A Coven of Vampires

I

'As to why I asked you all to join me here, and why I'm making it worth your while by paying each of you five hundred pounds for your time and trouble, the answer is simple: the place appears to be haunted, and I want rid of the ghost.'

The speaker was young, his voice cultured, his features fine and aristocratic. He was Lord David Marriot, and the place of which he spoke was a Marriot property: a large, ungainly, mongrel architecture of dim and doubtful origins, standing gaunt and gloomily atmospheric in an acre of brooding oaks. The wood itself stood central in nine acres of otherwise barren moors borderland.

Lord Marriot's audience numbered four: the sprightly octogenarian Lawrence Danford, a retired man of the cloth; by contrast the so-called 'mediums' Jonathan Turnbull and Jason Lavery, each a 'specialist' in his own right; and myself, an old friend of the family whose name does not really matter since I had no special part to play. I was simply there as an observer - an adviser, if you like - in a matter for which, from the beginning, I had no great liking.

Waiting on the arrival of the others, I had been with David Marriot at the old house all afternoon. I had long known something of the history of the place . . . and a little of its legend. There I now sat, comfortable and warm as our host addressed the other three, with an excellent sherry in my hand while logs crackled away in the massive fireplace. And yet suddenly, as he spoke, I felt chill and uneasy.

'You two gentlemen,' David smiled at the mediums, 'will employ your special talents to discover and define the malignancy, if indeed such an element exists; and you, sir,' he spoke to the elderly cleric, 'will attempt to exorcise the unhappy -creature? - once we know who or what it is.' Attracted by my involuntary agitation, frowning, he paused and turned to me. 'Is something troubling you, my friend . . . ?'

'I'm sorry to have to stop you almost before you've started, David,' I apologized, 'but I've given it some thought and -well, this plan of yours worries me.'

Lord Marriot's guests looked at me in some surprise, seeming to notice me for the first time, although of course we had been introduced; for after all they were the experts while I was merely an observer. Nevertheless, and while I was never endowed with any special psychic talent that I know of (and while certainly, if ever I had been, I never would have dabbled), I did know a little of my subject and had always been interested in such things.

And who knows? - perhaps I do have some sort of sixth sense, for as I have said, I was suddenly and quite inexplicably chilled with a sensation of foreboding that I knew had nothing at all to do with the temperature of the library. The others, for all their much-vaunted special talents, apparently felt nothing.

'My plan worries you?' Lord Marriot finally repeated. 'You didn't mention this before.'

'I didn't know before just how you meant to go about it. Oh, I agree that the house requires some sort of exorcism, that something is quite definitely wrong with the place, but I'm not at all sure that you should concern yourself with finding out exactly what it is you're exorcizing.'

'Hmm, yes, I think I might agree,' Old Danford nodded his grey head. 'Surely the essence of the, harumph, matter, is to be rid of the thing - whatever it is. Er, not,' he hastily added, 'that I would want to do these two gentlemen out of a job - however much I disagree with, harumph, spiritualism and its trappings.' He turned to Turnbull and Lavery.

'Not at all. sir,' Lavery assured him, smiling thinly. 'We've been paid in advance, as you yourself have been paid, regardless of results. We will therefore - perform - as Lord Marriot sees fit. We are not, however, spiritualists. But in any case, should our services no longer be required . . .' He shrugged.

'No, no question of that,' the owner of the house spoke up at once. 'The advice of my good friend here has been greatly valued by my family for many years, in all manner of problems, but he would be the first to admit that he's no expert in matters such as these. I, however, am even less of an authority, and my time is extremely short; I never have enough time for anything! That is why I commissioned him to find out all he could about the history of the house, in order to be able to offer you gentlemen something of an insight into its background.

And I assure you that it's not just idle curiosity that prompts me to seek out the source of the trouble here. I wish to dispose of the property, and prospective buyers just will not stay in it long enough to appreciate its many good features! And so, if we are to lay something to rest here, something which ought perhaps to have been laid to rest long ago, then I want to know what it is.

Damn me, the thing's caused me enough trouble!

So let's please have no more talk about likes and dislikes or what should or should not be done.

It will be the way I've planned it.' He turned again to me. 'Now, if you'll be so good as to simply outline the results of your research . . . ?'

