Strange Conflict (44 page)

De Richleau knew that there was nothing that he could do to help his friends and that his own body lay entirely at the Satanist's mercy. It was impossible for him even to begin the battle—that battle which meant so much—until the Doctor slept; and what powers the Satanist might be able to exert in the meantime was a matter which the Duke had no means of guessing. Perhaps he was already too late. Perhaps by his former cowardice he had robbed himself of all chance of being able to meet his enemy in battle on the astral.

Dismissing that awful thought which sapped his courage, he summoned all his fortitude to endure in patience the new ceremony of compulsion which his adversary was about to exercise upon his corpse, while he could only remain a helpless spectator.

Having returned to the sanctuary behind the altar, Doctor Saturday stood looking down at the Duke's body while de Richleau took up a position just above and behind his own head.

He had never practised necromancy but he had read a considerable amount about it so he was perfectly well aware that his unfortunate corpse might now be subject to all kinds of abominable treatment.

His only consolation was that he had sealed the nine openings of his body early that afternoon so he felt reasonably confident that the Doctor could not cause an elemental to enter and take possession of it. But should all the Satanist's efforts to reanimate it fail, it was quite on the cards that in a fit of fury he would smash or sever some vital part, thereby rendering it unfit for further service.

If he bashed in or cut off the head, or drove a knife through the heart, stomach or liver, the effect would be exactly the same as if his victim had blown out his own brains before leaving for the astral, the Duke would still be in a position to challenge the Doctor on the astral, but, even if he had defeated the Mulatto, he would never again be able to return to his own body.

He knew that, if only he could triumph over the Satanist, it was really of very little moment whether he was able to get back to his own body afterwards or not. It might well be that his incarnation as Monseigneur le Duc de Richleau, Knight of the Most Exalted Order of the Golden Fleece, was now over.

It is written that each of us is allotted a certain span for every Earth life, and that no one has the power to prolong his time here for a single second; although, having free will, we may at our peril terminate our lives by suicide or, to our detriment in future lives, shorten our present existence by abuse of the body through over-indulgence in alcohol or other excesses.

If the sands of his recent incarnation
had
run out it would at least be a mighty consolation to know that by his last act of free will he had rescued his friends from their state as Zombies, even if he was unable to rejoin them; but that depended upon the outcome of the battle which he had yet to wage.

A thought which perturbed him far more than the possibility of a mortal wound being inflicted on his body was that his enemy might mutilate it. The Duke was completely powerless to lift a finger in defence of his own corpse, and there was nothing whatever to prevent the Doctor's emasculating it with a knife, cutting off the ears and the nose and putting out the eyes. If that happened, de Richleau, even if he won his astral battle afterwards, would still be compelled to return to the hideous wreck of a carcase that remained and to live on, perhaps for years, as a repulsive, shattered invalid. And that, he feared, was just the very thing that the Doctor
would
do when he had again called upon the recalcitrant spirit and it had still refused to answer.

The tall Mulatto removed his terrifying mask and great horned head-dress, then he spoke to the corpse very quietly. ‘It is useless for you to continue to defy me. If you are still in your physical frame you will save yourself a very great deal of pain by sitting up at once. If you are not in your body you must be lurking not very far away and you will return to it immediately. De Richleau, I order you to answer me.'

He waited for a moment and, as no reply was forthcoming, went on: ‘Very well, then; we'll soon see whether or not your spirit is in your body.'

With his long, bony fingers he untied the Duke's right shoe and removed both it and the sock. He then took a long taper of black wax from the drawer of an old carved chest at the side of the room and, lighting it, applied the flame to the sole of the bare foot.

De Richleau felt no pain whatever but he viewed the operation with considerable distress, since he knew that if he did ever return to his body he was going to find himself with an extremely nasty burn.

