Black August

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Are they—are they really dead? Or did I see it in a nightmare?’

  He nodded slowly. It was impossible to conceal the truth, and she shivered slightly.

  ‘Oh, it was horrible, Kenyon!’

  ‘Where were you?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Outside the window. It was before dinner last night, I had gone up on to the hill. I used to do that every evening. Just sit and gaze towards Shingle Street, thinking of you, and wondering if I’d ever see you again.’ She spoke simply and naturally now, caressing his hair with her hand. ‘I came back in the twilight and what it was I don’t know, but something made me look in at the dining-room window as I passed, so I saw it all.’

  He took her other hand and kissed it as she went on: ‘Poor Agatha was just coming through the door as I looked in; her eyes suddenly seemed to start out of her head and she fell forward on her face, then I saw the men! There were five of them and their faces were horrible, they sprang over her body and set on Uncle Timothy, and one of them snatched up the carving knife, but I couldn’t look away. I simply couldn’t. Oh, Kenyon!’

  It was a wail rather than a cry and again he pressed her to him while her body quivered and shook with great choking sobs, yet he was glad to see her cry for he knew that tears would bring her relief, and after a desperate fit of weeping she looked up again.

  Then—then I realised that if they saw me they might kill me too—so I ran, just wildly out into the heath among the gorse and bracken, and when I was breathless I flung myself down in a deep ditch where the long grass hid me. How long I lay there I don’t know. It must have been hours I think, for the dew had fallen and I was shivering with cold when I did screw up courage to come back. My teeth were chattering, I couldn’t keep them still, but when I crept in through the back door, the men were gone, then in the dining-room I—I saw them both.’

  She burst into a fresh fit of sobbing at the awful memory, and for a little time Kenyon strove unsuccessfully to comfort her, but at last she choked her tears back and concluded her story.

  ‘First I thought I’d go to Orford, but my legs simply would not work so I thought I’d better rest for a little until I felt able to face the journey. I crept up here and lay on the bed crying desperately for I don’t know how long, and then I suppose, oh, it sounds awful, but I was simply dead beat, and I must have dropped asleep.’

  Thank God you did,’ he answered fervently. ‘It probably saved your brain.’

  ‘But, Kenyon, what shall we do?’

  ‘Why, get back to Shingle Street just as fast as we can.’

  ‘I can’t, dear; there’ll be the funeral and all sorts of things to see to.’

  ‘Well, we must arrange all that as best we can, but I promised Gregory that I’d be back this evening and nothing will induce me to leave you here another night.’

  She smiled rather wanly. ‘You haven’t changed much, have you?’

  ‘Listen, darling, I’m not threatening to carry you off as I did before, but you must see this time that it’s really dangerous for you to stay behind on your own.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t stay here. I’ve plenty of friends in Orford who would take me in.’

  ‘Perhaps, but what guarantee have you got that the same awful thing isn’t going to happen again, and to you, in a week or so’s time?’

  ‘How can I go, it’s impossible until after the funeral.’

  Then that must be this afternoon.’

  ‘Kenyon! It’s not decent!’

  ‘Why, surely you’re not afraid of what people in the town will say, are you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Ann shrugged impatiently. ‘It is respect for them—I—I loved them, Kenyon.’

  ‘Steady, darling.’ He put a supporting arm about her shoulders as she choked back her tears. ‘Don’t you think that they would wish it themselves, Ann? They’d be the very first to urge it, if it meant your safety.’

  She nodded wearily. ‘All right, if you can arrange it.’

  ‘Good, we’d better go into Orford at once then, I’ll leave you for a moment while you put a few things in a bag.’

  Downstairs he applied himself to the grim task of laying the two poor battered bodies side by side and covering them decently, yet even beneath the sheets he unearthed for the purpose the Reverend Timothy gave rise to gruesome thoughts. One knee, bent under him, was held firm by rigor mortis and defied all Kenyon’s efforts to force it down. At last he was compelled to leave it, a grotesque and faintly terrifying protuberance still cocked ceilingwards beneath the linen.

