by Brian Lumley
“Nor did I,” Harry answered.
“I feel filthy,” she continued. “I need a bath. What on earth did that creature want with us?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I think he must be insane.”
“Harry, let’s not go straight back to the inn. Just drive around for a while.” She rolled down her window, breathing deeply of the fresh air that flooded in before lying back in the seat and closing her eyes. He looked at her, thinking: “God!—but you’re certainly showing your age now, my sweet”…but he couldn’t really blame her.
• • •
There were two or three tiny villages within a few miles of Szolyhaza, centres of peasant life compared to which Szolyhaza was a veritable capital. These were mainly farming communities, some of which were quite picturesque. Nightfall was still several hours away and the rain had moved on, leaving a freshness in the air and a beautiful warm glow over the hills, so that they felt inclined to park the car by the roadside and enjoy a drink at a tiny Gasthaus.
Sitting there by a wide window that overlooked the street, while Julia composed herself and recovered from her ordeal, Harry noticed several posters on the wall of the building opposite. He had seen similar posters in Szolyhaza, and his knowledge of the language was just sufficient for him to realise that the event in question—whatever that might be—was taking place tonight. He determined, out of sheer curiosity, to question Herr Debrec about it when they returned to the inn. After all, there could hardly be very much of importance happening in an area so out-of-the-way. It had already been decided that nothing should be said about their visit to the ruins, the exceedingly unpleasant hour spent in the doubtful company of Herr Möhrsen.
• • •
Twilight was settling over the village when they got back. Julia, complaining of a splitting headache, bathed and went straight to her bed. Harry, on the other hand, felt strangely restless, full of physical and mental energy. When Julia asked him to fetch her a glass of water and a sleeping pill, he dissolved two pills, thus ensuring that she would remain undisturbed for the night. When she was asleep he tidied himself up and went down to the bar.
After a few drinks he buttonholed Herr Debrec and questioned him about the posters; what was happening tonight? Debrec told him that this was to be the first of three nights of celebration. It was the local shooting carnival, the equivalent of the German Schützenfest, when prizes would be presented to the district’s best rifle shots.
There would be sideshows and thrilling rides on machines specially brought in from the cities—members of the various shooting teams would be dressed all in hunter’s green—beer and wine would flow like water and there would be good things to eat—oh, and all the usual trappings of a festival. This evening’s main attraction was to be a masked ball, held in a great barn on the outskirts of a neighbouring village. It would be the beginning of many a fine romance. If the Herr wished to attend the festivities, Debrec could give him directions…?
Harry declined the offer and ordered another drink. It was odd the effect the brandy was having on him tonight: he was not giddy—it took a fair amount to do that—but there seemed to be a peculiar excitement in him. He felt much the same as when, in the old days, he’d pursued gay young debutantes in the Swiss resorts or on the Riviera.
Half an hour and two drinks later he checked that Julia was fast asleep, obtained directions to the Schützenfest, told Herr Debrec that his wife was on no account to be disturbed, and drove away from the inn in fairly high spirits. The odds, he knew, were all against him, but it would be good fun and there could be no possible comeback; after all, they were leaving for Budapest in the morning, and what the eye didn’t see the heart wouldn’t grieve over. He began to wish that his command of the language went a little further than “good evening” and “another brandy, please”. Still, there had been plenty of times in the past when language hadn’t mattered at all, when talking would have been a positive hindrance.
In no time at all he reached his destination, and at first glance he was disappointed. Set in the fields beside a hamlet, the site of the festivities was noisy and garishly lit, in many ways reminiscent of the country fairgrounds of England. All very well for teenage couples, but rather gauche for a civilized, sophisticated adult. Nevertheless, that peculiar tingling with which Harry’s every fibre seemed imbued had not lessened, seemed indeed heightened by the whirling machines and gaudy, gypsyish caravans and sideshows; and so he parked the car and threaded his way through the swiftly gathering crowd.
