Beware The Beasts (3 page)

On the following Sunday, old Sir Basil Hether, who was the local authority on everything from pottery to astronomy, was shown into the vicar's study. He was faintly apologetic, but rather more distant in his manner than apologetic.

"I came to see you about the Millham tomb," he said.

"We begin Monday week," said the vicar cheerfully.

"So I heard. But of course, you can't do it, you can't open it, you know very well there's a curse on it."

The Reverend Martin Webly fingered his jaw patiently and then took up some old papers which lay not far from his elbow on his desk. "Yes, yes," he said, a little scorn in his voice. "That curse. Let me see, I believe it's here somewhere - a copy of it, that would be. Yes, here it is."

Hether extended his hand for it and opened it slowly, carefully, with a certain respect for old things. He peered attentively at the script, "It seems properly clear," he said thoughtfully. "The Latin is easily translated, and you are warned that any disturbance of the tomb will give you grievous trouble."

The Reverend Mr. Webly took the old paper back and looked at it with pursed lips and narrowed eyes out of which his skepticism showed plainly. "I'm glad you find it so clear. I fail in that. 'Who dares disturb this tomb releases unto death my companion and now his,'" he read. "That's a free translation, isn't it?"

Hether nodded. "And clear enough, too, I should say."

Webly made no comment. He put the paper down and crossed his hands on his paunch, eyeing the old man with ill-concealed impatience. "Nevertheless, Monday we begin work. I don't anticipate that it will take us very long. And if the men make any kind of trouble about this superstition, I'll take a hand myself."

Hether brightened visibly. "That might not be so bad, then," he said reflectively. "As I understand the curse, it applies only to the disturber of the grave; so you are not really loosing any menace upon the parish."

Webly ignored this thrust and asked about the legends which existed about Nicholas Millham. He had heard hints, of course, but few people wished to speak of the old man. What was there about him?

Hether, however, had no inhibitions. He could say quite readily what there was about Sir Nicholas Millham. The old man had practised demonology, and there were any number of queer events which had been attributed to him in the absence of any other explanation. And then there was, of course, the matter of his death; he had apparently had some foreknowledge of that, and had had the tomb erected and the curse put on it just a week before he was killed in an accident.

Webly had some difficulty restraining himself. He reminded his visitor that this was, after all, the twentieth century, not the dark ages. "But you've said nothing about Millham's companion to which he so cryptically alludes," he went on. "I presume he did have a companion - or is that presuming too much?"

If Sir Basil Hether was aware of the vicar's sarcasm, he chose to overlook it. "Oh, yes, several. But his favorite was a large black dog, named Daemos, and the story goes that of dark nights the villagers could hear the old man's voice calling his dog - 'Here, Daemos! Here, Daemos!'"

"What a queer name for a dog!"

Hether rose to go. "Oh, not at all," he said benignly. "When you consider the root of it in the Greek, and its subsequent use in our own language:
daimon
to
daemon
or
demon
. I dare say Millham had a sense of humor."

The Reverend Mr. Webly mentally reserved to include Sir Basil Hether among those destined to receive the benefit of his prayers and showed him out, unmindful of the old man's dubious mutterings and head shakings. The vicar was a practical man; he permitted Hether's "I really wouldn't do it! I wouldn't sanction it!" to pass from his mind even more swiftly than the old man passed from his sight down the lane to where his car stood waiting.

On Monday week the work was begun, everyone exercising the utmost care, so that no damage might be done. The vicar told himself and his parishioners that he was not a vandal. Nevertheless, he had to import workmen from outside; without saying so in so many words, old Hether had given him to understand that he would have difficulty with local workmen, and he had been right. The vicar got outside help, preached a sermon on the evils of superstition, and devoted his attention to the matter of the Millham tomb. He was eager to discover now how great the treasure would be, and whether it would pay the parish's debt, which would please his superiors very much and make his own chances for advancement so much greater. He did not at the moment consider the possibility of his advancement to another plane.

