Prey

by Graham Masterton

  Above my head, the tentacled thing was drawn deeply into the blackness of the shadow, and then the glowing globules followed it. What remained was a huge dark virulent cloud, colder than anything that I had ever felt before—so cold that it radiated cold. Yog-Sothoth, the three-in-one, the Unholy Trinity from which the Old Ones had been created, the Hell-on-Earth. And Mazurewicz, who was the devil, was its midwife.

  The world had never made any particular sense to me before. Here we all were, whirling around in space, placed on this planet for no reason that anybody could think of. But now that I stood in the bitter-cold shadow of Yog-Sothoth, every mystery of human life and superstition and religion seemed to be answerable.

  The fundamental fact of our existence on this planet was that we were not the first. Our folk-memory was haunted by ghosts and hallucinations and myths and extraordinary superstitions… the dreamtime, the Aborigines had called it. The time before. The time before us—when the Old Ones had dominated the Earth.

  My ears were bombarded by a deep drumming noise, as the black shadow gradually descended on young Mr Billings. Lightning crackled all around him, short-circuiting from one finger to the next. Sparks flew out of his hair. He screamed ecstatically as the cloud rumbled lower and lower; and as he screamed, a torrent of sparks flew out of his mouth, like sparks from a cutting-torch.

  “I shall rule you all!” he shrieked at us. “I shall live for ever and ever, and I shall rule you all!”

  Without saying anything—without even looking at me—D-s Miller started running toward the altar. Brown Jenkin lurched after him, and slashed at the air with his claws; but didn’t dare to go any further.

  “Sergeant!” I shouted at him. “Sergeant!”

  But D-s Miller was scaling the mountain of bones as fast as he could; and I suddenly understood what he was trying to do. One man, young Mr Billings had boasted. One man can chase you and devour you. But supposing that man wasn’t young Mr Billings? Supposing that man was—D-s Miller dived at young Mr Billings and rugby-tackled him onto the bloody wreckage that had once been Vanessa Charles. Young Mr Billings shouted at him in fear and horror, but D-s Miller kicked him away—not once, but twice, and then again, and again. Young Mr Billings slid down the crumbling, broken ossuary of children’s bones, until he was lying on his back, one leg upraised, against the chapel wall.

  D-s Miller stood in his place. There was an expression on his face which I couldn’t understand. Beatific—martyred—but almost outrageously satisfied—as if he had at last performed an act of public service which was worthy of him. No wonder he had believed in Brown Jenkin, right from the very beginning. He was nearly a saint.

  The cold black cloud roared down on top of him like a theater-curtain coming down. What did Yog-Sothoth care, which human it enveloped? For one instant, I saw D-s Miller with his eyes alight, his whole body transfigured with showers of dazzling static, his hair flying upward, his arms outstretched. Then the huge black cloud rumbled upward, up into the poisonous-yellow sky, and there was a sound which compressed the atmosphere so intensely that I heard it because I didn’t hear it—it simply hurt my eardrums, and then it didn’t hurt my eardrums, because it had passed.

  Young Mr Billings, aghast, staggered knee-deep up the pile of bones until he reached the bloody and deserted summit.

  “Me!” he screamed at the sky. “Me! You were supposed to take me!”

  “Et maintenant pourquoi?” demanded Brown Jenkin, even more enraged. “Tu as promised me alles, you fucker! Et maintenant c’est tout disparu, dans cet cloud!”

  Young Mr Billings dropped to his knees, groaning and sobbing and punching his own chest. Brown Jenkin scuttled up to him and stood over him and spat at him, spat in his face, spat in his hair, strings of spittle all over his cheeks and his ears and his eyelashes.

  “Pourquoi did I suffer and fight for all of these years bastard-bastard! Pourquoi!”

  Young Mr Billings clenched his fists and sobbed and wailed as if he were in mourning. Brown Jenkin stood and stared at him with undiluted venom. Then, with a quick matter-of-fact gesture, he dragged his claws across young Mr Billings’ throat, and hooked out his larynx. Young Mr Billings pumped scarlet blood, twisted, and collapsed, one leg quivering. Brown Jenkin stood with his larynx on the end of his claw, with his upper lip curled in the nearest that I had ever seen him manage to a grin.