'Very well,' I shrugged in acquiescence. 'As long as I've made my feelings in the matter plain...' Knowing David the way I did, further argument would be quite fruitless: his mind was made up. I riffled through the notes lying in my lap, took a long pull on my pipe, and commenced:

'Oddly enough, the house as it now stands is comparatively modern, no more than two hundred and fifty years old, but it was built upon the shell of a far older structure, one whose origin is extremely difficult to trace. There are local legends, however, and there have always been chroniclers of tales of strange old houses. The original house is given brief mention in texts dating back almost to Roman times, but the actual site had known habitation - possibly a Druidic order or some such - much earlier. Later it became part of some sort of fortification, perhaps a small castle, and the remnants of earthworks in the shape of mounds, banks and ditches can be found even today in the surrounding countryside.

'Of course the present house, while large enough by modern standards, is small in comparison with the original: it's a mere wing of the old structure. An extensive cellar - a veritable maze of tunnels, rooms, and passages - was discovered during renovation some eighty years ago, when first the Marriots acquired the property, and then several clues were disclosed as to its earlier use.

This wing would seem to have been a place of worship of sorts, for there was a crude altar-stone, a pair of ugly, font-like basins, a number of particularly repugnant carvings of gargoyles or 'gods', and other extremely ancient tools and bric-a-brac. Most of this incunabula was given into the care of the then curator of the antiquities section of the British Museum, but the carved figures were defaced and destroyed. The records do not say why . . .

'But let's go back to the reign of James I.

Then the place was the seat of a family of supposed nobility, though the line must have suffered a serious decline during the early years of the seventeenth century - or perhaps fallen foul of the authorities or the monarch himself - for its name simply cannot be discovered. It would seem that for some reason, most probably serious dishonour, the family name has been erased from all contemporary records and documents!

'Prior to the fire which razed the main building to the ground in 1618, there had been a certain intercourse and intrigue of a similarly undiscovered nature between the nameless inhabitants, the de la Poers of Exham Priory near Anchester, and an obscure esoteric sect of monks dwelling in and around the semi-ruined Falstone Castle in Northumberland. Of the latter sect, they were wiped out utterly by Northern raiders - a clan believed to have been outraged by the 'heathen activities' of the monks - and the ruins of the castle were pulled to pieces, stone by stone. Indeed, it was so well destroyed that today only a handful of historians could even show you where it stood!

'As for the de la Poers, well, whole cycles of ill-omened myth and legend revolve around that family, just as they do about their Anchester seat. Suffice it to say that in 1923 the Priory was blown up and the cliffs beneath it dynamited, until the deepest roots of its foundations were obliterated. Thus the Priory is no more, and the last of that line of the family is safely locked away in a refuge for the hopelessly insane.

'It can be seen then that the nameless family that lived here had the worst possible connections, at least by the standards of those days, and it is not at all improbable that they brought about their own decline and disappearance through just such traffic with degenerate or ill-advised cultists and demonologists as I have mentioned.

'Now then, add to all of this somewhat tenuously connected information the local rumours, which have circulated on and off in the villages of this area for some three hundred years - those mainly unspecified fears and old wives' tales that have sufficed since time immemorial to keep children and adults alike away from this property, off the land and out of the woods - and you begin to understand something of the aura of the place. Perhaps you can feel that aura even now? I certainly can, and I'm by no means psychic . . .'

'Just what is it that the locals fear?' Turnbull asked. 'Can't you enlighten us at all?'

'Oh, strange shapes have been seen on the paths and roads; luminous nets have appeared strung between the trees like great webs, only to vanish in daylight; and, yes, in connection with the latter, perhaps I had better mention the bas-reliefs in the cellar.'

'Bas-reliefs?' queried Lavery.

'Yes, on the walls. It was writing of sorts, but in a language no one could understand - glyphs almost.'

'My great-grandfather had just bought the house,' David Marriot explained. 'He was an extremely well-read man, knowledgeable in all sorts of peculiar subjects. When the cellar was opened and he saw the glyphs, he said they had to do with the worship of some strange deity from an obscure and almost unrecognized myth cycle. Afterwards he had the greater area of the cellar cemented in - said it made the house damp and the foundations unsafe.'

'Worship of some strange deity?' Old Danford spoke up. 'What sort of deity? Some lustful thing that the Romans brought with them, d'you think?'

'No, older than that,' I answered for Lord Marriot. 'Much older. A spider-thing.'

'A spider?' This was Lavery again, and he snorted the words out almost in contempt.

'Not quite the thing to sneer at,' I answered. 'Three years ago an ageing but still active gentleman rented the house for a period of some six weeks. An anthropologist and the author of several books, he wanted the place for its solitude; and if he took to it he was going to buy it. In the fifth week he was taken away raving mad!'

