They Used Dark Forces (22 page)

For a moment she broke off to get her breath then, her voice rising to an hysterical note, she cried, ‘After I'd watched for a few minutes Malacou stopped chanting. Khurrem got up from her knees. They both stripped off their robes. They had nothing on beneath them and stood there naked. Then … then, he picked her up and seemed to be offering her to the spirit of Evil. And … and then he had her on the altar. His own daughter, Gregory! His own daughter!'

Gregory stared at Erika in horror. For a moment he was at a loss for words, then he exclaimed, ‘It almost passes belief that a man could do such a thing.'

‘It's true!' she cried. ‘Every word I've said. I saw it with my own eyes.' Then, bursting into tears, she threw herself down beside him.

Putting his arms about her shoulders, he strove to comfort her. ‘There, there, my sweet. To have witnessed such a scene must have upset you terribly. But at least we now know where we stand. Stefan was right. Malacou really is a disciple of the Devil.'

‘But incest!' Erika sobbed. ‘The sight of them locked together naked on that altar almost made me sick. It was revolting—utterly horrible.'

‘Dearest, I can imagine how you must have felt; but I suppose Satanists stick at nothing. Probably the more evil the things they do, the more power they draw down to themselves from Satan. One can only pity Khurrem. She is completely dominated by him. And this explains the wretched state she's in: her long silences and heavy drinking. I don't suppose it is the first time this has happened. No doubt she's still good at heart and loathes having to give herself to her father, but he compels her to.'

Still sobbing, Erika nodded. ‘I … I'm sure you're right. People whose consciences are troubling them often try … try to drown their thoughts in drink. But how awful for her, darling; how awful for her to … to have to let him make use of her body. Somehow we must help her to escape from him.'

For a moment Gregory remained silent, then he said, ‘Listen,
my sweet. However much you may feel the urge to try to help her you must make no attempt to do so; anyhow, for the present. I'm helpless here. Until I can stand on my feet again and give a good account of myself we'll both remain in Malacou's power. You've got to do your damnedest to act naturally tomorrow with both of them, and for the time being try to put out of your mind what you saw.'

Suddenly she jerked herself away from him, her eyes distended, her expression again one of terror. ‘But, darling, I thought I told you. They know I saw them.'

‘What!' he exclaimed. ‘No! How could they?'

‘When I was kneeling on the roof of the chapel looking down at them my knees were on one beam and my hands on another. As I moved to get up I slipped. By then my hands were off the beam. One of them landed on a plank and it was rotten. Part of it snapped off and fell. For a moment I remained there petrified. They both stopped … stopped what they were doing and looked up. They must have known that it was I who was spying on them. Who else could it have been?'

‘It might have been a tramp who'd climbed up there hoping to find a way into the ruin to get a night's shelter,' Gregory suggested. But even as he spoke he knew that he was fooling himself. Malacou's highly developed sixth sense would have told him that it was Erika who was up on the roof.

‘No, that won't wash,' he conceded quickly. ‘This is bad, my darling; very bad. But we mustn't take too black a view. Malacou knows that we are in no position to make trouble for him, and there's a chance that he may be too ashamed of himself to mention it. Anyhow, we must pretend that we know nothing of this, then he may think that you did not actually see what he was doing and supposed him only to be engaged in some occult ceremony. For us the really important thing is that we should keep clear of the Nazis; and that goes for him, too. He can't throw us out without incriminating himself; so he's got to keep us here until I'm fit to move under my own steam. Our best course will be to ignore the whole thing and we'll hope that he and Khurrem will, too.'

After a while Erika agreed to do her best to act naturally with them both the next day; then she crept into bed with
Gregory and lay for a long time with his arm about her. There could be no question now of their making love; only of her drawing sufficient strength from him to face the return journey past the chapel roof. In the early hours of the morning, when it seemed certain that the hideous ritual was long past its culmination and the chapel would again be deserted, she summoned up her courage to kiss him a belated good-night and set off on her way back to the Manor.