For a good three minutes the Mulatto held the flame under the arch of the Duke's instep, until the flesh blackened and gave off a sickly smell. Suddenly he lifted the taper and blew it out. Having replaced it in the drawer, he remarked:

‘Now at least we know that it isn't that you escaped the full effects of the drug which I put in the water you drank at midday. You were clever enough to get out of your body before rigor mortis set in. However, I have no doubt whatsoever that you are close at hand listening to me, and the sooner you surrender the better it will be for you. I command you to return to your body.'

Once again he waited for a moment. When there was no response, he added: ‘Since you still refuse, I must drag you back by force.'

Turning to the chest, he took from another drawer a little snakeskin bag. Opening its neck, he poured the contents on to a six-sided table and de Richleau saw that they were a collection of small bones.

The Doctor arranged the bones in a certain pattern and began to chant over them in a low voice. Almost instantly the Duke felt his astral jerk forward and downward towards the head of the corpse.

Metaphorically, de Richleau “dug his heels in” and resisted the pull, with all the strength of his will. For minutes on end it seemed as though the back of his astral was breaking under the strain; everything went black before his astral sight and the monotonous chanting beat like thunder against his mind so that it excluded all else from his astral hearing; but somehow he managed to resist the terrific pull upon him. At last the Satanist ceased chanting and the tug on the Duke's astral stopped.

Making a gesture of annoyance, the Mulatto scooped the bones back into the bag and threw it into the chest.

For several moments he remained staring down at the body, a puzzled frown creasing his forehead. Then he said: ‘I think I know why the bones failed to exert the necessary pressure on you just now. As a European you would
naturally not be subject to Negro magic to the same extent as if you were a coloured man. However, as I have both White and Black blood in my veins, you need not flatter yourself that you can elude me. The Ancient European magic will certainly break down your resistance. I don't think you will face for long the terror inspired by the Great God Pan.'

Going to the chest again, he selected a great variety of items and with some of them carefully erected a pentacle for his own protection. When the defence was completed he placed in its centre a small cauldron, under which he piled wood of three kinds and, with the aid of a pair of bellows, swiftly got the fire going. He then poured seven different liquids into the iron pot and waited patiently while they heated up. As soon as the mixture was brought to the boil he began to mutter an invocation, and every few minutes, after bowing to the North, to the East, to the South and to the West he cast into the bubbling froth one of the horrid things which he had taken from the chest.

As the ceremony proceeded the Duke became conscious of a terrible coldness that was now affecting him upon the astral plane, and he knew that one of the great evil entities of the Outer Circle was approaching. Very faintly at first, gradually growing lounder, he heard the sound of a flute; then quite suddenly the horned god appeared beside him.

De Richleau closed his astral eyes; he dared not look upon that face, for the sight of it in its evil beauty is said to drive men mad and to poison their spirits.

He felt his hand taken in an icy clasp and there was a gentle whispering in his ear. In vain he tried to shut his mind against it; in spite of all his efforts he felt himself being led away and carried swiftly to another sphere.

The cold decreased, the temperature became pleasantly warm again and, for some reason that he could not explain, he suddenly lost all sense of fear. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was in a woodland glade and that seated beside him on a tussock of grass was a good-looking young man with humorous, kindly eyes.

The young man smiled and said: ‘You were terribly frightened, weren't you? But I'm not surprised. People have the most extraordinary ideas about me which aren't true at all. They think of Pan as the most terrifying person;
but you can see for yourself that I'm nothing of the kind. Of course, I can understand their fear of me in a way; it's entirely owing to all the slanderous lies which have been told about me by the priests of the Christian God. He's a dreary fellow, and it always amazes me that in recent centuries so many people should have chosen to follow him instead of me.'

De Richleau sat there, spellbound and quite fascinated, as the young man went on: ‘It was an extraordinary piece of luck for you that the Mulatto decided to call on me. He's no mean antagonist, mind you, but he made a fatal mistake in thinking that his powers extended outside such help as he can secure from his own Voodoo gods. Naturally, as a European deity, I'm on your side—not his; so you needn't worry any more—everything's going to be quite all right.'