'Eh? Harumph! Mad, you say?' Old Danford repeated after me.

I nodded. 'Yes, quite insane. He lived for barely six months, all the while raving about a creature named Atlach-Nacha - a spider-god from the Cthulhu Cycle of myth - whose ghostly avatar, he claimed, still inhabited the house and its grounds.'

At this Turnbull spoke up. 'Now really!' he spluttered. 'I honestly fear that we're rapidly going from the sublime to the ridiculous!'

'Gentlemen, please!' There was exasperation now in Lord Marriot's voice. 'What does it matter? You know as much now as there is to know of the history of the troubles here -more than enough to do what you've been paid to do. Now then, Lawrence -' he turned to Danford. 'Have you any objections?'

'Harumph! Well, if there's a demon here - that is, something other than a creature of the Lord - then of course I'll do my best to help you. Harumph! Certainly.'

'And you, Lavery?'

'Objections? No, a bargain is a bargain. I have your money, and you shall have your noises.'

Lord Marriot nodded, understanding Lavery's meaning. For the medium's talent was a supposed or alleged ability to speak in the tongue of the ghost, the possessing spirit. In the event of a non-human ghost, however, then his mouthings might well be other than speech as we understand the spoken word. They might simply be - noises.

'And that leaves you, Turnbull.'

'Do not concern yourself, Lord Marriot,' Turnbull answered, flicking imagined dust from his sleeves. T, too, would be loath to break an honourable agreement. I have promised to do an automatic sketch of the intruder, an art in which I'm well practised, and if all goes well, I shall do just that. Frankly, I see nothing at all to be afraid of. Indeed, I would appreciate some sort of explanation from our friend here -

who seems to me simply to be doing his best to frighten us off.' He inclined his head inquiringly in my direction.

I held up my hands and shook my head. 'Gentlemen, my only desire is to make you aware of this feeling of mine of . . . yes, premonition! The very air seems to me imbued with an aura of -' I frowned. 'Perhaps disaster would be too strong a word.'

'Disaster?' Old Danford, as was his wont, repeated after me. 'How do you mean?'

'I honestly don't know. It's a feeling, that's all, and it hinges upon this desire of Lord Marriot's to know his foe, to identify the nature of the evil here. Yes, upon that, and upon the complicity of the rest of you.'

'But -' the young Lord began, anger starting to make itself apparent in his voice.

'At least hear me out,' I protested. 'Then -' I paused and shrugged. 'Then . . . you must do as you see fit.'

'It can do no harm to listen to him,' Old Danford pleaded my case. 'I for one find all of this extremely interesting. I would like to hear his argument.' The others nodded slowly, one by one, in somewhat uncertain agreement.

'Very well,' Lord Marriot sighed heavily. 'Just what is it that bothers you so much, my friend?'

'Recognition,' I answered at once. 'To recognize our -opponent? - that's where the danger lies.

And yet here's Lavery, all willing and eager to speak in the thing's voice, which can only add to our knowledge of it; and Turnbull, happy to fall into a trance at the drop of a hat and sketch the thing, so that we may all know exactly what it looks like. And what comes after that? Don't you see? The more we learn of it, the more it learns of us!

'Right now, this thing - ghost, demon, "god", apparition, whatever you want to call it - lies in some deathless limbo, extra-dimensional, manifesting itself rarely, incompletely, in our world.

But to know the thing, as our lunatic anthropologist came to know it and as the superstitious villagers of these parts think they know it - that is to draw it from its own benighted place into this sphere of existence. That is to give it substance, to participate in its materialization!'

'Hah!' Turnbull snorted. 'And you talk of superstitious villagers! Let's have one thing straight before we go any further. Lavery and I do not believe in the supernatural, not as the misinformed majority understand it. We believe that there are other planes of existence, yes, and that they are inhabited; and further, that occasionally we may glimpse alien areas and realms beyond the ones we were born to. In this we are surely nothing less than scientists, men who have been given rare talents, and each experiment we take part in leads us a little further along the paths of discovery. No ghosts or demons, sir, but scientific phenomena which may one day open up whole new vistas of knowledge. Let me repeat once more: there is nothing to fear in this, nothing at all!'

'There I cannot agree,' I answered. 'You must be aware, as I am, that there are well-documented cases of . . .'

'Self-hypnotism!' Lavery broke in. 'In almost every case where medium experimenters have come to harm, it can be proved that they were the victims of self-hypnosis.'

