The man was different from the local police. He was stocky, with quiet eyes and long intelligent fingers. And he believed Ralf. Enough, at any rate, to send four men up along the trail Ralf had followed days earlier. Actually, they wanted Ralf to go along and direct them, but when he refused, melting before them to a quaking old man, they left him behind.
That night, Ralf stayed in the prison cell. The suggestion that he go back up into the hills had so shattered him that he had needed a shot to quiet him down. In his sleep, he dreamed of a sun, black but shining, with strange stars tapping in the dark blue of the sky around it. He was alone in a damp alley, greasy brick walls rising on either side of him towards the alien sky. There was a stain on the air of something burnt, and his stomach closed at the smell of it.
Then, from the far end of the alley where an icy light was wavering, a figure approached. It was a man, thin and long as a stick, and he was carrying something. As he drew closer, Ralf could see that his face was cushiony, his chin slippery with drool, and his eyes remote, bright as needles. An idiot's face. His swollen lips were moving in a whisper: Shut your ears big, Ralf.
Ralf's whole body clenched at the sound of that withered, barely audible voice. But he couldn't turn away. He was transfixed by what the idiot was carrying: a black cistern with a wide mouth. His eyes were locked on it, watching it approach, tilt forward, and reveal a blackness gem-lit by a splatter of tiny lights, pin-bright, like stars.
The lights were wheeling, and watching them curve through the dark, Ralf succumbed to a lurch of vertigo, keeled over, and fell, howling, into the depthless black.
He shrugged awake and sat still a long time before accepting coffee and bread. The four men who had gone up into the hills had not returned. The officer had wired for a helicopter to cover their trail and see if it could turn up any sign of them. When Ralf was strong enough to leave the police shack, he emerged in time to see the helicopter return. The pilot and his partner were excited. They had seen something, but Ralf didn't lag around to find out what.
The walk into Port-au-Prince was long and tedious, and in the condition he was in, it would take him most of the day. But when he got there, the American consul would wire his sister in Stony Brook for money. Then he could leave, get out before Gusto sent down more of his boys or the hills sent down what they were festering.
He walked to the edge of the trenchtown and stopped at the side of the road that led to the capital.
One last time, he looked back. The helicopter had gone up again. Its insectlike body glinted in the distance as it dropped towards the horizon, sunlight splintering off its domed glass, a wandering star burning alone above the hills.
The Second Wish by BRIAN LUMLEY
The scene was awesomely bleak: mountains gauntly grey and black-towered away to the east, forming an uneven backdrop for a valley of hardy grasses, sparse bushes, and leaning trees. In one corner of the valley, beneath foothills, a scattering of shingle-roofed houses, with the very occasional tiled roof showing through, was enclosed and protected in the Old European fashion by a heavy stone wall.
A mile or so from the village - if the huddle of timeworn houses could properly be termed a village leaning on a low rotting fence that guarded the rutted road from a steep and rocky decline, the tourists gazed at the oppressive bleakness all about and felt oddly uncomfortable inside their heavy coats. Behind them their hired car - a black Russian model as gloomy as the surrounding countryside, exuding all the friendliness of an expectant hearse - stood patiently waiting for them.
He was comparatively young, of medium build, darkhaired, unremarkably good-looking, reasonably intelligent, and decidedly idle. His early adult years had been spent avoiding any sort of real industry, a prospect which a timely and quite substantial inheritance had fortunately made redundant before it could force itself upon him. Even so, a decade of living at a rate far in excess of even his ample inheritance had rapidly reduced him to an almost penniless, unevenly cultured, high-ranking rake. He had never quite lowered himself to the level of a gigolo, however, and his womanizing had been quite deliberate, serving an end other than mere fleshly lust.
They had been ten very good years by his reckoning and not at all wasted, during which his expensive lifestyle had placed him in intimate contact with the cream of society; but while yet surrounded by affluence and glitter he had not been unaware of his own steadily dwindling resources. Thus, towards the end, he had set himself to the task of ensuring that his tenuous standing in society would not suffer with the disappearance of his so carelessly distributed funds; hence his philandering. In this he was not as subtle as he might have been, with the result that the field had narrowed down commensurately with his assets, until at last he had been left with Julia.
