Dennis Wheatley - The Devil Rides Out

Simon was annointed with holy water and with holy oil. The gesture of Horus was made to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west. The palms of his hands were sprinkled and the soles of his feet. Asafoetida grass was tied round his wrists and his ankles. An orb with the cross upon it was placed in his right hand, and a phial of quicksilver between his lips. A chain of garlic flowers was hung about his neck, and the sacred oil placed in a cross upon his forehead. Each action upon him was preceded by prayer, concentration of thought, and invocation to the archangels, the high beings of Light, and to his own higher consciousness.

At last, after an hour, all had been accomplished in accordance with the ancient lore and De Richleau examined Simon again. He was warmer now and the ugly lines of distress and terror had faded from his face. He seemed to have passed out of his dead faint into a natural sleep and was breathing regularly.

‘I think that with God’s help we have saved him,’ declared the Duke. ‘He looks almost normal now, but we had best wait until he wakes of his own accord; I can do no more, so we will rest for a little.’

Rex passed his hand wearily across his eyes as De Richleau sank down beside him. ‘I’ll say I need it. Would it be … er … sacrilegious or anything if I had a smoke?’

‘Of course not.’ De Richleau drew out his cigars. ‘Have a Hoyo. It is thoughts, not formalities, which make the atmosphere of good or evil.’

For a little while the two friends sat silent, the points of their cigars glowing faintly in the darkness until a pale greyness in the eastern sky made clearer the ghostly outlines of the great oblong stones towering at varying angles to twenty feet above their heads.

‘What a strange place this is,’ Rex murmured. ‘How old do you suppose it to be?’

‘About four thousand years.’

‘As old as that, eh?’

‘Yes, but that is young compared with the Pyramids and, beside them, for architecture and scientific alignment, this thing is a primitive toy.’

‘Those ancient Britons must have been a whole heap cleverer than we give them credit for all the same, to get these great blocks of stone set up. It would tax all the resources of our modern engineers, I reckon. Some of them must weigh a hundred tons apiece.’

De Richleau nodded. ‘Only the piety of many thousand willing hands, hauling on skin ropes, and manipulating vast levers could have accomplished it, but what is even more remarkable is that the foreign stones were transported from a quarry nearly two hundred miles from here.’

‘What do you mean by “foreign stones”?’

‘The stones which form the inner ring and the inner horseshoe are called so because they were brought from a great distance — a place in Pembrokeshire, I think.’

‘Horseshoe,’ Rex repeated with a puzzled look. ‘I thought all the stones were placed in rings.’

‘It is hardly discernible in the ruins now but originally this great temple consisted of an outer ring formed of big arches, then a concentric circle of smaller uprights. Inside that, five great separate trilithons or arches, two of which you can see still standing, set in the form of a horseshoe and then another horseshoe of the smaller stones.’

‘The Druids used the horseshoe, too, then?’

‘Certainly. As I have told you, it is a most potent symbol indissolubly connected with the Power of Light. Hence my use of it in connection with the swastika and the cross.’

They fell silent again for some time, then Simon stirred beside them and they both stood up. He slowly turned over and looked about him with dull eyes until he recognised his friends, and asked in a stifled voice where he was.

Without answering, De Richleau drew him down between Rex and himself on to his knees, and proceeded to give thanks for his restoration. ‘Repeat after me,’ he said, ‘the words of the Fifty-first Psalm.’

‘Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness: according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.

Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my faults and my sin is ever before me.’

To the end of the beautiful penitent appeal the Duke read in a solemn voice from the Prayer Book by the aid of a little torch while the others repeated verse by verse after him. Then all three stood up and began at last to talk in their normal voices.

De Richleau explained what had taken place, and Simon sat upon the altar-stone weeping like a child as now, with a clear brain, he began at last to understand the terrible peril from which his friends had rescued him.

He remembered the party which had been given at his house and that the Duke had hypnotised him in Curzon Street. After that—nothing, until he found himself present in the Sabbat which had been held that night, and even then he could only see vague pictures of it, as though he had not participated in it himself, but watched the whole of the ghastly proceedings from a distance; horrified to the last degree to see a figure that seemed to be himself taking part in those abominable ceremonies, yet mentally chained and powerless to intervene or stop that body, so curiously like his own, participating in that godless scene of debauchery.

Dawn was now breaking in the eastern sky, as De Richleau placed his arm affectionately round Simon’s shoulders. ‘Don’t take it to heart so, my friend,’ he said kindly. ‘For the moment at least you have been spared, and praise be to God you are ‘still sane, which is more than I dared to hope for when we got you here.’

Simon nodded. ‘I know—I’ve been lucky,’ he said soberly.

‘But am I really free—for good ? I’m afraid Mocata will try and get me back somehow.’

‘Now we’re together again you needn’t worry,’ Rex grinned. ‘If the three of us can’t fight this horror and win out we’re not the men I always thought we were.’

‘Yes,’ Simon agreed, a little doubtfully. ‘But the trouble is that I was born at a time when certain stars were in conjunction, so in a way I’m the key to a ritual which Mocata’s set his heart on performing.’

The invocation to Saturn coupled with Mars,’ the Duke put in.

‘That’s it, and he can’t accomplish it without me. That’s why I’m scared he’ll exercise every incantation in the book to drag me back to him despite myself.’

‘Isn’t that danger over? Surely it should have been done two nights ago, but we managed to prevent it then.’

‘Ner,’ Simon used his favourite negative with a little wriggle of his bird-like head. ‘That would have been the most suitable time of all, but the ritual can be performed with a reasonable prospect of success any night while the two planets remain in the same house of the Zodiac’

‘Then the longer we can keep you out of Mocata’s clutches, the less chance he stands of pulling it off as the two planets get farther apart,’ Rex commented.

De Richleau sighed. His face looked grey and haggard in the early morning light. ‘In that case,’ he said slowly, ‘Mocata will exert his whole strength when twilight comes again, and we shall have to fight with our backs to the wall throughout thus coming night.’

CHAPTER XX

THE FOUR HORSEMEN

Now that the sun was up Rex’s resilient spirit reasserted itself. ‘Time enough to worry about tonight when we are through today,’ he declared cheerfully. ‘What we need most just now is a good hot breakfast.’

The Duke smiled. ‘I thoroughly agree, and in any case we can’t stay here much longer. While we feed we’ll discuss the safest place to which we can take Simon.’

‘We can’t take him anywhere at the moment,’ Rex grinned. ‘Not as he is—with only the car rug and your great-coat to cover his birthday suit.’