by Brian Lumley
Khumeni! Something suddenly clicked in Dimitrios Kastrouni’s mazed mind. Khumnas and Mhireni, of course! Not only had Guigos taken them, but he’d taken something of their names, too. ‘Khum’ from Khumnas and ‘eni’ from Mhireni. And that was the realization which broke the spell. What would this beast’s name have been if he had also succeeded in taking Kastrouni? Kashumeni? The thought enraged Kastrouni: his hatred and strength were doubled.
This was no man but a hell-spawned beast formed of the parts of others, and this paralysis wasn’t hypnosis but fear! Kastrouni had been unmanned by his own knowledge, his own terror – almost. But now, as Khumeni’s hands clamped onto his shoulders, in that same instant his own fingers closed on the pistol-grip of his speargun. But before he could even begin to bring that weapon to bear …
Effortlessly Khumeni lifted him up and dragged him in through the open window, his hands like clamps crushing Kastrouni’s shoulders. The creature was – powerful! Of course he was, for had he not invoked the lust and strength and power of Demogorgon? Who or what Demogorgon was Kastrouni did not know or could not be sure, despite what he’d read in the works found in Guigos’s saddle-packs; but he considered it likely that at least part of Demogorgon was Death, for certainly he now stared directly into Death’s face.
Khumeni held him helpless in the bedroom – held him upright, arms fast to his sides – held him a foot off the floor and glared at him from only inches away. Kastrouni was literally immobilized from the waist up. But he could move his head.
He glanced down, saw the bowed, upright hind-quarters of a donkey and its huge genitals. This in an instant, and in the next the beast had hurled him away, against the wall, to crumple winded to the floor. But still he held the speargun; and as the power- and sex-crazed Pan of a figure loped unevenly toward him, terrible hands again reaching, so he shakily lifted the weapon, aimed it and without paused pulled the trigger.
The spear was armed with a trident, its tines about three inches long and brown with rust. If the head had been of the single-point variety, then certainly it would have gone right through Khumeni’s shoulder. As it was, the horizontal bar at the base of the trident stopped it. Nevertheless three rusty barbs went home, deep into the hobbling beast’s right shoulder just below the collar-bone, and the force and pain of the impact spun him off course, flailing wildly, he tripped and fell to the floor, and lay there threshing his legs – both hairy, one at least part-crippled – while he screamed and yanked at the spear in his shoulder.
Even injured, Khumeni would be more than a match for any normal man; knowing this, Kastrouni grabbed at his one opportunity for escape. He struggled to his feet, leapt for the door. He would have done better to dive straight out of the window. Khumeni ignored the pain in his shoulder, shot out a leg which ended in a hoof, tripped him only half-way out of the door.
Out in the corridor Kastrouni scrambled to his feet, fell, jumped up again and bounded for the porch. Khumeni – still roaring with the strange raw quality of a large, wounded animal, still wrenching at the shaft of the spear – was right behind him. A hand fell on Kastrouni’s shoulder, hurled him sideways. He crashed in through the door of the first bedroom, shattering its thin louvres as he went. Then the beast was in the room with him.
In the gloom of the single bedroom, where the lamp had guttered so low that its light was very nearly extinct, Kastrouni saw his pursuer outlined in the broken door, saw that the spear was no longer in his shoulder and that blood flowed freely from his wounds. Then the creature had advanced and cornered him. Kastrouni saw again those terrifically powerful hands reaching – and heard the low moan of the naked Greek girl on the bed.
Khumeni was momentarily distracted; his feral eyes turned toward the bed; Kastrouni smashed into him shoulder-first and caught him off balance. The beast-thing crashed into a small table bearing the lamp and toppled it. Flames at once gouted upward, sending the shadows flying. A lace coverlet was burning fiercely, setting fire to other bedclothes.
But then a strange thing: instead of returning to the attack, Khumeni merely glared at his adversary, gave a single snarl (of frustration, Kastrouni thought), then rushed to get the Greek girl off the blazing bed. Since she, like the others, had simply been used by the beast, and since presumably she was no longer of any earthly importance to him, Kastrouni would have thought he’d give first consideration to his own skin. But in any case it was all to the good, allowing Kastrouni a second opportunity to flee – out through the shattered bedroom door in a flash, from corridor to entrance hall, and so into the clean night air.