'And that's not all,' Turnbull added. 'You'll find that they were all believers in the so-called supernatural. We, on the other hand, are not-'

'But what of these well-documented cases you mentioned?' Old Danford spoke up. 'What sort of cases?'

'Cases of sudden, violent death!' I answered. 'The case of the medium who slept in a room once occupied by a murderer, a strangler, and who was found the next morning strangled - though the room was windowless and locked from the inside! The case of the exorcist,'

(I paused briefly to glance at Danford) 'who attempted to seek out and put to rest a certain grey thing which haunted a Scottish graveyard. Whatever it was, this monster was legended to crush its victims' heads. Well, his curiosity did for him: he was found with his head squashed flat and his brains all burst from his ears!'

'And you think that all of-' Danford began.

'I don't know what to think,' I interrupted him, 'but certainly the facts seem to speak for themselves. These men I've mentioned, and many others like them, all tried to understand or search for things which they should have left utterly alone. Then, too late, each of them recognized . .. something . . . and it recognized them! What I think really does not matter; what matters is that these men are no more. And yet here, tonight, you would commence just such an experiment, to seek out something you really aren't meant to know. Well, good luck to you. I for one want no part of it. I'll leave before you begin.'

At that Lord Marriot, solicitous now, came over and laid a hand on my arm. 'Now you promised me you'd see this thing through with me.'

'I did not accept your money, David,' I reminded him.

'I respect you all the more for that,' he answered. 'You were willing to be here simply as a friend. As for this change of heart ... At least stay a while and see the thing under way.'

I sighed and reluctantly nodded. Our friendship was a bond sealed long ago, in childhood. 'As you wish - but if and when I've had enough, then you must not try to prevent my leaving.'

'My word on it,' he immediately replied, briskly pumping my hand. 'Now then: a bite to eat and a drink, I think, another log on the fire, and then we can begin . . .'

II

The late autumn evening was setting in fast by the time we gathered around a heavy, circular oak table set centrally upon the library's parquet flooring, in preparation for Lavery's demonstration of his esoteric talent. The other three guests were fairly cheery, perhaps a little excited - doubtless as a result of David's plying them unstintingly with his excellent sherry - and our host himself seemed in very good spirits; but I had been little affected and the small amount of wine I had taken had, if anything, only seemed to heighten the almost tangible atmosphere of dread which pressed in upon me from all sides. Only that promise wrested from me by my friend kept me there; and by it alone I felt bound to participate, at least initially, in what was to come.

Finally La very declared himself ready to begin and asked us all to remain silent throughout. The lights had been turned low at the medium's request and the sputtering logs in the great hearth threw red and orange shadows about the spacious room.

The experiment would entail none of the usual paraphernalia beloved of mystics and spiritualists; we did not sit with the tips of our little fingers touching, forming an unbroken circle; Lavery had not asked us to concentrate or to focus our minds upon anything at all. The antique clock on the wall ticked off the seconds monotonously as the medium closed his eyes and lay back his head in his high-backed chair. We all watched him closely.

Gradually his breathing deepened and the rise and fall of his chest became regular. Then, almost before we knew it and coming as something of a shock, his hands tightened on the leather arms of his chair and his mouth began a silent series of spastic jerks and twitches. My blood, already cold, seemed to freeze at the sight of this, and I had half risen to my feet before his face grew still.

Then Lavery's lips drew back from his teeth and he opened and closed his mouth several times in rapid succession, as if gnashing his teeth through a blind, idiot grin. This only lasted for a second or two, however, and soon his face once more relaxed. Suddenly conscious that I still crouched over the table, I forced myself to sit down.

As we continued to watch him, a deathly pallor came over the medium's features and his knuckles whitened as he gripped the arms of his chair. At this point I could have sworn that the temperature of the room dropped sharply, abruptly. The others did not seem to note the fact, being far too fascinated with the motion of Lavery's exposed Adam's apple to be aware of anything else.

That fleshy knob moved slowly up and down the full length of his throat, while the column of his windpipe thickened and contracted in a sort of slow muscular spasm. And at last Lavery spoke. He spoke - and at the sound I could almost feel the blood congealing in my veins!

For this was in no way the voice of a man that crackled, hissed and gibbered from Lavery's mouth in a - language? -which surely never originated in this world or within our sphere of existence.

No, it was the voice of ... something else. Something monstrous!

Interspaced with the insane cough, whistle and stutter of harshly alien syllables and cackling cachinnations, occasionally there would break through a recognizable combination of sounds which roughly approximated our pronunciation of'Atlach-Nacha'; but this fat had no sooner made itself plain to me than, with a wild shriek, Lavery hurled himself backwards - or was thrown backwards - so violently that he overturned his chair, rolling free of it to thrash about upon the floor.

