The House of a Hundred Whispers

by Graham Masterton

  Next he took out a Tupperware box and prised open the lid. It was crammed with slippery white ghost slugs, all writhing on top of each other. He had already pierced each one of them with at least ten cloves, and one by one he picked them out and stuck them to the oak panelling around the hallway, about a yard apart, just above the skirting board. They all started to creep vertically upwards, leaving silvery trails of slime up the walls.

  Grace covered her eyes with her hand and said, ‘Oh my Lord. They’re disgusting. I’ve never seen white slugs before.’

  ‘Well, white ghost slugs are comparatively rare, so that doesn’t surprise me,’ said Francis. ‘They don’t have eyes, because they live so deep underground that they don’t need to be able to see, and their heads and their breathing holes are both at the same end of their bodies. They’re carnivorous, too, unlike most other slugs. They feed on earthworms mainly, biting them with a single tooth. But if you stud them with cloves, they can disinfect a room of almost any pre-Christian demon you care to mention.’

  Grace peered at them through her parted fingers. ‘They’re horrible. They make me feel sick. And aren’t they in pain, with all those cloves stuck in them?’

  ‘I don’t know. They may be. But I don’t know of any other way to isolate the force that we’re up against here, and if we don’t isolate it, we won’t have any realistic chance of dismissing it.’

  Now Francis took out The Great Book of Lyre, a thick leather-bound volume with roughly trimmed pages. He opened it to a page that he had already bookmarked, and laid it flat on the floor in front of the chair. Then he bent over the suitcase and lifted out a large brindled cat.

  Even Rob said, ‘Bloody hell, Francis!’ The cat not only had a heavy, drooping body, with its legs dangling down, but it had three heads crowded together on its neck, all with their yellow eyes staring sightlessly at nothing at all.

  ‘My friend the vet did this fancy bit of needlework for me,’ said Francis. ‘He took some persuading, I have to admit, but he owed me a considerable favour. These cats, they’re the very core of this ritual. You can call it a spell, if you like, the legendary rule of three, rather than a ritual, because it goes way back to the days when Dartmoor was Druid, and probably way before that.

  ‘It’s even mentioned in Shakespeare, would you believe? It’s in Macbeth, when the witches are stirring up their brew. “Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d…” What many scholars today don’t realise is that Shakespeare wasn’t saying the cat had let out one mew after another. He was saying that it had mewed three times all at once, simultaneous-like, and it could do that because it had three heads.’

  ‘My God,’ said Katharine. ‘My friends are never going to believe this, when I tell them. If I ever do have the nerve to tell them.’

  ‘Is there anything you want us to do?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘No, my dear, nothing – except to stand behind me and give me your moral support. Hopefully, once I’ve started reciting the ritual, you’ll be able to feel the force rising out of the house. Once you can feel that, try to concentrate your minds on expelling it – out of the floors, out of the walls, out of the door and away across the moor. Your mental hostility to it will be a great help to me in hurrying its dismissal.’

  Francis took nine large tallow candles out of his suitcase, fixed them into silver candleholders and arranged them in a circle around his makeshift altar. He lit them all and let them burn for a while, holding the sword in his right hand and the Druidic chanting beads in his left. Rob and Vicky and Grace and Portia gathered close behind him, although Katharine kept herself well back in the drawing-room doorway, her arms protectively crossed over her chest, almost hugging herself. She was frowning as if she were sure that something catastrophic was going to happen.

  ‘I’m making sure that the candles burn down a little – not like that match I lit up there in the witching room,’ said Francis.

  ‘What if they don’t burn down?’ asked Portia.

  ‘If they don’t burn down, that would tell me that the force has somehow managed to suspend time here in this hallway, too, and that it’s probably done that because it’s aware that I’ve entered the house – just like it was the last time – and that it’s guessed what I’ve come here to do. And this time it might try to do me a great deal more mischief than simply pulling my hair out.’

  He waited a little while longer, while the candle flames swivelled and dipped, but then he said, ‘No… it looks as if it’s fine, and it hasn’t yet twigged that I’m here. After all, I haven’t spoken its name yet. That’ll be the test, believe me. That’ll be the test.’