And behind him the bright glow of a fire rapidly spreading, showing as an orange glare through the corridor’s louvred windows, and Khumeni’s hoarse cries from within. Scrambling over a low garden wall to one side of the villa’s frontage, Kastrouni crouched down and looked back.
Out through the swinging front door staggered Khumeni, carrying the Greek girl and tossing her down on gravel well away from the building. And straight back in he went, through a thickening screen of smoke that gushed from the door and flowed in streamers from the louvres. Kastrouni had seen and done as much as it had been possible for him to do; he turned to make away, was brought to a halt by Khumeni’s hoarse shouting. The beast was calling his name! Again he looked back.
Khumeni stood at the open window to the second bedroom. He tossed the English girl out into the night, the top half of her uniform still clinging to her shapely form. Obviously he intended to save all three, only pausing to shout this threat from the burning house:
‘You, Kastrouni. You, Dimitrios, son of Costas. I was beginning to think you must be dead, but now I know differently. Well, you’ve interfered with my plans for the last time. I’ll find you now, Kastrouni, wherever you go, and then you’ll wish you really were dead!’
Kastrouni knew that this creature’s threat was not an idle one. He backed off, turned and ran into the darkness, headed for the beach. And from behind, fading: ‘Do you doubt it, Kastrouni? Dare you doubt it? Then see if you can doubt this – ’ And he uttered a guttural, barking command in some ancient or alien tongue, a command – or summons? – which ended with one sharp and clearly audible word: Demogorgon!
The summons was answered at once.
As if that earlier preternatural silence had been prelude or practice for this, the cicadas went silent on the instant and the sea, lapping in small wavelets one moment, grew utterly still in the next. An electric tension was immediately present, heavy and tangible as a rank odour on the night air.
Kastrouni slowed, skidding on pebbles, took cover beneath a lone olive tree. But took cover from what? He felt his fear hammering in his chest without knowing what he feared. Oh, he feared the beast Khumeni, certainly – what man in his right mind would not? – but now it seemed he also feared the very night and its sinister silence.
Out over the silver sea there was movement. Kastrouni saw it from the corner of his eye, jerked his head round to stare. Clouds were swirling together, forming from nothing in an otherwise clear sky, where no clouds should be. At first mere wisps, they rapidly assumed a bank of cloud in the shape of some strange spiral galaxy – and it was drifting shoreward!
Drifting? No, it was impelled shoreward – but as yet there was no wind!
Kastrouni stared harder. There were small lightnings in that weird, spiralling cloud, flickering veins of white light that grew brighter by the second. And as the thing approached the shore, so its core took on a definite density – an outline. What that outline was Kastrouni could not, would not think – but it seemed to have eyes that glared down like sentient points of hellfire from on high! And in another moment the traceries of energy were no longer mere traceries but purposeful flashes of lightning that seemed for all the world to walk over the sea, to walk like –
- Like something he had seen before, one monstrous night in a strange land more than twenty years ago!
Kastrouni ran.
He ran for the copse of pines, for his car, for h
is life.
The lightning was white, its accompanying thunder deafening, and it brought a wind that lashed at Kastrouni as if to snatch him up and dash him down. The still sea had been whipped to a frenzy in seconds, and sand from the beach formed dust-devil clouds that chased each other in all directions. In January or February, Kastrouni might have expected such – but mid-summer?
The cloud was almost overhead now but the fleeing man dared not look at it. Lightning flashed and struck the sea almost at the shoreline, sending steam boiling skyward. Another bolt, landing this time on dry land. And yet another, right at Kastrouni’s heels. The thing was going to walk right over him, stamp him flat!
The copse of pines seemed to grow out of the swirling sand and pounding thunder. Kastrouni flew forward into the trees. His car was waiting. Two cars were waiting!
