The Irish Witch rb-11

by Dennis Wheatley

  By then the moon had come up, but it was on the far side of the castle, so the side opposite him was still in deep shadow. Advancing toward the lake, he cautiously took a few steps into the water, in case what he had taken to be sand proved to be treacherous boggy mud, but the bottom was firm and the water shallow. He was barely knee deep in it when he reached the nearest stones of the rough causeway.

  From there on he clambered up from block to block, on his hands and knees because many of the big stones were covered with moss and provided only a precarious foot­hold. It took him a quarter of an hour to get to the top; but once there, by leaning sideways he was near enough to the partly open window to get a grip on the sill.

  Balancing carefully on his slippery perch, he stretched out a hand to the window, and pulled it back. Grasping the sill he gave a spring, dangled by both hands for a moment, then hauled himself up and landed on his chest with his head inside the room. Next moment he swore violently under his breath. The butt of the pistol had struck the underledge of the stone sill, and been knocked out of his belt. He heard it clatter as it bounced from rock to rock below. Two-thirds of his body still hung dangerous­ly out of the window. One false move and he would have a very nasty fall, breaking some bones if not his neck. First things first. He gave a swift wriggle and flung his arms forward. It brought him half-way through the window, and he was safe.

  Only then did his mind turn fully to the seriousness of his loss. Dare he go further, now that he was unarmed? Gould he retrieve his pistol? No, that was next to impos­sible. If he dropped back, he would almost certainly fail to land safely and go rolling down the great heap of rugged stones. Besides, even given the luck to escape that, what hope would he have of finding the pistol in the dark?

  Grimly he realised that he dared not risk a drop. He had no option now but to go forward. Two thoughts swiftly followed to console him a little. At least the pistol had not roused the inmates of the castle by going off, and in old castles skilfully arranged groups of weapons nearly always decorated the walls. From one of them he might arm him­self with a sword, mace or dagger.

  Even when he pushed aside the curtain, no glimmer of light penetrated the diamond panes of the window as the moonlight did not shine on that side of the castle. The room was in complete darkness, and he could not get any idea of its size. Stretching out his hands, he felt the floor, then pulled his legs through the window, squirmed round and stood up. For a full minute he remained where he was. No sound broke the stillness except that of his own breathing. Cautiously he took two steps forward, his hands stretched out before him. When he was well clear of the curtains he fished out his tinder box and a piece of candle, and struck a light. The flame had barely touched the wick: of the candle when there came a rustling sound and a voice said sharply: 'Who is that?'

  The voice was that of a girl. As the candle flared, he saw her. Surrounded by dark hair her face was a white blob. She was sitting up in an iron bedstead and the light gleamed on the brass knobs at its foot. Again she cried, 'Who are you ? What are you doing here ?'

  'Be quiet!' Roger said quickly. 'I mean you no harm. But if you rouse the house, I'll shoot you.'

  As he spoke he walked forward so that he could see her better. At the same time he got an impression of the room. It was large and lofty and furnished only with a table on which was a mirror, a hanging cupboard, a round-lidded trunk and a single chair. Evidently it had not formerly been a bedroom, but had been turned into a temporary one.

  Since he was holding the candle she could see him bet­ter than he could see her. Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘I know you now! You are Susan's father, Mr. Brook.'

  ‘I am,' he replied, 'and you are Miss Jemima Luggala.'

  She nodded, gave a heavy sigh, then whispered, 'Thank God you've come! Susan and I were in despair. We'd given up all hope of being rescued from the witch.'

  Roger looked at her in surprise, walked forward, lit another candle that stood beside her bed and said with a frown, 'I was under the impression that you and Susan had left your mother against her will, to come and live here with Katie O'Brien.'

  'So that's what she told you ?' Jemima's dark eyes flash­ed with anger. 'It is a lie. I've no reason to love my mother, Mr. Brook. She is mean, greedy and a nymphomaniac. Not being well off, she has always grudged the money for my keep and clothes, so she had no scruples about getting rid of me, and was glad of the chance to make a bargain with the witch. Have you ever heard of the New Hell Fire Club?'

