The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror (14 page)

He lay back and gasped, weak with the intensity of his ejaculation. He felt suddenly fouled, as if he’d been dragged through demoniacal cesspools of sin.

Nauseated, he looked across from his bed at the carving. Its coarse features seemed even more hideous to him now than before, and he did not doubt but that in some repulsively Freudian way its lecherous features—mirrored, as he now realized, on the demon creature of his nightmare—had influenced his sleeping mind. As he looked at it he found it difficult to understand how he had failed to notice the unclean lust rampant about its face before, like some infernal incubus roused by the harlots of Hell. As he washed himself clean a few minutes later he wondered if it would not be better to get rid of the head, to throw it away and forget it, and in doing so, hopefully, rid himself of the dreams.

Only once, while he dressed, did a discordant thought make him wonder if, perhaps, the dream wasn’t connected in some way with his unsatisfactory relationship with Joan. But the two things were at such extremes in his mind that he could not connect them with anything other than shame. As he looked at the stone this shame transferred itself to this object, intensifying into a firm resolve to get rid of the thing. How could he possibly make any kind of headway with Joan, he told himself, with such a foul obscenity as that thing troubling him?

When Lamson left his flat a short time later, carrying the head in his raincoat pocket, it was with steps so unsteady that he wondered if he was coming down with something. The irritation on his hands had, if anything, become even worse, while aches and pains announced their presence from all over his body while he walked. He wondered if he had overstrained himself when he was helping his brother redecorate his farm, though he’d felt fit enough the day before. The Sunday morning streets were agreeably deserted as he walked along them. The only cars in sight were parked by the kerb. In a way he was glad that the dream had woken him as early as it had. Just past eight thirty now, it would be a while yet, he knew, before the city would start stirring into life today.

‘Dirt-y o-o1d ma-an, dirty o-old ma-an!’
He looked across to where the singsong voices came from. Two small boys of about ten or eleven years in age, perhaps less, were stood at the corner of the street in a shop doorway. Cheeky little brats, Lamson thought to himself as he noticed the shuffling figure their jeers were directed against, a stooped old man slowly making his way down a street leading off from the main road past a line of overfilled dustbins.

Although Lamson could not see his face he could tell that the old man knew the boys were calling out at him. Slow though his pace was, it was also unmistakably hurried, as if he was trying to get out of their way as quickly as he could on his old, decrepit legs.

‘Clear off!’ Lamson shouted angrily, feeling sorry for the old man.

The kids yelped and ran off down an alley, laughing.

If he had not felt so weary himself he would have run after them. How could they act so callously? He watched the old man as he continued up the street. There was something about the painful stoop of his back and the way his legs were bent, that struck a chord of remembrance somewhere. He could almost have been the tramp he met on the moors, except that he hadn’t been anything like as decrepit as this man obviously was, not unless his health had failed disastrously over the last couple of days.

Lamson crossed the road and headed up past St. James church, putting the old man out of his mind. The pleasant singing of the birds in the elms that filled the churchyard helped to ease his spirits, and he breathed in the scent of the grass with a genuine feeling of pleasure. He only wished that his legs didn’t feel so stiff and tired. He wondered again if he was coming down with a bug of some kind.

He paused suddenly by the wall and felt in his pocket, his fingers moving speculatively about the small stone head. Though he did not know properly why, he decided that the churchyard was too near his flat for him to get rid of the stone here. It would be better if he made his way to the canal where he could lose it properly without trace.

As he turned round to leave, he noticed a slight movement out of the corner of his eye. With a feeling of trepidation he paused, turned round and anxiously scanned the solemn rows of headstones.

