It is after nine and I am writing this by the failing light. My lamp has not been lit, nor will it be, as Konrad will not be coming up to me again. Helmuth has just paid me a final visit and he told me that before he left.
He came to gloat, and render my last sane hours unendurably hideous by disclosing the way in which he had tricked me; and, infinitely worse, tricked my beloved Sally.
Julia is not dead. It was only a heart attack she had, and she is now little the worse for her seizure. The inspiration to say that she was dead came to Helmuth when he and Dr. Arling had her limp body out on the terrace. He realised that Sally and I were in love, and saw that by causing us to believe that we had killed Julia he could bend us both to his will.
He led me to believe that, as Julia and Sally had clearly had a fight, it was Sally who would be charged with the murder, unless I signed away my fortune as the price of Dr. Arling giving a certificate that Julia had died a natural death.
He led Sally to believe that he knew the fight to have been only incidental, and that the marks on Julia’s throat showed that she had really died from strangulation—and that it was I who had strangled her. He threatened to hand me over to the police unless she would do as he wished; and, believing it to be the only way to save me from hanging, she agreed.
He told me that having signed the document would not now save me from mental destruction tonight, because I had not signed it with resignation—only under extreme pressure. He said that my prolonged and bitter opposition showed that I could never be made a useful member of the Brotherhood, and would always be liable to make trouble.
Therefore, at a quarter-past-one in the morning, when the moon is at its highest, they will invoke Lady Astoroth. She will appear here in my room, and tomorrow I shall be found a raving lunatic. Dr. Arling will remove me to his private asylum, and after I have spent some time there the official Board of Lunacy will examine and certify me.
I only pray that a merciful God will allow my mind to be blotted out entirely. If I were certain of that I think I could resign myself to this miserable fate. But nothing could make me resigned to what is in store for Sally.
Helmuth stood well out of reach at the end of my bed. Leonine, rock-faced, sardonic, he grinned at me with unutterably evil malice as he told me about that.
He says that Sally knows too much to be allowed to depart in peace, and that steps have to be taken to stop her tongue once and for all. That could be done by making her a lay-sister of the Brotherhood, as, after even the lowest degree of initiation, she would never dare to risk the appalling fate reserved for a member who betrays them—there is no recorded case of anyone ever having done so yet. And she has agreed to accept initiation, believing that only by doing so can she save my life.
Helmuth said that the initiation will take place at midnight, and that although I shall not be able to see it I shall hear enough of it through the grating to imagine what is going on. Sally does not yet know what they mean to do to her, but Helmuth took fiendish delight in describing to me what will happen, in order that I could better imagine the scene when it takes place.
He is to act as the officiating priest. Sally will be spreadeagled naked on a bed of nettles before the Devil’s altar. He will then do to her what he has failed to do so far. The excited cries of the congregation will inform me when the ritual is being accomplished, and the completion of the act will be the signal for a general orgy.
I do not think that when the Lady Astoroth appears to me at a quarter-past-one I shall know much about it. I shall have gone mad by midnight. May God have mercy upon my dear Sally, and upon my soul.
Wednesday, 24th June
This old Castle must have seen many strange and terrible events, but it can have seen none stranger or more terrible than those which occurred here last night. It is now the scene of catastrophe and death; yet, despite everything, I am still sane.
That I am so after what I endured between nine o’clock and midnight last night is in itself a miracle.
No sound came to distract my agonising thoughts until a little after ten; then I heard people moving in the chapel. Gradually the noise increased. I heard the clatter of plates and the clink of glasses; so I knew that the Satanists had begun to feast at the tables set up in the side-aisles.
The voices grew louder and more distinct. There came the drinking of healths and raucous laughter. That went on for well over an hour, so it must have been about half-past-eleven when the service started.
There was music, but music the like of which I have never heard before and hope never to hear again. It had no tune or any kind of beauty, but was a series of hideous discords, rising at times to a wild cacophony of sound interspersed by catcalls, shouts and animal noises.
I knew that those beasts in human form were working themselves up into a frenzy of abandon, the better to satiate their vile lusts when the time came.
The night was stiflingly hot, and the fumes of strange and horrible things that were burning down there came up to me through the grating. The chapel was brightly lit, and the grating stood out sharply; a great rectangle of light criss-crossed with its black bars, which illuminated the whole room almost as brightly as though it were day.
I had thrown off the bedclothes, and swung myself round so that my useless legs were dangling over the side of the bed. From time to time, as midnight approached, I tried to stand, but I could not do so for more than a minute without having to grasp the head of the bed for support.
I prayed as I have never prayed before—violently, unceasingly—supplicating God to spare Sally, or at least grant her oblivion, so that she might be spared the knowledge of the abominable things those beasts meant to do to her. I prayed aloud, and I was raving. I called on God and the Virgin Mary; on all the Powers of Good and Light and Love that there had ever been in the world.
