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

There was a gloom to his bedroom which came from more than just an absence of light, since even during the day it was there. It was a gloom which seemed to permeate everything within it like a spreading stain. As soon as Lamson stepped inside he was aware of the gloom, in which even the newest of his possessions seemed faded and cheap.

He looked at the stone head.

It drew his attention almost compulsively. Of everything it was the only object in the room that had not been affected by this strange malaise. Was it gloating? he wondered. Gloating at the way in which it had triumphed over everything else in the flat, including (or especially) the framed photo of Joan, with her blond hair curled so characteristically about her face? You’re trapped with me, it seemed to say like some grotesque spider that had caught him on its dusty web, smirking and sneering with its repulsively hybrid, goatlike features. Lamson rubbed his hands together vigorously, trying to push the thoughts out of his mind. I must get rid of the thing, he told himself (as he had continually done, though without result, for the past two weeks).

He glanced at his unmade bed with distaste and a feeling of shame.

‘Oh, God,’ he whispered self-consciously, ‘if only I could get rid of the obsession. Because that is all it is. No more. Only an obsession, which I can and must somehow forget.’ Or was it? There was no way in which he could get away from the doubt. After all, he thought, how could he satisfactorily explain the way in which the tramp had seemed able to read his thoughts and know just what it was that he’d dreamed? Or was he only a part of this same single-minded and delusive obsession? he wondered, somewhat hopefully, as his mind grew dull with tiredness. He glanced at his watch. How much longer could he fight against falling asleep? One hour? Two? Eventually, though, he would have to give in. It was one fight, as he so well knew by now, which no one could win, no matter how much they might want to, or with how much will.

In an effort to concentrate his thoughts he picked out a book from the shelf randomly. It was Over the Bridge by Richard Church. He had quite enjoyed reading it once several months ago, but the words did not seem to have any substance in his brain anymore. Letters, like melting figures of ice, lost form and swam and merged as if the ink was still wet, and slowly soaking through the pages as he watched.

When, as was inevitable, he finally lost consciousness and slept, he became aware of a change in the atmosphere. There was a warmth which seemed womb-like and wrong in the open air. It disturbed him as he looked up at the stars prickling the sky, the deep, black, canopied darkness of the sky.

On every side trees rose from the gloom, their boughs bent over like thousands upon thousands of enormous, extended fingers, black in their damp decay. Their leaves were like limpets, pearly and wet, as they shivered in the rising winds.

Before him a glade led down beneath the trees.

Undecided as to which way he should go, Lamson looked about himself uncertainly, hoping for a sign, for some indication — however faint or elusive — as to which path was the one he should take. There seemed to be so many of them, leading like partially erased pencil lines across a grimy sheet of paper through the over-luxuriant grass. Somewhere there was a sound, though it was so dimmed and distorted by the distance separating him from its source. Sibilantly, vaguely, the rhythmic words wound their ways between the trees.

Finding himself miming them, he turned his back to the sounds and started for the glade. Even as he moved he knew that he had made a mistake. But he knew, also, with a sudden, wild wrenching of his heart, that there was no escape. Not now. It was something which he knew had either happened before or was preordained, that no matter what he did there was no way in which he could escape from what was going to happen next. He felt damned — by God, the Devil and himself.

Crestfallen, as the awfulness of what he knew was about to happen next came over him, he felt a sudden impulse to scream. Something large and heavy rustled awkwardly through the ferns. Fear, like lust, swelled within him. He felt a loathing and a horror and, inexplicably, a sense of expectation as well, almost as if some small part of him yearned for what it knew was about to take place. He began to sob. How could he escape from this thing — how could he possibly even hope to escape from this thing — if some perverse element within him did not want him to be free?

He turned round to retrace his steps up the glade, but there was something dark stretched across his path, barring his way, some yards ahead of him. It turned towards him and rose. Starlight, filtering through the trees, glittered darkly across its teeth as it smiled.

Lamson turned round and tried to run back down the glade, but the creature was already bounding after him like a great black goat. He felt its claws sink into his shoulders as it forced him forwards, knocking him suddenly face down onto the ground. He tried to scream, but his cries were gagged on dried leaves and soil, as his mouth was gouged into them. The creature’s furiously powerful fingers tore at his clothes, strewing them about him. The winds blew cool against his hot, bare flesh as sweat from the lunging, piston-like body ran down the hollow of his spine.

There was a crash somewhere and the dream ripped apart.

The next instant he seemed to blink his eyes open to find the comforting sight of his familiar bedroom in front of him. The book he had been reading when sleep overcame him earlier, lay against his feet on the floor.

He breathed out a sigh of relief as he glanced at his watch. It was three thirty-five in the morning.

He shivered. Covered in sweat, his body felt awful, aching in every joint. He put on his dressing gown and crossed to the window, opening the curtains to look down into the twilit street below. It was empty and quiet, peaceful as it never was during the day. But it was also undeniably lonely. Cold and lonely and lifeless. The sight of its bleak, grey lines could not make him forget the dream for long, nor keep him away from the wretched feeling of despair that remembering it brought along with it, a despair made all the more unbearable at the realisation that its cause, deep down, must lie rooted in his character. There was no way in which he could deny to himself the perverted aspects it presented to him. But was he perverted as well? Or had the old tramp been lying? After all, he reasoned, why should he be any more perceptive of that kind of thing than anyone else? It was the man’s horrible suggestion, and that was all — no more certainly! — that was making his mind work in that direction now. Almost, he thought, pensively staring about his room, like some kind of post hypnotic suggestion. And if this were so and it was the tramp’s vile insinuations that had caused this neurotic and evil obsession, then it was up to him to vent these desires in the most normal way that he could. Otherwise, he knew, they would only worsen, just as they were worsening already.

Decided on this course, he rested quietly for the rest of the night, reading through the next few chapters of Over the Bridge , and listening to the radio.

When the sky began to lighten at last he welcomed the new day with a fervor he had not felt for many weeks. At last it seemed to him as if there was a chance of ridding himself of this nightmare.

At last…

It was not till midday that he dressed and stepped outside.

In realising that he had to prove to himself that he was normal, and rid himself of the perverse obsession that was deranging him, he had decided that the easiest way open to him was to call on Clara Sadwick, a local prostitute who rented rooms on Park Road above a newsagent’s shop. As he walked towards it down the sodden street the place appeared to have a dingy and slightly obscene look to it, with unpainted window frames and faded curtains, pulled together tight behind their grimy, flyspecked windows.