Horror Stories to Tell in the Dark

by Anthony Masters

  Once Dad and I went to a Russian Orthodox Mass in the monastery’s public chapel, where a local choir sang while, in a screened-off side chapel, the silent monks of St Nicholas would gather and the Abbot would lead the service.

  *

  For the first few days I was very lonely as I prowled around the grounds. The monastery was small, with crosses surmounting the domed roofs. There was a large front door and then a high, grey wall jutted out, enclosing the remainder of the building, and I had the odd feeling that all this desolate brick was to keep the monks in – not to keep the public out. The wall extended beyond the monastery, over some long grass and then into a sad little woodland of spiky trees and stunted bushes. There was a door in the wall that was usually closed, but on one occasion I noticed that it was slightly ajar – as if for a breath of fresh air.

  Summoning up all my courage I went to take a peek, but all I could see was part of a cloister. Next time I passed, the door was firmly closed, and I wondered uneasily if the silent monks had seen me spying on them.

  Then I met Igor, and what had been simply a sense of isolation and foreboding became raw fear.

  Igor was the caretaker’s son and was studying at a Moscow boarding-school, where he was learning every subject in English and only came home at weekends. He was short and belligerent-looking and at first I took against him, but once I’d spoke to him I realized that Igor was as lonely as I was and desperately wanted to make friends.

  We first met by the old, dried-out fishponds – another desolate sight at St Nicholas – and Igor asked me if I was happy. I shook my head.

  ‘It’s so spooky – and my father’s busy all day. There’s nothing to do.’

  ‘Why’s it spooky?’ he asked.

  ‘The monks. They scare me. I looked in – when the door in the wall was open – and it was awful.’

  ‘Awful?’

  ‘Dead and dry and dusty.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have trespassed,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s forbidden.’

  ‘Hasn’t your father ever been in there?’ I pressed him, and suddenly realized that I had become very curious.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Never.’ Igor sounded really scared. ‘That door should never have been open; it very rarely is.’

  ‘Don’t they have any visitors?’ I inquired quietly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about supplies?’

  ‘My father leaves everything on a huge trolley in the public chapel. Then he goes away and one of the monks pushes it back into the compound.’

  ‘The compound? That’s a terrible word,’ I admonished.

  ‘Nevertheless, that’s what we call it.’ He paused rather hesitantly and then began to speak rapidly and urgently. ‘You mustn’t, under any circumstances, go through that door.’

  ‘I was only looking —’

  ‘Looking becomes wanting. Other people have gone in —’ Igor whispered.

  ‘What happened to them?’ Then I realized what he might be trying to tell me. ‘You mean they never came back?’

  ‘They came back,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But they were changed.’

  ‘Changed?’ Why couldn’t he get to the point?

  ‘Mentally.’

  ‘How? Was it obvious?’ This was all so unnerving and so unexpected that I wondered if Igor was teasing me, but when I looked into his haunted eyes I could see he was serious. I hardly knew him, but already we had formed a terrible bond.

  ‘They just shut themselves away inside as if they’d had something taken away.’

  I lay awake all night. What had been taken from the people who had trespassed into the monastery? The dreadful thoughts rattled round in my head making sleep impossible, so eventually I rose and went to the window.

  The grounds of the guest house were bathed in a sharp, white light, and the moon rose overhead, looking pale and sickly. Everything seemed to have a slightly diseased air. The trees looked bent and brittle, the grass jaundice-yellow and the wall surrounding the monastery a deathly white. There were no stars in the sky – only racing clouds – and from somewhere a mournful nightjar called, repeating the cry again and again. It was as if the world outside had turned sour and lost all its colour and warmth and vivacity. It looked as if something had sucked out all the goodness and left only badness. I tried to dismiss the idea, but it wouldn’t go away.

  The next morning I looked for Igor, but the caretaker told me curtly that he was ill. Disappointed and lonely, I wandered around disconsolately for a while, trying to think what I was going to do that day. As usual my father was poring over the icons, so in the end I decided to knock on the door of the caretaker’s flat and see if I could at least speak to Igor. There was no answer for a long time and then the bolts were drawn back and his mother stood on the threshold. She looked afraid.

  ‘Can I see Igor?’

  She stared at me uncomprehendingly, her eyes red and full of tears.

  ‘Igor?’ I tried again.

  His mother nodded and led me through the cramped little apartment until I came to a small room whose walls were covered with the colours and photographs of a football team. Igor was in bed, lying on his back, his face ashen and expressionless except for his eyes which stared feverishly up at me.

  Directly his mother left the room, Igor whispered, ‘I thought you’d come.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘No. I went into the monastery.’

  I was horrified. ‘Why? I thought you said –’

  ‘I felt this – urge.’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘I felt that too. Then I looked out of the window last night and had this weird feeling that the earth was being drained.’

  ‘Something in there.’ His voice was now just a croak.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I couldn’t remember a time when I had ever been so afraid.