  He had only just finished when Ann came down, and after rummaging for some straps in the cupboard under the stairs, they attached her suitcase to the back of his borrowed bicycle and set off for Orford.

  The Vicar’s wife, whom Ann knew well but had never liked on account of her dictatorial manner, proved in this emergency a truly Christian woman. After their first words she would not allow Ann to talk of the tragedy, but made her lie down upon her bed, produced aspirin and fine china tea, which she valued more than gold dust, from her own limited store, and insisted that all arrangements should be left to herself and Kenyon.

  Her husband was another of those who had been caught away from home at the time of the outbreak, so Orford was without a vicar; but a local colleague had promised a service for that evening and she suggested that he should be asked to officiate at the interment of the Reverend Timothy and his housekeeper, at the same time.

  Kenyon soon learned from her that the little town was by no means so secure as he had supposed. At the outset of the trouble the local farmers had marched in and wrecked the bank, burning the ledgers that contained particulars of their overdrafts, derisively calling upon the manager, who had sought to protect his company’s property, to telephone ‘Head Office’ and see what they meant to do about it. The Watch Committee had restored order, and the head of it was a retired Colonel, a capable organiser, but a martinet, many of whose decisions were resented by the locals, and a Communist Party had been formed among the poorer classes which was likely to revolt against his authority at any moment.

  The village undertaker was sent for, and the verger, but neither expressed surprise at this hasty burial of a well-known local character. Both had been called on in these last few weeks to deal with a rush of their melancholy business which neither had ever known before. Even to this seeming sanctuary the terror was creeping closer day by day and already outlying farms were no longer safe from the murderous hunger raiders, so they accepted the tragedy at Fenn Farm almost as part of the gruesome daily business which they had come to know.

  Later, in an effort to cheer him, the Vicar’s wife led Kenyon out into her garden, but the dahlias and golden rod could not draw his thoughts from the long queue of people that he had seen earlier that afternoon in the Square. Not a cigarette or pipe had he seen among the men, and the faces of the women were filled with strained anxiety as they stood patiently wating for their meagre rations; some distance away a group of men wearing red armlets had been hustling three miserable-looking fellows towards the lock-up; invading townsmen, he had no doubt, caught in the act of housebreaking or some nefarious business on the outskirts of the town.

  Now he was regarding Orford with very different eyes to those with which he had viewed it in the morning. It seemed only a matter of a week or two before the Colonel and his Committee must be submerged under a wave of Bolshevism, and for the first time Kenyon admitted to himself that there was real justification for Gregory’s policy of ruthlessness to any but their own community. Only behind those well-planned and well-provisioned defences at Shingle Street was there any real hope of survival in this dissolution of England which was now affecting even its remotest parts.

  At half-past six Ann and Kenyon accompanied the Vicar’s wife to the ancient church. All regular parishioners had gathered for the service and, in addition, many townspeople who had learned of the Reverend Timothy’s tragic end.

  The visiting clergyman was an elderly man of unu
sually fine physique, stooping slightly in the shoulders but with a handsome leonine head on which the silver hair swept back from a broad and lofty forehead. His eyes were large, intelligent and kindly, and the fine tenor of his voice would have attracted large congregations had he been the incumbent of a wealthy parish. In a few simple sentences he passed from the subject of the newly-dead to an address upon the present situation, urging his listeners upon a course which would ensure their spiritual, and might ensure their bodily, preservation.

  He proceeded to cite the conduct of his own parishioners as an example. At the beginning all had been filled with fear at the approach of these terrifying and unknown dangers which were creeping in upon them, but a few, and those by no means the most regular attendants at his church, had come to talk with him about measures for their safety; and, in what seemed to him almost a miraculously short space of time, a strange understanding had come to them that if they would only believe in Our Lord and Saviour, no fear should ever trouble them any more.

