by Otto Penzler
“How about the servant lassies at Troon?” asked Mr. Burden.
“From Liverpool,” the doctor said. “They’ve heard nothing so far, Dressed up-town girls, too superior to be friendly with Seagate fishermen. They’ve only one complaint so far.”
“Aye!”
“They say Troon’s dark. Grumble about the windows—that the glass is always gray and clouded even when the sun’s shining outside.”
“Darkness. ‘Thing of Darkness’—that’s what parson called it the day he buried Joe Dawlish.”
“Thing of Darkness.” Doctor Dick rose. His face was drawn and stern. “Well, I must be off. I’m dining at Troon. A housewarming. I’ll call in again after it’s over. It’s likely to be a housewarming that leaves me cold.”
The heavy door clanged behind him.
“He’ll not come back this night.” Mrs. Burden turned a solemn face to her husband. He sat in his favorite chair, drawing on his churchwarden. “Friday, ’tis! And full moon. And—I didn’t tell Doctor Dick purposely—he’s enough on his mind—but it’s the anniversary of the day Lizzie Werne disappeared. It’s written in that old book I told you of. December 2nd, 1636.”
“You think old Werne’ll—?”
“Aye. I think he will.”
“You must excuse this picnic meal.” Edith’s eyes were ablaze with triumph. Hard bright color dyed her thin cheeks. “I warned you it would be a case of roughing it. The maids have done their best, but you know what they are!”
Four sat at the gate-legged table of Jacobean oak for dinner that night, the seventh night of the Kinloch’s arrival at Troon. Edith had worked like a beaver, had driven cook and housemaid before her whirl of energy like galley-slaves. The big gaunt house was furnished from wide shadowy attics to scrubbed and scoured kitchens and pantries.
Doctor Dick remembered the Biblical story of the man possessed of a devil, who swept and garnished his house. He remembered and shivered.
He made the reply his hostess expected of him. The well-pointed table, the gleaming silver and dinner service chosen to harmonize with the house, the five-course dinner, the well-trained maids imported from town, were all elaborate and overemphatic in perfection. Not the natural and dignified background of a well-bred hostess, but a show. Herself the blatant complacent showman!
“Alone I did it,” her voice, manner, and conversation implied.
“You know,” she reproached the visitor, “I really believe you’re disappointed. I think I see—yes, I’m sure I do—a sort of ‘I’d rather that my friend should die than my prediction prove a lie’ expression on your face.”
Alec intervened. He, at least, had the advantage of early discipline that had planted certain fixed rules of conduct in him. Doctor Dick looked ill at ease. He must be soothed. Hang it all, you didn’t rub things in at your own dinner-table! Edith was a bit above herself to-night. She’d got her way. They were living at Troon. Things were all right too—at least—He brushed away suspicion. Just an effect of lighting. He wasn’t used to the queer old house yet.
“Noticed the fireplace?” he asked. “It’s part of the original tavern. Sort of bakehouse. The whole inglenook, arches and chimney-breast and the little iron door to shove ashes through, were covered up by a kitchen range. Lovely old stuff that brick—three hundred years old.”
Thankfully, the guest accepted the diversion.
“Makes a wonderful dining room. That window too, I like the square panes—different from the silly imitations they make. Set in that battered old framework it’s—hello! Who’s that looking in? D’you keep a gardener working at this hour?”
Edith glanced up quickly, wished she’d drawn the curtains after all. She’d decided, on such a romantic moonlight night, that the vista of garden enhanced the room’s perfection. Impatiently she tinkled a small copper bell at her hand. No one answered it. She rang again, waited. No sound from outside.
Lynneth ventured a suggestion. She was in one of the strange dreamy moods that the doctor dreaded—moods that had recurred again and again since that night of her “vision,” as she called it. Her dinner-gown of smoke-gray velvet with its gleam of gold thread, the jewel—Tiger’s Tear—glinting tawny-yellow on her breast, the thick shining hair like folded wings about her head, all gave Doctor Dick a pang of terror and dismay. She looked unreal tonight, held in dreams, unaware of evil, of danger coming stealthily nearer as she slept.
