And Afterward, the Dark

by Basil Copper

  The insect paused and then launched itself on a thick silken thread; a nauseous stench was in his nostrils, the great spider gave a sibilant rattle and then it was on his mouth, covering his face and eyes with its bloated, sticky carcase. M. Pinet gave shriek after shriek as consciousness mercifully expired.

  "A most curious case," said the doctor, washing his hands in the washbasin of M. Pinet's room. "Heart sound as a bell, yet he must have died instantaneously from some great shock. Never come across anything like it. There'll have to be an inquiry, of course.''

  And the doctor, who was a matter-of-fact human being, gave a heavy sigh. The landlord's wife, who stood just inside the door of the death chamber, timidly assented.

  Down below in the bar the landlord, who lived by the secret fears of his customers, smiled a curious smile. He fondled a thick bundle of notes under the counter.

  In the room above, a tiny brown spider, not more than an eighth of an inch across, scuttled nervously across the dead man's forehead. The doctor brushed it impatiently away and it fell out of sight by the side of the bed.

  The Cave

  "Fear is a strange thing, and yet a comparative thing," said Wilson. "It means something different to you, something again to me. Temperament has so much to do with it; one man is afraid of heights, another of the dark, a third of the illogical in life.''

  The small group in the dining club stirred and gazed expectantly. Nobody answered. Encouraged, Wilson went on.

  "In fiction anything to do with the illogical, the mysterious, or the macabre has to be stage-managed. The mise-en-scene is set about with darkness, storms, scudding clouds, and all the apparatus of the Victorian Gothick novella. Life isn't like that and fear often comes, as the Bible says, at noonday. And this is the most frightful type of fear of all.''

  I put down my newspaper and Pender followed suit. The half dozen or so of us in the room gathered about the big central mahogany dining-table, facing Wilson in his comfortable chair by the fire.

  "I remember a particular instance which fitted no pattern imposed by logic," said Wilson, "and yet it was a perfect example of the terror by noonday. I had it at first-hand from an unimpeachable witness. It was simply that Gilles Sanroche, a middle-aged farmer, went stark-raving mad in the middle of a wheatfield, at noonday, in perfect August weather, on a hillside above Epoisses in Central France. It was not sunstroke, there was nothing in the field, and in fact the affair would have been an absolute mystery but for one thing.

  "The man was able to babble about 'something in the wheat' and there were three witnesses who came forward to say that they had seen great waves of wind following a fixed pattern in the corn surrounding the unfortunate man. And there was no wind at all on the day in question."

  Wilson paused again to see that his words were taking effect. No one ventured an opinion, so he resumed his apparently disconnected musings.

  "There's a mystery for you, if you like. And what drove Sanroche insane in broad daylight on a beautiful day in a French cornfield has never been discovered. But the local people spoke of 'the Devil snarling and prowling in the wind' up and down the valleys, and in fact a mediaeval inscription speaks to that effect in one of the local churches.

  "There is a germ of truth in the superstitions of these country folk and they talked, in a picturesque phrase, of the 'fence of the priesthood being thin' in that part of France. I was much taken with this simile, I must say; it was as though the physical presence of the clergy were spread in a living chain through the mountains and valleys of the country, literally fencing out the Devil.

  "Whether the Devil actually appeared to Gilles Sanroche I have no idea; he may have thought he did. But there is no doubt in my mind that fear took away his sanity that hot August afternoon. In one of his stories somewhere, de Maupassant strikingly illustrates the effect of fear on the human mind. He describes a night in a mountain hut—a night of appalling fear for the occupant—but dawn finds a logical explanation. The hideous face at the window was merely the narrator's dog and the remainder of the story was supplied by the atmosphere of the lonely hut and the man's own terror.

  "I was greatly impressed with this story when I first read it as a young man," Wilson continued, "and I have often returned to it since, as it strikingly parallels an experience of my own—also in the mountains—which again, though unexplainable, communicated to me the most fearful sensations of my life. The difference in my case being that though I myself saw or experienced very little in the way of concrete happenings, the facts underlying the experience were very terrible indeed, as subsequent events made clear.''

  There was by now a deep and expectant silence in the room, broken only by the hardly discernible crackling of the fire. Pender hastily passed the whisky decanter to me, refilled his own glass, and we then gave our undivided attention to Wilson who sat, one hand supporting his head, gazing fixedly into the fire.

  "I had gone on the second of a series of long walking tours in the Austrian Tyrol," he said. "All this was many years ago. I was then a young man of about twenty-nine years, I should say; strong, well built, untiring after eight hours' walking over rough country. Sound in wind and limb in every way and not at all imaginative or given to morbid fancies or anything of that kind.

  "I enjoyed long holidays in those days and I expected to spend at least two months in the exhilarating atmosphere of those great mountains. I was in good spirits, in first-class condition after three weeks' hard tramping, and in addition I was in the early stages of love.

  "I had met the girl who was later to become my wife in Innsbruck the first day of my holiday, and when our ways parted a week later, I had arranged to meet her again some weeks after. In the meantime I intended to explore some of the more remote valleys and photograph the carvings in a number of the older churches.

