Faces of Fear (6 page)

“This terrible creature seized that poor dog and ripped it out of the man-trap without even opening it. It had long clawlike fingers. The dog screamed, but the creature took hold of its ribcage and pulled it apart, as easily as you might pull a chicken's ribcage apart. The dog's innards dropped to the ground and the creature fell on them and started to cram them into its mouth
indiscriminately, strings of fat and liver and shredded intestine.

“After a while, the creature left its feast and slowly made its way back through the undergrowth, toward the house. I was shivering and sick to my stomach, as you can imagine, and I turned immediately for home. I had only gone a few yards, however, when I heard another scream up ahead of me – and this time, it wasn't a dog. I ran as fast as I could. I nearly tore out my eye on one bramble – here, you can still see the scar.

“I didn't have to go far before I found Miles, with his hand caught at the wrist in another man-trap. His face was grey with shock. He must have tripped, and put out his hand to save himself. The steel teeth had gone right through skin and flesh, and his hand was dangling by not much more than few shreds of skin.

“I tried to open the trap, but it was just as strong as the first one. While I was trying, Miles kept begging me to set him free, but I simply couldn't. And it was then that I heard that
rushing
sound again, those fearful crashing footsteps, and I realized that the creature in black was coming for Miles.

Duncan Greenleaf took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “There was nothing else I could do. I couldn't have left him there for the creature to tear apart.”

“So what did you do?” asked Marcus, although he could easily guess.

“I took out my penknife, and I cut off my brother's hand.”

“Oh, God,” said Marcus.

“Oh, God, indeed,” said Duncan Greenleaf.

“So that's him … with just one hand, being eaten up by the hungry moon.”

Duncan Greenleaf said, “Somehow I dragged him out
of the woods. I took off my belt and used it as a tourniquet to try to stop the bleeding, but he just went on pumping out more and more. By the time my father could call for the ambulance, he was unconscious; and by the time they got him to hospital, he was dead.”

“But your father didn't believe what had happened? And neither did the police?”

“Grown-ups don't believe in black monsters with mouths like sharks, Marcus. Especially when they searched the woods and found nothing at all – no man-traps, no dog. And the Vanes, of course, denied all knowledge of such things, as you would expect them to.

“I don't expect
you
to believe me, either. Why should you? But let me tell you this: I looked into the history of the Vane family when I was older. In fact it became something of an obsession of mine, and I expect you can understand why. The Vanes made all of their fortune in shipping, in the Mediterranean, and especially Greece. But in 1856 they were financially ruined: they lost several valuable cargoes and made some bad investments in America. However, only two years went by before the Vane's main competitors suffered some catastrophic shipwrecks, while the Vanes themselves suddenly appeared to have more money than they knew what to do with.”

“I don't understand what you're getting at,” said Marcus.

“Simply this: that John Vane, who was the head of the family at the time, went to Thessaly on the borders of Macedonia, and was publicly said to have ‘consulted with business experts', who assisted him to rebuild the family fortunes. But what ‘business experts' could he have possibly found in a Godforsaken place like that?”

“I'm sorry. I have no idea.”

“Ah! Thessaly, as you probably don't know, has always been notorious for its black magic and its sorcery, and for its witches.”

“He went to see
witches
?”

“Who else, in Thessaly? The Greeks say that these women have the power to ‘draw down the moon' – to use all the evil aspects of lunar forces to bring poverty and confusion to anybody they want. All they ask in return is a regular supply of living flesh, human or animal. It said in the
Illustrated London News
that after his return from Greece, John Vane was seen in the company of a tall woman dressed entirely in black, her identity unknown.”

“You surely don't think that—”

“
They're cloaked in black, Marcus
! That's what it says in the books! Cloaked in black, with teeth like razors, and they live for ever, if you keep on feeding them!”

He stared at Marcus desperately, gripping the arms of his chair. He appeared to be incapable of saying any more.

After a long, rigid silence, the plump nurse came up and touched Marcus's shoulder. “I think it's time to go now. He does get rather tired, when he talks about the old days, don't you, Duncan?”

