David Sutton - The Satyr's Head - Tales of Terror

Nightmares have a habit of doing that.

By the end of the next week I had finished the index for the manuscript and had typed it up into a final draft. I had been so busy that the horrors of the dream were almost erased from conscious memory. I phoned Stavely and told him the thing would be with him in a day or two, which he greeted with delight, so that as I replaced the receiver I felt quite elated. The sun glowed outside, everything was right with the world, the murmur of contentment was there, and soon a big fat cheque would be on its way, doing no end of good to my failing bank balance.

I decided to spend the rest of the weekend absorbed in a few good books, maybe even take in a film if there was anything worthwhile showing, and a drink at the pub. Relax, I thought, time to relax. So I took myself out that morning to the local library and browsed for a couple of hours. I finally came away with four books, a wide variety from poetry, novels, to a book on modern Astronomy — an old pastime of mine. I still had the four-inch refractor that I used for stargazing, or more correctly, Moon and planet studying.

The day was warm, but by the time I reached the local it was raining. I sat in the lounge for a while, talking to Tom Gerrard, a neighbour of mine, a pensioner who took time out in the pub most lunch times when the weather wasn’t too cold. With a couple of pints of lager inside me and with the atmosphere of the place, I was soon in pleasant conversation with Tom.

‘I might be getting old, Doug,’ he nodded at me after a lengthy scan of my face, ‘but to me you don’t half look washed out — like a worn out old rag I’d say.’

Tom was a friendly chap who invariably wore a dark suit, shiny with age, and a waistcoat with a silver pocket watch and chain strung from it. He had a thin, weather-beaten face and his white moustache was yellowed in places from his smoking a pipe.

‘I agree,’ I said, ‘I’ve been working like the devil the past two weeks, but then, you don’t want all the boring details do you?’ I smiled.

‘Good Lord, no!’ he answered in mock consternation, then added, ‘I dunno how you do such a thing as indexing. I’ll stick to my allotment any day! I ’ad enough of your kind of work when I was setting type for old Barnaby.’

‘Not quite the same, though is it Tom—’

‘Hmmph. You don’t know the half of it,’ he said sourly.

And so the day wore on, both of us exchanging pleasantries and gossip until it was chucking-out time. I walked home with Tom and saw him to his gate, where he caught me with a final bit of grapevine news before departing.

‘Oh, now did you hear about Mick Geddie’s little Sally — gone missing she has. About three weeks now. Only a little mite too. Always used to play hereabouts — always wore a yellow dress.’ He paused contemplatively. ‘I don’t reckon on her chances in this day and age,’ he finished with a macabre inflection.

I was glad to say that Tom didn’t see my face after he’d said all that. It hit me like a thunderbolt. I knew the Geddies vaguely, but I didn’t know their children at all. However, I was sure the girl across the street must have been Sally Geddie. The protruding chin, you see, is a marked characteristic of Mick, her father.

I just couldn’t believe it though. I’d seen her only the other day… or was it more than a week ago; I’d lost track of time just recently. But no, it couldn’t be the same child. Still, there was a persistent plucking of a chord in my mind that insisted on this girl being the one who was supposed to be missing. I felt like calling in at the police station, but I would be a fool if it turned out to be someone else’s daughter I had seen. After all, lots of kids wear yellow dresses. The nightmare I’d had must have mingled with reality until it had heightened the apparent none-event of my original sighting of the girl; without the dream it was a minor incident little worth further thought. I decided not to go to the police.

Instead, I took myself off to the park for the afternoon, with a book to read and sat on a shady bench and dozed and browsed through a few short stories while the sun dried up the rain that had fallen earlier. It might have been an extremely pleasant afternoon, but I was not to be lucky…

I sat almost asleep when I heard a voice call through the bushes behind me: ‘Mister… Mister,’ it said, ‘want to play?’ I jerked round startled, and in an instant saw those same penetrating eyes peering at me in their frightening way, but this time I was going to remain calm. Ignoring the stare, I stood up, placing the book on the bench, and said, ‘Are you Sally Geddie?’ The eyes blinked, the bushes rustled as she moved about and nothing further was said for a short while. Those damnable eyes still remained however, searing my retinas in unholy steadfastness. Then:

‘Want to play?’ she giggled and leapt out of sight. Further off I heard her shout, ‘Hide-and-Seek!’

I decided to put my embarrassment of children aside and join in the game. After all, I had nothing better to do, and if she was the missing child — though this now seemed most unlikely — I stood a good chance of reuniting her with her parents. So, I took chase.

A large hollow, ringed with trees and thick bushes and containing a pool of stagnant water lay a few hundred yards distant, and it was towards this that I ran where I saw the telltale yellow dress flying. When I reached the warm air under the trees she was nowhere in sight. I was quite hot and panted heavily while looking here and there in the undergrowth. Then a light, tinkling voice escaped from the greenery, ‘You can’t find me,’ it came in a sing-song manner, tempting, teasing. I moved towards where I thought it came from and there was a rustle of leaves and something yellow slid out of sight. I clawed my way through the thorny bushes but she was gone again.

I was now becoming very warm and a little excited. It was years since I’d done anything like this — yes, it was exciting playing hide-and-seek. All the mystery, the tingling terror of finding and being found, all this welled up from my childhood. I was breathing heavily.

‘Sally? Sally?’ I said lightly so as not to frighten her, ‘Sugar and spice and all things nice! I’m coming to find you!’ I passed a huge oak to see the give-away yellow drift past on the other side of the dell. I decided to break out from the trees and run right round the outside of the wooded hollow which would be quicker than negotiating the bushes and ferns, and, as I reached the other side, there came that soft, tormenting voice again, this time a quickly spoken, ‘Can’t-catch-me!’; then the giggling. I panted. Clearing the trees on the inside I came stumbling down the steep slope to stop by the foul, glistening water at the bottom of the hollow.

Above, the trees made a huge arc, allowing very little direct sunlight in to play on the stagnant water, where insects buzzed incessantly over the surface and strange bubbling sounds broke through from below. Aside from these odd bubblings the water was quite quiescent, black except where a growth of green plants had half covered the surface. It might have been fathoms deep for all one could see into its depths, but in fact it must have been a couple of feet at the most, the bottom probably thick with the mud and the leaf-mould of generations.

The trees down there were weirdly stunted and gnarled old things, infested with fungi, rather different than the tall oaks higher up the slope. The ground was a soft, wet carpet of leaf-mould. It was quiet too, no birds singing down there, though if you listened hard enough, you could hear them chirping high up in the branches, in the light. I sat down on the bank and tossed a twig into the water. It splashed and a few ripples moved sluggishly outwards, then all was silent again. I was acutely aware of my laboured breathing: I had to regain my breath. I was sweating profusely, my brow like a wet and sticky fire causing black spots before my dizzy eyes. I saw no sign of the yellow dress, but something caught my eye in the water. It was the broken-off limb of an oak and it rested, due to its curvature, partly in and partly out of the evil smelling pond. It was absolutely infested with fungus, pale brown pulpy things giving it a hideously soft mantle. Down towards the water the growth was torn and smashed and hung limply into the greasy water, as if someone had pulled, clawed at the rotten fibres in desperation.