Dennis Wheatley - The Devil Rides Out

In the faint starlight they could see that the tables were now heaped with an abundance of food and wine, and that the whole crowd had moved over towards the throne round which they formed a wide circle, so that the nearest came some little way up the slope and were no more than fifty yards from where the Duke and Rex lay crouched in the grass.

‘How long does it last?’ Rex asked, beneath his breath, a little nervously.

‘Until cock-crow, which I suppose would be at about four o’clock at this time of the year. It is a very ancient belief that the crowing of a cock has power to break spells, so these ceremonies, in which the power to cast spells is given, never last longer. Keep a sharp look out for Simon.’

‘I am, but what will they be doing all that time?’

‘First, they will make their homage to the Devil. Then they will gorge themselves on the food that they have brought and get drunk on the wine; the idea being that everything must be done contrary to the Christian ritual. They will feast to excess as opposed to the fasting which religious people undergo before their services. Look! There are the leaders before the altar now.’

Rex followed the Duke’s glance, and saw that half a dozen black figures were placing tall candles—eleven of them in a circle and the twelfth inside it — at the foot of the throne.

As they were lighted the twelve candles burned steadily in the windless night with a strong blue flame, illuminating a circle of fifty feet radius including the tables where the feast was spread. Outside this ring the valley seemed darker than before, filled with pitch-black shadows so that the figures in the area stood out clearly as though upon a bright circular stage.

‘Those things they have lighted are the special black candles made of pitch and sulphur,’ muttered the Duke. ‘You will be able to smell them in a minute. But look at the priests: didn’t I tell you that there is little difference between this modern Satanism and Voodoo? We might almost be witnessing some heathen ceremony in an African jungle!’

While the crowd had been busy at the tables, their leaders had donned fantastic costumes. One had a huge cat mask over his head and with a furry cloak, the tail of which dangled behind him on the ground; another wore the head-dress of a repellent toad; the face of a third, still masked, gleamed bluish for a moment in the candle-light from between the distended jaws of a wolf, and Mocata, whom they could still recognise by his squat obesity, now had webbed wings sprouting from his shoulders which gave him the appearance of a giant bat.

Rex shivered. ‘It’s that infernal cold again rising up the hill,’ he said half-apologetically. ‘Say—look at the thing on the throne. It’s changing shape.’

Until the candles had been lit, the pale violet halo which emanated from the figure had been enough to show that it was human and the face absolutely black. But, as they watched, it changed to a greyish colour, and something was happening to the formation of the head.

‘It is the Goat of Mendes, Rex!’ whispered the Duke. ‘My God! this is horrible!’ And even as he spoke, the manifestation took on a clearer shape; the hands, held forward almost in an attitude of prayer but turned downward, became transformed into two great cloven hoofs. Above rose the monstrous bearded head of a gigantic goat, appearing to be at least three times the size of any other which they had ever seen. The two slit-eyes, slanting inwards and down, gave out a red baleful light. Long pointed ears cocked upwards from the sides of the shaggy head, and from the bald, horrible unnatural bony skull, which was caught by the light of the candles, four enormous curved horns spread out—sideways and up.

Before the apparition the priests, grotesque and terrifying beneath their beast-head masks and furry mantles, were now swinging lighted censers, and after a little a breath of the noisome incense was wafted up the slope.

Rex choked into his hand as the fumes caught his throat, then whispered : ‘What is that filth they’re burning?’

‘Thorn, apple leaves, rue, henbane, dried nightshade, myrtle and other herbs,’ De Richleau answered. ‘Some are harmless apart from their stench, but others drug the brain and excite the senses to an animal fury of lust and eroticism as you will see soon enough. If only we could catch sight of Simon,’ he added desperately.

‘Look, there he is!’ Rex exclaimed. ‘Just to the left of the toad-headed brute.’

The goat rose, towering above the puny figures of its unhallowed priests, and turned its back on them; upon which one stooped slightly to give the osculam-infame as his mark of homage. The others followed suit, then the whole circle of Satanists drew in towards the throne and, in solemn silence, followed their example, each bending to salute his master in an obscene parody of the holy kiss which is given to the Bishop’s ring.

Simon was among the last, and as he approached the throne, Rex grabbed De Richleau’s arm. ‘It’s now or never,’ he grunted. ‘We’ve got to make some effort. We can’t let this thing go through.’

‘Hush,’ De Richleau whispered back. ‘This is not the baptism. That will not be until after they have feasted—just before the orgy. Our chance must come.’

As the two lay there in the rough grass, each knew that the time was close at hand when they must act if they meant to attempt Simon’s rescue. Yet, despite the fact that neither of them lacked courage, both realised with crushing despondency how slender their chances of success would be if they ran down the slope and charged that multitude immersed in their ghoulish rites. There were at least a hundred people in that black-robed crowd and it seemed an utter impossibility to overcome such odds.

Rex leaned over towards the Duke and voiced his thoughts aloud. ‘We’re right up against it this time unless you can produce a brainwave. We’d be captured in ten seconds if we tried getting Simon away from this bunch of maniacs.’

‘I know,’ De Richleau agreed miserably. ‘I did not bargain for them all being shut up together in one room in that house or coming on to this place in a solid crowd. If only they would split up a little we might isolate Simon with just two or three of them, down the rest, and get him away before the main party knew what was happening; but as things are I am worried out of my wits. If we charge in, and they catch us, I have not a single doubt but that we should never be allowed to come up out of this hollow alive. We know too much, and they would kill us for a certainty. In fact, they would probably welcome the chance on a night like this to perform a little human sacrifice in front of that ghastly thing on the stones there.’

‘Surely they wouldn’t go in for murder even if they do practise the filthy parody of religion?’ whispered Rex incredulously.

De Richleau shook his head. ‘The Bloody Sacrifice is the oldest magical rite in the world. The slaying of Osiris and Adonis, the mutilation of Attis and the cults of Mexico and Peru, were all connected with it. Even in the Old Testament you read that the sacrifice which was most acceptable to God the Father was one of blood, and St. Paul tells us that “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission”.’

‘That was just ancient heathen cruelty.’

‘Not altogether. The blood is the Life. When it is shed, energy —animal or human as the case may be—is released into the atmosphere. If it is shed within a specially prepared circle, that energy can be caught and stored or redirected in precisely the same way as electric energy is caught and utilised by our modern scientists.’

‘But they wouldn’t dare to sacrifice a human being?’

‘It all depends upon the form of evil they wish to bring upon the world. If it is war they will seek to propitiate Mars with a virgin ram; if they desire the spread of unbridled lust—a goat, and so on. But the human sacrifice is more potent for all purposes than any other, and these wretched people are hardly human at the moment. Their brains are diseased and their mentality is that of the hags and warlocks of the Dark Ages.’