“I think,” the girl’s voice was only a whisper, “I think they’ve gone away. Someone—came for them.”
Edith’s answer was sharp with vexation. “My dear girl, what an idea! Go away in the middle of my dinner party? Why? They don’t know a soul here. Really, Lynneth! You look half asleep. You’d better go and look for them. It might rouse you.”
Doctor Dick sprang to his feet. “No. Let me go, please!”
Edith raised resigned exasperated brows. He would behave like this. How irritating these unconventional people were! He seemed to think this was a picnic, after all. Taken her literally. So stupid! Spoiling the whole tone of her dinner. Now they’d all have to get up. She and Alec couldn’t sit still and let a guest chase about the house.
She rose, stood with finger-tips on the table, lifted her chin, looked around from under lowered lids in what she knew to be a really compelling pose. Her Queen Elizabeth look, she termed it privately. More privately still, she was sure there was some strain of royal blood in her. Some ancestor of hers had been—er—naughty! Oh, she was sure. How else did she come by the profound conviction of her own superiority? She knew she was different—an aristocrat deep down.
“I will go myself,” she pronounced. “I insist. The maids are my province, after all.”
Lynneth was unmoved by majesty’s withdrawal. She seemed to be listening to some far-off entrancing sound. The two men looked uncertainly at each other. Alec assumed a boisterous hearty manner.
“Drink up, drink up! Fill your glass, my boy, and pass the claret along. The girls are new to Seagate. Heard something and dashed out to investigate, I expect. You know how pin-headed they are.”
Minutes passed. No sound from hall or kitchens. Then came the tap-tap of high heels just overhead.
“Edith! Girls must’ve gone upstairs, not outside. I wonder—”
“We ought to go up, too.”
Doctor Dick was on his feet. Alec, puzzled and uncomfortably disturbed by something he did not begin to understand, rose also. They made for the door. The doctor turned back, to see Lynneth sitting peacefully at the table, dreaming, indifferent.
“Stay there. Don’t move from this room,” he called back. “Lynneth! Lynneth!”
She responded with a vague absent smile. Doctor Dick followed his host with a last anxious look of love at the girl. A sense of mortal deadly peril threatened. The whole house seemed growing dark and suffocating and evil.
A cry came from above. Every light dimmed, went out. Thick choking darkness muffled Troon from kitchens to attics. Blindly, Doctor Dick fought his way up.
“Where are you?” he called.
From the stairs above, he heard Alec’s voice, muffled, cursing.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing? Can’t you answer me, man?”
“I’m trying—to—get down.”
Alec’s voice came thicker, fainter now. A stumble. Curses and sound of hoarse hurried breathing in the darkness above. Then there was a yell—the crack of splintering wood—a heavy body came slithering and sprawling down the stairs as if flung with immense force. It knocked against Doctor Dick as he was stumbling upward, and he fell too, slipping down until an angle in the wall stopped him. Winded, uninjured, uncertain what to do next, he called out.
“Lynneth! Lynneth! Are you all right? Can you find matches? I left my lighter in my overcoat.”
No answer from the profound darkness below.
“Lynneth!”
A voice, a vague faint echo of the girl’s clear tone, floated down from above, it seemed to him. He made his way up the stee
p narrow old stairs again. “Lynneth! Lynneth!”
Edith Kinloch, cinnamon-brown silk flounces rustling her indignation, pursued her search. The kitchens, the pantries, were ablaze with light. And the hall. And the landing upstairs. She looked quickly into the rooms on the ground floor. No one there. But every room was brilliantly lighted.
She stamped her annoyance. Was this some low silly joke? Had the two maids gone off for some reason, leaving on all the lights merely to upset her? But why? Why? There had been no trouble over anything. Later perhaps, when they knew she did not intend to get more help—
She ran upstairs. Here again all lights were on. Every bedroom door was flung widely open. The blood rose to her head. In a rage now, she went up the last steep twisting staircase to the attics, and once more found the same silly prank had been played. True the lights were less brilliant. Fifteens were good enough for maids to waste! They’d only read in bed and be late in the morning if she gave them stronger lamps.
