And Afterward, the Dark

by Basil Copper

  He pronounced the last words in a very soft and curious manner and Trumble became suddenly aware that he was trespassing on very strange and dangerous ground.

  "He who would learn the secrets of my Master must be prepared for long and arduous preparations. It is a hard and thorny way."

  The air seemed to have grown close and sultry and Trumble's head began to swim; he was aware of Dr. Fabri's eyes which were now bright and sharp and boring into his.

  "Your Master?" Trumble asked foolishly, trying to fight the nausea which threatened to overcome him.

  "Of course," said Dr. Fabri.

  "My Master," he added softly. "We are all the servants of One Master, Mr. Trumble."

  Dr. Fabri laughed quietly and with the laughter the tension and oppression lifted from the room and Trumble felt he could breathe again; he wiped his forehead, which was wet with perspiration.

  "Are you well?" the doctor asked in some concern. He went to the sideboard and came back with a full glass which he thrust into his secretary's hand. Trumble drank the whisky as though it had been water and then felt normality returning to him. He gathered up his notes with a muttered apology to the doctor. They did not again return to the subject that evening.

  Several more weeks passed and it was now mid-May. Despite the season the weather had continued cold; Trumble was by now thoroughly accustomed to his duties; he continued the odd task of indexing in the inner cabinet and felt he had thoroughly mastered the complexities of Dr. Fabri's dictation style, while his treatment of the correspondence could not have been bettered by a professional secretary, he felt. Best of all, he had commenced to write again; the sheltered atmosphere of Linnet Ridge had released something long pent-up in him and in his spare time in the afternoons and often in the evenings, he began sketching out the movements of an epic poem in praise of the Old Gods.

  Curiously enough, there abruptly came a day of great heat, among those of cold, wet January-like weather; Fabri and Trumble had been seated long after breakfast was cleared that morning, going over some proofs of a projected book by Dr. Fabri on magic as practised by the older cultures of the world.

  Quite casually, in the middle of their discussion on business matters, Dr. Fabri turned to his secretary and said, "By the way, I am expecting a number of people this evening. We shall be occupying the study so I would be grateful if you would arrange to vacate the ground floor of the house by nine-thirty tonight."

  Dr. Fabri's tone was courteous and his words polite, but it was obvious to Trumble that his pronouncement was an order; so he did not question his employer, though he was naturally curious on the subject.

  "Would you like me to wait up?" he asked. "I could go into Guildford for the evening, if you wish, and return to the house late if you require any help in entertaining your guests."

  "That won't be necessary, Robert," Dr. Fabri said smoothly. "I should appreciate it, though, if you would receive the visitors between eight and nine o'clock, so I should cancel any arrangements you may have made regarding Guildford. Joseph will lock up later. He is used to our activities."

  When Trumble thought over the conversation later in the day he felt his curiosity roused by the phrasing of Dr. Fabri's last sentence; he wondered idly what activities were meant. And if Joseph were used to them, how frequent they might be. Apart from the visit of the ill-fated Bassett there were few guests to Linnet Ridge, and those only during the afternoons. As the day wore on he found his thoughts turning more and more towards the evening and it was with something like impatience that he watched the clock during his long hours of indexing in the cabinet, or studied his wristwatch during his turns around the garden.

  Just before dinner, which was earlier than usual that night, he cleared those of his personal papers which he felt he might require, and prepared his writing-table in the sitting-room of his own suite upstairs; he felt that if he were to be denied the use of the ground floor that night he would at least be able to put his time to good use in composition before retiring. He descended to the ground floor again just in time for dinner, to find Dr. Fabri already at table.

  To his surprise Trumble noted that there was a third person already seated and in conversation with his employer. The two men rose as Trumble entered and Dr. Fabri made haste to introduce his companion, though the secretary had already recognized the strong, clear-minted head of Zadek, the celebrated cellist, who was currently giving a series of concerts in the London area. Joseph, who had been standing in sullen silence, now bustled forward as Dr. Fabri snapped his fingers, and served the soup.

