There was a sound outside as of twigs being snapped, and a stone came crashing through the window, scattering splinters of glass across the room. A gust of wind fluttered the curtains as it wheezed and howled about us.
"Get back!" Foster cried. "Get back as far from the window as you can." Even as he spoke a further stone hurtled through the shards of glass still surrounding the hole, and bounced off the writing desk to strike the wall at the far side of the room with a resounding crash.
"We must get Poole out of here," I insisted. "One of those stones hitting him could be fatal."
Foster nodded his agreement. "We'll carry him to an upstairs room. He'll be safer there."
Hoisting him onto our shoulders, we hurriedly vacated the study. Two more stones, crashing through what remained of the window almost simultaneously, told us just how timely our exit was. As we climbed the stairs the bangs and crashes continued without respite till it seemed, as they increased in number and ferocity, as if a monstrous hailstorm of rocks was bombarding the house.
"They are only trying to scare us into making an untimely attempt to escape," Foster said, as we peered down at the grounds after leaving Poole stretched out in the safety of the passageway. The figures, concealed by the deep shadows under the trees, were in a sense unreal. Their features were unnaturally blurred, and my eyes seemed unable to focus properly upon them. What glimpses I got of them as I strained my eyes against the gloom were of badly misshapen and gaunt bodies wrapped in dull rags, which may at one time have been the habits of monks.
There was a thud against the wall. "They're trying to reach us up here now," Foster said as we stepped out of the room. There was a piercing crash of breaking glass as the windows were shattered behind us.
"Why go to these extremes?" I asked, grasping the stair rail as we started downstairs.
"Perhaps because they are afraid of us."
"Of us?" I could hardly hide my incredulity.
Shaking his head, Foster replied: "Don't be deceived into believing them indestructible just because they appear to have conquered death. It is all a sham, a facade. They have not stopped the gnawing of the worm nor brought breath into their parchment lungs. They cannot even step through the windows they have so easily broken to reach us. Maybe, therefore," he went on, growing more confident with each word, "it is possible that we may be able to sever what thin, frail thread still binds them to the semblance of life."
"And do you have any idea how we can do this?" I asked.
"Perhaps," Foster said. "But we would have to go down to their source." At the quizzical look I cast him, he said: "To the cellar."
I shook my head. "Never! What I've already experienced down there is enough for me. Nothing, nothing on this earth could persuade me to go there again."
"If that is the case," Foster said, "so be it. I can't force you to accompany me."
"You're still seriously thinking of going down there?" I asked.
"I am. I might look like an old fool - a crank - and, God knows, in some ways I may be, at that - but I know where my duty lies. What your friend in his foolhardy residence here has unleashed, I shall do my utmost to put right."
"There was something in this place long before Poole ever ventured here," I insisted. "You admitted so yourself."
"And so there was," Foster replied, unshaken. "There was something here, alone and speechless, unable to summon up anything else. It wasn't till the thing gained access to the cellar and gained control of Poole's voice that it could speak the words needed to bring its hellish brethren back to the similitude of life." Irritably he shook his head. "We are wasting time. If you will not enter the cellar with me, will you at least do me the favour of accompanying me to the cellar door? I may need your help."
"Of course I'll go there with you," I said, "if you still insist on entering the place."
Upon reaching the cellar door, Foster paused, looking along the shelves beside it. At one end there was an untidy heap of tools: hammers, nails, a rusty pair of pliers, a saw and what looked like part of a very old brace and bit. Reaching for one of the heaviest hammers, Foster said: "This should do in case I meet with any trouble." He chuckled drily as he took down the paraffin lamp and lit it. Shaking it lightly he listened to the reassuringly loud lapping of its nearly full tank.
Tucking the hammer in his belt, he reached for the door bolt, drawing it quietly from its socket. As he pulled the door open there was a sudden smell of fetid air, a vile corruption that struck nausea in us both with one, half-gasped breath. Crying out in pure and absolute terror, Foster fell back from the doorway. There was a movement in the gloom, and I was sensible of an odd shuffling sound. With one spasmodic but determined movement, Foster raised the lamp high into the air. Its light spread into the gloom, revealing the stooped and ragged figure glaring at us with its withered and leprous abomination of a face. Its back bent double beneath the remnants of a monk's habit, it shook as if straining to keep itself erect on the topmost step.
There is no way in which I can describe the loathing horror that the creature inspired within me, with its suppurating, claw-like hands, the eye-like slits of the wrinkles in its decaying flesh, or the grotesque stains of dissolution that, in nauseatingly contrasting hues, were spread about its ravaged body. Even as I looked upon the irregular and stained stitches about its body and face, where the severed quarters of what I knew to be the Abbot's remains had been rejoined, I could not force the scream that I felt stifled within me from my lips.