  'I have. Your mother used to frequent it when she lived in London and, I have reason to suppose, partici­pated in the orgies that took place there.'

  'She did. Katie O'Brien told me so. But when my mother left England she was deprived of that outlet for her lusts. That is why she followed the witch to Ireland. Katie had to go into hiding here, but that does not pre­vent her from still casting spells. They made a foul com­pact. By her magic arts Katie would provide my mother with a succession of lovers, and in return Susan and I were sold to the witch.'

  'Oh, come!' Roger protested. 'You and Susan are not children, but fully grown women. You cannot expect me to believe that both of you allowed your mother to hand you over to anyone against your wills.'

  Jemima stared angrily at him. 'Mr. Brook, I wonder that any man can be so dense. Naturally, we should have refused to go had we had the chance. My mother put a drug into the hot milk we always drink before going to bed at night. When we regained our senses, we were in bed in this castle and as it is surrounded by water we could not attempt to get away.'

  'So that is the way it was,' said Roger thoughtfully. 'And what of Charles St. Ermins? Was he drugged and brought here, too?'

  'My Lord St. Ermins!' Jemima looked surprised. 'No, why should he have been ? What has he to do with this?'

  'He came to Dublin some three weeks ago to search for Susan and take her home; but disappeared two days later.’

  ‘I know naught of that. I thought him to be still in Spain.'

  Roger was greatly puzzled. From all he had heard of Jemima, he had thought it probable that she was in part at least responsible for Susan's having fallen into Kate O'Brien's clutches. Georgina had said that the girl had both dominated her mother and achieved a great influence over Susan. Yet her account of her mother's bargain with the witch was highly plausible, because it was so in keeping with what he had learnt of Maureen Luggala's charac­ter. But what could have happened to Charles? That had become an even deeper mystery. Maureen had neither the brains nor the ability to put him out of the way; so, if he was not here, where could he possibly have got to? Another mystery was, if the girls had not become sister witches of the O'Brien's, why was she keeping them here? Of what value were they to her? After a moment he said:

  'You maintain that your mother virtually sold you and Susan to Kate O'Brien, and that you are prisoners. What good can it do her to hold two young girls captive?'

  Jemima gave him a slightly pitying look. 'It is evident, Mr. Brook, that you have little knowledge of Satanism. For the most important of all occult ceremonies by which great power can be obtained, the use of the body of a virgin is essential.' Suddenly, in a rush of words she burst out, 'It is this we are both dreading so terribly. That's why I was so overjoyed when I recognised you tonight and realised that you had come to rescue Susan. You'll take me with you too, won't you ? Please! Please! I implore you to.'

  The pleading look on the girl's face was so earnest that Roger felt much he had heard or assumed about her must be wrong. It was quite possible that she had been maligned and trapped. It dawned upon him then that there was a way in which he could put her to the test, and he asked :

  'Where is Susan ?'

  'In another temporarily furnished room like this, also on this floor but on the other side of the castle.' 'Could you take me to her?'

  'Yes. No-one will be about at this hour, and she is not locked in. Katie is confident that both of us are too fright­ened of the curse she would put upon us if we tried to escape.'
>
  'Very well, then. Take me to Susan. If I can get her out, I'll take you too.'

  'Oh, thanks be to God!' Jemima gasped. 'May He for ever bless you!' Slipping out of bed she swiftly put on a chamber robe, picked up her candlestick and walked quickly to the door. Roger blew out the candle he was holding, nipped the wick and followed her out into a gloomy passage.

  With Jemima leading, shielding the flame of her candle from the draught with one hand, they walked on tiptoe down a long corridor. Roger followed a few paces behind her, with every sense alert. The girl's plea for protection, and apparent anxiety to escape from the witch had im­pressed him. Yet he was worried by doubts about the wisdom of having accepted her as an ally, although she must be aware that if she led him into a trap she would be the first victim of it, for he had only to leap forward to strike her down. Again he felt bitter regret at having lost his pistol, but he now had no choice other than to trust her and, if she did betray him, he could at least fell her with a blow on the back of the neck from which she would not easily recover.

