THE HAUNTING OF TOBY JUGG
Dennis Wheatley
Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones
I dedicate this book
to my friends
past and present
of
THE ROYAL AIR FORCE
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Monday, 4th May
Chapter 2: Tuesday, 5th May
Chapter 3: Wednesday, 6th May
Chapter 4: Thursday, 7th May
Chapter 5: Friday, 8th May
Chapter 6: Saturday, 9th May
Chapter 7: Sunday, 10th May
Chapter 8: Monday, 11th May
Chapter 9: Tuesday, 12th May
Chapter 10: Wednesday, 13th May
Chapter 11: Thursday, 14th May
Chapter 12: Saturday, 16th May
Chapter 13: Sunday, 17th May
Chapter 14: Monday, 18th May
Chapter 15: Tuesday, 19th May
Chapter 16: Wednesday, 20th May
Chapter 17: Thursday, 21st May
Chapter 18: Friday, 22nd May
Chapter 19: Saturday, 23rd May
Chapter 20: Sunday, 24th May
Chapter 21: Monday, 25 th May
Chapter 22: Tuesday, 26th May
Chapter 23: Wednesday, 27 th May
Chapter 24: Thursday, 28th May
Chapter 25: Friday, 29th May
Chapter 26: Saturday, 30th May
Chapter 27: Sunday, 31st May
Chapter 28: Tuesday, 2nd June
Chapter 29: Wednesday, 3rd June
Chapter 30: Thursday, 4th June
Chapter 31: Friday, 5th June
Chapter 32: Saturday, 6th June
Chapter 33: Monday, 8th June
Chapter 34: Wednesday, 10th June
Chapter 35: Thursday, 11th June
Chapter 36: Friday, 12th June
Chapter 37: Saturday, 13th June
Chapter 38: Sunday, 14th June
Chapter 39: Monday, 15th June
Chapter 40: Tuesday, 16th June
Chapter 41: Wednesday, 17th June
Chapter 42: Thursday, 18th June
Chapter 43: Friday, 19th June
Chapter 44: Saturday, 20th June
Chapter 45: Sunday, 21st June
Chapter 46: Monday, 22nd June
Chapter 47: Tuesday, 23rd June
Chapter 48: Wednesday, 24th June
Chapter 49: Monday, 3rd July, 1945
A Note on the Author
Introduction
Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.
As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.
There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.
There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.
He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ‘all his books’.
Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.
He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.
He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.
The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.
Dominic Wheatley, 2013
Monday, 4th May
I feel that the time has come when I must endeavour to face facts. These past few nights I have been frightened—scared stiff—really terrified. Ten months ago I was a sane, strong, healthy man; now I am weak, irresolute and, I fear, on the verge of going mad.
Perhaps I am only imagining things. But if I set down all that is happening here—or rather, that which I believe to be happening—when I look at what I have written again next day, I shall at least know that I haven’t dreamed the whole horrible business overnight.
That is why I have decided to start keeping a journal. In it I intend not only to give an account of these strange experiences of which I have recently been the victim, but also make an attempt to rationalise them. If I can somehow argue matters out with myself until I reach a logical conclusion as to what lies at the bottom of my fears, I shall, perhaps, be able to face them better and save my sanity.
I used to enjoy writing essays, and the work involved in setting down my thoughts coherently should help a lot to keep my mind free from aimless, agonising dread of the night to come. I shall not write in the evenings, though, as the accursed shadows in this big room are apt to make me jumpy near sundown, and might lead me to exaggerate the facts. I’ll work on it in the mornings, or afternoons
, when the good, clean daylight, streaming in through the broad windows, makes me feel more like the man I used to be.
It is not so long ago since my friends nicknamed me ‘The Viking’, partly, of course, on account of my appearance, but also because I was credited with having a kind of ‘devil-may-care’ courage with which everyone is not blessed. I wonder what they would think if they had seen me as I was last night—a gibbering nervous wreck—frantic with fear of some ghastly thing that was hidden from me only by the blackout.
