Dark Conflict

by John Glasby

  ‘We’d better break in through one of the windows,’ whispered Nayland. He paused and looked carefully about him, hugging the shadows of the trees. ‘And we’ll have to be careful. There’s no telling what fiendish things we may find in there. Keep close behind me and do whatever I tell you without asking any questions.’

  ‘I understand,’ Blake said thinly.

  ‘Good. Then come on. But no noise! If that man Caltro should once suspect that we’re here —’

  They reached the back of the house, pressing themselves tightly against the cold stone of the wall. All of the windows had heavy curtains drawn across them and several were crisscrossed with strong steel bars.

  Death and evil are out here, Nayland reflected suddenly, and all of the things usually associated with, and part of, the night.

  A chill came over him as he stood there; a chill not so much from the cold night air, as from a subtle something that tore at his nerves. His body felt taut and his nerves were stretched to breaking point.

  He turned his head a little and tried to shut out the low, moaning murmur of the wind as it rustled through the branches of the trees. Somehow, there seemed to be a voice in it that gave him a sick, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was a terrible, dismal voice, lonely and vast and far away. A voice which spoke to him of Death, a last gasping breath, a screaming of torture, of Hell itself.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ said Blake quietly, after a brief pause. ‘If there was we ought to have —’

  ‘Quiet!’ hissed Nayland sharply, clutching at his companion’s arm. ‘I thought I heard something. There!’

  ‘I don’t hear anything.’

  ‘Listen.’

  For a long moment, there was complete silence; an eerie stillness that dragged on and on until Nayland began to think he had been mistaken. There was the thin, white mist still hanging around the house and in the darkness he couldn’t see anything plainly, but the blackness seemed to do something to the smallest noise, magnifying it, distorting it a little until it was scarcely recognizable for what it really was.

  And then, from somewhere inside the silent house, there came the insistent throbbing that he had heard a few moments earlier. It seemed to be coming from a long way away, a monotonous thudding like a drum being beaten in a hollow, echoing room.

  ‘Hellfire,’ Blake muttered, starting forward, ‘what the devil is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. But whatever it is, I think we have to find out.’

  Nayland worked his way slowly along the wall until he reached one of the windows without the steel bars across it. He gave the catch a cursory glance and then took a long, slender-bladed knife from his pocket.

  The window creaked in protest as he inserted the steel blade beneath the framework, prizing it gently upwards with slow, steady movements of his fingers. His grim features were tight with concentration.

  A moment later, the blade snapped upward, breaking the lock. Nayland slipped the knife into his pocket, then eased the window silently upwards, revealing a square of darkness within which nothing moved.

  ‘This is it,’ Nayland said quietly. ‘Keep close to me and don’t make any noise.’

  Gingerly, he pulled himself up by his arms and eased his body through the window. Touching the floor with his feet he pulled himself upright and moved back a couple of paces, feeling behind him with his hands like a blind man. In his mind’s eye, he could see Caltro and the rest of these fiends, sitting somewhere in the darkness, possibly within a few feet of where he was standing at that moment, watching him.

  Blake’s dark shadow appeared in the opening, outlined against the night. A moment later, he dropped gently down beside him and stood breathing heavily in the dimness.

  Carefully, Nayland stepped forward into the darkness. The silence was broken only by the continuous dripping of a leaking tap somewhere close at hand and he figured that this must be the kitchen. In the darkness, it was almost impossible to see anything and until he was sure of his bearings, he didn’t want to use the torch in his pocket.

  On the other side of the kitchen, furthest from the window, he found the door. It opened quietly as he twisted the handle, but the darkness beyond it was blacker still. He stopped for a moment and held his breath, motioning Blake to remain quiet. Still nothing moved.

  He was just beginning to think that the house really was deserted and those people had decided to take Simon Merrivale away to perform the ceremony elsewhere; a place where they wouldn’t be interrupted, when he heard the noise again. It was appreciably louder now.

  A monotonous thudding that appeared to come from somewhere near the top of the house; sharp, drumming echoes that chased themselves through the stillness.

  Carefully, Nayland took the pencil torch from his pocket and snapped it on. Midnight shadows twisted and scurried away from the light as he played it around the walls of the narrow passage in which they found themselves. He stood quite still for a full minute, thinking back, recalling the general layout of the house. At the moment, they were at the rear of the place.

  Finally, he was satisfied. At the end of the narrow hallway, he found a half-open door and opened it slowly. Beyond it lay the large room in which they had earlier seen the intricate marble design with the huge altar against one wall, ready for some hideous ceremony to take place.

  The room was empty. Huge grotesque shadows moved around the massive shape of the altar as he played the beam of the torch over it. The long black candles in their silver sticks stood out in startling detail.

  But where were Caltro and Merrivale and the other participants they had not yet met?

  The luminous hands on Nayland’s watch showed that it wanted only another six minutes to midnight. Little bits of half-forgotten knowledge were filtering into his mind, forcing their way into his consciousness.

