Dennis Wheatley - The Devil Rides Out

‘Oh, Hell!’ Rex groaned, ‘we’ve simply got to get Simon out of this some way.’

The Goat turned round again after receiving the last kiss, holding between its hoofs a wooden cross about four feet in length. With a sudden violent motion it dashed the crucifix against the stone, breaking it into two pieces. Then the cat-headed man, who seemed to be acting the part of Chief Priest, picked them up. He threw the broken end of the shaft towards a waiting group, who pounced upon it and smashed it into matchwood with silent ferocity, while he planted the crucifix end upside down in the ground before the Goat. This apparently concluded the first portion of the ceremony.

The Satanists now hurried over to the tables where the banquet was spread out. No knives, forks, spoons or glasses were in evidence. But this strange party, governed apparently by a desire to throw themselves back into a state of bestiality, grabbed handfuls of food out of the silver dishes and, seizing the bottles, tilted them to drink from the necks, gurgling and spitting as they did so and spilling the wine down their dominoes. Not one of them spoke a word, and the whole macabre scene was carried out in a terrible unnatural silence, as though it were a picture by Goya come to life.

‘Let’s creep down nearer,’ whispered the Duke. ‘While they are gorging themselves an opportunity may come for us to get hold of Simon. If he moves a few paces away from them for a moment, don’t try to argue with him, but knock him out.’

At a stealthy crawl, the two friends moved down the hillside to within twenty yards of the little lake, at the side of which the tables were set. The throne still occupied by the monstrous goat was only a further fifteen yards away from them, and by the light of the twelve black candles burning with an unnaturally steady flame even in that protected hollow among the hills, they could see the clustered figures sufficiently well to recognise those whom they knew among them despite their masks and dominoes.

Simon, like the rest, was gnawing at a chunk of food as though he had suddenly turned into an animal, and, as they watched, he snatched a bottle of wine from a masked woman standing nearby, spilling a good portion of its contents over her and himself; then he gulped down the rest.

For a few moments Rex felt again that he must be suffering from a nightmare. It seemed utterly beyond understanding that any cultured man like Simon, or other civilised people such as these must normally be, could behave with such appalling bestiality. But it was no nightmare. In that strange, horrid silence, the Satanists continued for more than half an hour to fight and tumble like a pack of wolfish dogs until the tables had been overthrown and the ground about the lakeside was filthy with the remaining scraps of food, gnawed bones and empty bottles.

At last Simon, apparently three parts drunk, lurched away from the crush and flung himself down on the grass a little apart from the rest, burying his head between his hands.

‘Now!’ whispered the Duke. ‘We’ve got to get him.’

With Rex beside him, he half rose to his feet, but a tall figure had broken from the mass and reached Simon before they could move. It was the man with the mutilated ear, and in another second a group of two women and three more men had followed him. De Richleau gritted his teeth to suppress an oath and placed a restraining hand on Rex’s shoulder.

‘It’s no good,’ he muttered savagely. ‘We must wait a bit. Another chance may come.’ And they sank down again into the shadows.

The group about the tables was now reeling drunk, and the whole party in a body surged back towards the Goat upon its throne. Rex and De Richleau had been watching Simon so intently they had failed to notice until then that Mocata and the half a dozen other masters of the Left Hand Path had erected a special table before the Goat, and were feeding from it. Yet they appeared strangely sober compared with the majority of the crowd who had fed beside the lake.

‘So the Devil feeds, too,’ Rex murmured.

‘Yes,’ agreed the Duke, ‘or at least the heads of his priesthood, and a gruesome meal it is if I know anything about it. A little cannibalism, my friend. It may be a stillborn baby or perhaps some unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered, but I would stake anything that it is human flesh they are eating.’

As he spoke, a big cauldron was brought forward and placed before the throne. Then Mocata and the others with him each took a portion of the food which they had been eating from the table and cast it into the great iron pot. One of them threw in a round ball which met the iron with a dull thud.

Rex shuddered as he realised that the Duke was right. The round object was a human skull.

‘They’re going to boil up the remains with various other things,’ murmured the Duke, ‘and then each of them will be given a little flask of that awful brew at the conclusion of the ceremony, together with a pile of ashes from the wood fire they are lighting under the cauldron now. They will be able to use them for their infamous purposes throughout the year until the next Great Sabbat takes place.’

‘Oh, Hell!’ Rex protested. ‘I can’t believe that they can work any harm with that human mess, however horrid it may be. It’s just not reasonable.’

‘Yet you believe that the Blessed Sacrament has power for good,’ De Richleau whispered. ‘This is the antithesis of the Body of Our Lord, and I assure you, Rex, that, while countless wonderful miracles have been performed by the aid of the Host, terrible things can be accomplished by this blasphemous decoction.’

Rex had no deep religious feelings, but he was shocked and horrified to the depths of his being by this frightful parody of the things he had been taught to hold sacred in his childhood.

‘Dear God,’ muttered the Duke, ‘they are about to commit the most appalling sacrilege. Don’t look, Rex—don’t look.’ He buried his face in his hands and began to pray, but Rex continued to watch despite himself, his gaze held by some terrible fascination.

A great silver chalice was being passed from hand to hand, and very soon he realised the purpose to which it was being put, but could not guess the intention until it was handed back to the cat-headed man. One of the other officiating priests at the infamy produced some round white discs which Rex recognised at once as Communion Wafers—evidently stolen from some church.

In numbed horror he watched the Devil’s acolytes break these into pieces and throw them into the brimming chalice, then stir the mixture with the broken crucifix and hand the resulting compound to the Goat, who, clasping it between its great cloven hoofs, suddenly tipped it up so that the whole contents was spilled upon the ground.

Suddenly, at last, the horrid silence was rent, for the whole mob surged forward shouting and screaming as though they had gone insane, to dance and stamp the fragments of the Holy Wafers into the sodden earth.

‘Phew!’ Rex choked out, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. ‘This is a ghastly business. I can’t stand much more of it. They’re mad, stark staring crazy, every mother’s son of them.’

‘Yes, temporarily,’ the Duke looked up again. ‘Some of them are probably epileptics, and nearly all must be abnormal. This revolting spectacle represents a release of all their pent-up emotions and suppressed complexes, engendered by brooding over imagined injustices, lust for power, bitter hatred of rivals in love or some other type of success and good fortune. That is the only explanation for this terrible exhibition of human depravity which we are witnessing.’

‘Thank God, Tanith’s not here. She couldn’t have stood it. She’d have gone mad, I know, or tried to run away. And then they’d probably have murdered her. But what are we going to do about Simon?’