Graham Masterton - The Devils of D-Day

“We’ll take it,” I said wearily, and I sat down on the bed and took off my shoes before she could even answer. The mattress felt as if it was crowded with unravelled fencing wire, but right then it was heaven. The old lady left us alone together, and we undressed, washed in Arctic water, and fell into bed. I don’t remember falling asleep, but it must have been pretty quick, because I didn’t even have time to put my arm around Madeleine’s naked back.

I was wakened by a scuffling noise. For a second, I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not, but then I heard it again, and I lifted my head from the pillow and looked around. I held my breath, and tried to suppress the pump-pump-pump of my heart. The room was very dark, suffocatingly dark, and even though I strained my eyes, I couldn’t see if there was anything there. I lifted myself up on one elbow, and the bedsprings creaked and complained like a tired orchestra.

There was silence. I whispered, though I didn’t want to: “Elmek?”

No reply. Madeleine stirred in her sleep, and turned over.

I whispered again: “Elmek?”

There was another scuffle, then a rustling sound They seemed to come from down behind the foot of the bed. I sat up, my skin electric with fear, and I tried to see what was hiding there in the darkness.

Again, there was silence. But I was sure I heard a faint scratching and rustling on the worn linoleum, and I was sure that a darker shadow shifted and moved in the gloom.

I kept absolutely still. I could feel that Madeleine was awake now. She reached across the bed and squeezed my hand, too frightened to speak. But I bent my head towards her and said softly, “Don’t panic. It’s in here somewhere, but don’t panic.”

She nodded, and swallowed. In the hush of the night, we waited for the devil to stir again, our hands tightly clenched together, our breath held back into shallow gasps.

Suddenly, Madeleine said, “Dan. The window. Dan! ”

I turned towards the window. I flinched in shock. There was someone silhouetted against the curtains, a tall figure of clotted shadows, unmoving and quiet. I took one look, and then my hand went scrambling in search of my bedside lamp, but I tangled my fingers in the flex by mistake, and the lamp tipped over and crashed on to the floor.

In the terrible silence that followed, a woman’s voice said, “ Are you rested? ”

It was a strange, throaty voice—too deep for a woman, really, but too vibrantly female for a man. The dim figure stirred, and moved silently across the room. I could just make out a pale face—a smudge of grey in the grainy blackness.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “Who are you?”

The figure didn’t reply for a while. It seemed to be grating its teeth together, with an edgy, squeaking sound. Then it said: “ We take many forms you know. Many substances. Aren’t you afraid? ”

I said, “Are you Elmek?”

“ Elmek or Asmorod or Kaphis. We have more names than nights that have passed since the crucifixion. Don’t think that your book can identify us, because it won’t. ”

“What do you know about that?”

The thing gave a hoarse, blowzy laugh. “ I know that you. are wasting your time on religious folly. Angels! You must be demented. You have struck yourself a bargain with me, my friend, and with my master Adramelech, the Grand Chancellor of Hell, the peacock and the serpent. Don’t talk to me of angels! ”

Madeleine said, “What are you going to do with us? You’re not going to keep your bargain, are you?”

There was a sound of crackling, as if the beast were tugging its knuckles, or biting into bones. Then it said, in a much deeper, more slurred and masculine voice, “ Bargains are struck for good and evil. Bargains have always been struck for good and evil. The priests and the bishops have struck bargains before, and not been disappointed. We didn’t only fight at Senlac, you know. We were there with Charlemagne, and we were there with Jeanne d’Arc. No wonder the English burned her! The stones told of monstrous devils whirling around her head in battle, and they were true, mon ami. It is only now that the church has seen fit to rewrite its history, and deny the existence of all the unholy allies it used for its so-called holy wars! ”

Madeleine was shivering in fright. I put my arm around her and held her close, but the devil wasn’t disturbed.

“ Think of the Spanish Inquisition, ” it whispered. “ Think of the torture chambers of England and France. Each had its devil! In times gone by, devils walked the earth freely, and they still walk the earth! They made bargains with men, for mutual advantage, because man is an evil creature, thank the stars, as well as a good one. ”

Over in the corner of the room, near the door, I saw a faint blueish light, like the phosphorescence in the ocean at night. Then, to my horror, something began to appear out of the darkness. I stared and stared, and, half-distinguishable in the shadows, its mouth stretched back in a wolfish grin, was a beast that could have been a devil, could have been a whoreish woman, could have been some hideous slimy subaqueous squid. There was a sour smell in the room, and the blue light crawled and nickered like the foul illumination from decaying fish.

I saw everything in that moment that disgusted and horrified me. I saw what looked like a woman’s hands seductively drawn back up a curving shining thigh, only to realize that the thigh wasn’t a thigh at all, but a desperately wriggling trunk of tentacles. I saw pouting lips that suddenly turned out to be festering cuts. I saw rats crowding into the mouth of a sleeping woman. I saw living flesh cut away from living bones, first in ribbons of skin and muscle, and then in a stomach-turning tangle of sodden flesh.

Madeleine, beside me, shrieked.

“ Elmek! ” I yelled, and rolled out of the bed towards the ghastly apparition.

There was a paralysing burst of white light, and I felt as if someone had cracked me over the head with a pickaxe handle. Dazed and dazzled, I fell sideways on the cold linoleum, bruising my shoulder against the leg of the bed. I tried to get up, but something hit me again, something heavy and soft.

Madeleine screamed, “Dan! It’s in the bed! It’s in the bed! ”

Stunned, wiping blood away from a split lip, I gripped hold of the edge of the mattress and pulled myself upright. Madeleine was beating in terror at the blankets, as if something had scurried its way under them, and was crawling around her legs. For a half-second, in the eerie blue light of that failing phosphorescence, I saw something reach out from under the covers and touch her naked leg. It was black and claw-like and hairy, like a grossly overgrown spider. I hit at it, yelling in fear and anger, and then I seized Madeleine’s wrist and yanked her off the bed and halfway across the Moor.

There was a moment of sheer panic when I thought that whatever was under those blankets was going to come crawling after us. I heard something heavy drop off the bed, and the scratch of claws on the floor; but then the blue light suddenly began to flicker again; and go dim, like a torch with used-up batteries, and the sour odor of devil began to fade away. I heard a soft soughing noise, a wind where no wind could blow, and then there was silence. Both of us crouched on the floor, panting from fright. We listened and listened, but there was no sound in the room at all, and after a while we cautiously raised our heads.

“I think it must have gone,” I said quietly.

Madeleine whispered, “Oh God, that was terrible. Oh my God, I was so scared.”

I switched on the overhead light. Then I went over to the bed and prodded at the covers with the broken bedside lamp. In the end, I gathered up enough courage to lift the blankets and turn them over. There was nothing there. If it hadn’t been a terrifying illusion, then it had left us.