The Haunting of Toby Jugg (46 page)

With a shudder, I tried to thrust from my mind the appalling picture of myself lying there in bed, striking wildly with the Champagne bottle at an intangible form which yet seemed to smother me, and gradually became a semi-fluid substance like reddish black treacle as it sucked at a vein in my neck.

I countered that unnerving vision by arguing that if it could enter and materialise in such a manner here, it could have done so equally well down in the library. But then again, perhaps in those early stages of my ‘conditioning’ Helmuth had held it in check, whereas tonight he had no such intention.

My grim speculations got no further. At that moment I heard footsteps on the stairs; the door opened and Helmuth appeared.

I could not see him very clearly, as the moonlight hardly penetrated to that corner of the room, but it shimmered faintly on the strange garment he was wearing, and as he moved forward I saw that it was a ceremonial robe of white satin with a number of large black symbols imposed upon it. The folds of the robe prevented me from making out exactly what they were, but they looked like the signs of the Zodiac. Round his neck he wore a black stole heavily embroidered in gold, and on his head a curiously shaped flattish mitre. In his hand he carried a silver wand, at one end of which there was a crescent moon.

Without a word to me, or a glance in my direction, he walked past the foot of my bed. As he did so I could see the flattish mitre more clearly; it was really a toque of dark fur with two large red
jewels in front; it was fashioned to appear like a big spider and the jewels were there to represent eyes.

Holding himself very rigid and moving with slow deliberation, as though he were in a trance, he advanced to the door that gives on to my little terrace, made the sign of the Cross the wrong way round with his wand, then unlatched the door and opened it a fraction.

The question I had been asking myself was answered. He had to assist the Great Spider to materialise itself by some hideous ceremony, and once it had acquired a body it could not pass through material obstacles. He had come up to let it in.

Turning, he walked slowly back towards the door that gives on to the staircase. I did not see him go. My eyes were fixed on the terrace door. At any second I expected to see it open and disclose the beast. As the other door shut behind Helmuth I had a wild impulse to call him back and beg him to spare me; but I managed to suppress it.

If I had not actually seen him unlatch the door to the terrace I would not have known that it was open. But I did know. It was just ajar, and it needed no more than a push of a child’s hand for the heavy oak postern to swing slowly inward on its well-oiled hinges.

My hands were clammy as I stared at it, imagining that I could see it moving; but for what seemed an age nothing happened.

Suddenly my heart missed a beat. The door had not moved, but I knew that the beast was approaching. It was three weeks since I had felt that awful sensation, but there was no mistaking it. The perspiration that had already broken out on my forehead now chilled it as though snowflakes were melting there; my breath was coming faster yet catching in my throat, and I had a queasy feeling in my stomach that made me want to retch.

Still the door remained as Helmuth had left it. With the saliva running hot in my mouth I kept my gaze riveted on the old oak boards. The waiting seemed unbearable, and if at that moment I had been able to pray at all, I should have prayed for something—anything—to happen, that would end my agonising suspense.

The night was very still. It was close on twelve o’clock and I knew that all the Castle staff would normally be asleep. But even
if any of them were awake and I had screamed for help, shut off as I was and at such a distance from their quarters, they could never have heard me.

All at once the eerie quiet was broken by a faint scuffling noise. The hair on the back of my head rose like the hackles of a dog. I could feel my eyes open wide with apprehension, and my ears seemed to start out from the sides of my head with the intensity of my listening.

The noise came again, louder this time. It sounded as if a boot was being scraped with quick, light jerks against rough stone. I still had my eyes fixed unswervingly upon the door; but a sudden flicker of movement just outside my line of vision caught my attention. Jerking my head round, I stared at the checkered patch of moonlight on the floor. Part of an all too familiar shadow sprawled across it. Slowly I raised my eyes; then I saw the beast itself.

