He breathed out a sigh of relief as he glanced at his watch. It was three thirty-five in the morning.
He shivered. Covered in sweat, his body felt awful, aching in every joint. He put on his dressing gown and crossed to the window, opening the curtains to look down into the twilit street below. It was empty and quiet, peaceful as it never was during the day. But it was also undeniably lonely. Cold and lonely and lifeless. The sight of its bleak, grey lines could not make him forget the dream for long, nor keep him away from the wretched feeling of despair that remembering it brought along with it, a despair made all the more unbearable at the realisation that its cause, deep down, must lie rooted in his character. There was no way in which he could deny to himself the perverted aspects it presented to him. But was he perverted as well? Or had the old tramp been lying? After all, he reasoned, why should he be any more perceptive of that kind of thing than anyone else? It was the man’s horrible suggestion, and that was all—no more certainly!—that was making his mind work in that direction now. Almost, he thought, pensively staring about his room, like some kind of post hypnotic suggestion. And if this were so and it was the tramp’s vile insinuations that had caused this neurotic and evil obsession, then it was up to him to vent these desires in the most normal way that he could. Otherwise, he knew, they would only worsen, just as they were worsening already.
Decided on this course, he rested quietly for the rest of the night, reading through the next few chapters of Over the Bridge, and listening to the radio.
When the sky began to lighten at last he welcomed the new day with a fervor he had not felt for many weeks. At last it seemed to him as if there was a chance of ridding himself of this nightmare.
At last…
It was not till midday that he dressed and stepped outside.
In realising that he had to prove to himself that he was normal, and rid himself of the perverse obsession that was deranging him, he had decided that the easiest way open to him was to call on Clara Sadwick, a local prostitute who rented rooms on Park Road above a newsagent’s shop. As he walked towards it down the sodden street the place appeared to have a dingy and slightly obscene look to it, with unpainted window frames and faded curtains, pulled together tight behind their grimy, flyspecked windows.
As he stepped inside and began to climb the bare staircase to the first floor landing, he gazed bleakly at the mildewed paper on the walls. A naked light bulb swayed on the end of a cord at the head of the stairs. He wondered what he had let himself in for at a place like this. Fortifying himself, however, with the thought that in going through with what was to follow he might end the dreams that had been tormenting him for the past three weeks, he pressed on the buzzer by the door facing him at the top. One fifteen, she had said on the phone when he rang her an hour before. It was just a minute off that time now. He ran his fingers nervously through his uncombed hair.
After a short pause the door opened before him.
‘Believe in punctuality, don’t you?’ Clara said with an offhand familiarity which made him feel more relaxed as she stepped back and looked at the slim gold watch on her wrist. She was dressed in a denim skirt, fluffy red slippers and a purple, turtle-necked sweater, which clung, about her ample breasts.
She smiled as she showed him in.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she said breezily.
‘Thank you,’ Lamson said as he hung his coat on a hook by the door and looked about the room. In the far corner, partially hidden behind a faded Japanese screen, was a bed. In front of the old gas fire stood a coffee table crammed with dirty plates. He wondered if she had been having a party or whether, as seemed dismayingly more likely, she merely washed them up when there were no more clean ones left. He hoped, fleetingly, that she was a little more conscientious about cleaning herself.
Clara ground the cigarette she’d been smoking into a saucer, then said:
‘It’ll be forty quid. Cash first, if you don’t mind. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but 1 can hardly take you to court if you refuse to pay afterwards.’
Lamson smiled to cover his embarrassment, and said that he understood.
‘You can’t be too careful, can you?’ he added, sorting out the notes from his wallet. ‘Forty pounds, you said?’ he went on, as he placed the money in her waiting hand.
‘Many thanks,’ she replied, taking it to a drawer and locking it inside.
She looked back at him coyly.
‘Well, I suppose we had better begin,’ she said, folding back the screen from the bed. With no further words, she kicked off her slippers and began to unbutton her skirt. Within a few minutes she was dressed only in her tights and bra. She looked up then as if only just remembering his presence, and told him to hurry. ‘I haven’t all day to wait for you getting undressed. Unless, of course, you prefer having it with your clothes still on.’ She shook her head, laughing almost like a young girl, though she was in her late thirties, unfastening her bra and letting it fall forward from her breasts. Lamson swallowed as he stared at the limpid mounds of pale white flesh that were uncovered, their puckered orbs matching the goose flesh that was starting to rise on her cozily rounded arms.
She shivered, complaining to him again at his slowness.
‘Do you want me to help you?’ she asked sarcastically.
Lamson shook his head as he loosened his trousers and let them fall, unaided, to the floor. Stepping out of them onto the lukewarm oilcloth he looked at her again.
‘Come on, luv,’ she said as she rolled back on the rumpled bed. ‘Off with the rest of them and we can begin.’