  Hard-headed business men, and farmers who all their lives had been wresting every penny from each other, had put their avarice behind them and spoken to others of their conversion, so that soon the whole village had come, in this great emergency, to see the light.

  He went on to describe the new life and hope that had permeated his community. How each morning they gathered for a simple service to ask a blessing and a guidance for the labours of the day, and met each evening to render thanks for their preservation; while their need being greater than his, it had even been necessary for him to lend his own Bible to poor people who lacked that blessing, that they might read at home the wonderful message which all had learnt at school, but so many forgotten in the turmoil of modern life, yet which stood as a timeless beacon, unflickering, undimmed, in the growing darkness of a changing world.

  ‘Of what value is property any more?’ he asked; ‘God in His goodness has given us many blessings, but in our folly we have abused them, hoarding where we had opportunity, striving against each other for a greater share than our necessities warranted, and waxing fat and slothful upon the labours of our weaker brethren. Now, in His infinite wisdom He has chosen to change the order of things that we may see them in their true perspective and live more nearly in accordance with His will. The fruits of the earth remain with us and the fishermen may still go down to the sea. There is no reason, once the crisis is past, why any man should starve, but once more the money changers have been thrown out of the temple and humanity given a new chance to accept the simple, straightforward teaching which Christ laid down nearly two thousand years ago for the guidance of mankind.

  ‘Death and destruction are upon every side,’ came the clear clarion note of the silver voice, ‘yet that is only because we have been bound up with ignorance and evil for so long. No man who truly believes upon our Saviour can raise his hand against another, and although everyone will be called upon to make some sacrifice of worldly goods, how infinitesimal is that sacrifice compared to the ineffable peace and joy which comes to those who live daily according to the Word, strong in the knowledge that the divine love is about them, and certain that whatever may befall, their blindness has been lifted from them, so that when their eyes are closed to this life on earth they will be the joyous recipients of the eternal salvation in the life to come.’

  It was the most vital sermon that Ann and Kenyon had ever heard, and with the people of Orford they stood silent and awestruck, so that the passion of the afternoon was gone and the terror which had assailed them in the morning.

  Silently, with lowered eyes, they followed the creaking farm wagon which carried the coffins to their last resting place and after the final rites set out, with new hope in their hearts but little knowledge of what lay before them.

  21

  Gregory ‘Reaps the Whirlwind’

  Kenyon had been anxious to get Ann safely back to Shingle Street before dark, but that was impossible now. It was already seven-thirty when they started off up the hill out of Orford, and he knew that they would have to tramp a good portion of the way for, in this undulating country, he could only carry her on the step of his bicycle where the gradients were favourable.

  They made fair going until they reached the forked roads in Watling Wood, but there they were delayed for a little by a curious incident. A lanky man in a battered bowler planted himself in the middle of the road and asked where they were going.

  ‘To Woodbridge,’ said Kenyon promptly.

  ‘Then you have our permission to proceed,’ replied the strange individual.

  ‘Oh? Oh, thanks!’ Kenyon murmured with some surprise.

  ‘Don’t—er—mention it to the Cardinal,’ added the other.

  ‘What?’ inquired Ann.

  ‘I find him a little difficult, you know,’ the stranger waved his cane gaily and then leaned forward in a confidential attitude. ‘He is a little puffed up with the success of our Army at La Rochelle.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ agreed Kenyon with a soothing note in his voice. ‘It must be very difficult for you.’

  ‘True—true, but not for nothing are we called Louis the Just, and the Bishop of Luçon has proved his worth.’

  ‘I am certain that he appreciates the confidence of his master,’ declared Kenyon, for after such a day he could not resist the temptation to indulge his humour with this curious acquaintance.

  ‘You are a person of understanding,’ was the quick response. ‘What a pity that you are not noble. If you were we would nominate you for the Order of the Golden Fleece. Our brother of Spain has just sent us a couple.’

  ‘Fortunately,’ said Kenyon, ‘I happen to possess the necessary quarterings.’