The sweat was pouring off me. It ran into my eyes and they grew misty. I could no longer see even the brightly lit grating clearly. My effort was so intense that I was shaking all over. I tried to throw my spirit forward out of my body, and down into the chapel to protect Sally. I cried aloud my defiance of Satan and all his works.
It was then the miracle happened. God had heard my prayer. I found that I was standing up, and that I was walking towards the panel.
I seemed to be buoyed up and supported by unseen hands. Without any effort I climbed through the panel opening on to the secret stairs. They were faintly lit by the moonlight coming through the arrow-slits. I walked slowly but surely down them till I reached the door at the bottom. I thrust it open and entered the chapel.
The scene was one which will remain stamped on my memory until my dying day. There were about eighty people present, all wearing fantastic costumes. Many of them were women, some nude to the waist, others dressed in eccentric arrangements of veiling through which their bodies could be seen, or which left their sexual parts exposed. The men were in gorgeous satins and velvets, and each wore a head-dress in the likeness of some wild animal or poisonous reptile.
Like a reredos, behind the altar, there spread a vast web which seemed to have been spun from liquid silver. It extended to both sides of the chapel and right up to its roof. In the centre of the web, about twenty feet up, sat the Great Spider.
In front of the altar stood Helmuth. He was wearing his white satin robe with the black signs of the Zodiac on it, but the robe was now hitched up so that he was naked from the waist down. Two women, one of whom was Julia, knelt at either side of him in attitudes of adoration. In front of him two assistant priests were standing, and between them they held Sally by the arms. She was dressed in the fashion of a nun, except that her single garment was of magenta veiling, through which one could see her white body.
Konrad was stationed quite near me, with five other men. They were all clad alike, in red with long hose and horned head-dresses, in imitation of the Devil; and evidently formed a Satanic guard, as they stood in a line in front of the main door of the chapel and each of them was hol
ding at rest long tridents with barbed points.
It was Konrad who first saw me. He must have thought that I was an avenging spirit. Pointing at me, he let out a howl of terror, then fell to the ground and lay grovelling there a dozen paces from my feet.
At his shout the whole congregation turned in my direction. Sally alone could have known how I had got into the chapel, and that by some extraordinary means I had managed to get down the stairs. She gave a loud cry, broke from the men who were holding her, and came running towards me.
Helmuth and the rest must also have thought that I was a spirit to disperse their diabolical gathering, as they either remained rooted where they stood, their faces aghast with fear, or cowered away from me. The Great Spider had begun to run frantically up and down its huge silver web. Then, just as Sally reached me, I found myself with my right arm outstretched again hurling defiance at the Devil.
As I did so I could feel the power streaming into me and out through my pointing arm like an electric current. Suddenly the Great Spider stopped its dance, quivered violently as though struck by lightning, and began to disintegrate. In a matter of seconds it had dissolved into a cloud of evil-smelling black smoke.
Consternation seized the Satanists. They began to run senselessly in all directions, covering their heads and screaming with fear. I waited no longer, but grasped the edge of the door behind me and made to pull it open.
I had it about a foot open when it stuck. At that moment something must have clicked over in Helmuth’s quick brain. He had not seen me come through the door and was probably unaware that it even existed until he saw it partly open. He must have guessed then that behind it lay a secret staircase up to my room: and that what he had thought to be an apparition was really myself in the flesh.
Above the din, I heard him bellow: ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of! He is only a man! Stop them! Stop them! Catch them before they get away!’
A sudden hush, all the more marked from the previous clamour, fell on that weird assembly. For a moment they hesitated, and in that moment I got the door wide open. It gave unexpectedly, and swung right back.
‘Stop them, damn you! Stop them!’ Helmuth yelled again; and as I thrust Sally through the doorway, the brief hush was succeeded by a new pandemonium. With howls of rage and hate the Satanists came charging towards us.
We were up about four steps when the first of our enemies reached the door. Helmuth was among them, and from the maniacal glare in their eyes I knew that if they got us they would tear us limb from limb. It was an awful moment—perhaps the worst that night—for we had so nearly got away, and I knew that only God’s help could save us from being dragged down before we were half-way up the stairs. But He extended His merciful protection to us once again.
It was then that there came the second miracle of that unforgettable night. I heard a rumbling sound. It increased in volume to the noise of thunder before we were up another couple of steps, drowning the fierce cries of the mob that pursued us.
Suddenly a great torrent of water burst from the entrance to Great-aunt Sarah’s tunnel. It hit the opposite wall of the passage like a tidal wave, drenching us to the skin; then turned and roared into the chapel. A second later I glimpsed the old lady’s frail body as it whirled out of the tunnel and through the open door.
Night after night for over forty years she had laboured for love’s sake, and an inscrutable Providence had decreed that the culmination of her efforts should exactly coincide with the desperate need of two other lovers who were in dire peril. Her own ordeal, too, was over. At long last she had burrowed her way to the lake bottom, and in so doing had rejoined her Lancelot in a better way than she could ever have done in life.