Hung with bunting and festooned with balloons like giant ethereal multi-hued grapes, the great barn stood open to the night. Inside, a costumed band tuned up while masked singles and couples in handsome attire gathered, preparing to dance and flirt the night away. Framed for a moment in the huge open door, frozen by the camera of his mind, Harry saw among the crowd the figure of a girl—a figure of truly animal magnetism—dressed almost incongruously in peasant’s costume.
For a second masked eyes met his own and fixed upon them across a space of only a few yards, and then she was gone. But the angle of her neck as she had looked at him, the dark unblinking eyes behind her mask, the fleeting, knowing smile on her lips before she turned away—all of these things had spoken volumes.
That weird feeling, the tingling that Harry felt, suddenly suffused his whole being. His head reeled and his mouth went dry; he had consciously to fight the excitement rising from within; following which he headed dizzily for the nearest wine tent, gratefully to slake his thirst. Then, bolstered by the wine, heart beating fractionally faster than usual, he entered the cavernous barn and casually cast about for the girl whose image still adorned his mind’s eye.
But his assumed air of casual interest quickly dissipated as his eyes swept the vast barn without sighting their target, until he was about to step forward and go among the tables in pursuit of his quarry. At that point a hand touched his arm, a heady perfume reached him, and a voice said: “There is an empty table on the balcony. Would you like to sit?”
Her voice was not at all cultured, but her English was very good; and while certainly there was an element of peasant in her, well, there was much more than that. Deciding to savour her sensuous good looks later when they were seated, he barely glanced at her but took her hand and proceeded across the floor of the barn. They climbed wooden stairs to an open balcony set with tables and cane chairs. On the way he spoke to a waiter and ordered a bottle of wine, a plate of dainties.
They sat at their tiny table overlooking the dance floor, toying with their glasses and pretending to be interested in completely irrelevant matters. He spoke of London, of skiing in Switzerland, the beach at Cannes. She mentioned the mountains, the markets of Budapest, the bloody history of the country, particularly of this region. He was offhand about his jet-setting, not becoming ostentatious; she picked her words carefully, rarely erring in pronunciation. He took in little of what she said and guessed that she wasn’t hearing him. But their eyes—at first rather fleetingly—soon became locked; their hands seemed to meet almost involuntarily atop the table.
Beneath the table Harry stretched out a leg towards hers, felt something cold and hairy arching against his calf as might a cat. A cat, yes, it must be one of the local cats, fresh in from mousing in the evening fields. He edged the thing to one side with his foot…but she was already on her feet, smiling, holding out a hand to him.
They danced, and he discovered gypsy in her, and strangeness, and magic. She bought him a red mask and positioned it over his face with fingers that were cool and sure. The wine began to go down that much faster…
• • •
It came almost as a surprise to Harry to find himself in the car, in the front passenger seat, with the girl driving beside him. They were just pulling away from the bright lights of the Schützenfest, but he did not remember leaving the great barn. He felt more than a little drunk—with pleasure as much as with wine.
“What’s your name?” he asked, not fi
nding it remarkable that he did not already know. Only the sound of the question seemed strange to him, as if a stranger had spoken the words.
“Cassilda,” she replied.
“A nice name,” he told her awkwardly. “Unusual.”
“I was named after a distant…relative.”
After a pause he asked: “Where are we going, Cassilda?”
“Is it important?”
“I’m afraid we can’t go to Szolyhaza—” he began to explain.
She shrugged, “My…home, then.”
“Is it far?”
“Not far, but—”
“But?”
She slowed the car, brought it to a halt. She was a shadowy silhouette beside him, her perfume washing him in warm waves. “On second thoughts, perhaps I had better take you straight back to your hotel—and leave you there.”