  I hesitated for just one moment more. Then I ran. Mazurewicz saw me running, but didn’t make any attempt to stop me. Perhaps Mazurewicz was more philosophical about the human dilemma than he had ever been given credit for. Perhaps he simply didn’t feel like running after me. Old Scratch, running after a sprat? I ran through the graveyard and jumped across the brook, and labored my way up the slippery, sloping hill. Up above me, the sky was growing ominously dark, and the sea was making a sound that I had never heard before: a slow, oily gurgle. Perhaps Mazurewicz hadn’t bothered to chase me because his work was done. He had supervised the birth of Yog-Sothoth, the Unholy Trinity, and God would never rule this planet again.

  Panting, sweating, but chilled to the bone, I scaled the fire-escape up to the roof. Halfway up, a rusty rung gave way in my hand, and dropped to the patio below. I heard it clang, dully, and bounce. I clung to the handrail for a long twenty seconds, shivering. Then I carried on up, praying all the way.

  I crossed the slimy roof, balancing, gasping, trying not to slip. Lightning flickered in the distance, over the English Channel. Thunder rumbled, and echoed, and re-echoed. At last I reached the skylight, and opened it up. I took one last look around. I doubted that I would ever live to see 2049... but here it was, with its dying vegetation, and its corrosive air, and its seas viscous with oil. Somewhere, already, the chilly black shadow of Yog-Sothoth was spawning more offspring. Perhaps they deserved the planet that they had now inherited. We had certainly deserved to lose it.

  I eased myself down through the skylight, and closed it, and heard the last sprinkle of acid rain against the glass.

  22

  Time of Trouble

  Downstairs, I found Danny in the living-room with Charity, as well as Detective-constable Jones, two more CID officers, and a milling crowd of confused uniformed officers.

  “Where’s Detective-sergeant Miller?” asked D-c Jones. “I thought he was with you.”

  “Oh… no,” I said. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “What happened to your leg?” asked D-c Jones. “Looks like you need a few stitches in that.”

  I looked down and saw that my right trouser-leg was dark with drying blood. Brown Jenkin had slashed me, deep into the muscle, but since my escape from the chapel I simply hadn’t felt it.

  “I, er, caught it,” I told him. “There was a sharp piece of tin on the edge of a suitcase.”

  “Well, it looks like you need a few stitches in that,” D-c Jones repeated. “And a tetanus jab.”

  “Where the hell’s Dusty got to, then?” asked one of the CID officers, taking out a cigarette and lighting it one-handed. “We’ve got Mrs Pickering down at the vicarage, looking like the meat counter at Sainsbury’s; we’ve got all this hoo-ha up here, and no D-s Miller.”

  “I thought he was with you,” D-c Jones repeated, frowning at me as if I had just walked into the room.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t know where he is.” And that, in a way, was the God’s-honest truth. I didn’t know where he was; or what was happening to him. I prayed only that he wasn’t suffering too much.

  “Well, take that leg down to the hospital,” said D-c Jones. “We’ll be back later. I’ve got quite a few questions for you.”

  “All right,” I told him. I was beginning to feel chilled, and I was shivering from shock and exertion—not to mention the wound that Brown Jenkin had inflicted on my leg. I sat down in one of the armchairs, and covered my face with my hands.

  Danny came up to me, then Charity. “Are you all right, Daddy?” asked Danny, seriously.

  I took hold of his hand and squeezed it. “I’m
all right. Brown Jenkin scratched me, that’s all. That detective’s right: it may need some stitches. What about you? Are you all right?”

  Danny nodded.

  Charity said, “The other man… what happened to him?”

  I looked towards the front door—which seemed to have freed itself from its frame. The last of the police officers was leaving now. He called back, “Open or closed?”

  “What?”

  “The door. Do you want it open or closed?”

  “Open, I think.”