  When he had withdrawn once more, Dr. Fabri put the two men at ease by talking smoothly and flowingly of general matters and gradually the meal was transformed into a pleasant arena of reminiscence and anecdote, of philosophical musings, all backed by a wide range of scholarship and cultured taste. Trumble had seldom heard his employer in this vein and indeed, it would have been hard to better his conversation; Trumble himself confined his own comments to brief generalities in answer to specific questions.

  Zadek, Trumble thought, was either a Czech or of Eastern European extraction and though his English was good, his guttural tones and occasional hesitations of pronunciation made it sometimes difficult to follow the trend of his thoughts. But despite this, he had a wide grounding in the liberal humanities and his conversation was not confined merely to musical matters; allowing for the language difficulties, he spoke humorously and well, and the meal flowed along in a pattern composed of laughter, mellow reminiscence, and good fellowship.

  They had sat down to table early, a little after half-past six; and now it was nearly eight o'clock, Joseph had just come in to remind them. Trumble sipped his second liqueur with his black coffee and felt that he had more than upheld his own end of the conversation. Zadek had also heard of Trumble's efforts as a poet, to the secretary's barely concealed astonishment, and the two men had, in fact, treated him as their peer. Though flattered, Trumble did wonder, as the meal progressed, whether the cellist had not been briefed by Fabri before his arrival in the dining-room.

  Even so, it was a pleasant thought of the doctor's, and not for the first time the secretary felt his heart warming to him. He was a little strange, not to say eccentric in his ways, but no one could complain of their treatment under his roof. But now Joseph was standing at his elbow and communicating unmistakably by his manner that Trumble should prepare himself for the guests who were expected between eight and nine o'clock. So Trumble rose to his feet, excused himself, and a few minutes later stationed himself within easy earshot of the front door.

  He had not long to wait; it was just three minutes past eight when the first visitors announced themselves. These were a tall, thin woman in her mid-fifties, accompanied by a plump young man in his early thirties. Joseph, impassive as one of the wooden images in the doctor's collection, relieved them of their hats and coats while Trumble, murmuring polite conventionalities, showed them to the study. He did not enter himself but merely ushered them through and closed the door behind them.

  In all, he must have passed through something like thirty people between eight and nine o'clock, when the flow finally began to slacken off. Though he recognized no one, Trumble felt there must have been more than one person of public eminence among the gathering; they were about evenly divided between men and women but the age range fell into two distinct patterns. The men were from about thirty to sixty at a rough guess, while the women's ages ranged between twenty and about fifty-five.

  All were well dressed and highly literate in their conversation and manner; without exception all seemed to have arrived by private car and none of them addressed Trumble in terms other than the polite greetings normally exchanged among total strangers. To his fumbled attempts at small talk they maintained a discreet silence until they were beyond the study door. Joseph remained in the hall throughout the entire proceedings and stationed himself directly in front of the study whenever he was not engaged in dealing with hats and coats. His manner, too
, did not encourage any approach from Trumble.

  Finding himself ignored in this manner, the secretary retired to a side room with a novel between his excursions to the door and back; after nine o'clock he found his services were no longer required and as the half hour chimed he found the silent-footed Joseph at his elbow.

  "I think that is the last of the ladies and gentlemen, sir," he said softly, in that politely insolent manner which the secretary found so offensive. He could not have made the situation more plain if he had said, "I think it is time you followed your instructions and retired upstairs." So Trumble elaborately stretched himself, smoothed out the cushion at his elbow, and took his time in closing his book.

  "Thank you, Joseph, that will be all," he said by way of feeble revenge. The servant stared at him a moment longer with smouldering eyes, then abruptly turned and went silently out of the door. A moment later the main hall-light was extinguished. Trumble waited as long as he felt he dared—after all, he did not want to bring Dr. Fabri out to see what was delaying him—and five minutes later ascended the oak staircase with as good grace as he could muster.