Although Lamson felt embarrassed at his nakedness as he slipped out of the last of his clothes, and could feel the blood burning through his cheeks, he was surprised—and not just a little alarmed—that there was no other reaction, that he seemed, in fact, to be incapable of carrying out what he had paid for. Seemingly unaware of this—or, if she was, taking no apparent notice of it—she smiled as he approached her. Lightly, questingly, her hands felt about his body as he pushed his face into her breasts. He smelt the faint aroma of sweat and eau-de-cologne, his mind whirling with haphazard and conflicting sensations. She pressed his mouth against her hardening nipples as he moved further up her body. Yet, still, he could not find the desire to possess her.
‘Come on, come on, dearie,’ he heard her whisper between gasps. He raised himself onto his elbows and looked down into her face. In the same instant her hands grasped hold of him between his legs. He gasped as her fingers lengthened and tightened gently about his penis, guiding him towards her. It was as if his loins were being instilled with a surcharge of life.
He looked down at her eyes—Joan’s face seemed to merge with hers, hiding the cheapness and vulgarity that had been there a moment before. It was almost angelic. Never before had he looked upon a face such as this, upon which all his pent up emotions of warmth, affection and even love could be gladly poured. His eyes passed lingeringly about her warm, soft cheeks where the blood made a pleasant suffusion of pink. She smiled encouragingly, and yet with an apparent innocence which drove him into an almost unbearable desire to possess her. He felt her thighs rise on either side of his legs, pressing him to her. He could feel himself grow stiff, entering her slowly, cautiously passing into the warmth within her summoning body. He could have cried out at the exquisite pangs that were racing through him, obliterating conscious thought.
Even through the pleasure that was overwhelming his mind, though, Lamson became suddenly aware that the room was darkening. Something sharp and dry scraped painfully across his back. He cried out in alarm as it stuck, like a vicious hook, ruthlessly dragging him away from her.
The pain crescendoed suddenly as he was tugged from the bed and flung onto the floor. Contorted in agony, he looked up. He glimpsed something dark stride over him. There was a scream. It seemed to cut deep into his ears like slivers of glass, and he tried desperately to crawl back onto his knees. Then the screaming stopped, as suddenly as it beg
an. Instead there was a ripping sound, like something being torn apart.
‘No! God, no!’ he sobbed, dizzy with nausea, his sight blurring as he seemed to start falling in a faint. Whatever stood over him still moved, its weight shifting from one leg to the other in sickening, horrifying rhythm to the rips and tears from the bed.
Feebly Lamson tried to reach out across the sheets to stop whatever was going on there, when something soft and warm touched his fingers.
Something wet.
It clung to him as he automatically recoiled away from it, screaming hysterically as darkness closed in all about him.
It could have been hours, or even just minutes afterwards, when he opened his eyes once more. However long he’d been unconscious, the tawdry bedchamber had gone, as if he had never been there. Instead he was stretched out on the floor of his flat, facing the window. A blowfly buzzed aggressively, though without result, against the windowpane. Besides this there was silence.
As he slowly climbed to his feet, his first reaction was one of intense relief. He could have laughed out loud in that one brief instant in joy at the fact that it had never happened, that it was all just a horrible dream, that he had never even left his flat!
Then he noticed the spots of blood on his shirt. There were scabs of it clotted about his hands and fingers. His stomach heaved with revulsion as he stared down at the ugly stains covering him like the deadly marks of a plague.
‘Oh, my God!’ he muttered, rushing convulsively to the sink to wash them from him. His hands still dripping, he grabbed hold of his shirt and tugged it from him, grinding his teeth against the pain in his back as the scabs swathed across it were torn open. His shirt had been glued to him by them. When the pain subsided enough for him to touch them, he gingerly felt across his back, his fingers cautiously trembling along the blood-clogged grooves gouged into him. Crestfallen with horror, he stared at his haggard face in the mirror above the sink. Did it happen? Was it not just a dream but some vile distortion of reality?
He stepped back into his bedroom and looked at the head, perched where he had left it. The thing stared at him with its coal-black, swollen eyes. It seemed bigger than before, like an oversized, blackened grapefruit. You know, he thought suddenly, you know what happened, you black swine of a devil! But no, this was madness. How could he believe that the thing had some sort of connection with what had happened? It must be something else. But what? he wondered. What but something equally bizarre, equally preposterous could account for it?
What?
What?
Outside he heard the two-tone siren of a police car as it sped down the road. After it had gone there was another. Lamson strode to the window and looked down as an ambulance hurtled by, its blue light blinking furiously.
He leant against the windowsill, feeling suddenly weak. Resignedly, he knew that it happened, it really did happen. By now they must have found her blood-soaked body, or what was left of it. He gazed down at the stains still sticking to his fingers, and wondered what he could do. Like the Brand of Cain, threads of blood clung to the hardened scales about his knuckles. If only he had thrown that stone away when he’d intended to originally. If he had, he was sure that none of this would have ever happened. He grabbed hold of the stone, clenching it tightly as if to crush it into dust. Something black seemed to move on the edge of his sight. He turned round in surprise, but there was nothing there now.