Nothing moved, except for a light film of drizzle that began to filter down through the overhanging boughs of the trees. Yet, even though he could not see anything to account for what he seemed to have glimpsed, like a blurred shadow moving on the edge of his sight, he was sure that he was not mistaken. He stepped up the street to where a narrow gate led into the churchyard. He looked across it once again, and wished that he could make himself leave this suddenly disturbing place, but he could not. With slow, but far from resolute steps, he walked down the asphalt path between the headstones, his senses attuned to the least disturbance about him: the cold moisture of the drizzle on his hands and face, the hissing of the leaves as the rain passed through them, the singing of the birds that echoed and re-echoed about him, and the distant murmur of a car along Station Road as the clock tolled a quarter to nine. The air seemed strangely still. Or was it his own overwrought imagination, keyed up by the horrendous nightmare, scenes from which still flickered uncomfortably in front of him? He felt a fluttering sensation in his stomach as he looked along the roughhewn stones of the church with its incised windows of stained glass.

Quickening his pace, as the drizzle began to fall with more weight, he passed round the church. As he walked by the trees on the far side of the building, where they screened it off from the bleak back walls of a derelict mill, he again noticed something move. Was it a dog? he wondered, though it had seemed a little large. He whistled, though there was no response other than a thin, frail echo.

He strode between a
row of ornate monuments of polished marble. Was that someone there, crouched in the bushes?

‘Excuse me!’ he called enquiringly. Then stopped. Calling out to a dog, indeed! he thought as he glimpsed what he took to be a large black hound—perhaps an Irish wolfhound—scutter off out of sight between the trees.

As he walked back to the street, he decided that it was about time he got on his way to the canal before the rain got any worse.

The rain did worsen. By the time he reached the towpath of the canal, he was beginning to regret having come out on a morning like this on such a pointless exercise. The rain covered the fields on either side of the canal in a dull grey veil. What colours there were had been reduced to such a washed-out monochrome that the scene reminded him of that in an old and faded photograph. Facing him across the dingy waters of the canal were rows of little sheds and barbed wire fences. Crates of neglected rubbish had been abandoned in the sparsely grassed fields, together with the tyreless carcasses of deserted cars. The fields rose up to the back of a grim row of tenements whose haphazard rooftops formed a jagged black line against the sky. Only the moldering wood of the derelict mills and their soot-grimed bricks on his side of the canal stood out with any clarity.

A dead cat floated in a ring of scum in the stagnant water at his feet, its jellied eyes sightlessly staring at the sky with a dank luminescence.

As he took the stone head from his pocket, Lamson heard someone move behind him. Having thought that he was safely alone, he spun round in surprise. Crouched deep in the shadows between the walls of the mill, where a gate had once stood, was a man. A long, unbuttoned overcoat hung from about his hunched body. It was a coat that Lamson recognized instantly.

‘So it was you those kids were shouting at,’ Lamson accused, as the tramp tottered out into the light. ‘Have you been following me?’ he asked. But there was no response, other than a slight twitching of the old man’s blistered lips into what he took to be a smile, though one that was distinctively malignant and sly. ‘You were following me last night, weren’t you?’ Lamson went on. ‘I heard you when you slipped, so there’s no point denying it. And I saw you this morning when those kids were having a go at you. I thought they were being cruel when they shouted out at you, but I
don’ t know now. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps you are a dirty old man, a dirty, insidious and evil old man.’ Even now there was no more response from the tramp than that same repugnant smile. ‘Haven’t you got a tongue?’ Lamson snapped. ‘Grinning there like a Gargoyle. Well? You were talkative enough when we met on the moors. Have you taken vows of silence since then? Come on! Speak up, damn you!’ He clenched his fists, fighting back the impulse to hit him in the face, even though it was almost too strong to resist. What an ugly old creature he was, what with his pockmarked face all rubbery and grey and wet, and those bloated, repulsive lips. Was he some kind of half-breed? he wondered, though of what mixture he could not imagine. A thin, grey trickle of saliva hung down from a corner of his mouth. There was a streak of blood in it. As he stared at him he realized that he looked far worse, far, far worse than before, as if whatever disease had already swollen and eroded his features had suddenly accelerated its effect.

The tramp stared down at the stone in
Lamson’ s hand.

‘Were you after gettin’ rid of it? Is that why you’ve come to this place?’ he asked finally.

‘Since it’s mine, I have every right to, if that’s what I want to do,’ Lamson said, taken aback at the accusation.