  ‘The door was open. I felt as if I was being invited in.’ I had to strain to hear what he was saying. ‘Inside everything was very plain and bare, and nothing was growing – not even a tree. The ground was covered with a kind of ash and I couldn’t even see any grass. What’s more, there didn’t seem to be any paint on the buildings, and when I caught sight of one of the monks he was white and bald – he didn’t even have any eyebrows.’ Igor coughed, and for a moment I didn’t think he was going to be able to carry on, but somehow he continued. ‘I hid for a while, feeling terrified, but still curious. Then I heard a sound – a sort of sucking sound.’

  I shuddered. ‘Where was it coming from?’

  ‘The bell tower. So I went over, opened the door, checked no one was looking and began to climb up.’ The whisper became even fainter. ‘There was slime on the stairs. I slipped on it and when I touched the stuff it was warm. Immediately I felt I couldn’t go on, so I came down and opened the door in the wall again. My legs became weaker and weaker and I only just made it back.’ He paused. ‘When I went to bed I dreamt, and the dream kept recurring. I’m going back in there. Up those stairs – through that slime. Someone’s calling me.’

  ‘You’ve got a fever.’ I tried to soothe him.

  ‘Someone’s calling,’ he repeated, and his pale features twisted in an agony that was terrible to see.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying —’ I pleaded with him frantically, but it was no good.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he whispered again and again, and eventually his mother came and ushered me away. Because she spoke no English and I had no Russian it was impossible for us to talk about Igor and the call that he claimed had come for him, but I knew by instinct that she was as terrified as I was.

  I went for a walk in the pine woods later that morning and then sat on top of the hill, looking down at the interior of what I now called the forbidden monastery. I had climbed through deep snow, but the morning sun was sparkling on the soft white carpet which gave off a curiously unearthly radiance. There was nothing much to be seen in the cloisters below
: the occasional monk walking slowly amongst the painted columns, a cat running towards the bell tower and then the mournful deep sound of the Abbot singing the midday office. Then I saw the cat return, and even from my vantage point I could make out that the creature had changed colour from jet-black to a curiously transparent grey. I stared down, wondering if I was mistaken or if the snow glare was making my eyes deceive me. But no – the cat was now ash-white.

  Suddenly I saw a monk walk slowly away from the cloister and then break into a run, and strained my eyes to see what was going on. He looked pallid like the cat as he bent over the creature, stroking its fur and looking up at the bell tower. Even from a distance I could feel the hatred in him, see his anger. Then he did a very curious thing: moving quickly across the quadrangle, he hurried to the door in the wall and opened it slightly. Picking up the cat, he hurried back into the building.

  I slid and stumbled down the hillside, possessed by an unsettling certainty that the door was being deliberately left open, and as I came nearer I distinctly saw Igor walking unsteadily out of the guest house and towards the monastery wall. Bursting into a stumbling run I shrieked out his name, but I was still too far away for him to hear me.

  As I tumbled through the snow, mile upon mile of pine woods seemed to flash past me, a huge wilderness where anything could happen, anything could lurk in the dead ground under the trees. Only rarely would a penetrating sunbeam dart through the foliage and I imagined things moving away, seeking shadows and darkness. The images kept coming into my mind as if they were some kind of transmitted warning.

  Gasping for breath, I arrived back in the valley with a great feeling of despair. Then I saw that the door was still open.

  Cautiously, but without hesitation, I walked into the monastery. The early afternoon sun filtered from dark clouds overhead and shafts of ancient sunlight, mellow and glowing, slanted across the quadrangle. There was no one around and a thick silence filled the air. Then a single bell began to toll and beneath the sound I heard an odd fluttering of what seemed to be dry wings. Gradually, the terror grew inside me until I could hardly breathe. Nevertheless, I pressed on, staring round to see if I was unobserved until, keeping to the shadows, I walked quickly towards the tower.

  I opened the sombre wooden door, and saw a flight of worn stone stairs. I was just about to ascend when I heard the sound of running steps outside and froze, desperately looking around me for a hiding-place. There was nowhere, and seconds later I saw the flushed white face of a tall man with a bald head.

  He gazed at me in silence, and I could see his skin was so stretched and grey that it seemed to be flaking away. ‘I am the Abbot,’ he said at last, his voice thin and weak. ‘You are trespassing.’

  ‘I’m looking for Igor,’ I stuttered.

  ‘You are trespassing,’ he repeated.

  ‘I have to find Igor – he’s ill.’

  ‘He’s going to die.’

  ‘No —’ I was horrified.

  ‘There is nothing you can do to save him.’

  I tried to run up the stairs, but the Abbot grabbed my arm and held it tightly. ‘I cannot allow any more sacrifice.’

  ‘Sacrifice?’ I was completely bewildered now.

  ‘A young child’s soul contains less sin. His appetite is sharper for these – like we enjoy young lamb.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Come with me. I will show you. Then you must go.’

  I followed the Abbot to the main monastery building with its two domes. We climbed up a long flight of stairs until we came to a circular room whose only furnishings were a heavily decorated chair and a footstool.

  ‘Sit down, child.’

  I did as I was told, but I felt a burning restlessness. Why was Igor going to die? There must be some way of saving him.

  ‘Why was the door in the wall left open?’ I demanded.

