Collected Stories (26 page)

“It can’t happen. Mad people are sending me mad.”

The growing strangeness of his behaviour could not go undetected. He was becoming withdrawn, apt to start at every sound, and betrayed a certain distrust of strangers by an eerie widening of his eyes, and later, the baring of his teeth in a mirthless grin. His mother commented on these peculiarities in forcible language.

“I think you’re going up the pole. Honest I do. The milkman told me yesterday, he saw you snarling at Mrs. Redfem’s dog.”

“It jumped out at me,” George explained. “You might have done the same.”

Mrs. Hardcastle shook her head. “No. I can honestly say I’ve never snarled at a dog in my life. You never inherited snarling from me.”

“I’m all right.” George pleaded for reassurance. “I’m not turning into—anything.”

“Well, you should know.” George could not help thinking that his mother was regarding him with academic interest; rather than concern. “Do you go out at nights after I’m asleep?”

He found it impossible to lie convincingly, so he countered one question with another. “Why should I do that?”

“Don’t ask me. But some nut has been seen prancing round the common at three o’clock in the morning. I just wondered.”

The physical change came gradually. One night he woke with a severe pain in his right hand and lay still for a while, not daring to examine it. Then he switched on the bedside lamp with his left hand and, after further hesitation, brought its right counterpart out from the sheets. A thick down had spread over the entire palm and he found the fingers would not straighten. They had curved and the nails were thicker and longer than he remembered. After a while the fear—the loathing—went away, and it seemed most natural for him to have claws for fingers and hair-covered hands. Next morning his right hand was as normal as his left, and at that period he was still able to dismiss, even if with little conviction, the episode as a bad dream.

But one night there was a dream—a nightmare of the blackest kind, where fantasy blended with fact and George was unable to distinguish one from the other. He was running over the common, bounding with long, graceful leaps, and there was a wonderful joy in his heart and a limitless freedom in his head. He was in a black-and-white world. Black grass, white-tinted trees, grey sky, white moon. But with all the joy, all the freedom, there was a subtle, ever-present knowledge, that this was an unnatural experience, that he should be utilising all his senses to dispel. Once his brain— that part which was still unoccupied territory— screamed: “Wake up,” but he was awake, for did not the black grass crunch beneath his feet, and the night breeze ruffle his fur? A large cat was running in front, trying to escape—up trees—across the roofs—round bushes—he finally trapped it in a hole. Shrieks—scratching claws—warm blood— tearing teeth... It was good. He was fulfilled.

Next morning when he awoke in his own bed, it could have been dismissed as a mad dream, were it not for the scratches on his face and hands and the blood in his hair. He thought of psychiatrists, asylums, priests, religion, and at last came to the only possible conclusion. There was, so far as he knew, only one set of people on earth who could explain and understand.

***

Mummy let George in. Father shook him firmly by the hand. Carola kissed him gently and put an arm round his shoulders when he started to cry.

“We don’t ask to be what we are,” she whispered. “We keep more horror than we give away.”

“We all ’ave our place in the great graveyard,” Father said. “You hunt, we sup, ghouls tear, shaddies lick, mocks blow, and fortunately shadmocks can only whistle.”

“Will I always be—what I am?” George asked.

They all nodded. Mummy grimly, Father knowingly, Carola sadly. “Until the moon leaves the sky,” they all chanted.

“Or you are struck in the heart by a silver bullet,” Carola whispered, “fired by one who has only thought about sin. Or maybe when you are very, very old, the heart may give out after a transformation...”

“Don’t be morbid,” Mummy ordered. “Poor lad’s got enough on plate without you adding to it. Make him a nice cup of tea. And you can mix us a jug of something rich while you’re about it. Don’t be too ’eavy-handed on the O group.”

They sat round the artificial log fire, drinking tea, absorbing nourishment, three giving, one receiving advice, and there was a measure of cosiness.

“All ‘M’s’ should keep away from churches, parsons, and boy scouts,” Father said.

“Run from a cross and fly from a prayer,” intoned Mummy.

“Two can run better than one,” Carola observed shyly.