  Joseph was still standing in front of the door; Trumble saw that he was wearing some sort of dark cloak like that of a coachman. The man's head was silhouetted against the deep pinks and greys of the convoluted intestines of the Bosch painting which had so disturbed him earlier; Trumble could not help but feel that it was an appropriate background for Joseph's saturnine features. Then the secretary had passed the head of the stairs and was within his own room.

  For more than two hours he wrestled in his room with the difficult metres of the verse-form he had chosen for his new work, but the felicitous phrase eluded him. He got up at length from the table; there was no noise in all the house. He extinguished the lights in the sitting-room and passed through into the bedroom; light shining from under the door which led onto the landing showed him that Dr. Fabri's visitors had not yet gone; otherwise the lamps in the hall on the ground floor would have been switched off. And he had heard no sound of cars departing.

  It wanted but a few minutes of midnight and again Trumble felt tiredness sapping the strength of his limbs; once in his pyjamas he looked out at the garden but the night was dark and there was little to be seen. He got into bed, turned out the light, and was soon asleep.

  It seemed but a moment before he started awake; some unusual noise had aroused him from a deep sleep which it was usually impossible to disturb. Trumble was facing the wall, but as the room was in semidarkness he reasoned that light was still shining in under his bedroom door. A glance over his shoulder confirmed this. His watch showed the time as being a quarter past two and its steady tick reassured him. He sat up in bed then and pushed away the sheets, his mind quite alert. A moment later he again heard the sound which had penetrated the walls of sleep; the low murmur of many voices seemingly from far away.

  He got out of bed and padded over towards the door. Again he found it unlocked. Trumble hesitated for a fraction and then once more heard the low, insidious noise that mumbled like a dark sea swirling within rocky pools on some lonely coast beyond the world's fringe. His feet found the warmth of his carpet slippers instinctively; already he was shrugging on his thin silk dressing-gown. He opened the door cautiously but the corridor and landing were silent and deserted.

  One solitary lamp burned in the dusk of the hall he saw, as he gained the staircase; his form concealed by a thick corner post, his eyes searched the darkness below. To his relief Joseph was no longer standing sentinel. He felt no fear; curiosity had driven it out. He was impelled towards the mysterious noise which he was convinced was coming from the interior of Dr. Fabri's study. The low, mumbling sound came again as he hesitated and then he went with a rush born of desperate courage down the staircase, as though the interruption had given him the confidence to move under its thick, muttered cover.

  He reached the study door without incident and felt the smooth-fitting lock turn noiselessly at his pressure on the handle; he slipped inside into the comfort of almost complete darkness. He crouched behind a high-backed chair, his heart thudding uncomfortably in his throat. The darkness ahead of him was suddenly split by soft red light which blossomed beyond the windows leading onto the garden; Trumble could see little by the fantastic flicker, but he noted once again the ruinous dereliction of the grounds in the faint glare. He moved over towards the windows, careful not to bump into the furniture, but when he reached them the pale fire had burnt to a dusky umber. He was reminded irresistibly of Poe's "red-litten windows" in "The Haunted Palace."

  While he crouched irresolute, another low moaning murmur started up within the room; Trumble felt his legs turn to water and he crouched sweating in the shadow as the red glow grew within the garden. Then he saw the explanation; the light was coming not from the grounds but from within the house.

  Somewhere below him, light was flickering and shimmering from a window inside the building and staining the lawns with faint amber. With this he recovered something of his courage; his first thought was the large platform approached by the spiral staircase, but his heart failed him as he considered the difficulty of the ascent in the dark. The sounds appeared to be coming from within the cabinet where Trumble normally worked and yet he knew that it would have been impossible to contain thirty people within its narrow limits.