  Whenever people became involved too deeply with Black Magic in its most terrible and potent form, almost invariably their minds were manipulated by people like Caltro. He did not doubt that this man was an Ipsissimus of the Order of the Left Hand Path and extremely dangerous. He had seen for himself the powers such people possessed, how they would promise anything, until susceptible men like Merrivale would fall entirely beneath their spell, heeding nothing but what was told them.

  His fingers were beginning to tremble slightly as he walked cautiously forward into the vast room. The faint drumming sound continued to hammer away into his brain, but he could not locate where it was coming from.

  At the far end of the room a stairway spiraled up to the rooms on the first floor. In the light from the torch, the stairs stood out in black and white, leading upwards until they vanished out of sight.

  ‘Empty?’ said Blake in a hushed whisper. It was more of a question than a statement.

  Nayland felt his scalp tighten. ‘I don’t think so. I wish to God I knew where that drumming sound was coming from, and what it is.’

  He led the way across the room and threw open a door set in the far wall at the side of the stairs. Blake heard his sudden sharp intake of breath a moment later and came hurrying forward.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘There — see.’ Nayland swung the beam along the wall, until it rested just above the door through which they had just entered.

  ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘Exactly. That mask and headdress were there when we came earlier. They’ve gone.’

  ‘But what’s the significance of that?’

  ‘I only wish to God I knew. I’ve a feeling they’ve taken them away for some purpose. But where are they? Apart from that goddamned noise, I’d say the place was completely deserted. But it isn’t like them to have left in the middle of their ceremonies.

  ‘Merrivale said himself that everything had been prepared and that they couldn’t postpone it. Caltro would never agree to either stopping or postponing the ceremony just because we showed up and there was the possibility that we might return. Instead, I would have thought they’d
have posted someone to watch for us in the event that we did come back.’

  ‘Maybe we’d better see if there’s anyone upstairs. That’s the only place they could be. We’ve seen nothing down here.’

  They went back into the huge room, their feet making no sound on the thick carpet that surrounded the marbled floor.

  Boom — boom — boom! The sound continued to throb in their ears, unceasing, and it had a spine-chilling quality about it that set Nayland’s teeth on edge.

  Halfway up the stairs, he paused and slipped the heavy revolver out of his pocket, hefting it into the palm of his right hand. He could now sense danger all around them.

  Boom — boom — boom — boom!

  They reached the top of the stairs and stood quite still for a moment, looking about them, getting their bearings.

  The drumming seemed to be all around them now, beating at them from all sides, great swelling waves of noise that thundered down at them as the weird echoes ran along the intersecting corridors.

  Throwing all caution to the wind, Nayland suddenly cupped his lips and shouted at the top of his voice:

  ‘Simon!’

  There was no answer. Only the drumming seemed to increase still further in volume as though mocking him, scorning him for trying to pit his feeble strength against something far greater and stronger than he.

  ‘Simon. Are you there?’ Blake yelled the words at the top of his voice.

  ‘Those fiends must have taken him with them when they left,’ muttered Nayland harshly.

  There was no need now for secrecy. If anyone were lurking in the house, they would know by now where they were. He had half-expected the drumming to stop once they had shouted and announced their presence in this way, but it still continued to beat and throb in huge murmurs of sound, rising to a mighty crescendo that filled the whole house.

  ‘There’s something wrong here.’ Nayland led the way along the corridor, throwing open the first door he came to and snapping on the light. The room lay empty. The bed near the wall had not been slept in.

  The second bedroom was almost exactly the same as the first; nothing had been moved, nothing seemed out of place. The room was sparsely furnished but everything was of the highest quality. Luxury seemed to abound in this place of mystery, he thought.

  ‘Nobody there,’ he said, glancing round to where Blake stood in the doorway. ‘It looks as though the birds have flown and taken Simon with them.’

  ‘But where could they have gone?’ Blake looked bewildered.

  Nayland shrugged resignedly. ‘One thing’s certain. We’ll never find them tonight.’ He checked his watch. It was almost midnight.

  A few moments later, the church bell in the distance chimed the hour, the long, drawn-out strokes sounding faintly through the moonlight. He shivered inwardly and began to count subconsciously. Many times in the past he had heard the Voodoo drums beating and booming endlessly in the tangled swamps of Africa and the West Indies.

  He had watched the Leopard Men at their secret rites in the jungle, seen them on the prowl, seeking their victims, ripping and clawing at squirming, shrieking bodies, leaving them mutilated beyond human description.

  But there had been times in the beginning when he had never believed. He had laughed with scorn at the curses thrown at him by the witchdoctors of the dark jungles of the African interior.

  There had been other times when he had been forced to believe. When he had seen the walking dead as they had been summoned in a hideous trance that was neither life nor death but something unutterably horrible.

  But here, somewhere in the heart of London, where everything should have been sane and normal, feeling the presence of unknown horrors ringing him around, all of the other terrors he had known in different lands among the more superstitious people of the world began to fade into insignificance.

  Here, he felt, there was real evil. It wasn’t the black horror of the voodoo or the chanted witchcraft of the jungles, the things he had been able to laugh at. Here, it was something different and far more horrible.

  Some part of his mind, detached but alert, continued to count the slow beat of the distant chimes.