Still, fear of physical danger and of this sort of thing are entirely different matters. Some of my brother officers who were hard put to it to prevent themselves showing how badly they had the jitters would probably laugh at me now; while others braver than myself, and there were plenty of them, might be every bit as scared as I am. It would depend on their individual degree of susceptibility to the supernatural.
If anyone had suggested to me a few months ago that I was a psychic type myself, I should certainly have denied it. But I must admit to being so now, as the only alternative is that I really am going nutty. Rightly or wrongly I believe that I am being haunted by some form of devil—and I don’t mean the sort that comes from knocking back too much Scotch. I mean one of those forces of Evil that are said to have been let loose in the world after Satan and his host were defeated by the Archangel Michael and cast down out of Heaven.
That sounds old-fashioned stuff, I know; but either something of that kind did actually happen when the world was young, or it didn’t. There is no middle way about it. And, if it did, there has been no revelation since to the effect that these age-long enemies of man have been withdrawn to another sphere, or that their infernal Master has ceased from his efforts to corrupt and destroy the seed of Adam.
Satan has become rather a figure of fun these days, or, at worst, a bogeyman with whom wicked old women sometimes frighten children; but, all the same, he still remains our ultimate expression for the most concentrated form of Evil, and everything else that is evil must in a greater or lesser degree partake of his attributes. Therefore, in endeavouring to get to grips with my own problem, it may be worth speculating on him a little, and on the reasons for the apparent decline in his powers.
In this year of Grace—save the mark; I should have said this year of world-wide death and destruction, 1942—how many people, I wonder, believe in the Devil? I mean as a definite personality with hoofs and horns and a barbed tail, waving a pitchfork and breathing brimstone over everything? I suppose a few very religious rather backward people do; lonely, timid spinsters living in remote country districts, particularly in Scotland and down here in Wales, and the older generation of peasants in Central and Southern Europe.
I can’t myself. I think that all those accounts of monks and other characters coming face to face with the Devil in the Middle Ages were, as old Gibbon put it: ‘The product of an empty stomach on an empty brain’; or else deliberate lying. In those days religion played such a large part in everybody’s life that people thought of Heaven and Hell as only just round the corner; so the easiest way to obtain a little cheap notoriety was to come down one morning with your shirt on inside-out, and declare to a wide-eyed audience that the Devil had visited you in the middle of the night with some tempting proposition.
On the other hand one can never be certain—absolutely certain—that all such records are the ravings of unbalanced minds or pure invention. After all, why do we disbelieve them? Mainly, I think, because it seems improbable that such a V.I.P. as the Prince of Evil could be bothered to torment, or accept the homage of, quite ordinary people.
But his demons were said to be legion, and it may be that they sometimes assumed their master’s form when appearing to the Godly, or attending a witches’ sabbath as the guest of honour. That may be the explanation; for, while it must remain an open question whether any human being has even seen the Devil, it seems impossible to doubt the existence of demons. Cases of demonic possession still occur from time to time, as any Roman Catholic priest will testify; and during the Middle Ages such happenings were regarded as almost everyday affairs.
The reason for their much greater frequency in the past is not far to seek. Life was so very different then, and everyone was so much more concerned with the things of the spirit. Whether they were in a state of grace or not was of vital importance to people, because they were daily reminded at morning prayers and evening Bible readings—as well as during the whole of every Sunday—that, should they meet with a sudden death, they would get no second chance, but have to give an account of their acts to date when hauled naked and trembling before their Creator.
Such constant preoccupation with thoughts of miracles and martyrs, angels and demons, must have made their minds much more open to supernatural influences than ours are today. It is, therefore, one thing to be a bit sceptical about the accounts of Old Nick putting in a personal appearance and quite another to brush aside as trash the whole vast literature dealing with Christian mysticism.