He flattened himself to the bole of a pine, sensed rather than saw someone close to him in the night. Then something crashed against the base of his skull and everything dissolved in pain and icy, inky darkness …
Windblown, the Englishman Willis stood over Kastrouni and pointed his pistol with its ugly silencer at him. The man on the ground remained motionless where he had fallen, was out like a light. ‘Good!’ whispered Willis, his pronunciation perfect as ever, however shaky his voice. ‘Very good. You could never have outrun that, my unknown friend. It followed your fear as remorselessly and unerringly as a hound tracks the blood of a wounded man. But unconscious you’re also unafraid, and so the scent is lost.’
Baffled, the lightning was retreating down the beach, the whirling cloud already beginning to lose something of its cohesion. Willis used the toe of an immaculately styled shoe to turn Kastrouni over onto his back. ‘So you see, you really ought to thank me for that tap on the head. No?’ He shrugged. ‘Have it your own way. But who are you and what were you doing, eh, that he should call something like that down on you? Were you spying on him? Ah, you sneaky, grubby, dirty-minded little Greeks!’
The cloud was drifting out over the sea, retracting its fiery legs, beginning to disperse. The wind had died away as quickly as it came up and the cicadas were tentatively starting up once more. Willis wiped a brow shiny with cold sweat. He considered putting a bullet into the unconscious man’s brain, then thought better of it. He had no instructions, didn’t even know who the man was. Nobody, probably. Khumeni had been enraged at finding someone spying on him, that was all. And as to why Willis had saved this stranger’s life: really, he’d had little choice in the matter. In fact he’d been obliged to save himself! A direct hit by the lightning – on the unknown Greek, or worse still one of the cars – and it could easily have killed both of them.
Willis bit his lip. Perhaps he should kill him after all. He went down on one knee, aimed his pistol at a spot central between Kastrouni’s closed eyes, and –
Down the beach a previously unnoticed orange glow turned red and demanding. And suddenly the acrid smell of smoke was in the air. Distantly, harsh as the bark of an angry dog, Willis heard Khumeni cursing and calling his name. He stood up, put away his gun. The villa? On fire? What the hell – ?
Willis moved to his car and jerked open the door. He glanced one more time at the figure stretched out under the trees, then got in. Whatever had happened back there at the villa, so close to the road – a fire in the house, whatever – it was bound to attract attention. And soon. That had been Khumeni’s plan, of course: to attract attention and stir old fears, old hatreds, but not while he was still on the island.
Willis switched on his engine, lights, put the car in gear and picked his way through the pines to the road. By the time he got back to the villa flames were leaping from almost all of the windows – and Khumeni, clad only in baggy trousers and a dressing-gown, was raging where he loped to and fro on the gravel drive …
Part II
Chapter One
Late May 1983; a little before midnight; a private country estate near Radlett, just north of London.
Set in wooded acres behind high stone walls, the house was restored Elizabethan, three-storey, timber-framed with high-peaked dormers, very attractive and impossibly expensive. Its single incongruity was a large modern porch, mainly glass, extending like a foyer to meet the tarmac of the drive where it wound to the house from tall iron gates.
The owner of the place was a long-retired big-time crook, August ‘Gus’ (or more often, in his youth, ‘Cat’) Carter, one of London’s gang-bosses from the city’s criminal heyday, and one of the few to come through it all hale and hearty and rich with spoils. He was one of the exceptions proving the rule that ‘crime doesn’t pay.’ It had paid him, handsomely. Another exception to the same rule was Charles Trace, ‘Charlie’ to his small circle of friends, who even now emptied the display cases in Carter’s locked top-floor study. The doors of the study were locked, anyway, if not the dormer window through which Trace had gained entry.
Cat Carter and his much younger wife were in the Bahamas, enjoying the first week of a three-week holiday; and while Cat was away the mice – his three grown-up children from a previous marriage, two half-breed hoorays and an educated-to-order deb – were playing. Downstairs the spacious olde-worlde rooms were a riot of upper-class rovers, rangers and ravers, and all-or-nothing groupies, ‘dancing’ to the much amplified heavy metal pounding of Glue in Persons, in person. The outrageous group’s van was parked in the grounds with the cars of the guests. A stubby Volkswagen with gaudy Glue in Persons legends daubed on both sides and on the roof, it stood out like a sore thumb amidst Jags and Mercs and Porsches. There was even a Roller complete with chauffeur, hat pulled down over his eyes where he slept in the back.
