The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror (13 page)

As he studied them, he felt that if they had remained in their entirety, the head would have looked almost satiric, despite the bloated lips. In fact, the slightly raised eyebrows and long, straight nose—or what remained of them—were still reminiscent of Pan.

He heard a glass being placed on the table beside him. When he looked up he saw that it was Allan Sutcliffe.

‘I didn’t notice you in here before. Have you only just got in?’ Lamson asked.

Sutcliffe wiped his rain-spotted glasses on a handkerchief as he sat down, nodding his head. He replaced his glasses, then thirstily drank down a third of his pint before unbuttoning his raincoat and loosening the scarf about his neck. His face was flushed as if he had been running.

‘I didn’t think I’d be able to get here in time for a drink. I have to be off again soon to get to the Film Society. What have you got there, Henry?
You been digging out your garden or something?’

Almost instinctively, Lamson cupped his hands about the head.

‘It’d be strange sort of garden in a second floor flat, wouldn’t it?’ he replied acidly.

He drew his hands in towards his body, covering what little still showed of the head with the ends of his scarf. Somehow he felt ashamed of the thing, almost as if it was obscene and repulsive and peculiarly shameful.

‘Where did you say you were off to?’ he asked, intending to change the subject. ‘The Film Society? What are they presenting tonight?’

‘
Nosferatu
. The original. Why? D’you fancy coming along to it as well? It’s something of a classic, I believe. Should be good.’

Lamson shook his head.

‘Sorry, but I don’t feel up to it tonight. I only stopped in for a pint or two before going on home and getting an early night. I’ve had a long day already, what with helping my brother, Peter, redecorating the inside of his farmhouse. I’m about done in.’

Glancing significantly at the clock above the bar, Sutcliffe drained his glass, saying, as he placed it back on the table afterwards: ‘I’ll have to be off now. It starts in another ten minutes.’

‘I’11 see you tomorrow as we planned,’ Lamson said. ‘At twelve, if that’s still okay?’

Sutcliffe nodded as he stood up to go.

‘We’ll meet at the Wimpy, then I can get a bite to eat before we set off for the match.’

‘Okay.’

As Sutcliffe left, Lamson opened his sweat-softened hands and looked at the head concealed in the cramped shadows in between. Now that his friend had gone, he felt puzzled at his reaction with the thing. What was it about the thing that should affect him like this? he wondered to himself. Placing it back in his pocket, he decided that he had had enough of the pub and strode outside, buttoning his coat against the rain.

Sunlight poured with a cold liquidity through his bedroom window when Lamson awoke. It shone across the cellophane that protected the spines of the hardbound books on the shelves facing his bed, obscuring their titles. It seemed glossy and bright and clean, with the freshness of newly fallen snow.

Yawning contentedly, he stretched,
then drew his dressing gown onto his shoulders as he gazed out of the window. Visible beyond the roof opposite was a bright and cloudless sky. He felt the last dull dregs of sleep sloughing from him as he rubbed away the fine granules that had collected in his eyes. Somewhere he could hear a radio playing a light pop tune, though it was almost too faint to make out.

Halfway through washing he remembered the dreams. They had completely passed from his mind on wakening, and it was with an unpleasant shudder that they returned to him now.

The veneer of his cheerfulness was dulled by the recollection, and he paused in his ablutions to look back at his bed. They were dreams he was not normally troubled with, and he was loath to think of them now.

‘To Hell with them!’ he muttered self-consciously as he returned to scrubbing the threads of dirt from underneath his nails.

The measured chimes of the clock on the neo-Gothic tower, facing him across the neat churchyard of St. James, were tolling midday when Lamson walked past the Municipal Library. Sutcliffe, who worked at a nearby firm of accountants as an articled clerk, would be arriving at the Wimpy further along the street any time now. Going inside, Lamson ordered himself a coffee and took a seat by the window. He absent-mindedly scratched his hand, wondering nonchalantly, when he noticed what he was doing, if he had accidentally brushed it against some of the nettles that grew up against the churchyard wall. A few minutes later Sutcliffe arrived, and the irritation passed from his mind, forgotten.