There are innumerable accounts of people who became so obsessed with the question of the Life to Come that they gave themselves up to a special devotion to their favourite Saints, and as a result of their whole-hearted fervour developed miraculous powers of their own. And of others, the bad-hats and natural rebels, who dabbled in witchcraft, Satanism and alchemy. It is certainly incontestable that there was hardly a village in Europe where someone or other was not credited with the power to cast spells and bring calamity on their enemies by ill-wishing them. The bulk of testimony to such happenings is overwhelming, and it simply is not credible that for hundreds of generations the whole population of Christendom was fooled by a succession of liars and lunatics.
Of course, in these days, there are plenty of sceptics who regard all accounts of occult phenomena as bunkum; and due either to people imagining things when in an abnormal condition, or to the machinations of rogues and charlatans who make a dubious living out of tricking the credulous.
But the opinions of such bigoted materialists do not prove anything. They are simply the outcome of the present widespread lack of Faith. It is only natural that people brought up, as I was, to believe that there are no such places as Heaven and Hell should be strongly prejudiced against any evidence which might convince them of the existence of some fearsome Otherworld, inhabited by mysterious forces and the spirits of the dead. To accept it would compel them to abandon their comfortable philosophy—or lack of one. They would begin to get the wind up at the thought that they must have souls themselves, and the frightening question of what might happen to them when they die.
The extraordinary decline in the practice of all religions during the past thirty years no doubt accounts for the comparatively few people who now ever pause to ponder such questions seriously. Yet it would be absurd to assume that a fundamental change has taken place in the composition of human beings, and that because great numbers of them rarely think about their souls they no longer have them.
Moreover, the age of materialism has brought us no new answers to such riddles as: What took place ‘in the beginning’, and what is meant by ‘the end of time’, or, how did it come about that life started on our own small planet? Yet the more we learn of the universe the more apparent it becomes that everything in it is regulated by unchanging laws, and that chemical conditions alone are incapable of producing any form of life whatsoever.
Yet the origin of these mysteries has been questioned only in recent times. Previously, in every country and in every age since the beginning of recorded history, it has been the first article in the creed of man that the Creation was the work of a Supreme Intelligence. In addition, all religions also held in common that the souls of men were immortal, and that the unceasing struggle for them between the eternally warring forces of Good and Evil was all part of the Great Plan.
World-wide tradition asserts that these beliefs were based on a series of Divine revelations made for man’s guidance; and, all modern thought having failed to produc
e any other tenable theory, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to reject them.
But to accept them carries with it an awe-inspiring thought; for it then becomes unthinkable that in the past hundred years or so any part of this vast and complex system can have altered. Therefore, although the Devil may no longer appear to people—even if he ever did so in person—he cannot have become inactive, and his power for evil must remain as potent as of old.
No one has ever denied him intelligence, so it is reasonable to assume that he is clever enough to adapt his methods to suit every advance in modern thought. If wars, revolutions, the mushroom growth of the herd mentality and their resulting miseries can be attributed to a supremely evil intelligence working secretly upon the greed, fears and follies of man, he has good reason to congratulate himself on the monstrous reaping of hate and violence that his sowing has brought him in the past quarter of a century. In fact, if looked at from that point of view, it seems that the general decline of religion since the end of the Victorian era has enormously facilitated the Devil’s age-long task of replacing order by chaos and, at last, entering into his Principality of this World as the Lord of Misrule.
Even to suggest that he is now taking a personal interest in myself would be atrociously conceited; but, unless I am suffering from delusions, I can only suppose that either I or this room have recently become a focus for the activities of one of his innumerable lesser satellites. How otherwise can one possibly explain the shadow; or the stark terror that has gripped me, holding me rigid in a paralysis of fear, on each of the five occasions that I have seen it—and, God forbid, may do so again tonight?
Tuesday, 5th May
I could not write anything this morning. I tried to as soon as I was alone, but my hand shook so much that it would not hold the pencil firmly. Then, at half-past eleven, I had to go out with Deb.
It has been a lovely day and the bright sunshine in the garden restored me a little. Those sharp black eyes of Deb’s don’t miss much, though, and it is hardly surprising that she noticed how haggard I look.
The Haunting of Toby Jugg Page 1