At his usual hour next morning Malacou came to Gregory's room. There were pouches under his eyes and his dark face seemed more heavily lined than usual. Sitting down he said at once:

‘Before the arrival of your friends I told you that a new influence was about to make itself felt here and that it would be adverse to the rapport we had succeeded in establishing between us. When Kuporovitch reappeared I thought he would be the cause of it, but in that I was wrong. It is the woman whom you have made your mistress who has come between us, and I will not tolerate her presence here. She must leave tonight.'

That Malacou might make such a demand had never occurred to Gregory. Frantically he sought in his mind for a way to avert such a blow but, caught off his guard, he cried angrily, ‘You lecherous blackguard! This is because she found you out, eh?'

The doctor nodded. ‘She has brought this on herself. She saw things she was not meant to see.'

‘She did, indeed! And for you to embrace your daughter carnally is against the laws of God and man. We know you now for what you are—a Satanist. With her you performed a Black Mass. You can't deny it.'

‘I do not seek to. But desperate situations require desperate remedies. Every Black Mass, as you term it, is said with an intention. Although I have said nothing of it, you know the situation that has arisen between Khurrem and Hauff. He has to die; and the ceremony I performed was with that intention.'

For a moment Gregory considered this explanation, then he said, ‘I know you are bitterly opposed to her marrying Hauff; although I've reason to suppose that she is not altogether unwilling. That makes things infinitely worse. And to
have forced her to commit incest with you in the hope of getting rid of him is utterly unforgivable. Rather than perform such an abominable act surely you could have overcome your prejudice against him as a German and a Nazi. You did so in the case of von Altern. In fact you told me that you favoured the match and actually bought him for her.'

Malacou passed a hand wearily over his black, grey-flecked hair. Then he gave a slight shrug and said, less aggressively, ‘That was entirely different. Perhaps you will understand me better if I tell you that I have loved only two women in my life: my wife and Khurrem.

‘I married my wife when she was sixteen; at sixteen Khurrem had become the image of her dead mother. Condemn me if you will, but at that age I seduced her. She was not unwilling, for she thought more highly of me than of other men. For ten years we were completely happy and our relationship had nothing at all to do with Satanism. Then she met von Altern and fell desperately in love with him. I loved her dearly, so gave way to her pleading and arranged for her to marry him.

‘A few years later came the war and I left Poland to live here. Von Altern's military duties had already taken him away. Khurrem is passionate by nature and she was then at an age when women feel their greatest desire for sexual satisfaction, so I soon persuaded her to play again the part of a wife to me. By that time I had progressed far in my occult studies and I needed a woman's aid. At first she was reluctant, so I hypnotised her and in that way made her give herself to me as the culmination of an occult operation. But such ceremonies are far more effective if the woman is conscious of the part she plays and is willing. As time went on I lightened the state of hypnosis under which I took her, until from habit she accepted the role that fate had decreed for her. From that time onward, on certain favourable days each month, I have been able to continue my enjoyment of her with the advancement of my occult activities. It is thus that the present state of things has come about.'

Frowning, Gregory listened to this appalling story, then he said, ‘You have made her, then, your chattel; and, like yourself, a servant of the Devil.'

‘You may term her that,' Malacou retorted defiantly, ‘but she is also my love, and I will not be robbed of her. I will allow nothing, nothing to come between us. That is why Hauff has to die; and your woman, who would try to part us, must go.'

‘No, no!' Gregory protested. ‘I can't possibly do without her.'

‘Tarik and I looked after you when neither she nor Kuporovitch was here and now that you are in a much better state it will be even easier for us to do so.'

‘Maybe! But God knows I've spent weeks enough alone here for hours on end. I need her companionship.'

‘You will have to do without it.'

‘Why the hell should I?'

‘Because her continued presence would interfere with the development of the psychic link between us.'

‘There will be no further link. I'll see to that. Nothing will induce me to lend myself again to these practices. I'll not have you lead me to become a servant of Satan.'