  He bent down and picked up the three-headed cat, holding it so that its heads were resting on his left shoulder. He stroked it, over and over, and while he stroked it he leaned forward so that he could read the words from The Great Book of Lyre.

  ‘Hear me, o sleeping malevolence… awake from thy slumbers and hear my commands. Awake from thy slumbers and rise up, I adjure thee. Rise up and quit this domain, for today and for all eternity, and never seek to return. I command thee to leave in the name of Arawn, and in the name of Manannán, and with the power of Cailleach the veiled one, whose three spirits rest here now on my shoulder. It is daytime now, when the full moon is blinded and trusts in the guidance of saintly men and women, and when thou cannot divert its innocent strength for thine evil intentions.’

  Rob could feel a humming under the floor, as if a huge electrical generator had started up somewhere beneath them. The frames of some of the paintings around the hallway started to rattle softly against the panelling, and from the kitchen he could hear the sound of plates jingling together on the dresser.

  ‘Hear me, o sleeping malevolence!’ Francis repeated, much louder this time. ‘Awake and take heed of my commands! Awake and quit this domain instanter! Quit this domain and release it from thy corrupted influence! Thy days and nights of dominance here are over forever!’

  The humming grew louder and louder, until the whole house felt as if it were vibrating, and the circular gilt-framed mirror hanging next to the umbrella stand dropped off the wall, its frame chipping and its glass cracking in half. Vicky reached out and gripped Rob’s hand, and Grace put her arm around Portia. Even Katharine left the drawing-room doorway to come and stand close beside them.

  ‘I know thou canst hear my voice, o malevolence!’ Francis shouted. ‘I know that thou canst hear my voice and recognise the influence that I carry on my shoulder! Rise up and take thy leave, I command thee, by the sacred rule of three! Thou art banished from this domain until time turns in upon itself, and the heavens are swallowed up by darkness for all eternity!’

  The humming grew louder still, and the vibration intensified, and now an oil painting of one of the Wilmingtons’ racehorses fell off the wall.

  Abruptly, Francis stood up straight, still holding the cat on his shoulder, and roared out, ‘Esus! I know thee! I recognise thy presence here! Esus, I command thee to rise up, and quit this domain for ever!’

  Outside, lightning flashed and crackled. Through the window by the front door Rob saw a dazzling bolt of lightning strike the headless cherub on its severed neck, so that lumps of broken marble tumbled across the courtyard. The lightning was followed almost at once by a bellowing roll of thunder, so loud that he couldn’t hear what Francis screamed out next. Even when the thunder had grumbled away, the vibration in the hallway continued.

  Francis was standing still now, his eyes closed and his teeth gritted as if he were battling with some demon inside his head. He grunted with effort, lifting the three-headed cat an inch or two off his shoulder and then letting it drop back again.

  ‘Francis?’ said Rob. ‘Francis, what’s—?’

  But Francis ignored him. Instead, he stepped sideways, away from the chair that he had made into a makeshift altar. He hesitated for a few seconds, stamping his left foot again and again, like an impatient horse. Then he flung the cat all the way across the hallway so that it thumped against the lib
rary door.

  As soon as the cat dropped to the floor, all the candles blew out, one after the other, so that the altar was surrounded by drifting ribbons of smoke. Francis reached over, picked up the Celtic shield and tossed all the water in it over the sheepskin. Then he hurled the shield to one side so that it bowled along the hallway into the drawing room and then fell over with a reverberating clank.

  ‘Francis – what’s wrong?’ Rob asked him, but again Francis didn’t seem to hear him. He turned and stared back at Rob with those colourless eyes, but the expression on his face was unreadable. It wasn’t helplessness. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t hatred, either. He looked as if he couldn’t understand who or even what Rob was, and as if he couldn’t understand who or what he was, either.

  ‘Francis, this is all going tits up, isn’t it? Let’s stop.’

  ‘Francis, Rob’s right,’ said Grace, taking a step towards him and holding out her hand. ‘We’ll have to try something else. Perhaps your friend Father Salter can get in touch with that school of exorcism in Rome.’

  Lightning flashed again, and again, as if a jostling crowd of paparazzi were taking pictures of them through the window.