  Charity said, “It’s happened, hasn’t it? The Unholy Trinity? It’s come to life?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “Young Mr Billings wanted to be—well, in some way he wanted to be part of it. But right at the last moment, D-s Miller pushed him away, and took his place.”

  Charity looked thoughtful. “In that case, your D-s Miller will go on many strange journeys, to places that men have never seen. You ought to envy him, in a way.”

  “I think I’m all right here, thanks. Where’s Liz?”

  “Liz has locked herself in her room. She’s no threat to us yet. But soon her power will increase, and her three sons will start to grow inside her, and then I won’t be able to do anything to control her. I can barely do anything now.”

  “What you suggested before—that we wait until she gives birth, and then destroy the witch-entity that comes out of her—do we have to do that?”

  “It’s the only way to stop the witch-entity from possessing another woman, and then another, and then at last Vanessa Charles. It’s the only way to change that future you saw.”

  “Isn’t there any other way?”

  “No other way in which you can be sure that it will never happen, no.”

  I was silent for a moment, thinking.

  “Why?” asked Charity. “Do you have some qualms about it?”

  “Qualms?” I still found it difficult to accept the adult way in which she spoke to me. “Yes, I do have qualms as a matter of fact. I saw what happened to Vanessa Charles—she was huge and fat and all these things were moving around inside her—then she was literally ripped to pieces.”

  “Yes?” said Charity, her eyes expressionless.

  “Well… my qualms are that I don’t want Liz to have to go through that. I don’t want Liz to be torn to pieces.”

  Charity was silent for a long time. Then she said, “You know the risks that you will be running, if you don’t destroy this witch-entity for good and all? You know that as long as just one witch-entity survives, the Old Ones will always be able to return?”

  “I’ve seen that thing for myself, yes. Yog-Sothoth. But perhaps if the world is going to get as bad as all that… if the skies are going to choke us and the sea’s going to be thick with chemicals… well, maybe we deserve it.”

  “Do you care, then, what happens to Liz?” asked Charity.

  “Of course I care. I like her. I liked her, anyway. I think I might have loved her.”

  “Well, of course there is a different way,” said Charity. “You can go back to the moment when she first came here, and you can make things happen differently.”

  “How, differently?”

  “As differently as you like. The choice is yours. But if she doesn’t stay here… if she isn’t possessed by the witch-entity that possessed Kezia—and if you don’t impregnate her with the Unholy Trinity of Yog-Sothoth… then she will be saved, won’t she—even if the witch-entity survives.”

  “Can’t we burn down the house? If the witch-entity is hidden in the house, and we burn it down—?”

  “It will still survive, in the ashes, in the earth. The only time to destroy it is when the three sons are born. At that moment, it has given all its strength to its children. At that moment it is weak.”

  “And how do you destroy it?” I asked. “What do you do—work some sort of spell?”

  Charity smiled and shook her head. “No… you allow it to possess you… you allow it to crawl into your very soul… and then you—” and here she made a slashing motion with her fìnger, across her own throat. “You die, and you take the witch-entity with you.”

  I stared at her. “You were going to do that? You were going to kill yourself?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “Then forget it. I’m not going to stand by and see Liz torn to bits and you cutting your own throat. Not a hope. Forget it.”

  “I’m prepared to do it,” Charity asserted.

  “Perhaps you are, but I’m not.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “I’m sure.”

  “In that case,” she said, “we’ll have to try it the other way.”

  *

  She led Danny and me out into the garden, and across the lawns, and across the brook. We climbed over the graveyard wall and walked between the gravestones. Gerald Williams, Gathered Unto God, November 7th 1886, Aged 7 Years. I could hardly bear to look. Gerald Williams had been dragged into the future, and butchered, and roasted—an innocent sacrifice to an evil god. Susanna Gosling, Now At Peace.

  We forced our way into the chapel. Our feet crunched on the broken slates. I looked around. The mural of Kezia Mason grinned at us still, but there was no sign yet of the hideous carnage to come. The sky was bright, butterflies fluttered through the glassless window.

  “Look,” said Charity, climbing up to the window-sill, and pointing into the garden.