It was peering through the left-hand lower corner of the grating at me. I could not see the whole of it; only about three-quarters of the body, the head and parts of several legs, one of which was fully extended above it and measured more than the length of my arm. Its body was fat and furry; its legs thick, sinewy and covered with sparse stiff hairs each about two inches long. As it clung there, silhouetted against the bright moonlight that was now streaming through the grille, I could see every detail of its outline; but its face was obscured by shadow, and all I could distinguish of that were two reddish eyes, glowing luminously.

The room was now ice-cold, and filled with an appalling stench. There flashed into my mind a temporary morgue that I had once had to visit, where bomb-torn bodies were being preserved for identification on blocks of ice. The atmosphere was very similar, except that there the smell of putrefaction had been partially obscured by iodoform, whereas here it came undiluted in sickening waves from the pulsing body of the beast.

After a second it shifted its position. The movement was so swift that I only glimpsed its action. One nimble sideways slither and it was still again, spreadeagled right in the middle of the grating.

I was no longer capable of any coherent thought. All I could do
was to keep muttering ‘This is it! This is it!’ while my brain subconsciously absorbed certain physical facts about the Horror.

It was as big as a fully fledged vulture. Its skin and hair were black, but splotched here and there with patches of a leprous-looking greyish-white. It could easily have torn a cat limb from limb or made mincemeat of a hound. But there seemed no animal, short of the elephant, hippopotamus and rhino, to whom the beast would not have proved a formidable opponent. Even a lion might have found himself bested by such a beast, had it sprung upon his back and, while he roared impotently, clung there, gnawing its way into his liver.

Suddenly it began its devil-dance, scampering to and fro across the grating. With chattering teeth I watched it; and slowly the fact penetrated to my mind that although it possessed immense physical activity its intelligence must be dull and sluggish. It could see the terrace door through the grille yet it made no attempt to test that way into the room; instead it kept at its frantic blind fumbling to find a means of getting through the iron bars.

For a good ten minutes it continued to leap up and down, back and forth, until I was dizzy with watching it; then, all of a sudden, it dropped from sight.

I was sitting up propped against my pillows, the champagne bottle gripped in one hand and my heavy silver cigarette box in the other. For a moment or two I remained with every muscle tensed, then I relaxed a little. The room was still very cold, and the stink of rotting offal remained strong in my nostrils; but I was beginning to have just a flicker of hope that Helmuth’s plan had miscarried, and that I might yet come through unharmed—unless he had some means of communicating with, and directing, his foul emissary. I think now that must have been so.

It is impossible to estimate time with any accuracy in such circumstances. It may have been three minutes, it may have been ten, after the brute had dropped from sight, that I heard the scraping noise again. This time it came from out on the terrace.

I shuddered, swallowed hard, and tensed myself. The scraping grew louder; then there came a faint tapping, which might have been made by the brute’s pointed feet. My eyes were starting
from their sockets as they stared at the door. Slowly it was pushed open.

The door swung back without a sound, and there in the entrance stood the monster. Now that it was no longer between myself and the moonlight I could see it plainly. It stood a good two-foot-six from the ground and shimmered with a faint reddish radiance of its own. It appeared to have no neck and its head was sunken, like that of a hunchback, into its obese body. Under a low, vulture-like forehead the two fire-bright eyes glared at me malignantly. Instead of the beak I had expected, its mouth was a horrid cavity surrounded by fringed gills, that constantly twitched and exuded a beastly brownish saliva.

In spite of the cold the sweat was pouring off me. I knew that in another moment this awful creature—a devil out of hell in the form of a gargantuan insect—would be upon me. But Sally’s assurance, that none of us are ever given a trial to bear that is beyond our capabilities, came back to me, and strengthened my determination to fight the brute to the last gasp.

Something outside myself suddenly warned me that the monster was just about to spring. With all my force I hurled the cigarette box at it.

The box caught it full and square on the body, just below its slavering mouth. Even in that moment of terror I found myself observing the curious effect of my missile with surprise and interest. It did not go through the brute, as it would have through a spectre; nor did it land with a bump and then fall to the floor, as it would have on striking a flesh-and-blood animal. It seemed to sink right into the furry mass just as though I had thrown it at a great lump of dough. And the impact had some effect, as the beast wobbled uncertainly on its spindly legs, then backed a couple of paces.

