The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (79 page)

Now fear is a very odd thing; unless it is overmastering and overwhelming it always produces its own reaction. Whatever courage we have rises to meet it, and with courage comes anger that we have given entrance to this unnerving intruder. That, at any rate, was my case now, and I made an effective emotional resistance. My servant came running in to see what the noise was, and we set Perseus on his feet again and examined into the cause of his fall. It was clear enough; a big piece of plaster had broken away from the niche, and that must be repaired and strengthened before we reinstated him. Simultaneously my fear and the sense of an unaccountable presence in the room slipped from me. The footsteps outside were still unexplained and I told myself that if I was to shudder at everything I did not understand there would be an end to tranquil existence for ever.

I was dining with Hugh that night; he had been away for the last week, only returning to-day, and he had come in before these slightly agitating events happened to announce his arrival and suggest dinner. I noticed that as he stood chatting for a few minutes, he had once or twice sniffed the air, but he had made no comment, nor had I asked him if he perceived the strange faint odour that every now and then manifested itself to me. I knew it was a great relief to some secretly quaking piece of my mind that he was back, for I was convinced that there was some psychic disturbance going on, either subjectively in my mind, or a real invasion from without. In either case his presence was comforting, not because he is of that stalward breed which believes in nothing beyond the material facts of life, and pooh-poohs these mysterious forces which surround and so strangely interpenetrate existence, but because, while thoroughly believing in them, he has the firm confidence that the deadly and evil powers which occasionally break through into the seeming security of existence are not really to be feared, since they are held in check by forces stronger yet, ready to assist all who realize their protective care. Whether I meant to tell him what had occurred to-day I had not fully determined.

It was not till after dinner that such subjects came up at all, but I had seen there was something on his mind of which he had not spoken yet.

“And your new house,” he said at length, “does it still remain as all your fancy painted?”

“I wonder why you ask that,” I said.

He gave me a quick glance.

“Mayn’t I take any interest in your well-being?” he said.

I knew that something was coming, if I chose to let it.

“I don’t think you’ve ever liked my house from the first,” I said. “I believe you think there’s something queer about it. I allow that the manner in which I found it empty was odd.”

“It was rather,” he said. “But so long as it remains empty, except for what you’ve put in it, it is all right.”

I wanted now to press him further.

“What was it you smelt this afternoon in the big room?” I said. “I saw you nosing and sniffing. I have smelt something too. Let’s see if we smelt the same thing.”

“An odd smell,” he said. “Something dusty and stale, but aromatic.”

“And what else have you noticed?” I asked.

He paused a moment.

“I think I’ll tell you,” he said. “This evening from my window I saw you coming up the pavement, and simultaneously I saw, or thought I saw, Naboth cross the road and walk on in front of you. I wondered if you saw him too, for you paused as he stepped on to the pavement in front of you, and then you followed him.”

I felt my hands grow suddenly cold, as if the warm current of my blood had been chilled.

“No, I didn’t see him,” I said, “but I saw his step.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. I saw footprints in front of me, which continued on to my threshold.”

“And then?”

“I went in, and a terrific crash startled me. My bronze Perseus had fallen from his niche. And there was something in the room.”

There was a scratching noise at the window. Without answering, Hugh jumped up and drew aside the curtain. On the sill was seated a large grey cat, blinking in the light. He advanced to the window, and on his approach the cat jumped down into the garden. The light shone out into the road, and we both saw, standing on the pavement just outside, the figure of a man. He turned and looked at me, and then moved away towards my house next door.

“It’s he,” said Hugh.

He opened the window and leaned out to see what had become of him. There was no sign of him anywhere, but I saw that light shone from behind the blinds of my room.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see what is happening. Why is my room lit?”

I opened the door of my house with my latchkey, and followed by Hugh went down the short passage to the room. It was perfectly dark, and when I turned the switch, we saw that it was empty. I rang the bell, but no answer came, for it was already late, and doubtless my servants had gone to bed.

“But I saw a strong light from the windows two minutes ago,” I said, “and there has been no-one here since.”

Hugh was standing by me in the middle of the room. Suddenly he threw out his arm as if striking at something. That thoroughly alarmed me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “What are you hitting at?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I saw . . . But I’m not sure. But we’re in for something if we stop here. Something is coming, though I don’t know what.”