She hadn’t thought fifteens were quite so poor though. Why, one candle would give more light than these things. Must be faulty bulbs. She’d ring up and complain tomorrow. They seemed to be getting dimmer as she looked at them. One died right out overhead. The one over the stairwell. She’d turn her ankle getting down again.
But where were those fools of girls? She stalked across to the wardrobe. There hung the tweed coats they wore, and a lot of other clothes. They couldn’t have run off. They must be in the garden. She’d go down and send Alec out to find them.
Lynneth would have to make coffee and serve it, to cover the gap. Thank heaven, they’d finished the last course, anyhow. She turned about on the square landing, a mere three-foot platform, from which the attics opened.
In the big west room a sound brought her head about with a jerk.
“Who’s there? Is that you, Beasley? Parkes?”
A shuffle. A heavy tread. She went back to the room. A light clicked off in the room as she entered it. She wheeled with a little squeal of anger.
“How dare you—”
In the darkness, a blacker deadlier darkness moved. Held rigid in sudden cold fear, her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom. The window stood widely open. No. Not open. She looked at the thing. No window or even frame was there. Merely a ruinous irregular break in the crumbling wall.
She went to it, dizzy, sick, her nostrils filled with dusty choking stench. Her eyes followed the swelling shapeless Thing of Darkness that moved in the moonlit darkness of the room. A sudden red light shone from a foul little lantern that stood on a stone shelf formed by the chimney-breast’s irregularities. Bare crumbling brick, the chimney was.
“But this”—she spoke aloud in a hoarse amazed voice—“this is what it was before we restored it. This isn’t our Troon!”
“No. It’s mine.”
Loud voice and louder laughter answered her. She recognized them. In the smoking lamplight, she saw the vast ugly bulk, the bloated face, the small cruel eyes set under matted hair.
“You! You here again! I thought I told you—”
Her voice died. Her cold hands flew to her throat. She pressed back—back against the dirty old wall behind. The other attic was darkened now; her frightened eyes glanced across to it. She was up here in the dark, shut up with this brutal mad old man. It was a trick! Those servants! She’d have them punished. A monstrous experience! How dare they let her be subjected to it!
Ah!—he was moving nearer—nearer—darkness, thick black choking darkness, rolled forward like a tidal wave.
Now it touched her. She shrieked. Ice-cold, wet, like rotting slime, it touched her—closer about her—closer! Backward she went before the stifling death—back to the gaping ruinous wall. If she could get to that—call for help! Yes! Yes! She was on her knees on the dusty uneven broken flooring. With desperate effort she twisted, thrust her head outside.
“Help! Help!” she shrieked. “Help!”
The word choked in her throat. She was drawn back, as if the room were a quicksand into which she sank—down—down—silken flounces ripped—hair fallen all about her face of idiot terror—down—down—through the door of life—down through hell’s dark gates—down—down—the Thing of Darkness pressed closer—closer still.…
It seemed to Doctor Dick, fighting his way in the unnatural darkness, as if he struggled up through clouds of poisonous gas whose fumes took strength from his limbs, sight from his eyes. Gasping. Dragging himself up one stair at a time. A cold numbness invaded him.
Then a frightful bubbling shriek pierced his senses. It came from above. Another—and more horrible cry. He groaned. He couldn’t hurry. He felt consciousness being blotted out. Darkness pressed on him like solid walls. A stench of rotted decay filled his nostrils, choked the breath in his throat … it failed him … he fell forward.
Darkness flowed over him like the river of death itself.
He opened his eyes to find himself lying on the stairs just below the first-floor landing. Electric lights winked on all sides. Gray dawn met his aching bewildered eyes through a vast skylight overhead.
He tried to think, to remember as he struggled to rise. How had he come there? Why did such heavy desperate weariness weigh him down?
Sick, trembling with effort, he stood clinging to the baluster rail. Below, under the glare of a droplight, he caught sight of a man sprawled untidily across a glowing Persian rug. Groaning, he stumbled down to investigate.
It was Alec who lay there. Doctor Dick’s professional instinct pricked him from lethargy as he examined the man. “Broken leg, slight concussion,” he murmured. Suddenly full recollection flashed in his clouded mind.
“Lynneth! Lynneth!” he called aloud.