“No, I wouldn’t hear of it,” he spoke quickly, seeing his hopes for the night crumbling about him, sobered by the thought that she could so very easily slip out of his life. The early hours of the morning would be time enough for slipping away—and he would be doing it, not the girl. “You’d have to walk home, for one thing, for I’m afraid I couldn’t let you take the car…” To himself he added: And I know that taxis aren’t to be found locally.
“Listen,” he continued when she made no reply, “you just drive yourself home. I’ll take the car from there back to my hotel.”
“But you do not seem steady enough to drive.”
“Then perhaps you’ll make me a cup of coffee?” It was a terribly juvenile gambit, but he was gratified to see her smiling behind her mask.
Then, just as quickly as the smile had come, it fell away to be replaced by a frown he could sense rather than detect in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “But you must not see where I live.”
“Why on earth not?”
“It is not…a rich dwelling.”
“I don’t care much for palaces.”
“I don’t want you to be able to find your way back to me afterward. This can be for one night only…”
Now this, Harry thought to himself, is more like it! He felt his throat going dry again. “Cassilda, it can’t possibly be for more than one night,” he gruffly answered. “Tomorrow I leave for Budapest.”
“Then surely it is better that—”
“Blindfold me!”
“What?”
“Then I won’t be able to see where you live. If you blindfold me I’ll see nothing except…your room.” He reached across and slipped his hand inside her silk blouse, caressing a breast.
She reached over and stroked his neck, then pulled gently away. She nodded knowingly in the darkness: “Yes, perhaps we had better blindfold you, if you insist upon handling everything that takes your fancy!”
She tucked a black silk handkerchief gently down behind his mask, enveloping him in darkness. Exposed and compromised as she did this, she made no immediate effort to extricate herself as he fondled her breasts through the silk of her blouse. Finally, breathing the words into his face, she asked:
“Can you not wait?”
“It’s not easy.”
“Then I shall make it easier.” She took his hands away from her body, sat back in her seat, slipped the car into gear and pulled away. Harry sat in total darkness, hot and flushed and full of lust.
• • •
“We are there,” she announced, rousing him from some peculiar torpor. He was aware only of silence and darkness. He felt just a trifle queasy and told himself that it must be the effect of being driven blindfolded over poor roads. Had he been asleep? What a fool he was making of himself!
“No,” she said as he groped for the door handle. “Let’s just sit here for a moment or two. Open a bottle, I’m thirsty.”
“Bottle? Oh, yes!” Harry suddenly remembered the two bottles of wine they had brought with them from the Schützenfest. He reached into the back seat and found one of them. “But we have no glasses. And why should we drink here when it would be so much more comfortable inside?”
She laughed briefly. “Harry, I’m a little nervous…”
Of course! French courage!—or was it Dutch? What odds? If a sip or two would help her get into the right frame of mind, why not? Silently he blessed the manufacturers of screw-top bottles and twisted the cap free. She took the wine from him, and he heard the swishing of liquid. Her perfume seemed so much stronger, heady as the scent of poppies. And yet beneath it he sensed…something tainted?
She returned the bottle to him and he lifted it to parched lips, taking a long deep draught. His head immediately swam, and he felt a joyous urge to break into wild laughter. Instead, discovering himself the victim of so strange a compulsion, he gave a little grunt of surprise.
When he passed the bottle back to her, he let his hand fall to her breast once more—and gasped at the touch of naked flesh, round and swelling! She had opened her blouse to him—or she had removed it altogether! With trembling fingers he reached for his mask and the handkerchief tucked behind it.
“No!” she said, and he heard the slither of silk. “There, I’m covered again. Here, finish the bottle and then get out of the car. I’ll lead you…”
“Cassilda,” he slurred her name. “Let’s stop this little game now and—”
“You may not take off the blindfold until we are in my room, when we both stand naked.” He was startled by the sudden coarseness of her voice—the lust he could now plainly detect—and he was also fired by it. He jerked violently when she took hold of him with a slender hand, working her fingers expertly, briefly, causing him to gabble some inarticulate inanity.