Marcus walked across the thickly-shingled driveway and climbed the steps to the front door. Hastings House was huge, with crenellated battlements, and turrets, and spires. Its west wall was overgrown with ivy, as though somebody had casually thrown a huge green blanket over it. Marcus pulled the doorbell and waited.

After a very long time, a thirtyish man in a mustard-coloured tweed waistcoat and brown corduroys appeared from around the side of the house, accompanied by
two slavering bull terriers. He was very pale, with an almond-shaped head and slicked-back hair.

“Can I help?” he asked, briskly, as if he wasn't at all interested in doing any such thing.

“I don't know,” said Marcus. “I'm looking for Mr Gordon Vane.”

“I'm Gordon Vane. You don't have any kind of appointment, do you?”

“No, I don't. But I'm afraid that I've lost my dog.”

“I can't see what that has to do with me.”

“It ran into your woods, I'm afraid. I was wondering if you'd seen it. It's a Sealyham cross.”

Gordon Vane shook his head. “If it's gone into
those
woods, I doubt if you'll ever see it again.”

“I was wondering, if you hadn't seen it, whether I could go and look for it.”

“Out of the question, I'm afraid.”

“I wouldn't do any damage.”

“That's not the point. Those woods are very marshy in places, and really quite dangerous.”

“They don't
look
dangerous,” Marcus persisted.

“Well, I'm afraid they are, and if anything were to happen to you, we're not insured. If you leave me your telephone number, I'll let you know if your dog turns up.”

“I saw somebody else in the woods,” said Marcus.

Gordon Vane had been patting his dogs, but now he sharply looked up. “You saw somebody? Who?”

“I don't know … somebody very tall. Enormously tall, and all dressed in black.”

Gordon Vane stared at Marcus as if he could see right through his eyes into his brain. Then, without a word, he took a gold mechanical pencil out of his waistcoat pocket, along with a visiting-card, and said, “Here. Your telephone number.”

He stood and watched as Marcus walked away, his feet scrunching on the shingle. Marcus wasn't sure if he had done the right thing by pretending to have lost a dog. Maybe he shouldn't have alerted the Vanes at all. But he couldn't think of any other way of flushing out Duncan Greenleaf's “terrible black creature”. If the Vanes thought that there was a stray dog wandering in the woods, and that there was the strong possibility that its owner might be wandering in the woods, too, looking for it, then they might let the creature out.

What was more, if the Vanes were concerned that Marcus had actually seen the creature, and might report it, they might let it out to silence him.

Except, of course, that Marcus was ready for it. He had brought a camera, and a large scouting knife, and a baseball bat. He had tried to persuade Roger to lend him his shotgun, on the pretext that he wanted to go clay-pigeon shooting, but he didn't have a licence and Roger was a stickler for things like that.

More than anything else, though, Marcus wanted to go back to Duncan Greenleaf and show him that he hadn't imagined the creature in black, and that he had done his very best for the tiny boy in the mouth of the hungry moon.

He waited until well past midnight before he walked past Roger's house and along the lane that led to the woods. The night was clear and still and the moon shone like a lamp. He left the lane just where the sign said ‘Strictly Private' and began to crunch and rustle his way through the dry leaves and the blackberry bushes. He was tense, and a little jumpy, especially when a bird suddenly fluttered out of the undergrowth right in front of him, but he wasn't especially afraid. It seemed as if he had
been destined to do this, ever since he had first seen the hungry moon on the cereal packet. It seemed as if he had been chosen all those years ago to right an outstanding wrong.

He had looked up more about the witches of Thessaly, and Duncan Greenleaf was quite right about their appearance, and what they could do. Apparently they could also transform themselves into birds and animals, and they had an intimate knowledge of aphrodisiacs and poisonous herbs. A Thessalonian witch's den would be filled with incense, and strange engravings, and the beaks and claws of birds of prey, as well as pieces of human flesh and small vials of blood taken from the witch's victims. They particularly relished the noses of executed men.