The light seemed to me to be burning dim; shadows began to collect in the corner of the room, and though outside the night had been clear, the air here was growing thick with a foggy vapour, which smelt dusty and stale and aromatic. Faintly, but getting louder as we waited there in silence, I heard the throb of drums and the wail of flutes. As yet I had no feeling that there were other presences in the place beyond ours, but in the growing dimness I knew that something was coming nearer. Just in front of me was the empty niche from which my bronze had fallen, and looking at it, I saw that something was astir. The shadow within it began to shape itself into a form, and out of it there gleamed two points of greenish light. A moment more and I saw that they were eyes of antique and infinite malignity.

I heard Hugh’s voice in a sort of hoarse whisper.

“Look there!” he said. “It’s coming! Oh, my God, it’s coming!”

Sudden as the lightning that leaps from the heart of the night it came. But it came not with blaze and flash of light, but, as it were, with a stroke of blinding darkness, that fell not on the eye, or on any material sense, but on the spirit, so that I cowered under it in some abandonment of terror. It came from those eyes which gleamed in the niche, and which now I saw to be set in the face of the figure that stood there. The form of it, naked but for a loincloth, was that of a man, the head seemed now human, now to be that of some monstrous cat. And as I looked I knew that if I continued looking there I should be submerged and drowned in that flood of evil that poured from it. As in some catalepsy of nightmare I struggled to tear my eyes from it, but still they were riveted there, gazing on incarnate hate.

Again I heard Hugh’s whisper.

“Defy it,” he said. “Don’t yield an inch.”

A swarm of disordered and hellish images were buzzing in my brain, and now I knew as surely as if actual words had been spoken to us that the presence there told me to come to it.

“I’ve got to go to it,” I said. “It’s making me go.”

I felt his hand tighten on my arm.

“Not a step,” he said. “I’m stronger than it is. It will know that soon. Just pray – pray.”

Suddenly his arm shot out in front of me, pointing at the presence.

“By the power of God!” he shouted. “By the power of God!”

There was dead silence. The light of those eyes faded, and then came dawn on the darkness of the room. It was quiet and orderly, the niche was empty, and there on the sofa by me was Hugh, his face white and streaming with sweat.

“It’s over,” he said, and without pause fell fast asleep.

Now we have often talked over together what happened that evening. Of what seemed to happen I have already given the account, which anyone may believe or not, precisely as they please. He, as I, was conscious of a presence wholly evil, and he tells me that all the time that those eyes gleamed from the niche, he was trying to realize what he believed, namely, that only one power in the world is Omnipotent, and that the moment he gained that realization the presence collapsed. What exactly that presence was it is impossible to say. It looks as if it was the essence or spirit of one of those mysterious Egyptian cults, of which the force survived, and was seen and felt in this quiet Terrace. That it was embodied in Naboth seems (among all these incredibilities) possible, and Naboth certainly has never been seen again. Whether or not it was connected with the worship and cult of cats might occur to the mythological mind, and it is perhaps worthy of record that I found next morning my little lapis lazuli image, which stood on the chimney-piece, broken into fragments. It was too badly damaged to mend, and I am not sure that, in any case, I should have attempted to have it restored.

Finally, there is no more tranquil and pleasant room in London than the one built out in front of my house in Bagnell Terrace.

The Companion

Joan Aiken

It gave her intense, not wholly masochistic gratification to survey her hideous rented furniture, to go into her dark little unfunctional kitchen and discover that the gas-pilot had gone out again, that before putting a kettle on to boil she must laboriously poke a long-stemmed match into the dirty interstices of the stove, turn, at the same time, a small, gritty, and inconveniently-placed wheel, and wait for the resulting muffled explosion; this ritual, which often had to be enacted several times a day due to the fluctuations of gas pressure, filled her with a dour amusement, confirming, as it did, all her most pessimistic feelings about the world. The aged recalcitrant plastic ice-trays, which were more likely to split in half under the pressure of an angry thumb than to eject a single cube of ice, the front gate that refused to latch properly, the wayward taps turning in improbable directions, emitting a thin thread of lukewarm water, the varying levels of the cottage, which had steps up or steps down between all its rooms, even one in the middle of the bathroom – these things fulfilled her expectation that life was intended to be a series of cynical booby-traps.