Dennis Wheatley - The Devil Rides Out

She began to wonder seriously for the first time if he was not right, and that during these last months which she had spent with Madame D’Urfe her brain had become clouded almost to the point of mania by this obsession to the exclusion of all natural and reasonable thoughts. She recalled those queer companions who were travelling the same path as herself, most of them far further advanced upon it, of whom she had seen so much in recent times. The man with the hare-lip, the one-armed Eurasian, the Albino and the Babu. They were not normal any one of them and, while living outwardly the ordinary life of monkeyed people, dwelt secretly in a strange sinister world of their own, flattering themselves and each other upon their superiority to normal men and women on account of the strange powers that they possessed, yet egotistical and hard-hearted to the last degree.

This day spent with the buoyant, virile Rex among the fresh green of the countryside and the shimmering sunlight of the river’s bank, had altered Tanith’s view of them entirely; and now, in a great revulsion of feeling, she could only wonder that her longing for power and forgetfulness of her fore-ordained death had blinded her to their cruel way of life for so long.

She stood up and smoothing down her crumpled green linen frock, did her best to tidy herself. But she had lost her bag in the car smash, so not only was she moneyless but had no comb with which to do her hair. However, feeling that now Rex had succeeded in preventing her reaching the meeting-place he would be certain to call off the police, she set out at a brisk pace away from Easterton towards where she believed the main Salisbury-Devizes road to lie; hoping to find a temporary shelter for the night and then make her way back to London in the morning.

Before she had gone two hundred yards, her way was blocked by a tall, barbed-wire fence shutting in some military enclosure, so she turned along it. Two hundred yards farther on the fence ended, but she was again brought up by another fence and above it the steep embankment of a railway line. She hesitated then, not wishing to turn back in the direction of Easterton, and was wondering what it would be best to do, when a dark, hunched figure seemed to form out of the shadows beside her. She started back, but recovered herself at once on realising that it was only a bent old woman.

‘You’ve lost your way, dearie?’ croaked the old crone. ‘Yes,’ Tanith admitted. ‘Can you show me how I get on to the Devizes road?’

‘Come with me, my pretty. I am going that way myself,’ said the old woman in a husky voice, which seemed to Tanith in some strange way vaguely familiar.

‘Thank you.’ She turned and walked along the bridle-path that followed the embankment to the west, searching her mind as to where she could have heard that husky voice before.

‘Give me your hand, dearie. The way is rough for my old feet,’ croaked the ancient crone; and Tanith willingly offered her arm. Then, as the old woman rested a claw upon it, a sudden memory of long ago flooded her mind.

It was of the days when, as a little girl living in the foothills of the Carpathians, she had made a friend of an old gipsy-woman who used to come to the village for the fair and local Saints’ Days, with her band of Ziganes. It was from her that Tanith had first learned her strange powers of clairvoyance and second sight. Many a time she had scrambled down from the rocky mount upon which her home was set to the gipsy encampment outside the village to gaze with marvelling eyes at old Mizka who knew so many wonderful things, and could tell of the past and of the future by gazing into a glass of water or consulting her grimy pack of Tarot cards.

Tanith could still see those greasy pasteboards which had such fascinating pictures upon them. The twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana, said by some to be copies of the original Book of Thoth, which contained all wisdom and was given to mankind by the ancient ibis-headed Egyptian god. For thousands of years such packs had been treasured and reproduced from one end of the world to the other and were treasured still, from the boudoirs of modern Paris to the tea-houses of Shanghai, wherever people came secretly in the quiet hours to learn, from those who could read them, the secrets of the future.

As she walked on, half unconscious of her strange companion, Tanith recalled them in their right and faithful order. The Juggler with his table—meaning mental rectitude; the High Priestess like a female Pope—wisdom; the Empress—night and darkness; the Emperor—support and protection; the Pope—reunion and society; the Lovers—marriage; the Chariot—triumph and despotism; Justice, a winged figure with sword and scales—the law; the Hermit with his lantern—a pointer towards good; the Wheel of Fortune carrying a cat and a demon round with it—success and wealth; Strength, a woman wrenching open the jaws of a lion—power and sovereignty; the Hanged Man lashed by his right ankle to a beam and dangling upside down while holding two money bags—warning to be prudent; Death with his scythe —ruin and destruction; Temperance, a woman pouring liquid from one vase to another—moderation; the Devil, bat-winged, goat-faced, with a human head protruding from his belly—force and blindness; the Lightning-struck Tower with people falling from it—want, poverty and imprisonment; the Star—disinterestedness; the Moon—speech and lunacy; the Sun—light and science; the Judgment—typifying will; the World, a naked woman with goat and ram below—travel and possessions; then last but not least the card that has no number, the Fool, foretelling dementia, rapture and extravagance.

Old Mizka had been a willing teacher, and Tanith, the child, an eager pupil, for she had spent a lonely girlhood in that castle on the hill separated by miles of jagged valleys difficult to traverse from other children of her own position, and debarred by custom from adopting the children of the villagers as her playmates. Long before her time she had learned all the secrets of life from the old gipsy, who talked for hours in her husky voice of lovers and marriages and lovers again, and potions to bring sleep to suspicious husbands and philtres which could warm the heart of the coldest man towards a woman who desired his caresses.

‘Mizka,’ Tanith whispered suddenly. ‘It is you—isn’t it?’

‘Yes, dearie. Yes—old Mizka has come a long way tonight to set her pretty one upon the road.’

‘But how did you ever come to England?’

‘No matter, dearie. Don’t trouble your golden head about that. Old Mizka started you upon the road, and she has been sent to guide your feet tonight.’

Tanith hung back for a second in sudden alarm, but the claw upon her arm urged her forward again with gentle strength as she protested.

‘But I don’t want to go! Not… not to the….’

The old crone chuckled. ‘What foolishness is this? It is the road that you have taken all your life, ever since Mizka told you of it as a little girl. Tonight is the night that old Mizka has seen for so many years in her dreams—the night when you shall know all things, and be granted powers which come to few. How fortunate you are to have this opportunity when you are yet so young.’

At the old woman’s silken words, a new feeling crept into Tanith’s heart. She had been dwelling upon Rex’s face as she crossed the plain, and all the health-giving freshness of his gay, clean modernity, but now she was drawn back into another world; the one of which she had thought so long, in which a very few chosen people could perform the seemingly impossible—bend others to their will—cause them to fall or rise—place unaccountable obstacles in their path at every turn, or smooth their way to a glorious success. That was more than riches, more than fame; the supreme pinnacle to which any man or woman could rise, and all her longing to reach those heights before she died came back to her. Rex was a pleasant, stupid child; De Richleau a meddlesome fool, who did not understand the danger of the things with which he was trying to interfere. Mocata was a Prince in power and knowledge. She should be unutterably grateful that he had considered her worthy of the honour which she was about to receive.