Duncan Greenleaf was quite right about the woods, too: the brambles were worse than barbed wire. Marcus hadn't ventured more than a hundred feet into the woods before his hands and his face were scratched, and he had torn the shoulder of his jacket. It seemed almost as if the undergrowth were viciously alive, cutting and tearing and catching at him.

He kept criss-crossing the undergrowth in front of him with his torch, in case of man-traps. It might be absurd to suspect that they were still set here, after more than sixty years, but it was no more absurd than suspecting that a Thessalonian witch-creature was lying in wait for him in the half-darkness, with glittering eyes and teeth like a shark.

After ten minutes of struggling forward, he began to reach the edges of the boggy ground. He heard an owl hooting, and then a quick, loping rustle through the bushes. His heart beating, he pointed the torch up ahead of him, and it reflected two luminous yellow eyes. He said, “
Ah
!” aloud, and almost turned and ran, but then
the creature loped off in the opposite direction, and he glimpsed the heavy swinging brush of a large fox.

He hefted his baseball bat and continued to edge slowly forward over the soft, muddy ground. He wondered how far the bog extended, and how deep it was. He tried to walk quietly, but his boots made a thick, sucking sound with every step.

He took one more step, and the mud began to drag him in, right up to his knees. He tried to pull his left foot out, but he overbalanced, and fell forward, dropping his baseball bat and stretching out his hands to save himself.

He heard it before he felt it. A ringing, metallic
chunk
! Then suddenly his left hand was ablaze with pain, as if he had thrust it directly into an open fire. He tried to pull his hand out, but the steel trap had caught him by the wrist, half-chopping his hand off. By the light of his fallen torch, he could see tendons and bone and bright red muscle. The man-trap was splattered with blood, and he could actually feel his arteries pumping it out onto the mud.

Don't panic don't panic.
It's bad, but it's not terminal. These days they can do wonders with microsurgery. That policeman's hand, they sewed that back on. That woman who lost her hands in a wallpaper trimmer, they sewed hers on too.
Don't panic, think.

With his free left hand, he reached out for his baseball bat. Aluminium, make a good lever, pry this fucking thing apart. But the bat had bounced too far away, and he couldn't get anywhere near it without causing himself so much pain that he bit right through the end of his tongue.

Tourniquet.
First thing to do is to stop the bleeding. With his left hand, he unbuckled his belt and tugged it off. After three tries, he managed to flip it over his wrist, and then buckle it up. He gripped the end of it in his teeth
and pulled it and pulled it until his veins bulged out. The flow of blood seemed to slow to a steady drip. He pulled even tighter, and it stopped altogether.

Now,
think.
Try to attract attention. He picked up his torch and waved it wildly from side to side, but he couldn't shout out because that would have meant releasing his grip on the tourniquet.

Think.
What can I do now?

But it was then that he heard a rustling sound, somewhere in the woods. A fast, relentless rustling, like something coming through the undergrowth with blood on its mind. Oh Jesus it's the witch. It's the witch and I'm trapped here the same way young Miles Greenleaf was trapped.

The rustling sounded heavier and quicker, and Marcus could hear branches breaking and bushes shaking.

There was nothing else for it. He scrabbled into his pocket and took out his scouting knife. He could bite his belt, that would stop him from screaming and from biting his tongue any more. He just hoped that he could cut himself free before the black-cowled creature came exploding out of the woods and tore him to pieces.

He placed the blade of the knife against the teeth of the man-trap. Then he began to cut into his wrist. The first cut felt freezing cold, and hurt so much that he started to sob. But he could hear the witch roaming through the woods, nearer and nearer, and even this was better than a violent death.

He cut through skin and nerves and muscle, but when he reached the wristbone he couldn't cut any further. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and rolled himself over in the mud, so that his bones were twisted apart, and he was free.

Whimpering, holding up the stump of his hand, he
started to struggle out of the woods. Without his torch he couldn't see where he was going, and every time the brambles caught him they put him off course. He staggered around and around, falling, climbing up onto his feet again, staggering, falling.