‘You’re looking a bit bleary eyed today, Henry,’ Sutcliffe remarked cheerfully. ‘An early night, indeed! Too much bed and not enough sleep, that’s your trouble.’

‘I wish it was,’ Lamson replied. ‘I slept well enough last night.
Too well, perhaps.’

‘Come again?’

‘Some dreams—’ Lamson started to explain, before he was interrupted by Sutcliffe as the waitress arrived.

‘Wimpy and chips and coffee, please.’

When she’d gone, Sutcliffe said: ‘I’m sorry. What was that you were saying?’

But the inclination to tell him had gone. Instead, Lamson talked about the Rovers’ chances this afternoon in their match against Rochdale. As they spoke, though, his mind was not wholly on what they were talking about. He was troubled, though he did not know properly why, by the dreams he had been about to tell Sutcliffe about, but which, on reconsideration, he had decided to keep to himself.

He was glad that he had a full day ahead of him, what with the football match this afternoon and a date with Joan at the Tavern tonight. Sutcliffe was taking his fiancé with them, and it promised to be an enjoyable evening for them all. He only wished that his relationship with Joan, who he had been going out with now for three months, wasn’t so peculiarly Platonic. Whether this was his fault or hers, he did not know. A bit of both, he supposed, when he thought about it. Yet, if things did not improve very soon, he knew that their relationship, whatever his own inner feelings might be, would start to cool. Was this the cause of the dreams? he wondered, as he tried to concentrate on what Sutcliffe was saying. There did not seem to be any other reason he could think of at the moment that could account for them, and he decided that this must be it.

As Lamson walked home through the vaporous gloom beneath the old street lamps along Beechwood Avenue, after leaving Joan at her parents’ home, his mind was deep in thought. It had been, as he had expected, an enjoyable evening, but only because of the new folk group they had been able to listen to at the Tavern. Joan had been no different than before: friendly and feminine in every way that he could wish, talkative—but not too much so—intelligent, amusing, and yet… and yet what was missing? Or was it him? What was it, he wondered, that made him feel so fatherly towards her, instead of the way in which at all other times he wished, even yearned, to be?

If not for the unexpected sound of someone slipping on the pavement some distance behind him, he would not have been brought out of his reverie until he reached Station Road and the last, short stretch to his flat. As it was, he half intentionally, half instinctively turned round to see if someone had fallen.

But all he glimpsed on the otherwise deserted avenue was the vague impression of someone merging hurriedly with the shadowy privet bushes midway between the feeble light of the lamp posts further back. So fleeting was the impression, though, that he would have taken it for the blurred motion of a cat that had raced across the avenue, but for the distinct recollection of something having slipped on the footpath.

For a moment or two he waited and watched in vain, certain that whoever or whatever hid in the gloom of the privet had not moved since he turned, and was only waiting for him to turn back again to emerge. It was disturbing, and he tried to play down his nervousness with the thought that it was probably only some kids playing an idiotic game of hide-and-seek in the dark. Unconvinced though he was by this explanation, it was substantial enough for him as an excuse to turn round with at least the pretense of indifference and continue on his way home. Even so, it was with a definite feeling of relief, however, when he reached Station Road, where the bright shop windows, neon signs and the passing cars and buses brought him back into reality. With more speed than he usually employed he strode along to the door leading into his flat and raced up the two flights of stairs to his rooms.

As he closed the door behind him he noticed the small black head he had bought from the tramp perched where he had left it on the dresser, its outline gleaming in the reflection of the streetlights outside.

It was looking towards him, crooked at an obtuse angle on its broken neck. He threw his overcoat onto the bed and stepped to the window to draw the curtains together before switching on the light. He felt at the radiator opposite his bed by the bookcase. It was just lukewarm.