She was a widow on her middle forties but still fairly trim, rather prominently featured, too heavily madeup, not a little calculating, and very well-to-do. She did not love her consort - indeed she had never been in love - but he was often amusing and always thoughtful. Possibly his chief interest lay in her money, but that thought did not really bother her. Many of the younger, unattached men she had known had been after her money. At least Harry was not foppish, and she believed that in his way he did truly care for her.
Not once had he given her reason to believe otherwise. She had only twenty good years left and she knew it; money could only buy so much youth ... Harry would look after her in her final years and she would turn a blind eye on those little indiscretions which must surely come - provided he did not become too indiscreet. He had asked her to marry him and she would comply as soon as they returned to London.
Whatever else he lacked he made up for in bed. He was an extremely virile man and she had rarely been so well satisfied-...
Now here they were together, touring Hungary, getting 'faraway from it all.'
'Well, is this remote enough for you?' he asked, his arm around her waist.
'Umm,' she answered. 'Deliciously barren, isn't it?' 'Oh, it's all of that. Peace and quiet for a few days it was a good idea of yours, Julia, to drive out here. We'll feel all the more like living it up when we reach Budapest.'
'Are you so eager, then, to get back to the bright lights?' she asked. He detected a measure of peevishness in her voice.
'Not at all, darling. The setting might as well be Siberia for all I'm concerned about locale. As long as we're together. But a girl of your breeding and style can hardly -'
'Oh, come off it, Harry! You can't wait to get to Budapest, can you?'
He shrugged, smiled resignedly, thought: You niggly old bitch! and said, 'You read me like a book, darlingbut Budapest is just a wee bit closer to London, and London is that much closer to us getting married, and-'
'But you have me anyway,' she again petulantly cut him off. 'What's so important about being married?'
'It's your friends, Julia,' he answered with a sigh. 'Surely you know that?' He took her arm and steered her towards the car. q~ney see me as some sort of cuckoo in the nest, kicking them all out of your affections. Yes, and it's the money, too.'
'The money?' she looked at him sharply as he opened the car door for her. 'What money?'
'The money I haven't got!' he grinned ruefully, relaxing now that he could legitimately speak his mind, if not the truth. 'I mean, they're all certain it's your money I'm after, as if I was some damned gigolo. It's hardly flattering to either one of us. And I'd hate to think they might convince you that's all it is with me.
But once we're married I won't give a damn what they say or think. They'll just have to accept me, that's all.'
Reassured by what she took to be pure na~vet~, she smiled at him and pulled up the collar of her coat.
Then the smile fell from her face, and though it was not really cold she shuddered violently as he started the engine.
'A chill, darling?' he forced concern into his voice. 'Umm, a bit of one,' she answered, snuggling up to him. 'And a headache, too. I've had it ever since we stopped over at - oh, wh
at's the name of the place?
Where we went up over the scree to look at that strange monolith?'
'Stregoicavar,' he answered her. 'The "Witch-Town." And that pillar-thing was the Black Stone. A curious piece of rock that, eh? Sticking up out of the ground like a great black fang! But Hungary is full of such things: myths and legends and odd relics of forgotten times. Perhaps we shouldn't have gone to l'ook at it. The villagers shun it...'
'Mumbo jumbo,' she answered. 'No, I think I shall simply put the blame on this place. It's bloody depressing, really, isn't it?'
He tut-tutted good-humouredly and said: 'My God! the whims of a woman, indeed!'
She snuggled closer and laughed in his ear. 'Oh, well, that's what makes us so mysterious, Harry.
Our changeability. But seriously, I think maybe you're right. It is a bit late in the year for wandering about the Hungarian countryside. We'll stay the night at the inn as planned, then cut short and go on tomorrow into Budapest. It's a drive of two hours at the most. A week at Zjhack's place, where we'll be looked after like royalty, and then on to London. How does that sound?'
'Wonderful!' He took one hand from the wheel to hug her. 'And we'll be married by the end of October.'
