmost dread. There was no disregarding the look of intense pleasure on the minute face. The head was turning from side to side, the eyes raking each face as though to absorb the maximum satisfaction from the flushed features, while the tapered ears were pricked so as not to lose a fragment of angered sound. Newton put his thoughts into words.

  “‘The damned thing is getting a kick out of us having a row.”

  “Don’t be so silly.”

  “For Pete’s sake, look at it. It’s licking its lips. Just as though it had just eaten a good meal.”

  “It’s pleased to see us.”

  Newton laughed like a man who is not amused.

  “You can say that again. There’s something weird about this.”

  He stopped short, let the sentence trail off into oblivion and kept his eyes on the grimacing creature. There was no avoiding the fact; it was unique. Moreover, the tiny face, the slender form and, above all, the exquisite blue eyes, were indescribably beautiful. He wondered why he had not realized this before. It was an evil beauty, combining the repellent fascination of a venomous snake and the sinuous charm of an infant beast of prey, but there was beauty. Or to be more accurate, an extreme prettiness. He felt a sudden, ridiculous urge—a well nigh overwhelming need—to stroke its head, to take it on to his lap and tickle its ears. He turned abruptly away and snapped: “Do what you like, but keep it out of my sight.”

  During the next few days it became apparent that something was missing from their normal relationship. Gone was the slightly mocking, affectionate comradeship that at times, though neither suspected, bordered on the flirtatious.

  Now there was politeness; words were marshaled with care, before being uttered. They were like two people walking through a gunpowder factory, knowing that a wrongly placed foot could cause a spark. Newton appeared to have forgotten about the existence of the creature, and Celia was careful never to mention it. Nevertheless, he was acutely alive to its continued presence in the house. Several times, when the kitchen door was open, he heard the strange twittering sound, and once, the rustle of air as it flew up the stairs. There was a terrible urge to go out and watch that slow, graceful flight, feast his eyes on the evil, pretty little face. But he continued to sit resolutely behind his typewriter, vainly trying to make his fingers cooperate with his brain. But the brain was not at all prepared to manufacture sentences, play with plots, create fictional drama, when the bizarre was in his own house. He decided to break through the barrier of suspicion and doubt which had come into being during the past few days.

  “I’m going back to town,” he announced one morning at breakfast. “I’ve finished work on the rough draft and I’d like my agent’s advice before I go any further.”

  Celia said, “Oh!” and poured a fresh cup of coffee.

  “What are your plans?” he enquired with a carefully casual air. “Would you like to drive up with me?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll stay on for a bit.”

  He felt a surge of irritation that threatened to sweep aside his carefully erected defense: Words bubbled to the surface of his mind and demanded release. But for a while he retained control.

  “By yourself? It will be a bit lonely.”

  She shrugged and picked up a newspaper.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  Irritation blunted its sharp edge against his self-control and became a blast of anger.

  “Don’t be so damned silly. How the hell can you stay down here by yourself?”

  “Easy. I’ll lock the door and stop anyone coming in.”

  “Look.” He slammed his cup down. “This place is meant to be a place where we get our breath back. We’ve been down here three weeks, and I think it’s about time both of us got back into circulation. Haven’t you got any work coming up?”

  She shrugged again. “So so.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I intend to stay on.”

  “Why?” He shouted and sensed the flutter of wings, but the door was shut and his anger was clamouring for outlet. “You’ve never wanted to before. If you had someone with you, I would understand. Wait a minute… I’ve got it… you’ve got some man coming down. Just waiting until I’m out of the way.”

  “If I were, it’s no business of yours.” Her eyes were now blazing pools of hate. She was shouting, betraying signs of coarseness that shocked him, even while it reinforced his anger. “I don’t have to ask your permission before I take a man to bed. If I invite an army down here, it’s no damn business of yours. It’s about time you remembered you’re my father, not my husband…”

  His hand swung out and struck her left cheek with such violence that she went hurling against the closed door. The door trembled, and from beyond came an excited twittering and the pulsating thud of wings on wood that strangely kept in time with his furious heartbeat. Lying there on the floor, she swore at him, using words he was not aware until that moment she even knew, and a lingering spark of reason made him spin round and run from the room. He flung open the front door and ran blindly to his car, anger warring with a submerged sense of intense danger. It was not until the car was roaring down the main road that he realized what that danger had been. In that moment of mad rage, when the thing had beaten the door with its wings, he—Newton C. Hatfield—had been but a heartbeat away from murdering his daughter.

  Newton spent the remainder of the day in the town flat.