As he stared morosely about the room, he wondered what had made him buy the head. What perverse attraction had struck him about it before had gone, and all he could see in it now was ugliness and decay. He picked it up. It wasn’t as if he could legitimately claim he’d bought it out of some kind of archaeological interest. It was years since he’d last pottered in that subject at school, and what enthusiasm he may have once had for it had been lost to him long ago. For a moment he rubbed the small lumps on its brows, but he felt too tired suddenly to study it tonight. There was a nagging ache in his back and his arms felt stiff, while the rash-like irritation had returned to tingle on the back of his hands.

Lamson dropped the stone head back on the dresser and began to change into his pajamas. He felt too tired now to think or even place his clothes folded up, as he normally did, on the table beside his bed.

For a moment he struggled to keep awake, but he could not resist. He did not want to resist. All he wanted to do was to surrender himself, his body and soul, to the dull black nothingness of sleep.

Sleep quickly overcame him as he lay on his bed and closed his eyes.

And in his sleep he dreamed.

There was a wood in his dream, a great, deep, darkly mysterious wood that filled him with unease as he listened to its decrepit oaks groaning in the wind.

He stood before it alone. But he did not feel alone. He could sense something watching him malevolently from the gloomy depths of the wood.

The twilight passed into the darkness of night. Shadows glided silently through the trees, gathering as if to stare out at him with small, round, rubicund eyes. Or was it his own eyes playing tricks with the dark?

Then he saw something emerge from the waist high ferns, crawling on all fours across the ground. It was almost black, its naked flesh dry and coarse, strung tight about its jutting bones. Its legs, though hairless, were as the legs of a goat, whilst shrunken breasts, some twelve in number, hung limply from its chest. They swayed as it moved, its jaundiced eyes gleaming from the deep black depths of their sockets with a foul anticipation. There was a convulsive twitching in its long, thin, bony hands.

Unable to move, Lamson watched it crawl towards him. Its penis was hard with lust, the dark nipples of its breasts enlarged and tight. Its lips were wet with overflowing saliva as it drew towards him.

Though partially human, it was hideously inhuman, a foul, unearthly, cacodaemoniacal Pan. Stiff black horns curved upwards from its brows; a scaled and rat-like tail flicked from its spine. He could see the mounting tension of its poised phallus.

He tried to scream.

With all his strength he tried to scream, to cry out and tear himself away from the hideous creature creeping towards him, but there was nothing he could do. He was paralyzed and defenseless.

A murmured chanting sibilantly issued encircling trees, flitting with the wind.

‘Ma dheantar aon scriosadh, athru, gearradh, lot no milleadh ar an ordu feadfar diultu d’e a ioc.’

The rhythmic chanting began to mimic the frenzied beating of a heart, faster and deeper, as the satyr, swaying its lean torso to the rhythms of the chants, came upon Lamson. Its left hand grasped him about the thigh, pulling him down till he knelt on the ground. Its foetid breath blew hot into his face like the searing gusts of a newly opened furnace. He could see the wrinkles in its clammy flesh and the sores suppurating on its lips.

With renewed urgency he wrenched himself free and tried to roll out of its way across the grass. But before he even saw it move he felt its hands grasping him once more. He kicked out at it, whimpering. Its talons tore a deep gash in his trousers and its palm slid searchingly down his leg.

Once more he kicked.

With a slow deliberation it reached out for the buckle of his belt and ripped it free.

It was crouched over him, its softly repulsive underbelly almost touching his legs. In the feeble light its body seemed huge.

With a sudden exertion Lamson managed at last to emit a scream.

As its hand reached for him between his legs darkness sprang up about him like a monstrous whirlpool.

He felt dizzy and sick, shuddering with horror as he awoke, his body drenched with perspiration in the tangled blankets of his bed. At the same time he felt the final climax of an orgasm clasp hold of him.