Since I was directly opposite Lavery at the table, I was the last to attend him. Lord Marriot and Turnbull on the other hand were at his side at once, pinning him to the floor and steadying him. As I shakily joined them I saw that Old Danford had backed away into the furthest corner of the room, holding up his hands before him as if to ward off the very blackest of evils. With an anxious inquiry I hurried towards him. He shook me off and made straight for the door.

'Danford!' I cried. 'What on earth is -' But then I saw the way his eyes bulged and how terribly he trembled in every limb. The man was frightened for his life, and the sight of him in this condition made me forget my own terror in a moment. 'Danford,' I repeated in a quieter tone of voice. 'Are you well?'

By this time Lavery was sitting up on the floor and staring uncertainly about. Lord Marriot joined me as Danford opened the library door to stand for a moment facing us. All the blood seemed to have drained from his face; his hands fluttered like trapped birds as he stumbled backwards out of the room and into the passage leading to the main door of the house.

'Abomination!' he finally croaked, with no sign of his customary 'Harumph!' 'A presence - monstrous - ultimate abomination - God help us . . . !'

'Presence?' Lord Marriot repeated, taking his arm. 'What is it, Danford? What's wrong, man?'

The old man tugged himself free. He seemed now somewhat recovered, but still his face was ashen and his trembling unabated. 'A presence, yes,' he hoarsely answered, 'a monstrous presence! I could not even try to exorcise . . . thatl' And he turned and staggered along the corridor to the outer door.

'But where are you going, Danford?' Marriot called after him.

'Away,' came the answer from the door. 'Away from here. I'll - I'll be in touch, Marriot - but I cannot stay here now.' The door slammed behind him as he stumbled into the darkness and a moment or two later came the roar of his car's engine.

When the sound had faded into the distance, Lord Marriot turned to me with a look of astonishment on his face. He asked: 'Well, what was that all about? Did he see something, d'you think?'

'No, David,' I shook my head, 'I don't think he saw anything. But I believe he sensed something - something perhaps apparent to him through his religious training and he got out before it could sense him!'

We stayed the night in the house, but while bedrooms were available we all chose to remain in the library, nodding fitfully in our easy chairs around the great fireplace. I, for one was very glad of the company, though I kept this fact to myself, and I could not help but wonder if the others might not now be similarly apprehensive.

Twice I awoke with a start in the huge quiet room, on both occasions feeding the red-glowing fire.

And since that blaze lasted all through the night, I could only assume that at least one of the others was equally restless . . .

In the morning, after a frugal breakfast (Lord Marriot kept no retainers in the place; none would stay there, and so we had to make do for ourselves), while the others prowled about and stretched their legs or tidied themselves up, 1 saw and took stock of the situation. David, concerned about the aged clergyman, rang him at home and was told by Danford's housekeeper that her master had not stayed at home overnight. He had come home in a tearing rush at about nine o'clock, packed a case, told her that he was off 'up North' for a few days' rest, and had left at once for the railway station. She also said that she had not liked his colour.

The old man's greatcoat still lay across the arm of a chair in the library where he had left it in his frantic hurry of the night before. I took it and hung it up for him, wondering if he would ever return to the house to claim it.

Lavery was baggy-eyed and dishevelled and he complained of a splitting headache. He blamed his condition on an overdose of his host's sherry, but I knew for a certainty that he had been well enough before his dramatic demonstration of the previous evening. Of that demonstration, the medium said he could remember nothing; and yet he seemed distinctly uneasy and kept casting about the room and starting at the slightest unexpected movement, so that I believed his nerves had suffered a severe jolt.

It struck me that he, surely, must have been my assistant through the night; that he had spent some of the dark hours tending the fire in the great hearth. In any case, shortly after lunch and before the shadows of afternoon began to creep, he made his excuses and took his departure. I had somehow known that he would. And so three of us remained . . . three of the original five.

But if Danford's unexplained departure of the previous evening had disheartened Lord Marriot, and while Lavery's rather premature desertion had also struck a discordant note, at least Turnbull stood straight and strong on the side of our host. Despite Old Danford's absence, Turnbull would still go ahead with his part in the plan; an exorcist could always be found at some later date, if such were truly necessary. And certainly Lavery's presence was not prerequisite to Turnbull's forthcoming performance. Indeed, he wanted no one at all in attendance, desiring to be left entirely alone in the house. This was the only way he could possibly work, he assured us, and he had no fear at all about being on his own in the old place. After all, what was there to fear?