  Five, six, seven . . .

  He was suddenly aware that the insistent beating that had been with them ever since they had entered the house had suddenly stopped. When it had actually ceased its monotonous thudding, he wasn’t quite sure. He stood there in the narrow corridor with the silent rooms on either side, sweating, feeling his heart thudding like a drum itself inside his chest.

  He pulled himself together with a conscious mental effort. From the very edge of his vision, he felt sure he could see something moving at the far end of the passage, slipping in and out of the shadows, coming forward with a peculiar gliding motion.

  Nine, ten . . .

  He was suddenly aware that he was holding his breath and his knuckles whitened with nervous tension as he gripped the gun in his right hand.

  For a second, nightmare was strong within him, pulling on the muscles of his throat so that he found it difficult to breathe properly.

  Eleven, twelve . . .

  Midnight! The sound of the distant chimes died away in tiny, shivering echoes in the moonlight. For a long moment there was complete silence, broken only by the gale of their breathing. Nothing seemed to move in the deep shadow pools of dark ebony.

  And then, from somewhere close at hand, the air was split by the most horrible, piercing scream Nayland had ever heard. All of the fear and agony in the world seemed to be embodied in it.

  A second later it ended in a long, drawn-out gurgle that was terrible to hear.

  A moment passed. There was a queer look on Blake’s face as he started forward along the corridor. A few yards ahead of Nayland, he paused. In front of them, a door clicked its lock and creaked open ominously.

  Nayland turned quickly, the beam of the torch flashing along the walls. At the end of the corridor, he saw the door to one of the rooms beginning to swing slowly back.

  There was a dim figure standing in the open doorway. A darker shape against the dim background. Nayland caught a brief glimpse of glittering eyes staring at him with a strangely hellish fury, and a leering grin that seemed to have all of the evil of hell locked in the curve of those lips.

  ‘My God!’ The words burst from Blake’s shaking lips.

  Nayland brought up the gun. The creature’s outlines seemed crazily indistinct. At first, he could scarcely believe that it was a man. Then the other came closer and he saw the feathered headdress and the hideous mask.

  At first, he could scarcely believe his eyes. The man was some kind of native, there was no doubt about that. But where had he come from and what was he doing here, alone in this house at this time of night? His first impression was that it was the manservant they had met earlier, but a second glance soon convinced him that this was not the case.

  Breathlessly, he watched what happened next, scarcely conscious of the fact that Blake was standing less than five feet away. His mind was suddenly a screaming turmoil as the figure came closer, moving with stiff and inflexible steps as though in a trance. There was something madly familiar too.

  What he was seeing was, of course, impossible. Simon Merrivale? Now why should that thought rush through his head? He blinked his eyes several times. For an instant, he had the vague impression that the other turned and stared directly at him, watching with a look of grim, sardonic amusement behind the mask.

  Nayland’s body felt suddenly cold. Quite suddenly, he knew the gun in his hand would be futile and useless against this thing.

  His hand was so limp that he could not raise it to aim and squeeze the trigger. Utter nightmare tore at his mind, trying to rip his brain to shreds. The creature moved closer, paused for a moment as it drew level with him and then moved on, down the stairs and across the room at the bottom.

  It took all his failing will to keep from turning and running, screaming, down into the house, through the front door and out into the
open, far away from this place. There seemed to be a thin, eerie laugh, high in the air, that trembled along his nerves.

  Chapter Four – Against the Darkness

  ‘Merciful God,’ muttered Blake, moving forward a little on shuffling feet. ‘What the devil was that?’

  ‘Steady,’ Nayland said. ‘We have to think and act calmly. Unless we do, we’re both in terrible danger. This is something I never expected. I think we ought to go down there and see what’s happening — if you’re game to come with me.’

  Struggling to control his nerves, Blake nodded silently and followed him down the stairs, occasionally mumbling words to himself that the other couldn’t quite make out. They reached the bottom of the stairs and glanced about them. There was no sign of the thing which had passed them in the corridor at the head of the stairs, but it had to be somewhere in the house. Once they found that creature, he thought fiercely, they would get to the bottom of this mystery. He didn’t know why he was so sure about that, but he felt certain that it would turn out that way.

  As he walked forward, feeling the metal of the gun cold against the palm of his hand, he discovered that he was more afraid than ever before. It was a rising terror that seemed to fill the entire house and press down upon him as if the very air were solidifying.

  There came a low, bubbling moan from just beyond the half-open door that led out of the room and Nayland, his left hand amazingly steady in spite of the fear that coursed through him, walked towards it and pushed it open with his palm.

  Blake followed close on his heels as he shone the torch into the hallway. Shadows fled before the light and the mute heads of the animal trophies stared down at him out of temporarily glittering eyes as the light flashed over them.

  ‘My God,’ Blake pointed. Nayland steadied the beam and stared down at the still figure lying on the red carpet arms outstretched, legs doubled up beneath him.

  ‘It’s Simon.’ Nayland threw a swift glance along the hallway before going down on one knee beside the inert body of Simon Merrivale, handing the torch to Blake.