  At the end of the corridor they entered a large, lofty hall. By the light of the single candle Roger could not see the walls, but he was aware that a gallery ran round it and in passing he glimpsed a few pieces of heavy furniture.

  At the far end of the hall they entered another passage. On that side of the castle, shafts of full moonlight came through the tall windows, but they were so begrimed with the dirt of ages that it was impossible to see out of them. Nevertheless, Roger could see enough to realise that this part of the building was in almost total ruin. As they ad­vanced, holes showed in the roof, a bat flitted by, the undrawn curtains hung beside the windows in moth-eaten rags. Here and there great festoons of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and swayed gently in the draught they made in passing.

  They turned into another corridor and then another. No sound reached them but that of the sudden scuttling of a rat. Yet Roger remained uneasy, still fearful that Jemima might be leading him into a trap. Why, he wondered, should her bedroom be where it was, while Susan's was so far from it, in the ruined part of the castle? The silence was eerie, the whole atmosphere of the place fraught with evil.

  Another bat sailed by. Roger started back. Jemima turned and smiled at him. About fifteen feet further on she suddenly took two quick paces forward, threw up her free hand and pressed it against an iron flambeau holder on the wall, then gave a sardonic laugh.

  Without a second's warning, the floor beneath Roger gave way. His feet slid from under him. He fell backward on to a steep, sloping ramp. Instinctively he threw out both his hands sideways, to stop himself from sliding further. They met only flat, cold stone. There was noth­ing he could cling to. Smoothly, his weight carried him down, down, down, down into the stygian darkness.

  25

  Render unto Satan

  Time, it is said, is an illusion. Without doubt, as assessed by the human mind, it can differ immensely, according to circumstances. The last hour of an afternoon class at school, on a subject at which one is bad, under a master one hates, can seem endless; whereas a long evening spent together by two people who are in love flashes by so rapidly that it seems over almost before it has begun. As Roger slid down the shute on his back, his descent seemed interminable to him, and thoughts sped through his brain with the speed of lightning.

  He must have been mad to trust Jemima. He had let her send him to his death. After all he had heard of her, how could he possibly have been such a fool as to be taken in by her clever acting? Never, never should he have fol­lowed her blindly, unless he had had a loaded pistol to hold against her back. Perhaps it would have been excus­able to let her lead him fifty or sixty feet, but once they left the comparatively modern wing of the castle he should have been warned. If both girls had been prisoners of the witch, why should they not have been quartered together, or at least in rooms near each other? When walking down those long passages, inhabited by flitting bats and scurry­ing rats, where dim moonlight showed the webs of a thousand generations of spiders hanging from ceilings and walls even a schoolboy would have realised that his guide was not taking him to Susan's room.

  Frantically he thrust out his hands and elbows, endea­vouring to check his swift descent, for he had no doubt at all that death awaited him at the bottom of the slope. During the years he had visited many ancient castles in France, Spain, Russia, Sweden and other countries, and in several of them he had been shown traps similar to this. They were called oubliettes. In mediaeval times many an unsuspecting guest had been led by a host, who had some secret reason for wanting to get rid of him, along a dim corridor until the host pressed a spring on the wall, and a trapdoor in the floor flapped open. The wretched guest fell through it, hurtled down a hundred feet or more and, a few minutes later, was choking out his life in the black­ness of an underground cistern fed with water from the castle moat.

  Roger heard the trapdoor above him slam, cutting him off for ever from light and life. Even if he could have checked his downward slide and turned over, the slope was too steep for him to have crawled up it and attempted to force open the trap. There was no escape. Except, yes. It was just possible that the oubliette ended in a waterway tunnel, large enough to swim through, to the lake. But if that were so, how long was the tunnel? How deep was the water in it? Would there be enough space between the water and the ceiling for him to breathe while swimming? If not, it was certain that he would drown.