Next day George told his mother he intended to leave home and set up house for himself. Mrs. Hardcastle did not argue as strongly as she might have had a few weeks earlier. What with one thing and another, there was a distinct feeling that the George, who was standing so grim and white-faced in the kitchen doorway, was not the one she had started out with. She said, “Right, then. I’d say it’s about time,” and helped him to pack.

Father, who knew someone in the building line, found George a four-roomed cottage that was situated on the edge of a churchyard, and this he furnished with a few odds and ends that the family were willing to part with. The end product was by no means as elegant or deceptive as the house at Hampton Court, but it was somewhere for George to come back to after his midnight run.

He found the old legends had been embellished, for he experienced no urge to rend or even bite. There was no reason why he should; the body was well fed and the animal kingdom only hunts when goaded by hunger. It was sufficient for him to run, leap, chase his tail by moonlight, and sometimes how’l with the pure joy of living. And it is pleasant to record that his joy grew day by day.

For obvious reasons the wedding took place in a registry office, and it seemed that the dark gods smiled down upon the union, for there was a thick fog that lasted from dawn to sunset. The wedding-supper and the reception which followed were, of necessity, simple affairs. There was a wedding cake for those that could eat it: a beautiful, three-tier structure, covered with pink icing, and studded with what George hoped were glace cherries. He of course had invited no guests, for there was much that might have alarmed or embarrassed the uninitiated. Three ghouls in starched, white shrouds sat gnawing something that was best left undescribed. The bride and her family sipped a basic beverage from red goblets, and as the bridegroom was due for a turn, he snarled when asked to pass the salt. Then there was Uncle Deitmark, a vampire of the old school, who kept demanding a trussed-up victim, so that he could take his nourishment direct from the neck.

But finally the happy couple were allowed to depart, and Mummy and Father wept as they threw the traditional coffin nails after the departing hearse. “Ee, it were champion,” Father exclaimed, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. “Best blood-up I’ve seen for many a day. You did ’em proud, Mother.”

“I believe in giving the young ’uns a good send-off,” Mummy said. “Now they must open their own vein, as the saying goes.”

Carola and George watched the moon come up over the church steeple, which was a little dangerous for it threw the cross into strong relief, but on that one night they would have defied the very Pope of Rome himself.

“We are no longer alone,” Carola whispered. “We love and are loved; and that surely has transformed us from monsters into gods.”

“If happiness can transform a tumbledown cottage into paradise,” George said, running his as yet uncurved fingers through her hair, “then I guess we are gods.”

But he forgot that every paradise must have its snake, and their particular serpent was disguised in the rotund shape of the Reverend John Cole. This worthy cleric had an allegorical nose for smelling out hypothetical evil, and it was not long before he was considering the inhabitants of the house by the churchyard with a speculative eye.

He called when George was out and invited Carola to join the young wives’ altar dressing committee. She turned grey and begged to be excused. Mr. Cole then suggested she partake in a brief reading from holy scripture, and Carola shrank from the proffered Bible, even as a rabbit recoils from a hooded cobra. Then the Reverend John Cole accidentally dropped his crucifix on to her lap, and she screamed like one who is in great pain, before falling to the floor in a deathlike faint. And the holy minister departed with the great joy that comes to the sadist who knows he is only doing his duty.

Next day George met the Reverend Cole, who was hastening to the death bed of a sinful woman, and laid a not too gentle hand on the flabby arm.

“I understand you frightened my wife, when I was out yesterday.”

The clergyman bared his teeth and, although George was now in the shape with which he had been born, they resembled two dogs preparing to fight.

“I’m wondering,” the Reverend Cole said, “what kind of woman recoils from the good book and screams when the crucifix touches her.”

“Well, it’s like this,” George tightened his grip on the black-clad arm, “we are both allergic to Bibles, crosses, and nosy parsons. I am apt to burn one, break two, and pulverise three. Am I getting through?”

“And I have a duty before God and man,” John Cole said, looking at the retaining hand with marked distaste, “and that is to stamp evil whenever it be found. And may I add, with whatever means are at my disposal.”