  Instead, he compromised; somehow, he dragged himself up the staircase and towards the blue curtains at the end of the room; lying in the comparative safety of a large settee which sheltered him, he cradled his head on his hands and listened intently. He felt he could go no farther without giving himself away, but at least he could make out what was being said by the chanting voices. And Trumble realized that it was desperately important that he should not give himself away, that he should not be discovered here in these damning circumstances at half-past two in the morning.

  He felt sick and ill and his teeth began to chatter as the sense of what he heard began to penetrate his consciousness; the mumbling was repeated, a single voice then replied, and the mumbling took up what the single voice was saying, amplifying it much as a congregation follows the lead of a priest. But this was like nothing Trumble had ever listened to in his life. Interested as he was in the occult and a dabbler on the fringe of things unseen, the ceremony taking place was so blasphemous and perverted that he trembled for his sanity.

  All the strength went out of his limbs and he seemed to have fainted for a short while; when he came to himself again a different stage in the ceremony had been reached. Things were evidently rising to a climax; there was exultation and ecstasy in the voices and a black, savage anger, and their responses to the leader's exhortations were becoming short and staccato in their chanting phrases. Trumble tried to blot out the words from his mind, but they slipped into his brain as through a sieve and burnt there like molten lead.

  "Save Us, Lord Satan, we pray thee," intoned the single voice.

  "Save the Ancient One, O Lord Satan," responded the congregation.

  "Accept this, our Offering, with Thy blessing, Lord Satan," said the single voice.

  "The Offering, Lord Satan!'' almost shrieked the worshippers.

  "Accept this, our sacrifice, O Lord of the Serfs," said the ringing voice.

  "The sacrifice of the Ancient One, O Lord!" came the response.

  "Bless us with Thy fertility, O Lord of the Flies," the calm voice intoned.

  "Accept this, our sacrifice, O Lord!" the mass of voices mumbled.

  Overcome with shame and loathing, Trumble remained in a trembling heap, unable to move and quite powerless to blot out the sounds of the vile things he knew were happening only a few yards from his prostrate form. There was a long silence which turned his blood to ice and kept his ears straining for the unspeakable climax.

  "Behold, the entrails of the Lamb, O Master!'' said the single voice in ringing triumph.

  "The Entrails, Lord Satan, Most Holy Master!" shouted the entire congregation.

  Then
came a sound which Trumble sought in vain to blot from his consciousness; a great, welling cry which appeared to burst from the bowels of the earth, rising to a scream which indicated a human being at the utmost pitch of agony. It echoed and burst in Trumble's eardrums like the last paean of souls rotting in hell, and the poet, shaking uncontrollably and almost vomiting with the extremity of his terror, felt the sound to be the aural equivalent of the torn viscera in the Bosch painting in the hall.

  Then the shriek cut off and was followed by a loathsome slopping noise which was as quickly drowned by the roaring approval of the congregation.

  Even in his piteous state of nerves Trumble felt he must make a supreme effort; by a tremendous exertion of will he dragged himself several yards back in the direction of the study door. Trembling as though with ague, tottering like an old man, he at last clawed himself upright and gained the entrance. His hand was almost on the knob when a quick footstep sounded in the hall. Trumble fell to the floor behind an armchair and crouched with thudding heart. The door was opened, letting in a long shaft of light from the hall; fortunately, whoever it was left the door open, in order to pick his way through the darkened room. As he heard the footsteps ascend the spiral staircase, Trumble slipped through the opening, praying that his shadow on the floor would not be noticed by the ascending figure, which had its back to him.

  Unfortunately, as he made for the staircase, reeling as though with fatigue, Trumble knocked against a table and made a loud clattering noise; with an access of terror he heard the footsteps rapidly descending the staircase. They were coming across the study floor. There was no time for Trumble to conceal himself. Gathering the frayed ends of his shrieking nerves he forced himself to walk towards the study door without concealment. Joseph met him at the half-open door. The dark, hard face was expressionless in the dim light of the lamp. Trumble saw that he was wearing the dark black cloak, the collar of which was lined with red silk.