  ‘My brothers have been – weak.’

  ‘I thought the monastery was closed to outsiders.’

  ‘It is. But my brothers, like me, are being drained.’

  With renewed shock I remembered the colourless landscape of my dreams. ‘Drained?’

  ‘It will end in fire,’ he said slowly.

  I stared at the Abbot uncomprehendingly as he continued, his long grey head turned towards me but his jaundiced eyes staring out of the round window towards the bell tower. ‘Some years ago one of our brothers lost his faith and he began to study alchemy. He wanted to find powers denied to him by God. He sought union with darkness – with Satan.’ He paused, but I didn’t dare interrupt, despite my desperation for Igor.

  ‘The devil’s powers need sustenance – the sustenance of the soul,’ he continued.

  ‘You mean —’ I broke into involuntary speech, trying to understand the full horror of what the Abbot was trying to tell me.

  ‘I mean that our brother feeds off the human soul.’

  I stared at him, unable to take in the enormity of what he was saying. ‘Did he gain any powers?’ I said at last.

  ‘He thought he would gain more – perhaps in the end be as all-seeing, all-embracing as God himself – but the Devil ensnared him.’

  ‘In the bell tower?’

  ‘So far we have kept his – his form to ourselves, but we are growing too weak. He is feeding off us, you must understand. Then one of the brothers opened the door in the wall. He was hoping the curious would enter and there would be some alleviation to our suffering.’

  ‘You mean – that the brother would feed off them instead?’

  ‘He was very wrong.’ At last the Abbot looked me in the eye and I could see his shame and guilt. ‘I cannot let this happen any longer.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I will show you and then you must go.’

  ‘Not without Igor,’ I insisted.

  ‘I am afraid that is impossible.’

  ‘I must rescue him – before it’s too late.’

  ‘It is too late.’

  In the dying light I could see a dark shape in the bell tower, and hear, through the half-open window, the rustling of wings. I turned to the Abbot, but he put a finger to his lips and beckoned me to follow him downstairs.

  ‘The monks will distress you, child. They are far more drained than I. Prepare yourself.’

  I tried to steel myself against what I was going to see, but when he threw open the double oak doors and I stared down at the things sitting behind the table I failed to choke back a scream.

  There were some twenty monks on either side of the long, unvarnished table, set with plates of bread and bowls. Some of the men had washed-out complexions and translucent skins, but others were unbearable to look at with their exposed veins and arteries clearly visible. In one man I could see his brain showing through his forehead. The monks did not look up but remained staring down at their plates in humble supplication, and as my scream died away I buried my face in the dusty robe of the Abbot. Then the door opened behind me.

  ‘Don’t look,’ the Abbot said.

  But I had to, for I knew by some sixth sense that Igor wanted me. Wrenching myself from the Abbot’s grasp I turned to face Igor.

  He was like an anatomical specimen. The thing had feasted on him and I saw Igor’s blood thinly circulating around his frame. But what was far worse, there was a terrible emptiness to him: his soul had been sucked dry and all I was looking at was machinery. The bloodless lips moved in his dead white face and the expressionless voice called my name again and again.

  What had once been Igor came towards me with hands outstretched. It was only then that I began to run.

  I stood trembling outside the still half-open door in the wall of St Nicholas’s monastery. Twilight was drifting into darkness now as I watched the Abbot walking towards the bell tower with his arm around what had once been Igor. The rising moon shone right through the boy. Behind them came the monks, holding flaming brands, and slowly the procession disappeared into the tower.

  I waited until I heard the roaring sound. Sud
denly the whole building was engulfed by fire and smoke as the bell began to toll. The flames leapt and crackled; then the roof fell in, and a creature, half man, half bat, rose from the inferno, its snow-white human head emitting a dreadful cry.

  ‘What’s that?’ hissed Will, and the bonfire flames rose as he threw a log into them.

  ‘What’s what?’ said Anne.

  Something rustled past in the firelight.

  ‘That’s a rat,’ said Barry with conviction. The group round the fire huddled together. ‘Reminds me of a seaside town I once knew …’ he continued.

  4

  Rats

  The battered old trawler limped into the harbour when I was fishing on the wall late at night. She was so low in the water that for a moment I wondered if she was going to founder. Lady Jane was the name carved on her bows, barely discernible amongst the flaking paint and barnacled hull. Her rigging was rusty, one of the hatches was broken and there was a great gouge on her starboard side.

  ‘Tod’s home.’ The rough voice of Captain Soames made me start, but I was not particularly surprised at his sudden appearance. The old man haunted the harbour wall and there was rarely a time when he was not wandering about its stained concrete and mooring posts – some of which were split and badly weathered. ‘That’s bad news,’ he added.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Swine of a man. Runs the Lady Jane single-handed – only because no one would sail with him.’

  ‘How long’s he been away?’ I said, reeling in my line, knowing full well that I couldn’t concentrate while Captain Soames was around. Rumoured to have been in the Royal Navy years ago, he was a permanent fixture in Sungate, knowing all there was to know about the dying trade in the old harbour and the few fishing boats that still actually went to sea for a living.