As the first violent spate of water receded we saw that it had swept the advancing Satanists below us from their feet. They were now a flailing mass of legs and arms struggling in the torrent. Helmuth alone was still standing framed in the doorway, breasting the tide as it raced past on either side of him. For a moment he stood there hurling imprecations at us, then a screaming, half-drowned woman was thrown against him by the rushing water. He lost his balance and plunged beneath it, to be swept away with the rest.
Thousands of gallons were pouring down from the lake to the lower level of the chapel in a steady flood. But for that unholy congregation worse was yet to come. Within a few minutes of the first inrush the water took hold of the half-ruined pillar bases and the temporary structures that were shoring the building up. Beams cracked and snapped. Above the roar of the water we could hear the louder roar of great chunks of masonry giving way. The Satanists were trapped there, owing to the main door on the chapel floor level being held fast shut by the weight of water pressing against it.
After Helmuth had been swept away, Sally and I continued to stand on the stairs watching the horrific spectacle through the open doorway. It was as though Samson had come again to pull down the pillars of the temple upon another host of Philistines. We saw one forty-foot column collapse upon the screaming crowd that struggled waist-deep in water. Then big sections of the roof began to fall in, burying them beneath water-logged debris.
We were cut off from the chapel by the flood, so there was nothing that we could do to help; no act of mercy that we could perform. The chapel was soon full of water to the height of the top of the tunnel, but it still continued to rise, as I knew it must until its level reached that of the lake outside. Step by step we retreated up the stairs, until the swirling waters, now quiet, had reached the top of the door, and our last glimpse of the débâcle within was cut off. Then we turned and went slowly up to my room.
There, side by side, we gave thanks to God for our merciful deliverance from Evil, and vowed to devote our lives to fighting Evil in all its forms. Nor did we forget to pray for the happiness of that spirit which for a little time lived in the body of Sarah Jugg—who yesterday was old and mad, but today is young and sane again.
* * * * *
Monday, 3rd July, 1945
It is now over three years since that terrible night when God overwhelmed the Satanists at Llanferdrack.
The following morning Sally found the document I had signed for Helmuth in his study and destroyed it. That afternoon we left for London in an ambulance, and this is the first time since that we have visited the Castle.
My back caved in soon after I got back to my room, and for a time the specialists thought that my miraculous walk had placed so severe a strain upon the healing ligaments prematurely that there was little hope of my ever setting foot to the ground again.
It was then that Sally insisted on marrying me; because, as she said, with all the money in the world, I would have to be good and could not be got at by designing hussies, as long as I remained a permanent invalid.
All the same, she always maintained, against the opinions of the doctors, that I would get well in the end; and I owe it to her loving care that by the end of the year I was able to walk a few steps, and can now walk a mile without crutches.
But no designing hussy has got at me yet, or is ever likely to. Sally and I are gloriously happy and eighteen months ago she had two of the loveliest babies in the world. I mean, of course, that she had twins. They are girls and alike as two peas. They’ve got Sally’s eyes but they are red-heads like me, and delightfully naughty.
These past three years I have been far too busy with my Companies even to think of my stamps. But on coming back here yesterday I went straight to my albums and extracted the scores of closely written pages that I had hidden in them. Sally and I read them through last night, and they recalled the time we spent here as though it had only ended yesterday.
I am going to have them bound up for her; and now that the war is over she wants me to have them published. We shall not mind if some people cannot bring themselves to believe the terrible and wonderful things that they reveal. We shall only be sorry that such people are still bound in Darkness and shut out from a realisation of the Eternal Verities. We know it all to be true, and it
is our testament that Evil can never triumph over the power of Love.
A Note on the Author
DENNIS WHEATLEY
Dennis Wheatley (1897 – 1977) was an English author whose prolific output of stylish thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling writers from the 1930s through the 1960s.
Wheatley was the eldest of three children, and his parents were the owners of Wheatley & Son of Mayfair, a wine business. He admitted to little aptitude for schooling, and was expelled from Dulwich College, London. In 1919 he assumed management of the family wine business but in 1931, after a decline in business due to the depression, he began writing.
His first book, The Forbidden Territory, became a bestseller overnight, and since then his books have sold over 50 million copies worldwide. During the 1960s, his publishers sold one million copies of Wheatley titles per year, and his Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming's James Bond stories.
During the Second World War, Wheatley was a member of the London Controlling Section, which secretly coordinated strategic military deception and cover plans. His literary talents gained him employment with planning staffs for the War Office. He wrote numerous papers for the War Office, including suggestions for dealing with a German invasion of Britain.
Dennis Wheatley died on 11th November 1977. During his life he wrote over 70 books and sold over 50 million copies.
Discover books by Dennis Wheatley published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/DennisWheatley
Duke de Richleau
The Forbidden Territory
The Devil Rides Out
The Golden Spaniard
Three Inquisitive People
Strange Conflict
Codeword Golden Fleece
The Second Seal
The Prisoner in the Mask
The Haunting of Toby Jugg Page 40