Dennis Wheatley - The Haunting of Toby Jugg

There was nothing supernatural about them but, all the same, it was a beastly experience, as the irritation never ceased for a second and there was something loathsome about the feel of their cold little bodies coming in contact with one's skin. Somehow, too, the longer it lasted the worse it became. For the first few minutes my mind was fully occupied by my angry attempts to fight off the little pests; but it suddenly dawned upon me that my efforts were both futile and exhausting. There were too many and too agile, and for all my wild slapping I had not succeeded in hitting more than a dozen or two. So I gave up, and endeavoured to remain still. But I found I simply couldn't for more than a few seconds at a time. It was then that my nerve began to give way.

I suppose it was pretty wet of me to allow a lot of harmless little insects to have that effect; but it was partly the impossibility of sitting still while they crawled all over me and the equal impossibility of getting rid of them; and partly, I think, the horribly disturbing knowledge of how they came to be there. Anyhow, after a quarter of an hour, that seemed to last half the night, I broke down, and began to weep with rage and distress.

Helmuth came in a few minutes later, to see how I was taking things, and he must have been extremely gratified by what he saw.

The stinking bit of black candle had burnt down to a quarter of an inch. He snuffed it, put the heel in his pocket, then went over to the terrace door and opened it wide for a few moments till the rush of cool air had driven most of the smell out of the room. Next he pronounced several sentences of what sounded like gibberish, but were, I suppose, a magical formula from some dead language. On that his legion of spiders immediately left me and scuttled away out of sight through the cracks in the wainscoting.

Holding his lamp aloft, he looked at me and said: 'Perhaps after tonight's experience I shall find you in a more reasonable frame of mind tomorrow. If not, I shall have to give you a sharper lesson. There is one family of spiders living in the ruins that I refrained from sending. They are not poisonous but their bite is painful, and if I send them to you in the dark you will find it most unpleasant. You might think that over before you go to sleep.'

When he had gone I did think it over; and I was, and am, still determined to resist. Spider bites can be most unpleasant, but I can hardly believe that they will prove more painful than would a beating with thin steel rods by a gang of Gestapo toughs. And, so long as my mind remains unimpaired, I mean to stick any pain that Helmuth may inflict on me to the limit of my will.

Nevertheless, at the time, my nerves were still in a parlous state; and, having already given way to tears, I let myself go again in a flood of self pity. It was in that state that Sally found me.

I did not hear her come in, as my head was half buried in the pillow and my sobs drowned the sound of her footfalls. It was her voice, saying 'What is it, Toby? Whatever is the matter?' that made me start up and find her already leaning over me.

She was standing right beside my bed holding a torch. It dazzled me for a moment, but I could just make out that she was in a dressing gown and had her fluffy brown hair done up in a lot of little plaits. They stuck out absurdly, like a spiky halo, but made her look very young and rather pretty.

'What is it?' she repeated gently. 'Why are you crying like this? Have you had some awful nightmare? I've just had one about you. It was horrid. You were in bed here, and there was a great black thing over your face. I couldn't see what it was, but I knew that you were suffocating. When I woke I was so worried that I felt I must come up and see if you were all right.'

'I I had a nightmare too,' I gulped. It seemed the only thing to say. I could not possibly expect her to believe that Helmuth had done a Pied Piper of Hamelin on me with all the spiders in the place; but I snuffled out that I had dreamed that a horde of them was swarming all over me.

'There, there,' she murmured. 'It's all over now, and you'll soon forget it. But I'm very glad I followed my impulse to come up, all the same.'

Then she perched herself on the edge of the bed, drew my head down on her breast, and made comforting noises to me as though I were a small boy who had hurt himself.

By that time I had practically got control of myself again; but I must confess that I didn't hurry to show it. Perhaps Weylands made me rather a hard, self reliant type; anyhow, circumstances have never before arisen in which I have been comforted by a girl. It was an entirely new experience and I found it remarkably pleasant.

After a bit I could no longer disguise the fact that I was feeling better; so she said she was going to send me to sleep. She has marvellous hands; strong yet slim, and very sensitive as I already knew from her giving me my massage treatments. Having made me comfortable on my pillows, she started to stroke my forehead with a touch as light as swansdown. In no time at all I had forgotten about Helmuth and felt a gentle relaxation steal over me; a few moments later I was sleeping like a top.

Later

This morning Sally and I said nothing to one another about last night. I had half a mind to thank her for her kindness, but shyness got the better of me; and she probably refrained from mentioning the matter out of tactfulness, feeling that I wouldn't like it recalled that a girl had found me in tears.

All the same it did come up this afternoon. I was sitting in my wheelchair looking through one of my stamp albums I have five altogether, and two of them are now completely interleaved with these sheets, but this was one of the others and I found I was out of cigarettes. As Sally was near my bedside table I asked her to pass me the big silver box on it, so that I could refill my case. She did so, and opened it as she handed it to me. There was a dead spider inside.

'That's funny,' she said. 'When I was making your bed with Konrad this morning I found three dead spiders in it, and here's another. I wonder how it got inside the box?'

I knew the answer to that one. The box had been open when Helmuth had come in to me at midnight. Later, while slapping at the little brutes, I had evidently hit this one as my hand caught the lid and smacked it shut.

But, without waiting for me to reply, she went on: 'It was queer finding three of them in your bed, too. I've never seen any there before. Perhaps a nest of them has hatched out behind the wainscot. Anyhow I'm sure it must have been one of them running over your face that gave you that horrid dream.'

An almost overwhelming impulse urged me to tell her the truth; but I managed to fight it down. I'm very glad I did now, as a few dead spiders would not have been enough to convince her that I hadn't dreamed the whole thing, and that it was simply my old prejudice against Helmuth reasserting itself in my sleep.

All the same, I count her having found the spiders a great piece of good fortune, as it is one item of concrete evidence; and, although it may cost me pretty dear, if the next few days produce others the time may not be far off when I can spill the whole story and she will have to believe me. Sally is 100 per cent honest; I am sure of that; and if only I can convince her of the facts she will be 100 per cent for me. I have got to, for in her now lies my only hope.

As it was, I said: 'Yes, you're right. I can still feel the little devils crawling over my skin. But that doesn't explain your dream about me; how do you account for that?'

She shrugged. 'Perhaps I was worrying about you before I went to sleep. For a permanent invalid you are a wonderfully cheerful person, and in the early part of the week you were right on top of your form; but the past two days you've gone right off the boil. Naturally I've felt rather concerned about that.'