Dennis Wheatley: The Haunting of Toby Jugg

Yet had I the means I would be sorely tempted to take my own life tonight.

It is after nine and I am writing this by the failing light. My lamp has not been lit, nor will it be, as Konrad will not be coming up to me again. Helmuth has just paid me a final visit and he told me that before he left.

He came to gloat, and render my last sane hours unendurably hideous by disclosing the way in which he had tricked me; and, infinitely worse, tricked my beloved Sally.

Julia is not dead. It was only a heart attack she had, and she is now little the worse for her seizure. The inspiration to say that she was dead came to Helmuth when he and Dr. Arling had her limp body out on the terrace. He realised that Sally and I were in love, and saw that by causing us to believe that we had killed Julia he could bend us both to his will.

He led me to believe that, as Julia and Sally had clearly had a fight, it was Sally who would be charged with the murder, unless

I signed away my fortune as the price of Dr. Arling giving a certificate that Julia had died a natural death.

He led Sally to believe that he knew the fight to have been only incidental, and that the marks on Julia's throat showed that she had really died from strangulation and that it was I who had strangled her. He threatened to hand me over to the police unless she would do as he wished; and, believing it to be the only way to save me from hanging, she agreed.

He told me that having signed the document would not now save me from mental destruction tonight, because I had not signed it with resignation only under extreme pressure. He said that my prolonged and bitter opposition showed that I could never be made a useful member of the Brotherhood, and would always be liable to make trouble.

Therefore, at a quarter past one in the morning, when the moon is at its highest, they will invoke Lady Astoroth. She will appear here in my room, and tomorrow I shall be found a raving lunatic. Dr. Arling will remove me to his private asylum, and after I have spent some time there the official Board of Lunacy will examine and certify me.

I only pray that a merciful God will allow my mind to be blotted out entirely. If I were certain of that I think I could resign myself to this miserable fate. But nothing could make me resigned to what is in store for Sally.

Helmuth stood well out of reach at the end of my bed. Leonine, rock faced, sardonic, he grinned at me with unutterably evil malice as he told me about that.

He says that Sally knows too much to be allowed to depart in peace, and that steps have to be taken to stop her tongue once and for all. That could be done by making her a lay sister of the Brotherhood, as, after even the lowest degree of initiation, she would never dare to risk the appalling fate reserved for a member who betrays them there is no recorded case of anyone ever having done so yet. And she has agreed to accept initiation, believing that only by doing so can she save my life.

Helmuth said that the initiation will take place at midnight, and that although I shall not be able to see it I shall hear enough of it through the grating to imagine what is going on. Sally does not yet know what they mean to do to her, but Helmuth took fiendish delight in describing to me what will happen, in order that I could better imagine the scene when it takes place.

He is to act as the officiating priest. Sally will be spread-eagled naked on a bed of nettles before the Devil's altar. He will then do to her what he has failed to do so far. The excited cries of the congregation will inform me when the ritual is being accomplished, and the completion of the act will be the signal for a general orgy.

I do not think that when the Lady Astoroth appears to me at a quarter past one I shall know much about it. I shall have gone mad by midnight. May God have mercy upon my dear Sally, and upon my soul.

Wednesday, 24th June

This old Castle must have seen many strange and terrible events, but it can have seen none stranger or more terrible than those which occurred here last night. It is now the scene of catastrophe and death; yet, despite everything, I am still sane.

That I am so after what I endured between nine o'clock and midnight last night is in itself a miracle.

No sound came to distract my agonising thoughts until a little after ten; then I heard people moving in the chapel. Gradually the noise increased. I heard the clatter of plates and the clink of glasses; so I knew that the Satanists had begun to feast at the tables set up in the side aisles.

The voices grew louder and more distinct. There came the drinking of health’s and raucous laughter. That went on for well over an hour, so it must have been about half past eleven when the service started.

There was music, but music the like of which I have never heard before and hope never to hear again. It had no tune or any kind of beauty, but was a series of hideous discords, rising at times to a wild cacophony of sound interspersed by catcalls, shouts and animal noises.

I knew that those beasts in human form were working them selves up into a frenzy of abandon, the better to satiate their vile lusts when the time came.

The night was stiflingly hot, and the fumes of strange and horrible things that were burning down there came up to me through the grating. The chapel was brightly lit, and the grating stood out sharply; a great rectangle of light crisscrossed with its black bars, which illuminated the whole room almost as brightly as though it were day.

I had thrown off the bedclothes, and swung myself round so that my useless legs were dangling over the side of the bed. From time to time, as midnight approached, I tried to stand, but I could not do so for more than a minute without having to grasp the head of the bed for support.

I prayed as I have never prayed before violently, unceasingly supplicating God to spare Sally, or at least grant her oblivion, so that she might be spared the knowledge of the abominable things those beasts meant to do to her. I prayed aloud, and I was raving. I called on God and the Virgin Mary; on all the Powers of Good and Light and Love that there had ever been in the world.

The sweat was pouring off me. It ran into my eyes and they grew misty. I could no longer see even the brightly lit grating clearly. My effort was so intense that I was shaking all over. I tried to throw my spirit forward out of my body, and down into the chapel to protect Sally. I cried aloud my defiance of Satan and all his works.

It was then the miracle happened. God had heard my prayer. I found that I was standing up, and that I was walking towards the panel.

I seemed to be buoyed up and supported by unseen hands. Without any effort I climbed through the panel opening on to the secret stairs. They were faintly lit by the moonlight coming through the arrow slits. I walked slowly but surely down them till I reached the door at the bottom. I thrust it open and entered the chapel.

The scene was one which will remain stamped on my memory until my dying day. There were about eighty people present, all wearing fantastic costumes. Many of them were women, some nude to the waist, others dressed in eccentric arrangements of veiling through which their bodies could be seen, or which left their sexual parts exposed. The men were in gorgeous satins and velvets, and each wore a headdress in the likeness of some wild animal or poisonous reptile.

Like a reredos, behind the altar, there spread a vast web which seemed to have been spun from liquid silver. It extended to both sides of the chapel and right up to its roof. In the centre of the web, about twenty feet up, sat the Great Spider.

In front of the altar stood Helmuth. He was wearing his white satin robe with the black signs of the Zodiac on it, but the robe was now hitched up so that he was naked from the waist down. Two women, one of whom was Julia, knelt at either side of him in attitudes of adoration. In front of him two assistant priests were standing, and between them they held Sally by the arms. She was dressed in the fashion of a nun, except that her single garment was of magenta veiling, through which one could see her white body.