In a cracked whisper I urged Foster to draw back from the doorway in case the crouched abomination should reach out for him with its talons. Perhaps numbed beyond feelings of horror, Foster merely shook his head, saying: "It can no more move its hands through the doorway than mine could penetrate stone." He laughed humourlessly, adding: "Which gives me an advantage I cannot but use to the full." With that he suddenly tugged the hammer from his belt and raised it in the air. The swaying lamp made the sharp shadows about the creature's face exaggerate its hideous decay, as if unseen maggots were writhing in torment beneath its flesh. Then, using the whole of his weight, Foster brought the hammer down onto the creature's head. The thing had barely time in which to look up as the hammer crashed into its skull. There was a dull splintering of bones, old and brittle ones, a black putrescence oozing from the obscene wound. The Abbot stiffened, its hands feebly moving as if to touch Foster, who in the instant backed away, drawing his arm out of reach. The hammer fell, forgotten, to the floor as the lich swayed in the doorway. From the wound in its skull, along with the foul fluids, other substances were being ejected in the pulsating flow: wriggling heaps of pallid worms that gathered on the stained floor. "For it is of old rumour," Foster recited to himself in awful fascination, "that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnal clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws, till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it… and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl!"
Unable to look upon the thing a moment more as it stubbornly fell to its knees in a doomed attempt to fight against the weakness plainly sweeping through its body, I stared at the floor. Horrible though it had been in "life", in its "dying" the creature had achieved new dimensions of revulsion and awfulness. Nor could I bear to see the burning penetration of its sunken eyes as it stared at us and through us into the house. There was something in that look which made panic stir itself within me.
Suddenly there was the sound of someone bounding down the stairs behind us. Surprised as I was at the unexpected sound, I was momentarily unable to react. When I did at last manage to turn round, it was to glimpse Poole as he dashed on past me. I called out to him in warning, but he shouldered me aside as he launched himself in a furious attack against Foster. The small librarian was on the point of turning round when Poole's fist struck him on the jaw. Without even so much as a groan Foster fell back against the cellar door, trying to steady himself against i
t. But Poole gave him no chance to regain his balance before he hit him again, pounding him in the stomach. As Foster doubled up, Poole grabbed him by one arm and propelled him towards the open doorway. Before I could do anything to stop him, Foster stumbled into the darkness at the top of the cellar steps. As if given new strength at the opportunity to wreak its vengeance upon him, the lich grasped Foster in its arms. Almost without knowing what he was doing, Foster swung the paraffin lamp, still gripped in his fingers, furiously against the creature's body. The putrescence from its skull splattered it, blotting out its light for an instant, before the lamp crashed to the ground at their feet. There was a gust as flames rippled upwards, catching on the creature's flowing robes and spreading through the pools of paraffin that were scattered at its feet. As if fed on something far more volatile than the pint or two of paraffin inside the lamp, the flames roared upwards, consuming both figures in a roaring ferocity of fire.
I cried out in despair as the sudden heat blasted out at me and I had to cover my eyes against it with my hands. I took a step forwards, but the heat was too strong and I had to step back. I looked round at Poole, and I felt a cold, unreasoning anger towards him. An anger which almost made me pound Poole into submission and force him into the growing inferno on the cellar steps. But it was an anger which died as I saw the horror and disbelief on Poole's face. The hatred that had seared his features only moments before had gone. "I… I couldn't stop myself," Poole muttered in his bewilderment. "I couldn't." He looked at me for support, beseechingly. "I couldn't."
I said that I understood, though there was so much that I knew I would never understand about what had happened.
I looked back at the blaze, in which the frenzied writhings of the two clasped figures had ceased. It was as if the destructive forces of those untold centuries had been unleashed upon the Abbot at last, taking their vengeful toll not only on the cleric himself but on Foster as well, till there remained, as the last few flames died down, only charred and unrecognizable fragments of bone and ashes on the floor.
As Poole collapsed, sobbing, I stepped into the study to see if there were any of the monks still lurking in the grounds. My relief could not have been more intense when I saw the faint flush of dawn penetrating the sky above the trees, now plainly etched against it. Of the creatures, not even one could be seen when I stepped to the shattered remains of the window and looked out.
I met Poole's eyes as he stepped towards me. Had my nerves been less taut, I might have felt some pity for his miserable plight, but the rigours of the night had been too much. I could tell that Poole remembered what he had done, though not why he had done it. That he had been possessed he undoubtedly realized, but not that it had been by something other than his own deranged subconscious. "How could I?" he repeated to himself. I wondered if he had seen the thing in the cellar. Or had his eyes been blinded to everything except Foster? "How could I?"
Irritation and fear building up inside me, I told him to stop being a fool. "Can't you see what it was that controlled you?" I asked.
He looked at me in alarm, that served only to intensify my annoyance, so that I grasped him by one arm and dragged him to the cellar door, where I showed him the charred fragments of bone which were all that remained as the fire died down of the Abbot. "He made you do it," I said callously. "Look at him!"
Poole shuddered as memories seemed to awaken inside him at the sight of the thing. He stepped away from it and knelt on the floor, clasping his hands to his face. "What can we do?" he asked.
What could we do? As I looked out at the stubborn darkness of the woods or into the dull twilight of the house, I felt trapped, claustrophobically and eternally trapped, as if caught within a nightmare from which there could be no escape into wakefulness and sanity. Sanity! Even the word itself seemed to verge on the ludicrous now. Sanity! What was it when even reality itself gave way to madness, when the curtains of our existence are rent apart and the grinning mask of chaos is thrust towards our eyes? What words could I utter in comfort when I felt my own mind sliding towards an oblivion of madness?