  Francis lifted one hand to his ear. He appeared to be listening to somebody who was whispering to him. He nodded, and nodded again, and then said, ‘Esus.’

  ‘Esus… is that the name of this force?’ Rob asked him.

  But Francis didn’t answer. Instead, he turned around and walked towards the sealed-up cellar door, his arms by his sides, as if he expected to be able to walk right through it. He collided with it, and then he turned around again, so that he was facing outward, back into the hallway.

  ‘Francis—’ said Rob.

  Francis still had that bewildered look on his face, but then suddenly he stretched his mouth open wide and let out a harsh, horrifying shriek. The upper plate of his dentures dropped down onto his lower teeth, so that for a split second it looked as if he had two mouths. He flung up his arms and galloped with his legs and it was only then that Rob realised what was happening to him. The back of his beige beanie was rapidly being soaked in dark crimson blood and his shoulders seemed to be clamped hard against the wall.

  ‘Esus! Stop!’ he screamed. ‘Esus! I beg you!’ But with a complicated series of snaps and cracks like twigs breaking, his skull was pulled into the plaster, followed by his ribcage and his arms and his pelvis and his legs. Only his bones disappeared. His face was flattened into a grotesque, rubbery mask with two eyes bulging out of their sockets, and his entire skin slithered down like a flaccid sack into his tattered Aran sweater and his ripped-open corduroy trousers – a sack bulging with his lungs and his liver and his stomach and heaps of slippery intestines.

  His body slid slowly to the floor and fell sideways, staring up at the ceiling with one boneless sleeve flopped across his chest like a bloody parody of a fallen scarecrow. All around the hallway, the white ghost slugs dropped off the wall and lay squirming.

  The vibration drummed louder through the floorboards, and then died. There was another flash of lightning, but it was dim and more distant this time, and they didn’t hear an echoing boom of thunder for at least eleven seconds. After that, Allhallows Hall was deathly silent.

  Katharine, mewling softly with shock, crept back into the drawing room, where she climbed onto the sofa and pressed a cushion against her face. Vicky and Grace and Portia stood staring at each other in terror and disbelief. They were too stunned to speak.

  Rob approached Francis’s body. He felt numb, and he had no idea what to do next. There was no point in calling for an ambulance. But should he call the police? If he did, would they believe him? If he hadn’t seen Francis’s skeleton being pulled through that wall in front of his eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it himself. Yet the police would have no choice – they would have to believe it. No human being could conceivably have pulled all of Francis’s bones out of his body, including his skull. He had left a bloody silhouette on the plaster, both hands outstretched, like the rayograph of somebody caught in the flash of an A-bomb.

  No, thought Rob, I have to call Detective Inspector Holley. Francis has been killed and enough of us have witnessed how it happened.

  He stepped back from the bricked-up doorway. The force must be somewhere down there – down in the cellar – and that was presumably why it had been sealed. Although the vibrations had completely died away now, he was sure he could still feel some tangible energy emanating from behind that wall. It was the same scalp-prickling sensation he had when he was convinced that he was being watched, even though he couldn’t see anybody watching him.

  Francis had spoken its name out loud, Esus, and that had woken it up. If nothing else, it had proved that he had correctly guessed which demonic force they were dealing with. But it had also proved that the spiritual decontamination that he had borrowed from Raphael Hix was nowhere near powerful enough to exorcise it – despite the clove-studded slugs and the holy water from the Druid’s Bowl and the herbs and the sword and the nine candles. Not even the three-headed cat had been enough to dismiss it.

  Rob tried not to think the name Esus, in case the force could read his mind. He couldn’t imagine the agony that Francis must have suffered, having his skeleton ripped out of his body.

  It was impossible to tell from his face, which had now collapsed so that his forehead sagged down over his nose with his eyeballs peering out from underneath it like a furtive animal.

  Rob was about to turn around and say that he was going to call the police when he heard a thick, coarse, churning sound. Right in front of his eyes, the sleeve of Francis’s sweater was being dragged into the wall. It was simply disappearing, inch by inch, followed by his beanie and the empty skin that had once been his face and his neck. His intestines bulged up inside his sweater as if they were being slowly cranked into a mangle, but then with a sharp squishing noise they disappeared, too, followed by his trousers. One of his Oxford shoes tipped up, but it took only a few seconds before that vanished, and then there was nothing left of Francis at all.