Trace had been quiet in his climbing and breaking in. The climb had been easy: all ivy and ledges and corners, and the dormer window – warped in its frame until the catch no longer fitted – had opened at a single push, opened inwards at that. And no alarms. Three storeys up, Cat Carter had thought the place secure enough; of all people, he should have known better. Trace had climbed inside as easily as that.
Now he grinned as he loaded up the zip pockets of his cat-suit with some of the choicest items of Carter’s collection. His gold collection. For forty-odd years the old thug had been getting this little lot together: fine lockets and miniatures in gold; filigreed chains and fancy snuffboxes; golden guineas, medallions and pendants; fob-watches and rings, and even tiny German ingots. A large fortune in this their original state, and even melted down a small fortune. Trace would settle for the small fortune; there wasn’t a fence in London who would try to pass Carter’s stuff as it stood, but there were many who’d take it in small, rough, anonymous ingots.
Gold: a lifelong foible of old Carter, and a way of life for Charlie Trace. The first had lived to gather it and admire its great beauty, while the second cared nothing for its beauty but stole it to live, which was the thing he did best. Stole it to live, yes, and very likely to die, if Cat Carter should ever discover the author of this little job …
His pockets loaded with about eight pounds in weight of trinkets (if loot such as this could ever be described in such a way) finally Trace was satisfied. Briefly he toyed with the idea of making two trips, then dismissed it. That would be to push his luck too far. He’d known about old Carter’s being in the Bahamas, but the party had been a bonus. Best to leave it at that.
Since the noise from the party downstairs was now deafening, blasting up through the house with its own dully shuddering vibrations, Trace could allow himself to relax a little and get out as quickly as possible. He could descend at speed and not worry too much if he jangled a bit. That was all to the good, for he knew from experience how eight or nine pounds of gold could weigh a man down.
Fortunately Carter’s study was situated at the back of the house and the back bedrooms on the first floor weren’t in use yet, or at least they weren’t illuminated. Bypassing one such window, Trace peered in and saw that he had been wrong in the first instance: three naked, marble bodies twined on a
bed in the darkness. Some bloke with a pair of birds. Lucky sod! But Trace didn’t wait for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness in the room. In any case, he’d rather partake than peruse. And moments later he was on the ground.
Then, sticking close to trees and shrubbery as much as possible, he was through the grounds in minutes and climbing the perimeter wall. There, hidden in bushes, his Black Bess awaited: an ancient but excellently maintained 500cc Triumph Speed Twin fitted with a Slickshift gearbox. Quickly he loaded up the bases of twin panniers and eased the false bottoms into position, then donned his crash-hat and wheeled the bike through the bushes to the road. Very little traffic about at this time of night, but there would be more as he rode into London.
Before kick-starting the motorcycle into life, he patted his top right-hand pocket, checked the presence there of the small documents-wallet which contained his driver’s licence, insurance and registration documents, and allowed himself a satisfied nod. His road tax, of course, was right up to date. It wouldn’t do to get pulled in for some minor traffic offence, not with all that yellow stuff hidden in his panniers. Nor, for that matter, would it do to have an accident.
So, despite the fact that his machine could do a ton without even breathing heavily, he took it easy all the way home, riding carefully through the summer night and arriving at his moderately attractive Highgate address a little after 1:00 A.M. He garaged the bike in a shed in the tiny plot of a garden, took the panniers and let himself into the house, passing through the communal hall and quietly upstairs to his own place.
Without emptying the panniers of their loot, he changed into a dressing-gown poured himself a drink, sat down by a panoramic window looking out over London. From here he had a prominent view of the city: it was all twinkling lights and night-haze, and the warmth of millions of people going up into the night, and even at this hour a rumbling one sensed rather than heard: the throb of a gigantic heart on the verge of sleep. It always had a calming effect on Trace. It cleared his mind and let him think slowly, methodically, clearly.