‘An’ why should you choose to do such a thing, I wonder? You liked it enough when I first showed it to you on the bus. Couldn’t ’ardly wait to buy it off o’ me then, could you? ’Ere’s the money, give us the stone, quick as a flash! Couldn’t ’ardly wait, you couldn’t. An’ ere you are, all ’et up an’ nervous, can’t ’ardly wait to get rid o’ the thing. What’s the poor sod been doin’ to you? Givin’ you nightmares, ’as it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What should I mean? Just a joke. That’s all. Can’t you tell? Ha, ha, ha!’ He spat a string of phlegm on the ground. ‘Only a joke,’ he went on, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

‘Only a joke, was it?’ Lamson asked
, his anger inflamed with indignation at the old man’s ill-concealed contempt for him. ‘And I suppose it was only a joke when you followed me here as well? Or did you have some other purpose in mind? Did you?’

‘P’raps I was only tryin’ to make sure you came to no ’arm. Wouldn’t want no ’arm to come to you now, would I? After all, you bought that ’ead off o’ me fair an’ square, didn’t you?
Though it does seem an awful shame to me to toss it into the canal there. Awful shame it’d be. Where’d you get another bit o’ stone like that? It’s unique, you know, that’s what it is right enough. Unique. Wouldn’t want to throw it into no canal, would you? Where’s the sense in it? Or the use? Could understand if there was somethin’ bad an’ nasty about it. Somethin’ unpleasant, like. But what’s bad an’ nasty about that? Don’t give you no nightmares, now, does it? Nothin’ like that? Course not! Little bit o’ stone like that? An’ yet, ’ere you are, all ’et up an’ ready to toss it away, an’ no reason to it. I can’t understand it at all. I can’t. I swear it.’ He shook his head reproachfully, though there was a cunning grin about his misshapen mouth, as if laughing at a secret joke. ‘Throwin’ it away,’ he went on in the same infuriatingly mocking voice, ‘Ne’er would ha’ thought o’ doin’ such a thing— old bit o’ stone like that. You know ’ow much it might be worth? Can you even guess? Course not! An’ yet you get it for next to nothin’ off o’ me, only keep it for a day or so, then the next thing I knows, ’ere you are all ready to toss it like an empty can into the canal. An’ that’s what you’ve come ’ere for, isn’t it?’

‘And if it is, why are you here?’ Lamson asked angrily. The old man knew too much—far, far too much. It wasn’t natural! ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘And why have you been spying on me? Come on, give me an answer!’

‘An answer, is it? Well, p’raps I will. It’s too late now, I can tell, for me to do any ‘arm in lettin’ you know. ’E’s ’ad ’is ’ands on you by now, no doubt, Eh?’

Lamson felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered the dream he had woken from barely two hours ago. But the old man couldn’t mean that. It was impossible for him to know about it, utterly, completely, irrefutably impossible! Lamson tried to make
himself leave, but he couldn’t, not until he had heard what the old man had to say, even though he knew that he didn’t want to listen. He had no choice. He couldn’t. ‘Are you going to answer my questions?’ he asked, his voice sounding far more firm than he felt.

The tramp leered disgustedly.

‘’Aven’t ’ad enough, ’ave you? Want to ’ear about it as well?’

‘As well as what?’

The tramp laughed. ‘You know. Though you pretend that you don’t, you know all right. You know.’ He wiped one watering, red-rimmed eye. ‘I ’spect you’ll please ’im a might bit better ’n’ me.
For a while, at least. I wasn’t much for ’im, even at the first. Too old. Too sick. Even then I was too sick. Sicker now, though, o’ course. But that’s ’ow it is. That’s ’ow it’s got to be, I s’ppose. ’E wears you out. That ’e does. Wears you out. But you, now, you, you’re as young as ’e could ask for. An’ fit. Should last a while. A long, long while, I think, before ’e wears you out. Careful! Wouldn’t want to drop ’im now, would you?’

It seemed as if something cold and clammy was clenching itself like some tumorous hand inside him. With a shudder of revulsion, Lamson looked down at the stone in his hand. Was he mistaken or was there a look of satisfaction on its damnable face? He stared at it hard, feeling himself give way to a nauseating fear that drained his limbs of their strength.