By Wednesday, the coffin was ready for its opening, and the vicar, true to his word, came from his study and opened it. He revealed Sir Nicholas Millham's remains, a small casket of jewels, and a thick mass of musty dust, which slithered like a cloud of fog over the edge of the coffin and vanished. One glance at the jewels was enough to convince the Reverend Mr. Webly that the parish's financial problem had been solved for the time being. He could not keep from returning to his study and telephoning old Hether to impart something of his triumph to him.

Sir Basil was not enthusiastic. Indeed, he was curiously restrained, so that the vicar had the uncomfortable impression that he was talking to a listener who sat annoyingly waiting for the end of a story which had already patently ended.

The vicar's triumph, however, was not to be dampened. He announced a special thanksgiving service for that evening, and preached a long sermon on the ways of Providence, despite the fact that the majority of his parishioners were not present. Old Hether was there, and several strangers, summoned no doubt by the unusual ringing of the bells, and curious about the whispered tales already making their way over the countryside about the vicar's find. The vicar had a few uneasy moments, until he could reassure himself that the jewels were safely locked up where no stranger was likely to find them; the only individual who might demand more information than he cared to impart to his parish was the tax collector for the Crown, and he was certainly not among those present.

Being practical and methodical, the vicar made a conservative estimate of the treasure's worth, and reckoned that, with care, there might be a small fund left over after the parish debt had been paid. It was while he was doing this late that night in his study that the telephone rang and old Hether's voice came over the wire to inquire whether the vicar was still all right.

"Of course, I'm all right. What do you mean?"

"Forgive my curiosity," murmured Sir Basil. "I told you I was superstitious. By the way, if you should need me - my telephone is next to my bed."

The vicar made short work of him; he was not kind. When he put down the telephone he was convinced that he had better plan to give an entire series of lectures upon the evil effects of superstition. If he had been irritated by the curious, stolid refusal of his parish workmen to assist at the opening of the tomb, he was even more disquieted and angered by the persistent stupidity of a man like old Hether, who ought to be about setting a good example rather than upholding the error of these country ways. The vicar, clearly, was from the city; he had come out of White-chapel, which was not a savory environment. Having seen a good deal of the rawer side of life, he had a natural tendency to be irate about those needless beliefs which always work to make the lot of a poor yokelry more difficult.

When he put out the light and went to bed, the vicar's mind was occupied with sonorous and rather pompous lines deriding the folly of superstition.

He was awakened in the night by what he thought at first was rain against the window pane; but, as he came more fully to his senses, he recognized it as a
snuffling
sound - the kind of sound an animal might make. At the same time he was conscious of a veritable bedlam in the village; it seemed to him that every dog in the countryside was barking furiously, madly, as if something frightened or angered them. He turned over on his side and listened intently; the snuffling sound was repeated.

It was manifestly ridiculous that any kind of animal could be snuffling at his window. The vicar slept on the second floor, and the walls went straight down to the ground, with not even a vine up which something might crawl, much less the roof of a verandah. Yet, there it was, a peculiar, persistent snuffling, accompanied from time to time by an oddly muted whine or growl, and set all the time against that wild barking in the background. He got up at last, irritated, and went over to the window.

The window looked out upon the lane and the corner streetlight. Almost the first thing he saw was a man standing there; he stood a little in the shadow, and yet his face was clearly visible - a long, dark, saturnine face, with dark pools for eyes, not exactly a young man, and yet not seeming old except in the curious parchment-like quality of his gaunt features. It was not someone the vicar knew.

While he stood looking, the vicar observed that the stranger under the light was not alone; a large dog bounded out of the vicarage yard and came quietly to his side. It seemed to the vicar with a curious kind of thrill that man and dog both turned and looked for a moment intently at the window from which he peered outward before they turned and vanished in the dark direction of the churchyard.

"What a strange thing!" murmured the vicar.