In spite of his first fears and suspicions de Richleau could not help feeling himself warm towards this candid and sympathetic young man. After all, when one thought about it a little it was perfectly clear that Doctor Saturday had indeed committed a most stupid blunder. The Duke, although nominally a Christian, was—apart from his unshakable belief in the Old Wisdom which teaches that each man carries God within himself—a pagan at heart. Pan was, therefore, the last entity that a Voodoo Witch Doctor should have called upon to assist him in coercing a cultured European who admired and respected the civilisation of the ancient Greeks.

‘I'm so glad you're beginning to see things again in their proper perspective,' Pan remarked, evidently reading the Duke's thoughts. ‘You've been through an extraordinarily wearing time with this Witch Doctor, but the fool has hoisted himself with his own petard now. You know quite a bit about sorcery yourself, so it's hardly necessary for me to remind you of the immutable law. If anyone summons an entity to do his bidding, and fails to control it, that entity is bound to turn upon the person who has called it up. I haven't the least intention of doing as the Mulatto demands and forcing you back into your body, though I could quite easily do so if I wished. Instead, I shall appear in one of my grimmer aspects to Doctor Saturday and settle his business for good and all. You will
then have nothing more to fear, and when you wake up in your body you'll find the Doctor is dead.'

‘What about my friends?' asked the Duke slowly.

‘Oh, you needn't worry yourself about them,' replied the young-old god. ‘On the Doctor's death their spirits will automatically be released.'

De Richleau sighed. ‘If you really mean that you will do this I shall owe you a great debt.'

‘Consider it as already paid,' smiled Pan. ‘After all, I owe you something for having been, at heart, one of my followers for many incarnations past. Then there's another side to it. I know the reasons for your visit to Haiti, and, although I have many other aspects which are far more ancient, on earth I'm best known as a Greek; so we're allies you see and I'm every bit as much for putting these trouble-making humourless Dictators in their places as you are.'

‘Of course,' smiled de Richleau. ‘I little thought when the night began that I'd find a Greek god for an ally; but naturally you must feel that way. You were always the patron of laughter and dancing and love-making—the very antithesis of war and the dreary regimentation of young and old for which the Totalitarian leaders stand.'

At last the Duke was able to relax and take in the full beauty of the Attic scene. Blissfully he let his eyes rove over the stunted oaks, mossy banks and clearings starred with crocuses and scillas. It was a fundamental tenet of his faith that in the end the Powers of Light always trap the powers of Darkness causing them to become undone through their own evil actions; and that was what had happened to his enemy.

The ordeal had, after all, been less terrible than he had anticipated, and help had been sent to him much earlier than he could have hoped. In what had seemed his darkest hour he had been called upon to face the great god Pan, but Pan had turned out to be a friend. Doctor Saturday's fate was now sealed and a splendid victory had been won by the Powers of Light.

‘Come on, then,' said Pan; ‘let's get back to Haiti and put an end to your unscrupulous enemy.' And in a flick of time they were both back in the sanctuary of the Hounfort.

The Witch Doctor was still mumbling over his cauldron and he could neither see nor hear Pan and the Duke as they arrived beside the corpse.

‘Get back to your body,' Pan ordered, ‘then I'll teach this impudent creature a lesson for daring to summon a European deity. When I appear to him he'll die of heart spasm—and that's a nasty, painful death.'

‘Hadn't you better give him the heart attack first?' suggested the Duke.

‘Oh no,' said Pan; ‘that would never do. I should then appear to you as I appear to him, and you too would be utterly blasted with uncontrollable terror. It would affect your astral and cripple it for centuries to come; whereas if you're back in your physical body and keep your eyes shut, you won't be able to see me; so all will be well.'

De Richleau saw the incontestable sense of this, so he hesitated no longer. Thanking Pan, he slipped back into his body but remained utterly still, showing no signs of life.