This was only another experiment, wasn't it?

Looking back now I feel a little guilty that I did not argue the point further with Turnbull - about his staying alone in the old house overnight to sketch his automatic portrait of the unwanted tenant - but the man was so damned arrogant to my way of thinking, so sure of his theories and principles, that I offered not the slightest opposition. So we three all spent the evening reading and smoking before the log fire, and as night drew on Lord Marriot and I prepared to take our leave.

Then, too, as darkness fell over the oaks crowding dense and still beyond the gardens, I once again felt that unnatural oppressiveness creeping in upon me, that weight of unseen energies hovering in the suddenly sullen air.

Perhaps, for the first time, Lord Marriot felt it too, for he did not seem at all ill-disposed to leaving the house; indeed, there was an uncharacteristic quickness about him, and as we drove away in his car in the direction of the local village inn, I noticed that he involuntarily shuddered once or twice. I made no mention of it; the night was chill, after all ...

At The Traveller's Rest, where business was only moderate, we inspected our rooms before making ourselves comfortable in the snug. There we played cards until about ten o'clock, but our minds were not on the game. Shortly after 10.30 Marriot called Turnbull to ask if all was going well. He returned from the telephone grumbling that Turnbull was totally ungrateful. He had not thanked Lord Marriot for his concern at all. The man demanded absolute isolation, no contact with the outside world whatever, and he complained that it would now take him well over an hour to go into his trance. After that he might begin to sketch almost immediately, or he might not start until well into the night, or there again the experiment could prove to be completely fruitless. It was all a matter of circumstance, and his chances would not be improved by useless interruptions.

We had left him seated in his shirt-sleeves before a roaring fire. Close at hand were a bottle of wine, a plate of cold beef sandwiches, a sketch pad and pencils. These lay upon an occasional table which he would pull into a position directly in front of himself before sleeping, or, as he would have it, before 'going into trance'. There he sat, alone in that ominous old house.

Before retiring we made a light meal of chicken sandwiches, though neither one of us had any appreciable appetite. I cannot speak for Marriot, but as for me, it took me until well into the 'wee small hours' to get to sleep . . .

In the morning my titled friend was at my door while I was still half-way through washing. His outward appearance was ostensibly bright and breezy, but I sensed that his eagerness to get back to the old house and Turnbull was more than simply a desire to know the outcome of the latter's experiment; he was more interested in the man's welfare than anything else. Like my own, his misgivings with regard to his plan to learn something of the mysterious and alien entity at the house had grown through the night; now he would be more than satisfied simply to discover the medium well and unharmed.

And yet what could there possibly be at the place to harm him? Again, that question.

The night had brought a heavy frost, the first of the season, and hedgerows and verges were white as from a fall of snow. Half-way through the woods, on the long gravel drive winding in towards the house, there the horror struck! Manoeuvring a slight bend, Lord Marriot cursed, applied his brakes and brought the car skidding to a jarring halt. A shape, white and grey - and hideously red - lay huddled in the middle of the drive.

It was Turnbull, frozen, lying in a crystallized pool of his own blood, limbs contorted in the agony of death, his eyes

glazed orbs that stared in blind and eternal horror at a sight Lord Marriot and I could hardly imagine. A thousand circular holes of about half an inch in diameter penetrated deep into his body, his face, all of his limbs; as if he had been the victim of some maniac with a brace and bit! Identical holes formed a track along the frosted grass verge from the house to this spot, as did Turnbull's flying footprints.

Against all my protests - weakened by nausea, white and trembling with shock as he was - still Lord Marriot raced his car the remainder of the way to the house. There we dismounted and he entered through the door which hung mutely ajar. I would not go in with him but stood dumbly wringing my hands, numb with horror, before the leering entrance.

A minute or so later he came staggering to the door. In his hand he carried a leaf from Turnbull's sketch pad. Before I could think to avert my eyes he thrust the almost completed sketch toward me, crying, 'Look! Look!'

I caught a glimpse of something bulbous and black, hairy and red-eyed - a tarantula, a bat, a dragon - whose joined legs were tipped with sharp, chitinous darts. A mere glimpse, without any real or lasting impression of detail, and yet -

'No!' I cried, throwing up my hands before my face, turning and rushing wildly back down the long drive. 'No, you fool, don't let me see it! 1 don't want to know! I don't want to know!'