  These lightning flashes of thought and terror pro­bably followed one another in less than a minute. Without warning, the angle at which he was sliding suddenly changed. The slope abruptly ceased, his feet shot forward and he came to rest flat on his back on a solid floor. His relief was instantaneous. It was not an oubliette. Yet it might be. Perhaps only a foot or so ahead of him there was a perpendicular drop, and by luck he was now lying on a broad ledge, the speed of his descent not having been sufficient to carry him over the edge.

  His speculation lasted only seconds. There came the sound of quick movement ahead of him, then a voice cried sharply:

  'Who is that?'

  Again relief flooded through him, acompanied by surprise, concern and the answer to one of the riddles he had been puzzling over for several days past.

  'Charles!' he exclaimed. 'So they've made you a pri­soner. And now I'm one, too.'

  'Uncle Roger!' cried the voice out of the darkness. 'How in the world. . . . But stay still a moment while I make a light.'

  There came the scraping of a tinder box, a sudden glow, then the rising flame from a candle wick enabled Roger to get an idea of his surroundings. They were in a circular dungeon about twenty feet in diameter. From some six feet up the walls tapered in a cone, but the light was not sufficient for Roger to see where they met the roof. Opposite the shute down which he had come there were ranged four low platforms, about six feet long by three feet wide, on short, square legs. On one of them was a straw-filled palliasse and some blankets, where Charles had been sleeping; on another a pile of books, three candlesticks and a number of loose candles. On a third were a tin basin, soap, towels and two wooden platters with fish bones and a cut cake on them. Beside the last stood a six-gallon stone jar and, between it and the place where he was now sitting up, there was a round hole in the floor which evidently served as a latrine.

  As Roger was looking round, Charles said, 'I supposed you to be still in France with Talleyrand. How come you to be here? And who led you into this trap?'

  Roger's reply needed only a few quick sentences, then he asked, 'But you, Charles? What happened to you in Dublin? Did you trace Susan to this place and then got caught ? Is she here ? Is she all right ?'

  'Yes, she's here and, as far as I know, well. At least she was a little over a fortnight ago. I have not seen her, but we spoke together.'

  'Is it true that the O'Brien woman persuaded her and Jemima to become witches? 'Twas that Lady Luggala wrote to your mother.'

  'I know. But 'tis not true—at least as far as Susan is concern
ed. Jemima, I'd wager, has long been a witch, al­though Susan did not know it. She suspected nothing un­til she was brought face to face with Katie. She recognised her at once after having seen her at the New Hell Fire Club. She was taken there over a year ago by . ..'

  ‘I am aware of that,' Roger interrupted. 'Your mother repeated to me all you had told her of it. Tell me what you know of the sequence of events in Dublin.'

  'After I left for Spain, that bitch Jemima laid herself out to win Susan's confidence and affection. In February, for some reason of which I am in ignorance, Maureen Luggala left London for Dublin, taking Jemima with her. As Jemima and Susan were such close friends, she was also invited to come over for a fortnight's visit, and she accepted. She had a pleasurable time doing the social round, and her first letters to my mother, asking to be allowed to stay on for a while, were genuine. Then, when my mother insisted on her returning, she told Maureen that she must. The following night they put a drug in her drink and, while she was unconscious, brought her here. Soon after she came to, Katie came to the room in which they had put her to bed, and mesmerised her. It must have been then, while under the occult influence of the witch, that she wrote the letter defying my mother and saying she intended to remain in Ireland with Jemima through the summer. When she came out of her trance Katie told her that if she made no trouble she would be well treated, but must remain locked in her room. Naturally, my poor beloved was distraught. But what could she do? Her clothes had been taken from her, and even had they not how could she escape from this place, surrounded as it is by water?'

  'And what of yourself?' Roger asked. ‘I traced you to the Grown and Shamrock and learned that you had been there for two nights, also that you had called on Maureen Luggala, although she swore she had not seen you. After that I could get no further, and could only suppose that, reverting to your membership of the Hell Fire Club, you had perhaps been persuaded by Susan to join their witches coven.'