I had no other missile in reach that was heavy enough to be of any value; so, gasping out a prayer for help, I transferred the bottle to my right hand and grasped it firmly by the neck.

It took me only a few seconds to do so, and in that time the monster had recovered. It sidled forward again to its previous position and gathered itself to spring. At that instant my prayer was answered.

I heard the staircase door open. There came the rush of flying feet, and I saw Sally race past the end of my bed. Without a tremor of hesitation she flung herself against the terrace door and slammed it to.

The beast had been half in, half out, of the open doorway. The impact threw it back on to the terrace, but the door closed so swiftly that it caught and cut off the lower part of one of the brute’s legs. Sally, her eyes distended from the awful thing she had seen, and her breath coming quickly after her valiant effort, had turned, and was standing with her back against the door staring at me.

By her feet I could see the severed leg. It seemed to have a vile life of its own, and was wriggling like a snake; but I had seen too much during the past quarter-of-an-hour to feel any surprise when it flattened itself into a ribbon and slid under the door to rejoin its monstrous owner on the terrace.

For what seemed a long time Sally and I said nothing. Both of us were rendered speechless from horror of the Thing we had just seen, and fear that it would yet manage to get at us. It must have been a good two minutes before we recovered sufficiently to feel that the stout oak door was really a strong enough barrier to keep it out.

At last Sally whispered: ‘Are—are you all right?’

‘Yes!’ I gulped. ‘But you? Oh, Sally, I love you so much! I’ve been in agony about you for the past twenty-four hours.’

She left the door and, coming over, stood beside my bed. ‘Do you really mean that?’ she asked slowly.

I nodded. ‘Yes. I didn’t mean to tell you that I loved you. It just slipped out in the stress of the moment. But I do—terribly. You won’t mind my loving you, will you? I promise faithfully that I won’t make a nuisance of myself.’

‘No,’ she said, and her voice seemed rather flat. ‘I’m sure you won’t make a nuisance of yourself; and I won’t mind your loving me—not a bit.’

She was standing with her back to the moonlight, so her face was in shadow; but she turned it a little away from me, and then I saw that she was crying. The light glinted on a large tear running down her cheek.

‘Sally!’ I exclaimed. And I reached out and took her hand. As I did so, she openly burst into tears, crumpled up, and practically fell into my arms.

For a moment I thought that she was still frightfully overwrought from the sight of that fearsome beast; but as she clung to me she laughed a little hysterically between her sobs, and murmured:

‘I won’t
mind
your loving me! How could I
mind
? Oh, Toby! Haven’t you guessed that I—I’m terribly in love with
you
?’

Over her shoulder I had been keeping an anxious eye on the door, but it was fast shut and no sound came from beyond it; so at those marvellous words of hers I ceased to think of the terrors outside, and our mouths met in a succession of long, sweet kisses.

A little later she told me she had believed that I thought her both plain and stupid; to which I was able to reply truthfully that her dear face aroused a tenderness in me that I had never felt for any other woman, and that I
knew
her to have more real wisdom than any woman
or
man that I had ever met.

She still seemed to think it astonishing that I should have fallen in love with her, but I said that the boot was on the other foot; and that, anyhow, it was the most rotten luck on her to have developed those sort of feelings for a cripple.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘There is nothing wrong with you apart from the fact that you can’t walk, and that does not make the slightest difference to your personality.’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said a little sadly. ‘And I’m immensely grateful for this present blessing of your love; but I won’t be able to keep it, because I can’t ask you to marry me.’

She turned her head and peered at me in the moonlight. ‘Does that mean that you are secretly married already and have a wife hidden away somewhere?’

‘Good lord, no!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I couldn’t ask a girl like you to tie yourself to a cripple for life. It wouldn’t be fair.’