  He tried not to think, but thoughts scurried across his brain like marauding rats. Since the death of his wife some seven years before, the relationship between him and Celia had been one of almost perfect concord. Whatever disagreements they might have had were without rancor and soon forgotten. But now, on two occasions, there had been undiluted hate, and he had struck her, too. The only conclusion was that either they were both going mad or that horrible little monster was, in some inexplicable way, responsible. He remembered the look of joyful lust when they had quarreled and the sound of beating wings as it tried to force its way through the door. But what was it? His imagination tried to explain an animal—but was it an animal?—that could stir up the basic instincts, and then—he dared to face the implication—draw strength from the resulting storm. Now, safe in the heart of London, the idea was fantastic; it scarcely merited consideration, but every argument that he presented to refute it was destroyed by the facts as he remembered them. He now went a little farther down
the path of forbidden knowledge. If—whatever the thing was—drew strength from the black silt that lies at the very bottom of human nature, then it surely followed that he and Celia had been—feeding it. And, as everyone should know, the end result of feeding is growth. Having given this conclusion his full consideration, Newton tore downstairs, jumped into his car and drove back the way he had come.

  Newton stopped the car and looked down upon the cottage and the great army of trees that stood in the background. The moon lit up the countryside and made every object stand out as though it were a figure freshly painted on a canvas. He was struck by the stillness, the complete absence of sound, and it seemed to his by now fevered imagination that he had somehow strayed into a plane that was either a little above or some way below that of normal existence. There was a dreamlike quality about the scene laid out before him: the motionless trees, the solitary cottage with its gleaming windows that resembled four watching eyes, and the grey ribbon that was the road, which looked as if it had never known the tread of solid foot or the hum of revolving car wheel. But suddenly, as though in mockery of his fanciful supposition, there was movement. The right hand casement—Celia’s bedroom— opened, and a black shape slowly emerged into the moonlight. It perched on the windowsill for a full minute, then, opening black wings, rose gracefully into the air. Newton felt the horror slide down into his stomach like a lump of black ice. The flying creature circled the cottage, then began to flap slowly towards the forest, but before it was lost in a sea of shadow, the moon highlighted it for an awful moment, so that every feature stood out in stark relief. They were all perfectly recognizable: the narrow head with its pointed ears and mane of black hair, the slender body, the wide-spread wings—but there was a terrible difference. It had grown. At least three feet from wingtip to wingtip, and possibly thirty inches from crown of head to rear, and the tail was coiled up between the hind legs. Newton made a sound that was midway between a shout and a scream as he pressed the self-starter, then drove swiftly down the hill and screeched to a halt before the front door.

  The hall was empty, save for the lingering ghosts of sated fear: the living room was a deserted battlefield, where overturned furniture lay like the dead of a defeated army: On the stairs he found a piece of torn dress, and three steps up, a discarded shoe. Celia’s bedroom door was open, and beyond was the gaping window, with a tattered nylon curtain hanging limply like the wedding veil of a violated bride. She was lying across the bed, the clothes ripped from her body, deep scratches disfiguring her face and white skin. When Newton, crying like a child who has come to understand the meaning of darkness for the first time, leaned over her, she opened her eyes and murmured sleepily: “It is growing up.”

  They argued long into the night. Newton shouted, threatened, walked out several times, but he always came back. Finally he begged.

  “Come away. You can’t… no one can stay in this place. Please listen to me.”

  The angry scratches were fading from her face and arms, and that in itself was a matter of fearful concern. But worse was Celia’s smile, her cool refusal to discuss what had happened and her emphatically stated intention not to leave the cottage.

  “You go,” she said. “We don’t want you. You’re much too goody-goody.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” he stared at her with alarmed eyes. “What have you become, girl?”

  For a moment she looked wistful, almost sad; then she smiled. “I thought I knew what I was. Now…” She shrugged. “Now I know I was wrong.”

  “That thing—” He jerked his head towards the window. “It is beast; more, it’s evil.”

  “Don’t play with words.” She moved to the window and stood looking up at the moon bright sky. “It is the seed from which we sprang. As the coal is to the fire, so that is to man. What is evil anyway? Don’t you realize it is the anagram of live?”

  “It is also the anagram for vile,” he retorted. “You… you are sick. Please believe me, you must come away now. Don’t even wait to pack a bag. Just jump in the car and we’ll be off.”

  Her smile was scornful and suddenly he was afraid of his daughter.

  “You haven’t got the message yet, have you? Don’t you realize wherever we go, it will follow us? There is a bond that can never be broken.”

  “Tell me,” he pleaded. “What the hell is—It?”