He stood there a little longer and was conscious presently that the bedlam of barking had ceased. It did not occur to him that the barking had stopped in approximately the time it would have taken the watcher and his dog to reach the churchyard. In some respects, the vicar was unimaginative; if he had thought enough of old Hether to give him a ring on the telephone, he might have spared himself certain unpleasant experiences.

It was maddening, but from that evening, everything seemed to go wrong. The bishop took him to task for opening the tomb without first investigating every other avenue of raising money and without having the parish convinced of the right to open it. "A form of desecration all the more to be deprecated since it was done purely for material gain," wrote the bishop. There went the Reverend Mr. Webly's chance for immediate advancement. Before noon, his gardener quit, coming into the study and putting his case very stolidly.

"Seein' as how the dogs do bark, and you know what that means, Reverend Zur."

"Why, no, what does it mean?" demanded the vicar truculently.

"Strange dogs about, there be, zur."

"Indeed!"

The vicar paid him and sent him off, not without rancor. It was being borne in upon him painfully that a man even of his standing could not educate people hidebound by all manner of legend and lore simply by denying the existence of their beliefs.

And before the day was out, there was, as might have been expected, old Hether. The vicar was obviously in no mood to see him, but there he was, coming as if he expected to be welcomed by open arms.

"Hear the dogs last night?" asked Hether.

"Who didn't?"

"Thought you might have heard 'em. So did I. Thought it might put you to thinking a bit."

"What fools these mortals be!" quoted the vicar pointedly.

"Quite so," agreed Sir Basil cheerfully, producing an old leather book. "Brought you a book I thought you'd like to see. Picture of old Millham in it."

The vicar took the book, glancing at its title:
South Country Demonology
. He opened it to the picture and gazed at the countenance of Nicholas Millham. He had instantly the singular sensation of looking upon someone familiar, but he could not place him. He frowned briefly before handing the book back.

"That black dog beside him was supposed to be his familiar. Of course you're aware of the legend about practitioners of the black arts and their demon companions, who took odd forms, but quite often that of a black dog," old Hether went on.

"I've seen that face somewhere before," said the vicar.

"Then you've seen the book, too, eh?"

"Oh, no."

"Must have. This is the only place Millham's portrait occurs. Never been reprinted, as far as I know, and the book's rare."

Their conversation was not pleasant.

It was not until Sir Basil had gone that the vicar remembered where he had seen that strange gaunt face before - it was the face of the nocturnal watcher under the streetlight in the lane!

"What a curious coincidence!" he thought. It was a pity that the vicar was conditioned to think in platitudes.

That evening he made the mistake of working late in the church; though the work he had to do there could have been done any time, it was possible that the vicar obstinately pursued this course because Sir Basil Hether had none too subtly hinted that it might be well if the vicar stayed inside after dark.

When he came out, on his way to the vicarage, he was immediately aware of the wild barking of the Millham dogs, the same mad volume of sound which had assaulted the usually quiet country darkness on the previous night. He was also uncomfortably conscious of being under surveillance and, looking around him from the comparative security of the church steps, he made out a figure standing at the entry to the churchyard just beyond. Because of what the vicar felt must be an optical illusion, it seemed to him that he could see the gate to the churchyard and an edge of one of the gravestones beyond showing directly through the figure of the man standing there. He thought briefly of old Hether's ridiculous hints, and reflected that in any case, it was rather late to be considering them.

He went down the steps and up the lane to where the lights of the vicarage shone out. A man's voice was raised in a shout behind him, and he thought with a warm glowing how pleasant it was to hear the familiar voices of countrymen in the deepening darkness of nights - men in the fields, men on their way home, men with lanterns looking for lost lambs or calves. Even as he thought this, he was aware suddenly of the words that reached his consciousness. He could not believe the evidence of his own ears - a man's voice calling insistently, with a strangely ominous quality:
"Here, Daemos! Here, Daemos!"