Graham Masterton - The Devils of D-Day

The voice laughed. “ I told you. I am Father Anton. ”

“I don’t believe you.”

“ You don’t believe that priests enjoy sex as much as anyone else? You don’t believe that I can look at Madeleine and think of her body? She gets me boiling, monsieur! Oh, yes, she gets me rampant as a goat in the rutting season! Now, don’t you feel that way, too? ”

I was shaking with nerves. I took one awkward step towards the door, deliberately stamping my bare foot as loudly as I could on the floorboards, and I shouted: “Go away! Just get out of here! I don’t want to listen!”

There was a pause. A breezy silence. I thought for a moment that the thing might have gone. But then it said, in a treacly, self-satisfied tone, “ I’ve scared you, haven’t I? I’ve really scared you! ”

“You haven’t scared me at all. You’re just disturbing my night’s rest.”

I felt a vague wind blowing across my room from the direction of the door, and I was certain that I could detect that sour, sickening odor of the demon. Perhaps it was just my imagination. Perhaps I was having a dream. But there I was, defenceless in my nightshirt and my goddamned ridiculous bedsocks, clutching a lightweight candlestick and hoping that whatever whispered behind that door was going to stay behind it, or better still, leave me alone.

“ We must talk, monsieur, ” said the voice.

“I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

“ But of course we do. We must talk about the girl. Don’t you want to talk about the girl? Wouldn’t you like to sit down far an hour or two, like men of the world, and talk about her bubs, perhaps, or the inner folds of her sex? ”

“Get out of here! I don’t want to listen!”

“ But of course you do. You’re fascinated. You’re fearful, but fascinated. We could talk about the many ways in which girls can have intercourse with animals and reptiles. The pain of it, and the sheer delight! After all, we must have her for the grand gathering, mustn’t we? We couldn’t do without her. ”

I retreated, trembling, back towards the bed. Whatever stood outside my door, its lewd words seemed to crawl all over me like lice. I groped for, and found, the book of angels which lay on my bedside table; and I also picked up, out of plain old-fashioned superstitious terror, the ring of hair which Eloise had given me for protection against devils and demons.

I raised the book of angels and said tightly: “I command you to go away. If you don’t go away, I’ll invoke an angel to drive you away. No matter how dangerous it is, I’ll do it.”

The voice chuckled. “ You don’t know what you’re talking about. Invoke an angel! How can you possibly believe in angels? ”

“The same way I’m beginning to believe in devils.”

“ You think I’m a devil? Well, I’ll prove you wrong! Just open the door and I’ll show you. ”

I kept the book held high. “I’m not going to. If you want to talk, talk in the morning. But right now I want you to go. I don’t care if you’re Father Anton or not. Just go.”

There was a long, dull silence. Then I heard a clicking noise. I couldn’t think what it was to begin with, but then I looked again at the door and saw, to my utmost dread, that the key was slowly revolving in the lock. One by one, the lock levers opened; and then the brass bolt at the top of the door slid back as if it was being tugged by a magnet.

My throat constricted. I hefted the candlestick and raised it behind me to hit whatever was out there as hard as I possibly could.

The doorknob turned. The door opened, and that soft sour draught began to course through my bedroom again. Then, untouched, the door swung wide by itself.

Outside, in the corridor, it was totally dark. The house stirred and shifted. I waited and waited, my candlestick raised over my head, but nothing happened. Nobody appeared. Nobody spoke.

I said, “Are you there?”

There was no reply. I swallowed, and my swallow seemed like the loudest sound in the world.

I took one step forward towards the doorway. Maybe it was waiting for me to come after it. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t disappoint it. After all, a demon was only a demon, wasn’t it? It was only some croaky voice in the night. Only some whisper in a derelict tank. Nothing more than a scattered heap of bones that Father Anton had sealed in his cellar.

I reached the doorway. The best thing to do would be to jump right out across the corridor. Then, if anything was hiding beside the door, ready to claw out at me, I could turn round and hit it first.

I said, loudly and unsteadily, “Are you there? Answer me! If you’re so damned smart, answer!”

There was nothing. It was so quiet in that moment that I could hear my watch ticking on the bedside table. I cleared my throat.

I tensed the candlestick in my hand, crouched down a little, and then I threw myself out of the open doorway, across the painted boards of the corridor, and scrambled around so that I was ready with my arm raised and my muscles tightened for action.

There was nothing. The corridor was empty. I felt a shiver that was both fear and relief, intermingled.

Perhaps the best thing to do now would be to go down and check that Father Anton was all right. After all, that whispery voice had claimed to be him, and if it was opening doors all over the house, it could have opened his, too. I pulled up my bedsocks, which were falling down round my ankles, and walked back along the dark corridor as far as the head of the stairs. On the landing below, an old French wall clock was tiredly counting away the small cold hours of the night, and a cardinal with a face about as happy as a hundred-year-old horse was looking gloomily out of an ancient oil painting.

I started to go down the stairs. My nightshirt made a soft sweeping sound on the boards, and I paused once to listen for any unusual noises. The wall clock suddenly whirred and struck the half hour, and I froze. But when the chimes had died away, there was silence again. I walked across the landing, and headed down the corridor where Father Anton’s bedroom was.

It was very dark along that corridor. Somehow the atmosphere was different, as if someone else had recently walked down here, disturbing the chilly air. I went as softly as I could, but my own breathing seemed almost deafening, and every floorboard had a creak or a squeak of its own.

I was halfway down the corridor when I saw something down at the far end. I stopped, and strained my eyes. It was difficult to make out what it was in the shadows, but it looked like a child. It was standing with its back to me, apparently gazing out of the small leaded window at the snow-covered yard. I didn’t move. The child could have been an illusion—nothing more than an odd composition of light and dark. But from thirty feet away it appeared remarkably real, and I could almost imagine it turning around and for one moment in my nightmare I had seen a face that grinned like a goat with hideous yellow eyes.

I took one very cautious step forward. I said: “ You! ” but my voice only came out as a whisper.

The small figure remained still. It was solitary and sad, in a way, like a ghost over whose earthly body no prayers had ever been spoken. It continued to look out over the yard, not moving, not turning, not speaking.

I took one more step nearer, then another. I said: “Is that you?”

One moment the figure seemed real and tangible, but then as I came even closer, the hooded head became a shadow from the top of the casement, and the small body melted into a triangle of dim light from the snow outside, and I stepped quickly up to the window and saw that there was nobody and nothing there at all.