Momentarily paralysed with nerve-tingling pleasure and shock, when finally he thought to reach for her she was gone. He heard the whisper of her dress and the click of the car door as she closed it behind her.
Opening his own door he almost fell out, but her hand on his shoulder steadied him. “The other bottle,” she reminded him.
Clumsily he found the wine, then stumbled as he turned from the car. She took his free hand, whispering: “Ssh! Quiet!” and gave a low guttural giggle.
Blind, he stumbled after her across a hard, faintly familiar surface. Something brushed against his leg, cold, furry and damp. The fronds of a bushy plant, he suspected.
“Lower your head,” she commanded. “Carefully down the steps. This way. Almost there…”
“Cassilda,” he said, holding tightly to her hand. “I’m dizzy.”
“The wine!” she laughed.
“Wait, wait!” he cried, dragging her to a halt. “My head’s swimming.” He put out the hand that held the bottle, found a solid surface, pressed his knuckles against it and steadied himself. He leaned against a wall of sorts, dry and flaky to his touch, and gradually the dizziness passed.
This is no good, he told himself: I’ll be of no damn use to her unless I can control myself! To her he said, “Potent stuff, your local wine.”
“Only a few more steps,” she whispered.
She moved closer and again there came the sound of sliding silk, of garments falling. He put his arm around her, felt the flesh of her body against the back of his hand. The weight of the bottle slowly pulled down his arm. Smooth firm buttocks—totally unlike Julia’s, which sagged a little—did not flinch at the passing of fingers made impotent by the bottle they held.
“God!” he whispered, throat choked with lust. “I wish I could hold on to you for the rest of my life…”
She laughed, her voice hoarse as his own, and stepped away, pulling him after her. “But that’s your second wish,” she said.
Second wish… Second wish? He stumbled and almost fell, was caught and held upright, felt fingers busy at his jacket, the buttons of his shirt. Not at all cold, he shivered, and deep inside a tiny voice began to shout at him, growing louder by the moment, shrieking terrifying messages into his inner ear.
His second wish!
Naked he stood, suddenly alert, the alcohol turning to water in
his system, the unbelievable looming real and immense and immediate as his four sound senses compensated for voluntary blindness.
“There,” she said. “And now you may remove your blindfold!”
Ah, but her perfume no longer masked the charnel musk beneath; her girl’s voice was gone, replaced by the dried-up whisper of centuries-shrivelled lips; the hand he held was—
Harry leapt high and wide, trying to shake off the thing that held his hand in a leathery grip, shrieking his denial in a black vault that echoed his cries like lunatic laughter. He leapt and cavorted, coming into momentary contact with the wall, tracing with his burning, supersensitive flesh the tentacled monstrosity that gloated there in bas-relief, feeling its dread embrace!
And bounding from the wall he tripped and sprawled, clawing at the casket which, in his mind’s eye, he saw where he had last seen it at the foot of her couch. Except that now the lid lay open!
Something at once furry and slimy-damp arched against his naked leg—and again he leapt frenziedly in darkness, gibbering now as his mind teetered over vertiginous chasms.
Finally, dislodged by his threshing about, his blindfold—the red mask and black silk handkerchief he no longer dared remove of his own accord—slipped from his face… And then his strength became as that of ten men, became such that nothing natural or supernatural could ever have held him there in that nighted cave beneath black ruins.
• • •
Herr Ludovic Debrec heard the roaring of the car’s engine long before the beam of its headlights swept down the black deserted road outside the inn. The vehicle rocked wildly and its tyres howled as it turned an impossibly tight corner to slam to a halt in the inn’s tiny courtyard.
Debrec was tired, cleaning up after the day’s work, preparing for the morning ahead. His handful of guests were all abed, all except the English Herr. This must be him now, but why the tearing rush? Peering through his kitchen window, Debrec recognised the car—then his weary eyes widened and he gasped out loud. But what in the name of all that…? The Herr was naked!