He placed the head back on the dresser and took a deep breath to compose himself. He wondered if he had left it too late to get rid of the head. Or was there time yet? After all, there was no saying what the thing might make him do next. Reluctantly, he looked again at the head. How he wished he could convince himself that it was nothing more than just an inanimate lump of stone. Once more he picked it up, his fingers experiencing the same kind of revulsion he would have felt on touching a diseased piece of flesh.
‘Damn you,’ he whispered tensely, suddenly flexing his arm. There was a movement by his side, furtive and vague. He whipped round. ‘Where are you hiding?’ he asked shakily, searching round the empty room. There seemed to be a sound somewhere, like the clattering of hoofs. Or was there? It echoed metallically, almost unreal. ‘Come on, now, where are you hiding?’ Something touched his arm. He cried out inarticulately in revulsion. ‘Go away!’ he choked, retreating to the window. He turned round to look outside, raising his hand and glancing at the head clasped tightly in his fingers.
Steady, now, steady, he told himself. Don’t lose your grip altogether.
He coughed harshly, feeling the phlegm in his throat. It involuntarily dribbled from his lips and spilt on the floor. Looking down, he saw a string of blood in it. He closed his eyes tightly. He knew what it meant, though he wished fervently that he could believe that it didn’t. He wished that he could have known earlier what he knew now and done then what he was about to do, when it wasn’t already too late.
‘God help me!’ he cried as he tugged his arm free of the fingers that plucked at him, and flung the stone through the window. There was a crash as the glass was shattered, and he fell to the floor.
Something rose up above him, seeming monstrously large in the gloom of his faltering sight.
‘Are you going up to see Mr. Lamson?’ the elderly woman asked, detaining Sutcliffe with a nervously insistent hand.
‘I am,’ he replied. ‘Why? Is there something wrong?’ He did not try to hide his impatience. He was nearly half an hour late already.
‘I don’ t know,’ she said, glancing up the stairs apprehensively. ‘It was late this afternoon when it happened. I was cleaning the dishes after having my tea when I heard something crash outside. When I looked I found there was broken glass all over the flagstones. It had come from up there,’ she pointed up the stairs, ‘from the window of Mr. Lamson’s flat; his window had been broken.’
His impatience mellowing into concern, Sutcliffe asked if anyone had been up to see if he was all right.
‘Do you know if he’s been hurt? He hasn’t been too well recently and he might be sick.’
‘I went up to his rooms, naturally,’ the woman said. ‘But he wouldn’t answer his door. On no account would he, even when I called out to him, though he was in there right enough. I could hear him, you see, bumping around inside. Tearing something up, I think he was. Like books, I s’ppose. But he wouldn’t open the door to me. He wouldn’t even talk. Not one word. There was nothing more I could do, was there?’ she apologized. ‘I didn’t know he was ill.’
‘That’s all right,’ Sutcliffe said, thanking her for warning him. ‘I’ll be able to see how he is when I call up. I’m sure he’ll answer his door to me when I call to him. By the way,’ he went on to ask, turning round suddenly on the first step up the stairs, ‘do you know what it was that broke the window?’
‘Indeed I do,’ the woman said. She felt in the pocket of her apron. ‘I found this on the pavement when I went out to clear up the glass. It’s been cracked, as you can see.’ She handed him the stone. ‘Ugly looking thing, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is.’ Sutcliffe felt at the worn features on its face. It was pleasantly soap-like and warm. He wondered why Lamson should have thrown something like this through his window. ‘Do you mind if 1 hold onto it for a while?’ he asked.
‘You can keep it for good for all I care. I don’t want it. I’m certain of that, Lord knows! It’d give me the jitters to keep an evil-looking thing like that in my rooms.’
Thanking her again, Sutcliffe bounded up the stairs, three at a time. He wondered worriedly if Lamson had thrown it through the window as a cry for help. Just let me be in time if it was, he thought, knocking on his door. ‘Henry! Are you in there? It’s me, Allan. Come on, open up!’
There was no sound.
Again he knocked, louder this time.
‘Henry! Open up, will you?’ Apprehensively, he waited an instant more, then he took hold of the door handle, turning it. ‘Henry, I’m coming in. Keep well away from the do
or.’ Heavily, he lunged against the door with his shoulder. The thin wood started to give way almost at once. Again he lunged against it, then again, then the door shot open, propelling Sutcliffe in with it.
‘Where are you, Henr—’ he began to call out as he steadied himself, before he saw what lay curled against the windowsill. Shuddering with nausea, Sutcliffe clasped a hand to his mouth and turned away, feeling suddenly sick. Naked and almost flayed to the bone, with tears along his doubled back, Lamson was crouched like a grotesque foetus amongst the blood-soaked tatters of his clothes. His head was twisted round, and it was obvious that his neck had been broken. But it was none of this, neither the mutilations nor the gore nor the look of horror and pain on Lamson’s rigidly contorted face, that were to haunt him in the months to come, but an expression that lay raddled across his friend’s dead face which he knew should have never been there—a look of joyful ecstasy. And there was a hunger there, too, but a hunger that went further than that of mere hunger for food.
The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror Page 16