  "I had spent the greater part of one day slogging my way up an immense shoulder of foothill, stumbling on scree, and awkwardly threading up through dense forests of pine and fir. By late afternoon I became painfully aware that I had little idea of my whereabouts. The village I had been making for that morning should have been, according to my map, down the next valley but I could see nothing but the green tops of the pines marching to the horizon. It seemed obvious that I had passed the valley entrance in making my long circuit of the shoulder; I had little alternative than to press on farther up the. hill or camp where I remained. I was ill-equipped for the latter; I had few provisions and not much more than a ground sheet and a couple of blankets strapped to my back.

  It did not take me long to make up my mind. There were quite a few more hours of daylight left and once I had quit the shadows of the forest and regained open country I should be walking in the sunshine. I decided to see what awaited me at the summit of the foothill; in the meantime I spent ten minutes resting, smoking, and admiring the view. I found half a packet of chocolate in my pocket and fortified by this went forward up the last half mile, if not with elan, at least with more cheerfulness.

  "I was pleased to find with the thinning out of the trees at the top, that I had chanced on a small road which evidently led from one valley to another. It was little more than a cart track but nevertheless a heartening sign of civilization, and with the help of my map I was able to orientate myself. I soon saw where I had gone wrong and assumed, correctly, that the road I had found would take me over to the next village to the west of the one I had originally intended making for.

  "I was glad to be out of the sombre gloom of the forest, and the upland road with its air of height and spaciousness, together with the sun which danced on the ground ahead of me, completely restored my spirits. I had walked for over an hour, and the road again began to descend into a valley, when I eventually saw the wooden spire of a tall church piercing the roof of the pines below me. A minute or two more and a sizeable community of thirty or forty houses spread itself out in the evening light.

  "But as I descended to the village I caught sight of a large sign at the roadside: Gasthof. Set
back from the road were heavy wooden gates, which were flung open. A drive corkscrewed its way upwards and a few paces round the corner I could see a large hotel of the chalet type, its pine construction gleaming cheerfully in the fading sunlight. The trim grass in front was kept in bounds by a blaze of flowers. The whole place had a magnificent view of the valley below and it was this, as much as the prospect of saving myself a walk, that decided me to put up here for the night.

  "Though the accommodation would probably be expensive, it would be worth it for the view alone. Alas, for my hopes. A stout, Brünnhilde type of woman, her blonde hair scraped back in a large bun, who appeared in the hotel foyer in response to my repeated ringing at the outer door, shook her head. Nein, she said, the guesthouse was closed for the season.

  "Here was a blow. Worse was to come. The woman, who seemed to be some sort of caretaker, explained in bad English, prompted by my halting German, that the hotels in the village were closed also—it was the end of the season. I could try but she very much doubted if I would be successful. There were only two hotels and she herself knew that the proprietor of one had closed and taken himself and his family off for their own holiday in Switzerland.

  "By this time the woman had been joined in front of the hotel by a brace of savage wolfhounds, who kept up menacing growls. I was glad I had not encountered them in the grounds and said as much to the woman, who gave me a wintry smile. What was I to do, I asked. She shrugged. My best hope was to try one or two houses where families took in occasional boarders. I could obtain advice from the police station.

  "I thanked her and was already retracing my footsteps along the drive when she recalled me with a word. She apologized; she didn't know what she had been thinking of. If I didn't mind another short walk in the forest she was sure Herr Steiner could offer me accommodation. It would be of a simple sort.... She shrugged again.

  "She pointed out a path which twisted between the hotel flower beds and descended steeply through the inevitable pine trees. I gathered the place was half inn, half private residence, run by a middle-aged German couple. In the season it acted as a sort of overflow annexe to the hotel, as it was only a quarter of a mile away, though quite secluded. Herr Steiner had an arrangement with the hotel over sending him guests; there was a monetary aspect and he was no doubt pleased of the extra custom for his own remote establishment. The woman apologized once again; she came from another district and was deputizing for her sister, otherwise she would have remembered the guesthouse earlier. I thanked her once more. She told me then that the road I had found earlier looped just before it reached the village and met Herr Steiner's establishment. I could either take the path from the hotel grounds or go along the road.

  "I made my farewell and decided to take the road. The dark path looked uninviting, the sun was sinking, and the thin tinkling of water from far distances lent a melancholy aspect to the evening. Besides, I had no wish to meet the wolfhounds in some lonely clearing, so I waved the woman good-bye.

  "In another five minutes I had descended the road, found the fork she spoke of, and then, a couple of hundred yards farther on, was rewarded by lights shining through the trees. It was now dusk and the noise of water was louder. I threaded a moss-grown path and saw a substantially built gasthof, of the traditional chalet pattern, with carved porch and vast, overhanging eaves.

  "Herr Steiner and his wife Martha, the couple who owned the gasthof, were an amiable pair and made me welcome, late in the season though it was. The husband, a man of late middle age, tall, stoop-shouldered, with a drooping ginger moustache, was much given to sitting by the kitchen fire by the hour, reading all the news in the ill-printed local newspaper, holding up the sheet close to the eyes and studying the small print with the aid of a pocket magnifier.