  I climbed up next to her, and looked out. The grass was neatly scythed, geraniums flowered brightly in circular beds. And there were no gravestones. Not one.

  “It’s morning,” I said, in bewilderment.

  Danny climbed up beside me. “Look, Daddy,” he said, pointing towards the sea. “There’s that fishing-boat again.”

  At that moment, I saw somebody step out of the kitchen door of Fortyfoot House and walk, quite confidently and calmly, across the sunlit patio. It was a man in a black tailcoat and a tall black hat. He was grasping his lapels as he walked, and turning his head from side to side as if he were making a tour of inspection.

  He reached the center of the lawn, and stood with his hands behind his back, evidently enjoying the sea-breeze.

  “Hey, you!” I shouted. “Yes, you on the lawn!”

  The man turned and stared toward the chapel with a dark, displeased expression on his face. He hesitated for a moment, but then he turned round and started to walk briskly back toward the house.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey! Hold on, there!”

  But the man took no notice whatsoever, and continued to walk with long scissorman steps toward the house.

  The door flew open—in he ran—the great, long, red-legged scissorman!

  “Come on, Danny!” I said. “We have to catch up with him!”

  We scrambled down from the window and squeezed ourselves out through the doorway. We hurried down the grassy slope, and balanced our way across the stream, and then climbed panting up the lawn toward the patio. As we approached the house, I saw that the kitchen-door was ajar. I knew for certain that I had closed it when we went out of the house together.

  I motioned for Danny to keep behind me, and I approached the kitchen door as slowly and as quietly as I could. I eased it open, and let it swing wide. It banged against the wall, and juddered, then it stayed still.

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  There was no reply. I paused, and listened. Then I called, “I know you’re here! I want you to come out!”

  You want him to come out? That grim, tall-hatted man?

  There was another long silence, and then I heard a quick shuffling noise in the hallway, and the sound of the front door opening. Without hesitation I ran through the kitchen and banged open the hall doorway, just in time to see a black silhouetted figure leap out of the front door of the house, and run furiously up the steep shingled driveway.

  I ran in hot pursuit, but even as I ran, I knew that I wasn’t chasing the man in the sidewhiskers and the tall stovepipe hat, and by the time I
reached the roadway, I had seen that I was running after a short girl with streaky-blonde hair and a black sweatshirt and linen shorts, with a cramful duffel-bag bouncing on her back.

  Liz, I thought. This is the moment, this is the chance. This is the time when I can save her from Fortyfoot House, and from the same grisly fate as Vanessa Charles. This is the time when I can save her from me.

  There may be other consequences—consequences just as terrible. But at least Liz will be safe.

  I stopped, while she ran on. I heard her sandals slapping on the hot summer tarmac. Then she had disappeared behind the laurels, and was gone. I stood in the roadway for a very long time, staring at the place where she had disappeared, and I suddenly realized that my heart was breaking.

  Danny came up the driveway and stood next to me. “Who was that?” he wanted to know.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. A girl. Whatever she wanted, she didn’t stop to tell me.”

  We walked back down to the house. “Do you fancy a drink?” I asked him. “There’s a café down by the beach.”

  “Gin-and-tonic,” he said, seriously.

  We crossed the lawn hand-in-hand. The morning was warm and very peaceful. I looked across at the chapel, and thought that there was something different about it, something I couldn’t quite place. Then I realized what it was. There were no gravestones any more, only an overgrown garden, with stunted apple-trees and feathery grass.

  Whatever I had done by letting Liz go, I had changed the fate of the orphans of Fortyfoot House. They were all long dead, of course: but they hadn’t been taken from here.

  “Where’s—?” asked Danny, suddenly, turning around.

  “Where’s who?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought there ought to be somebody else here, but there isn’t.”

  We walked down the sloping path to the promenade, and then along to the Beach Café. We sat outside, next to the wall, so that Danny could watch one of the local fishermen staking out his nets. An elderly woman who looked like gran’ma in The Waltons came up to us, wiping her hands on her apron. Doris Kemble, alive and well, and smiling.