"We must get out of here," I said at last, my voice grating. "We must never return. Only death and madness lie in this place for us if we remain."
Looking up from his despair, Poole asked: "What of Foster? What can we do about him?"
"Nothing now," I replied. "He is dead and, I hope, at peace. There's nothing we can do for him now."
"But his death?" Poole asked, his voice almost shrill. "I caused his death."
"Not willingly," I reminded him as I looked about the hallway. "When it's light we must bury him and what's left of the Abbot beneath the flagstones in the cellar. I doubt if anyone will ever find them there. We'll do that as soon as we can, then leave… and hope that in the months to come we can forget what happened here last night."
Poole agreed immediately to my plan. He had no choice. He knew as well as I did that, if we were to attempt to explain any of this to the police, we would be damned straight away as liars. There was no satisfactory way in which we could explain Foster's death, even if we had possessed enough strength of will to face an enquiry, which we didn't.
On leaving the house several hours later I drove us away from Fenley to Pire, and from there we went on to Tavestock, where I live. For the next few months Poole took up residence in an hotel in town. I saw him now and again. I did not shun him particularly; it was instead as if we mutually found that each other's company brought back memories we would both of us prefer to forget. Though it seemed, to my relief, that what had happened in Fenley remained our secret, and that what fuss there was about Foster's inexplicable disappearance died down to be more or less forgotten, Poole seemed unable to recover properly from our ordeal. I doubted then that he ever really forgot, even for a moment, what had happened, and I could tell from his red-rimmed eyes and haggard face that his nights were tormented and sleepless.
He complained sometimes about feeling as if he was being watched, insisting that at night he caught glimpses of someone peering into his room from the darkened streets. I told him that it was his overwrought imagination, that it was his fear of someone finding the two charred bodies we had buried in his house and of the police watching him. "And there's no chance of any of this happening so long as you still own that house and no one is allowed inside it," I insisted. "Don't worry," I would end. "We're safe. Forget that it ever happened. It's in the past."
Over the months that followed I only hoped that the mental breakdown that kept threatening to occur would not happen and that Poole would somehow find the strength of will to fight back against his insubstantial fears. In the end he left Tavestock. Probably I reminded him too much of what happened. I was not sad to see him go. In a way it came as a welcomed relief. We still occasionally exchanged letters. These, at least, I could cast to one side if their contents disturbed me, for he continually complained even now about someone monitoring his house. I knew that he was slowly losing control. The whole thing had become an obsession with him, so intense that he would not even set foot out of doors after dark. "They are watching me," he once wrote from the new house he had bought in Pire, "waiting for the first chance they get if I slip up."
It was not till last night, when I read about his death in the Barchester Observer & Times, that I realized for the first time in what awful terror he must have been living for the past ten months, for his dismembered, mutilated body had been found in an alley not far from his house. No one was specifically suspected. The only clues as to who might have carried out his foul murder were the traces of mould on his scattered remains and the splintered fragments of human nails found embedded in his flesh. But the latter, as I was to learn on enquiry today, were of a puzzling nature - at least to the police investigating his death. - For they were far too old to have been broken from the fingers of living men and were supposed, by the police inspector I spoke to about it, to have been stolen by someone with a perverted sense of humour from a rifled grave and purposely implanted i
n Poole's dead body.
Only I know the truth of what must have happened, for I have already seen them watching my house from the darkened streets at night. That is why I no longer set foot beyond my door after dusk and have fixed a crucifix at every possible entrance to my home.
They are only waiting for me to make that one small slip such as Poole must have eventually made in order to wreak their vengeance upon me as well. You will know, by the very fact that this narrative is in your hands, that this slip must have already been made. God have mercy on my soul when this occurs!
15 - Graham Masterton - The Taking of Mr Bill
It was only a few minutes past four in the afternoon, but the day suddenly grew dark, thunderously dark, and freezing-cold rain began to lash down. For a few minutes, the pathways of Kensington Gardens were criss-crossed with bobbing umbrellas and au-pairs running helter-skelter with baby-buggies and screaming children.
Then, the gardens were abruptly deserted, left to the rain and the Canada geese and the gusts of wind that ruffled back the leaves. Marjorie found herself alone, hurriedly pushing William in his small navy-blue Mothercare pram. She was wearing only her red tweed jacket and her long black pleated skirt, and she was already soaked. The afternoon had been brilliantly sunny when she left the house, with a sky as blue as dinner-plates. She hadn't brought an umbrella. She hadn't even brought a plastic rain-hat.
She hadn't expected to stay with her Uncle Michael until so late, but Uncle Michael was so old now that he could barely keep himself clean. She had made him tea and tidied his bed, and done some hovering while William lay kicking and gurgling on the sofa, and Uncle Michael watched him, rheumy-eyed, his hands resting on his lap like crumpled yellow tissue-paper, his mind fading and brightening, fading and brightening, in the same way that the afternoon sunlight faded and brightened.
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