  "He seemed to go through every scrap of information it contained, including the small advertisements, and it was always with regret that he at last closed the lens with a snap, disappointed that there was nothing further to read. His wife was quite elderly, at least fifteen years older, I should have said, reserved and quiet. She flitted like a shadow in the background but nevertheless it was flitting to some purpose for her establishment was impeccably clean, the meals punctual and of excellent quality.

  "I was only with the Steiners three days, but it did seem to me as though some trouble lurked at the back of Steiner's eyes, and once or twice I caught him, when he thought himself unobserved, in a curious posture, his newspaper dropped unnoticed to his knees, his head on one side, as though he were listening for someone or something.

  "For in truth, though their establishment was within such a short distance of both the village and the more imposing establishment higher up the hill, it appeared both lonely and isolated, mainly due to the overhanging hillside which cut it off from the main hotel, and to the thickly overgrown woodland with which it was surrounded.

  "This made the place seem damp and melancholy, and on my first evening, pushing open the shutters of my bedroom window, the impression given by the falling of water from somewhere below, in the silence of the night, affected my heart with a profound sadness. In all other matters, however, I saw nothing untoward. The Steiners were reasonably cheerful landlords, the terms moderate, the food of the best, as I have said, and all in all I counted myself fortunate to have such a headquarters while I continued on my walks and explorations of the neighbourhood.

  "I had proposed staying for a week, but events conspired to make this impossible, as you will see. On my first morning at the Steiners I set out soon after breakfast to reconnoitre the neighbourhood. I decided to leave the village until later and concentrated on the thick shelf of woodland on which the lower guesthouse was built.

  "This ran slanting across the mountainside and eventually came out onto a cliff-like plateau. Below was a superb panorama of the village and the forests beyond; above, more forest and the uplands on which the large hotel stood. It was a day of bright sunshine and it was with considerable contentment that I left the last of the trees behind and was able to walk freely on mossy undersoil, split here and there by outcrops of rock. I wandered in this way for an hour or more until I at length came out on a precipitous bluff and was rewarded by a magnificent view of the entire valley.

  "It was as I was coming away, half drugged by the beauties of the scene, that my eye was arrested by a patch of bold colour in the landscape. This was unusual in this region of dark greens of pines and fir, and the russet hue irritated my mind, so that I turned aside my steps and went to see what it was. An unpleasant shock then, in that time and place, my thoughts quite unprepared for such a thing, to find that what had attracted my eye was the scarlet of blood.

  "Great splashes and gouts were spread over the rocks and it was with considerable alarm that I followed a short trail. A few yards away, on the other side of a large boulder, lay the corpse of a young goat, evidently not long dead. I must say I looked about me with considerable unease, for I had at first thought the creature might have fallen from the rocks. I then plainly saw I had been mistaken and that the animal's throat had been torn out, and its breast viciously savaged.

  "This was evidently the work of some large and dangerous animal, and I make no apology for stating that I broke off a heavy tree branch and armed in this fashion set back on my walk to the guesthouse. On the way I met a man, who from his dress seemed like a shepherd, and told him of my discovery. He went pale and swore at some length.

  "'We have been troubled with this beast for some time,' he said, so far as I could make out from his heavy German accent. He told me too that even cattle had been dragged off from herds in the vicinity over the past few months. He thanked me and said he would warn the municipal authorities.

  "I was glad to arrive back to find the usual peaceful atmosphere in the guesthouse. My lunch was just coming up to the table, Herr Steiner as usual, reading by a fire which simmered in the great kitchen range.

  "There being no other guests in the hotel, I chose to have my meals in the great be
amed kitchen with the Steiners, and they were cheerful company in the evenings. My landlord had quite a good command of English, so conversation was not the strain it might have been for me.

  "I set to with eagerness, for the walk had sharpened my appetite. The main course over, I sipped my beer contentedly, and fell into conversation with Herr Steiner. But when I mentioned the matter of the dead goat it had an unlooked-for effect. Steiner turned quite white and sat with his mouth open, staring at me. I was rescued from this somewhat embarrassing moment by a loud crash in the background. Frau Steiner had gone to fetch the dessert and there was the bowl shattered on the floor of the kitchen.

  "What with apologies, moppings up, and the preparation of a fresh dessert, the incident passed over. When we again returned to it at the end of the meal, Steiner remarked, with an obviously simulated ease, that there had been some ravages among livestock by a beast which local hunters had so far failed to kill. He had been taken aback, he said, by the fact that the goat may have been from their own herd, but this could not be so as they were completely enclosed in the meadow below the house.

  "I accepted this explanation, not wanting to appear over-curious, but I remained convinced in my own mind that Steiner was lying. The old couple's alarm was too great for such an incident as they had suggested, but the matter was their concern, not mine, and there I was prepared to leave it. But the business continued to fret my mind and after lunch, somewhat ashamed of my overprecipitate retreat from the area where I had found the goat, I set out to explore once again. On the way through the outbuildings surrounding the Steiners' establishment, I caught sight of the block where the old man had been chopping up firewood, and, almost without thinking, seized the small hand axe which stood on the block, and thrust it into my belt.