The inn at Szolyhaza had been recommended for its comforts and original Hungarian cuisine by an innkeeper in Kecskem~t. Harry had suspected that both proprietors were related, particularly when he first laid eyes on Szolyhaza. That had been on the previous evening as they drove in over the hills.
Business in the tiny village could hardly be said to be booming. Even in the middle of the season, gone now along with the summer, Szolyhaza would be well off the map and out of reach of the ordinary tourist.
It had been too late in the day to change their minds, however, and so they had booked into the solitary inn, the largest building in the village, an ancient stone edifice of at least five and a half centuries.
And then the surprise. For the proprietor, Herr Debrec, spoke near-perfect English; their room was light and airy with large windows and a balcony (Julia was delighted at the absence of a television set and the inevitable 'Kultur' programs); and later, when they came down for a late evening meal, the food was indeed wonderful!
There was something Harry had wanted to ask Herr Debec that first evening, but sheer enjoyment of the atmosphere in the little dining room - the candlelight, the friendly clinking of glasses coming through to them from the bar, the warm fire burning bright in an old brick hearth, not to mention the food itself and the warm red local wine - had driven it from his mind. Now, as he parked the car in the tiny courtyard, it came back to him. Julia had returned it to mind with her headache and the talk ofillrnmoured Stregiocavar and the Black Stone on the hillside.
It had to do with a church - at least Harry suspected it was or had been a church, though it might just as easily have been a castle or ancient watchtower sighted on the other side of the hills beyond gaunt autumn woods. He had seen it limned almost as a silhouette against the hills as they had covered the last few miles to Szolyhaza from Kecskem~t. There had been little enough time to study the distant building before the road veered and the car climbed up through a shallow pass, but nevertheless Harry had been left with a feeling of- well, almost of dejavu - or perhaps presentiment.
The picture ofsombre ruins had brooded obscurely in his mind's eye until Herr Debec's excellent meal and luxurious bed, welcome after many hours of driving on the poor country roads, had shut the vision out.
Over the midday meal, when Herr Debec entered the dining room to replenish their glasses, Harry mentioned the old ruined church, saying he intended to drive out after lunch and have a closer look at it.
'That place, mein Herr? No, I should not advise it.'
'Oh?' Julia looked up from her meal. 'It's dangerous, is it?'
'Dangerous?'
'In poor repair - on the point of collapsing on someone?'
'No, no. Not that I am aware of, but -' he shrugged half-apologetically.
'Yes, go on,' Harry prompted him.
Debec shrugged again, his short fat body seeming to wobble uncertainly. He slicked back his prematurely greying hair and tried to smile. 'It is... very old, that place. Much older than my inn. It has seen many bad times, and perhaps something of those times still how do you say it? - yes,
"adheres" to it.'
'It's haunted!' Julia suddenly clapped her hands, causing Harry to start.
'No, not that - but then again - ' the Hungarian shook his head, fumbling with the lapels of his jacket.
He was obviously finding the conversation very uncomfortable.
'But you must explain yourself, Herr Debec,' Harry demanded. 'You've got us completely fascinated.'
'There is ... a dweller,' the man finally answered. 'An old man - a holy man, some say, but I don't believe it - who looks after... things.'
'A caretaker, you mean?' Julia asked.
'A keeper, madam, yes. He terms himself a "monk", I think, the last of his sect. I have my doubts.'
'Doubts?' Harry repeated, becoming exasperated. 'But what about?'
'Herr, I cannot explain,' Debec fluttered his hands.
'But still I advise you, do not go there. It is not a good place.'
'Now wait a min-' Harry began, but Debec cut him off.
'If you insist on going, then at least be warned: do not touch ... anything. Now I have many duties.
Please to excuse me.' He hurried from the room.
Left alone they gazed silently at each other for a moment. Then Harry cocked an eyebrow and said:
'Well?'
'Well, we have nothing else to do this afternoon, have we?' she asked.
'No, but - oh, I don't know,' he faltered, frowning. 'I'm half inclined to heed his warning.' 'But why?