  Rob went slowly back to rejoin Vicky and Grace and Portia. Portia was nearly hysterical, shivering and biting her thumbnail. Vicky looked up at Rob in fear and bewilderment and said, ‘Now what? Now what are we going to do? How are we ever going to get Timmy back now?’

  36

  They all made their way into the drawing room, where Portia sat down on the sofa next to Katharine and hugged her, trying to calm both of them down. Vicky took a seat on Herbert’s throne while Grace went over to the painting of the hooded figures and stared at it as if she might be able to pick out which one of them had pulled Francis into the bricked-up cellar.

  Rob paced up and down in front of the slowly collapsing fire, frantically trying to think what to do next. Eventually he stopped and said to Vicky, ‘What you suggested before… getting in touch with Father Salter. I think that was a good idea. In fact, I don’t see what else we can do. We could call the police but there’s no trace of Francis to prove he was here, except for his suitcase and all his paraphernalia, and do you seriously think they’re going to believe us? We’ve got candles and a sheepskin and a dead cat with three heads lying on the floor, apart from all those slugs. They’re going to think we’re some kind of weird sect.’

  ‘There’s a demon in that cellar, isn’t there?’ said Portia, looking up at Rob with her mascara all smudged. ‘A real, actual, genuine demon. It’s like something out of The Exorcist, only worse.’

  ‘Francis didn’t actually call it a demon. He said it was a “malevolent force”, but I suppose that could mean anything, including a demon. He shouted out its name, though. You heard him. And he addressed it as if it could hear him. So I don’t think you’re entirely wrong. And if it is a demon, maybe that’s how Father Salter can help us. He’s a trained exorcist, after all, and he told us that he’d recently exorcised a woman who was possessed.’

  Grace said, ‘Yes, but when he came here he was so frightened he alm
ost had a heart attack.’

  ‘Who else are we going to turn to, Gracey? I’ll just have to persuade him that he’s the only person who can help us to get rid of this thing. Maybe he can pray to God to give him a bit more bottle.’

  Rob suddenly caught sight of himself in the tall, narrow mirror next to the drawing-room door. His dark curly hair was unkempt and his face was white, with plum-coloured circles under his eyes. Vicky had always said that he looked like Lord Byron, but this morning he thought he looked like Lord Byron when the poet was suffering from the fever that had eventually killed him.

  Right, he thought, I can’t go on like this, and he took out his phone. He found the number for Our Lady of the Assumption in Tavistock and tapped it out. Father Salter answered almost at once, as if he had been holding his phone in his hand and waiting for Rob to call.

  ‘Hello. Maurice Salter speaking. How can I help you?’

  ‘Father Salter, this is Rob Russell. We met when you came to Sampford Spiney to visit Allhallows Hall.’

  There was a lengthy pause. Then Father Salter said, ‘Yes… Allhallows Hall. Have things settled down there now? Francis called me last night and told me he was coming to carry out his decontamination this morning. Has it been successful?’

  ‘He came to do it this morning, father. But there’s no easy way to tell you this. He’s dead.’

  ‘He’s passed away? Oh dear Lord, I’m totally shocked. How did he die? I had no idea that he was ill.’

  ‘He wasn’t ill. He was halfway through his ritual when he woke up the force that’s possessing this house and it killed him. You may not believe this, but it pulled him through the wall. All his bones first and then the rest of him.’

  Another long silence. Then Father Salter said, ‘Sorry. I’m still here. I was saying a small prayer for Francis. Commending his soul to the Lord, that he may be eternally happy in heaven.’

  ‘We need more than that, father. We’re in desperate trouble here. We still believe that our son, Timmy, is trapped here somewhere, as well as my brother, Martin, and Ada Grey. Francis brought along everything he needed for the ritual, but this force – this demon, if you want to call it that – it didn’t seem to be deterred in the slightest by anything he said or anything he did. In fact, he only made it even more violent.’