Malacou's eyes flashed and his voice was firm. ‘That need not follow; but you will obey my wishes. And it is my wish that when Frau Bjornsen comes to see you this afternoon you should tell her that she must leave Sassen tonight.'

‘She will refuse. She'll tell you to go to hell where you belong.'

‘She will not refuse. And unless she prefers to risk bringing the Gestapo here she will leave the Manor without making a scene. Remember, you are still a helpless cripple, so completely in my power. If I wish I could starve you into sending her away. But I do not want to impede your recovery. Instead, I shall have it conveyed to Herman Hauff that she is an anti-Nazi and is saying things detrimental to the regime. He will then have her deported.'

Gregory knew he was cornered. If he allowed Erika to resist and Malacou had her denounced her papers would be very strictly examined; then, should there be the least flaw in them, that might lead her into desperate trouble; whereas if she presented them herself at the frontier there was little to fear. Besides, even if they took the risk of ignoring his threat, in the
belief that he would be most loath to draw the attention of the Gestapo to anyone who had stayed as a guest at Sassen, how could they possibly carry on a war against him when he had so many means of bringing pressure on them?

‘Very well, then,' he agreed angrily; ‘since you insist, I'll tell her she must leave.'

That afternoon proved one of the bitterest he ever remembered. For three hours he and Erika tried to think of a way in which they could get the better of the Satanist and force him to rescind his demand, but in vain. At length, tearfully and in great distress, they parted, Erika having promised to let Gregory know the moment she arrived safely in Sweden, by means of a message of thanks sent to her hostess.

For the next forty-eight hours Gregory got little sleep, both from worrying about Erika's safety and about his own position; for Malacou did not come to see him, and speculating on the Satanist's possible powers made him most uneasy. But on the second evening the doctor reappeared and brought with him a telegram addressed to Khurrem. It had been handed in the previous afternoon at Trelleborg and ran:
Rotten crossing but soon over many thanks for generous hospitality. Selma
.

When Gregory had seen it Malacou sat down and said, ‘For the past week I have been able to spare little thought for you, owing to my preoccupation with this affair of Khurrem's; but now I am capable of concentrating again on other matters. Now you know that Frau Bjornsen has arrived safely in Sweden your mind should also be free from anxiety. Therefore, let us talk.'

‘I have nothing to say to you,' Gregory replied quietly. ‘The only thing I intend to concentrate on is getting well, so that I can relieve you of my presence as soon as possible.'

‘In that you are mistaken,' the doctor told him with equal quietness. ‘For our future relationship it is of the first importance that we should further develop the telepathic faculties that we have established between us.'

‘There will be no future relationship. When I leave this place I hope never to set eyes on you again; and if I do I shall avoid you like the plague.'

‘In that you are again mistaken. You cannot avoid your
destiny and it is written in the stars that we shall be brought together. For some time past it has no longer been necessary for me to hypnotise you while attending to your leg. But if you refuse to co-operate with me I shall be forced to resume the practice and so compel your obedience.'

‘I won't let you!' Gregory burst out. ‘I did before, but now I'll resist you with all the force of my will. And you'll find it stronger than yours.'

Malacou closed his eyes and bent his head, then remained silent. Two minutes later Tarik came into the room and the doctor spoke to him in Yiddish. The hunchback advanced on Gregory. Bracing himself, he shouted at Malacou, ‘Call him off. If he lays hands on me I'll strangle him.'

‘Should you try, you would be more of a fool than I take you for,' remarked the doctor. ‘Tarik is very strong and if you struggle it is certain that you will re-break your leg.'

Gregory knew that to be true. Confronted with this awful dilemma, he let Tarik get behind him as he sat up in bed and place his hands firmly on both sides of his face; but he closed his eyes tightly and forced down his head. Tarik slowly pulled it up again and, although Gregory grabbed his wrists and pulled upon them, he found it impossible, without straining his body, to exert enough strength to break the grip.