  ‘In that case we must certainly think of you, but can we persuade the Cardinal? That’s the thing. De Richleau is always after these windfalls for his own cronies—and he’s so devilish plausible. We have hardly been able to call our soul our own since that terrible trouble with poor Cinq Mars.’

  ‘Yes, that was a dreadful business,’ Kenyon shook his head, ‘but with your gracious permission we must proceed.’

  ‘Of course, of course. We too must ride on. La Villette tells us that he has raised a fine stag in the forest of St. Germains, and as the Cardinal will not be back until tomorrow evening—you understand.’

  Kenyon politely raised his hat, and setting the battered bowler more firmly on his head, that strange wraith of a vanished sovereignty disappeared into the lengthening shadows of the Suffolk lane.

  ‘Poor sweet,’ said Ann. ‘Who did he think he was, dearest?’

  ‘Louis XIII of France, I imagine, though God knows why!’

  ‘Stark staring mad, of course.’

  ‘Yes, these troubles must have sent him off his head, unless he is from the Ipswich Asylum. When they could no longer feed them they probably turned the inmates loose.’

  ‘How ghastly.’

  ‘I know, but let’s not talk of it. There’ll be a good dinner, and everyone so pleased to see you when we get to Shingle Street; I only wish the light would last a little longer though.’

  Already the sun had set behind the trees, but the afterglow lit their way as they pushed on to Chillesford, where Ann suggested that they could save a mile by turning off down the track through the marshes, which would bring them out at Butley Priory.

  By the time they reached the road again dusk had fallen, and now, made bold by the coming darkness, the human wolves who infested the countryside began to leave the hiding places where they had lurked during the day. Some accosted Kenyon, whose progress with Ann behind him on the bicycle was slow, casting envious glances at her suitcase, suspicious that it might contain food, but he warned them off with a flourish of his pistol. Others slunk quickly back into the hedges on their approach, fearful that Kenyon, with his superior physique, might have a mind to prey on them.

  The cottages that they passed were either dark and deserted or, if inhabited, showed it only by chinks of faint light through heav
ily-boarded windows behind which the owners lived in a state of seige, yet in the second hour of their journey the road was rarely free of sinister-moving shadows.

  Only Horsley Heath now remained to be passed before they reached the friendly Labour Colony, and another half-hour should see them home, but night had fully fallen, and when Kenyon was forced to dismount at a rise in the road both were filled with apprehension. Somehow the lonely stretch of common land seemed so much more likely to hold hidden danger than the friendly hedgerows which they had left behind, and it was easy to imagine every bush to be a crouching enemy.

  Strange, whining voices came out of the darkness every now and then, and once the sounds of a violent quarrel. Ann’s arm was through Kenyon’s and her hand clasped his as they trudged up the hill, yet at each unaccustomed sound from behind the gorse on either side she shrank nearer to him in sudden fear and, as he caught the note of soft padding footsteps in their rear, he urged her faster towards the hilltop, suddenly apprehensive that they were being followed.

  ‘Who goes there?’ A sharp voice cried as they breasted the rise.

  ‘Friend!’ said Kenyon, automatically.

  ‘You come here, then,’ said the voice.

  Kenyon drew his weapon and, passing the push bike to Ann, stepped a few paces forward. Three men advanced out of the darkness to meet him.

  ‘Where be ye a-goen’ to?’ asked the man who had challenged.

  ‘Hollesley,’ declared Kenyon.

  ‘Oh! then just you come and see the boss.’

  Ann made ready to run for it and Kenyon moved a little nearer to her, but the following footsteps had stopped, and turning they saw two other men waiting silently behind them.

  ‘Look here!’ Kenyon protested.

  ‘Now then,’ countered the first man, ‘you be a-goen’ to have a word with the boss; come on now!’

  For a moment Kenyon was tempted to shoot the fellow where he stood, but the four others were near enough to rush him and one of them gripped Ann by the arm. ‘Take your hands off,’ he said sharply.