They parted in mutual hate, and George in his innocence decided to use fear as an offensive weapon, not realising that its wounds strengthen resistance more often than they weaken. One night, when the moon was full, turning the graveyard into a gothic wonderland, the Reverend John Cole met something that robbed him of speech for nigh on twelve hours. It walked on bent hindlegs, and had two very long arms which terminated in talons that seemed hungry for the ecclesiastical throat, and a nightmare face whose predominant feature was a long, slavering snout.

At the same time, Mrs. Cole, a very timid lady who had yet to learn of the protective virtues of two pieces of crossed wood, was trying so hard not to scream as a white-faced young woman advanced across the bedroom. The reaction of husband and wife was typical of their individual characters. The Reverend John Cole, after the initial cry, did not stop running until he was safely barricaded in the church with a processional cross jammed across the doorway. Mrs. Cole, being unable to scream, promptly fainted, and hence fared worse than her fleetfooted spouse. John Cole, after his run, was a little short of breath: Mary Cole, when she returned to consciousness, was a little short of blood.

Mr. Cole was an erratic man who often preached sermons guaranteed to raise the scalps of the most urbane congregation, if that is to say they took the trouble to listen. The tirade which was poured out from the puplit on the Sunday after Mrs. Cole’s loss and Mr. Cole’s fright woke three slumbering worshippers, and caused a choirboy to swallow his chewing-gum.

“The devil has planted his emissaries in our midst,” the vicar proclaimed. “Aye, do they dwell in the church precincts and do appear to the Godfearing in their bestial form.”

The chewing-gum-bereft choirboy giggled, and Mr. Cole’s wrath rose and erupted into admonishing words.

“Laugh not. I say to you of little faith, laugh not. For did I not come face to face—aye, but a few yards from where you now sit—with a fearsome beast that did drool and nuzzle, and I feared that my windpipe might soon lie upon my shirt- front. But, and this be the truth, which did turn my bowels to water, there was the certain knowledge that I was in the presence of a creature that is without precedence in Satan’s hierarchy—the one—the only—the black angel of hell—the dreaded werewolf.”

At least ten people in the congregation thought their vicar had at last turned the corner and become stark raving mad. Twenty more did not understand what he was talking about, and one old lady assumed she was listening to a brilliant interpretation of Revelation, chapter XIII, verses 1 to 3. The remainder of the congregation had not been listening, but noted the vicar was in fine fettle, roaring and pounding the pulpit with his customary gusto. His next disclosure suffered roughly the same reception.

“My dear wife—my helpmeet, who has walked by my side these past twenty years—was visited in her chamber by a female of the species...” Mr. Cole nodded bitterly. “A vampire, an unclean thing that has crept from its foul grave, and did take from my dear one, that which she could ill afford to lose...”

Ignorance, inattention, Mr. Cole’s words fell on very stony ground and no one believed—save Willie Mitcham. Willie did believe in vampires, werewolves, and, in fact, also accepted the existence of banshees, demons, poltergeists, ghosts of every description, monsters of every shape and form, and the long wriggly thing, which as everyone knows, has yet to be named. As Willie was only twelve years of age, he naturally revelled in his belief, and moreover made himself an expert on demonologv. To his father’s secret delectation and his mother’s openly expressed horror, he had an entire cupboard filled with literature that dwelt on every aspect of the subject. He knew, for example, that the only sure way of getting a banshee off your back is to spit three times into an open grave, bow three times to the moon, then chant in a loud voice.

Go to the north, go to the south,

Go to the devil, but shut your mouth.

Scream not by day, or howl by night,

But gibber alone by candlelight.

He also knew, for had not the facts been advertised by printed page, television set, and cinema screen, that the only sure way of killing a vampire is to drive a sharp pointed object through its heart between the hours of sunrise and sunset. He was also joyfully aware of the fatal consequences that attend the arrival of a silver bullet in a werewolf s hairy chest. So it was that Willie listened to the Reverend John Cole with ears that heard and understood, and he wanted so desperately to shout out the simple and time-honoured cures, the withal, the ways and means, the full, glorious, and gory details. But his mother nudged him in the ribs and told him to stop fidgeting, so he could only sit and seethe with well-nigh uncontrollable impatience.