  She shook her head. “It is so hard to explain, and I can’t communicate very clearly—yet. There’s no voice in our sense of the word. It talks to me in my head. But I have been promised power. Unlimited success. To someone who has always been on the losing end, that’s really something. I suppose a few centuries ago I would have been burnt at the stake.”

  And she began to laugh as the moonlight turned her hair to silver-gold, and it seemed to the horrified father that he was listening to the laughing child of long ago.

  During the days that followed Newton watched his daughter with terror-inflamed anxiety, and never did he dare ask the question that haunted his waking and sleeping life. Where was it?

  Whenever he ventured into the kitchen, it was not there. Or in the living room. He had not the courage to go out at night and watch Celia’s bedroom window, and no sound now came to disturb the long, dark hours, but he knew it was still nearby. Tobias no longer brought his prey home, but seemed content to sit by the window, curiously alert to every sound and apparently watching something or someone that was not visible to Newton’s eyes.

  Celia appeared to have forgotten that there had ever been cause for friction between them and treated her father to the old bantering good humour that disturbed him more than the former bad temper. She had revealed to him a face that had undergone a terrible change, and now that the veil had been resumed, he could only guess at what further deterioration had taken place. But he began to listen and watch for any clues as to the creature’s whereabouts and habits. One evening he was rewarded.

  “I left my handbag upstairs,” Celia exclaimed.

  “I’m going up.” Newton waited for the angry refusal. “Would you like me to fetch it?”

  She smiled sweetly. “Thank you. You’re a pet.”

  Her bedroom was bathed in moonlight; the window was open and he detected a faint musty aroma. Two of his questions were answered. The thing spent the day in Celia’s bedroom, and it flew by night.

  Next day what could have been further information came from another source. Celia left him alone in the house and an hour later returned with a bundle of newspapers and magazines. Newton, for want of something better to do— his work was sadly neglected these days—seized a copy of the Daily Mail and began to skim through it. The possible information was on page four. A little paragraph in the right-hand bottom corner of the page.

  MYSTERIOUS BIRD

  Several eyewitnesses have reported seeing a strange and very large bird in the vicinity of Clavering in Kent. Descriptions vary from “a batlike creature with pointed ears and a vast wingspan,” to “something resembling a giant crow.”

  Reliable sources think it likely this is some form of freak bat, particularly as it is only reported to have been seen at night.

  The other item had possibly no connection with the thing that flew by night at all, but it still afforded Newton some further disquiet.

  RISING CRIME WAVE IN KENT

  There has been an unexpected outbreak of crimes against persons in Kent during the past few days. Several cases of robbery with violence, rape and one attempted murder have come to the attention of the police. All have been committed by people who have, up to now, led seemingly blameless lives.

  Chief-Superintendent Hargraves, of the Kent Constabulary, said in a statement last nigh?: “Television and films depicting violence have much to answer for…”

  Newton put down the newspaper and forgot that there was a subject he must not mention.

  “Celia, for God’s sake, where…?”

  She turned on him savagely: “Shut up. Don’t… don’t…”

  She broke off sud
denly, then quickly regained control.

  “Don’t ask questions that I cannot answer.”

  Well aware that another outburst of mutual anger might mean the flutter of wings, Newton lapsed into silence. But a terrible resolution came slowly into being.

  He allowed weeks to pass while the resolution grew into awful maturity, and during that time living with constant fear became a natural state of existence. It was then he realized that hell could not be such a dreadful place, because in time, the damned soul would get used to it. Cold dread entered his bed and became a sleeping partner; nagging anxiety robbed him of appetite; black terror came out of the past and pointed a skeleton finger towards the future. But at the same time his brain, well trained in the art of manufacturing plots, creating problems that must be solved, devised a plan that was based on cool reason.

  The thing—whatever its original state—was solid: There must be a form of flesh which coated a framework of some matter that was akin to bone. Therefore, it followed the creature—now a title, an easily recognizable name, began to frequently cross his crowded brain: Fly-by-Night—could be destroyed. Perhaps it would quickly recover from wounds; it might well be beyond his strength to inflict any kind of damage, but there was an element that no solid creature could resist. Fire. The resolution mated with the plan and became an operation.

  So that his precious stock of courage should not be reduced by sights and sounds, he deliberately did not look out of the window once the sun had set, and he plugged his ears with cotton wool after retiring to bed. Then, when the moon had begun to wane, he went into purposeful action.

  Eight sleeping pills powdered and mixed with cocoa made a near lethal drink, but the situation demanded drastic measures. He watched Celia sip from the earthenware mug, then trembled when she put it down with freely expressed disgust.

  “Horrible!” She wiped her mouth, then glared at him with sudden suspicion. “What the hell did you put in it?”