He made for the dining-room where he had left her last night. The place was deserted. Lights gleamed dismally in the half daylight. The dinner-table’s bravery of silver and glass mocked his distraught gaze. He searched the lower rooms. No one.
He passed Alec as if he’d been part of the hall furniture, and went upstairs. Lights burned everywhere. The air was chill but clean. Empty room after empty room greeted him vacantly. Only the last narrow stairs now to the wide attics above.
“Lynneth!”
He sprang up the topmost flight, and crouched beside the crumpled heap of gray velvet.
Her dark head was against the wall, blood stained her face, her soft white neck, the bosom of her dress. The Tiger’s Tear had fallen back against her parted lips—gleaming golden bauble.
Wild meaningless phrases shot into his distraught mind. Bits of Ecclesiastes: “The silver cord is loosed … the golden bowl—”
He touched her, bent closer. Ah, it was not death after all! Not death. He was all physician now. The healer. Dare he lift her to examine further? That head wound was very deep—blood still welling. His eyes grew cold with fear once more as he explored it. The skull was crushed at one place. How could he move her from that awkward corner? It would be fatal to jolt her wounded head.
He hesitated only a moment. He must do it, of course. He daren’t leave her alone in Troon while he got help. And every second counted. If ever he thanked heaven for his strength, it was now. When, with infinite care he’d laid her down at last on a bed in the nearest room on the floor below the attics, he went to the bathroom.
From an elaborately fitted-out medicine chest there, on which Edith had greatly plumed herself, he dug out what he could. Gray dawn brightened to day as he fought to save Lynneth. He used what makeshift medicaments he had. Dark hair he’d cut away was strewn on a pale costly rug beside the bed. The girl’s face looked carved from frozen snow beneath its bandages. Her pulse beat ominously beneath his touch.
Her life hung balanced by a thread, and he watched with increasing fear. She must lie undisturbed now for another twenty-four hours at least. There was a slim, a very slim chance of life—no chance at all if she moved.
But there was another night to face—another night at Troon. How could he protect her? What weapons could a
man use against the Thing of Darkness? Brooding, pondering, dazed with the terrific strain of the past hours, he sat. A creaking sound startled him.
It was Mrs. Burden. She was coming upstairs. He took her hands, kissed her withered cheek, tears of relief in his eyes at the sight of the old woman’s calm face and faithful eyes.
“You’re a miracle. No one in the world but you would have come. Now perhaps—”
He poured out in brief hurried whispers what he’d seen and heard last night.
“Servants gone. Kinloch’s smashed up. Edith Kinloch’s gone. I couldn’t look for her. I daren’t leave Lynneth alone for a minute in this house.”
“Best look now, sir. I’ll bide with your lass.”
She settled down beside the patient like a little brown bird, watching the unconscious girl, taking in the room with clear thoughtful old eyes.
Doctor Dick went upstairs to begin his search. She heard him coming slowly down at last; heard his heavy breathing as if he carried some awkward weight. He had to pass the open door of the room where she sat. She saw what it was he carried.
Its broken neck revealed what once had been a human face—now a darkened dreadful mask. A few tattered wisps of silk clung to the broken body. Jeweled rings glittered on limp and dusty hands.
Doctor Dick passed on, went into a room near by. When he came in to her again he looked like an old man.
“You saw—it?”
Mrs. Burden nodded solemnly.
“Wait here, sir. Coffee laced with brandy is what you need. We’ll talk when you’re better, my lamb—sir, I mean—begging your pardon!”
“Wait!” His hoarse voice detained her. “There’s Kinloch, poor chap! Help me lift him. I don’t think he’s seriously hurt.
“There’s no way out. We’ve got to spend this coming night at Troon. The chances are we’ll go”—Doctor Dick made a gesture to the bedroom across the landing—“like … that!”
“No. Not like that. Whatever comes, not like that. It’s true, as you said, ’tis no good letting any other body come inside this place. ’Tis for you and me—this night’s work. No one else can help. Even the vicar himself couldn’t. ’Tis for you and me. But no one of us will go—the way she did! No. If we have to die, I can take the three of us an easier road than that.”