Don't tell me you're superstitious, Harry?' 'No, not at all. It's just that - oh, I have this feeling, that's all.'
She looked astounded. 'Why, Harry, ! really don't know which one of you is trying hardest to have me on: you or Debrec? She tightened her mouth and nodded determinedly. 'That settles it then. We will go and have a look at the ruins, and damnation to all these old wives' tales!'
Suddenly he laughed. 'You know, Julia, there might just be some truth in what you say - about someone having us on, I mean. It's just struck me: you know this old monk Debrec was going on about? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be his uncle or something! All these hints of spooky goings-on could be just some sort of put-on, a con game, a tourist trap. And here we've fallen right into it! I'll give you odds it costs us five pounds a head just to get inside the place!' And at that they both burst out laughing.
The sky was overcast and it had started to rain when they drove away from the inn. By the time they reached the track that led off from the road and through the grey woods in the direction of the ruined church, a ground mist was curling up from the earth in white drifting tendrils.
'How's this for sinister?' Harry asked, and Julia shivered again and snuggled closer to him. 'Oh?' he said, glancing at her and smiling. 'Are you sorry we came after all, then?'
'No, but it is eerie driving through this mist. It's like floating on milk! ... Look, there's our ruined church directly ahead.'
The woods had thinned out and now high walls rose up before them, walls broken in places and tumbled into heaps of rough moss-grown masonry. Within these walls, in grounds of perhaps half an acre, the gaunt shell of a great Gothic structure reared up like the tombstone of some primordial giant. Harry drove the car through open iron gates long since rusted solid with their massive hinges.
He pulled up before a huge wooden door in that part of the building which still supported its lead-covered roof.
They left the car to rest on huge slick centuried cobbles, where the mist cast languorous tentacles about their ankles. Low over distant peaks the sun struggled bravely, trying to break through drifting layers of cloud.
Harry climbed the high stone steps to the great door and stood uncert
ainly before it. Julia followed him and said, with a shiver in her voice: 'Still think it's a tourist trap?'
'Uh? Oh! No, I suppose not. But I'm interested anyway. There's something about this place. A feeling almost of-'
'As if you'd been here before?'
'Yes, exactly! You feel it too?'
'No,' she answered, in fine contrary fashion. 'I just find it very drab. And I think my headache is coming back.'
For a moment or two they were silent, staring at the huge door.
'Well,' Harry finally offered, 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' He lifted the massive iron knocker, shaped like the top half of a dog's muzzle, and let it fall heavily against the grinning metal teeth of the lower jaw. The clang of the knocker was loud in the misty stillness.
'Door creaks open,' Julia intoned, 'revealing Bela Lugosi in a black high-collared cloak. In a sepulchral voice he says: "Good evening..."' For all her apparent levity, half of the words trembled from her mouth.
Wondering how, at her age, she could act so stupidly girlish, Harry came close then to telling her to shut up. Instead he forced a grin, reflecting that it had always been one of her failings to wax witty at the wrong time. Perhaps she sensed his momentary annoyance, however, for she frowned and drew back from him fractionally. He opened his mouth to explain himself but started violently instead as, quite silently, the great door swung smoothly inward.
The opening of the door seemed almost to pull them in, as if a vacuum had been created ... the sucking rush of an express train through a station. And as they stumbled forward they saw in the gloom, the shrunken, flame-eyed ancient framed against a dim, mustysmelling background of shadows and lofty ceilings.
The first thing they really noticed of him when their eyes grew accustomed to the dimness was his filthy appearance. Dirt seemed ingrained in him! His coat, a black full-length affair with threadbare sleeves, was buttoned up to his neck where the ends of a grey tattered scarf protruded. Thin grimy wrists stood out from the coat's sleeves, blue veins showing through the dirt. A few sparse wisps of yellowish hair, thick with dandruff and probably worse, lay limp on the pale bulbous dome of his head. He could have been no more than sixty-two inches in height, but the fire that burned behind yellow eyes, and the vicious hook of a nose that followed their movements like the beak of some bird of prey, seemed to give the old man more than his share of strength, easily compensating for his lack of stature.
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