The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror

THE SATYR’S HEAD by David A. Riley

AS HENRY LAMSON looked from the gate of his brother’s farm on the outskirts of Pire he noticed that someone was walking along the lane in his direction. Although it did nothing to disconcert him at the time, he did wonder, as he bid farewell to the silhouetted figures in the doorway, before setting off for his bus stop, why someone should have been coming back from the moors at this time of the night, especially when it had been pouring down with rain all day.

Shrugging his shoulders, Lamson pulled his raincoat collar up high about his neck against the drizzle and picked his way as carefully as he could between the puddles in the deeply rutted lane. He wished now, as his feet sank in the half hidden mud, that he had thought to bring a torch with him when he came on his visit, since the moon, though full, only faintly showed through the clouds, and the lane was for the most part in shadow.

Engrossed as he was in finding a reasonably dry route along the lane, he did not notice until a few minutes later, when the lights of his brother’s farm had disappeared beyond the hedgerow, that the figure he had seen was nearing him quickly. Already he could hear his footsteps along the lane.

Petulantly pausing to disentangle a snapped thorn branch that had caught on his trouser leg, he turned to watch the hunched figure hobbling towards him. A threadbare overcoat of an indeterminate colour swayed from about his body. In one hand he grasped a worn flat cap, while the other was thrust in his overcoat pocket for warmth.

When he finally succeeded in freeing himself of the twig, Lamson made to continue on his way; the man was obviously nothing more than a tramp, and an old one at that. As he started off, though, he heard him call out in a cracked bellow that rose and died in one breath:

‘’Arf a mo’ there!’

Irritated already at the drizzle that was soaking inexorably through his coat, Lamson sighed impatiently. As the tramp hurried towards him through the gloom, he slowly made out his bristly, coarse and wrinkled face, whose dirt-grained contours were glossy with rain.

The old man stumbled to a halt and raucously coughed a volley of phlegm on the ground. The pale grey slime merged in with the mud. Lamson watched him wipe his dribbling mouth with the top of his cap. Disgusted at the spectacle, Lamson asked him what was the matter.

‘Are you feeling ill?’ He hoped that he wasn’t. The last thing he wanted was to be burdened with someone like this.

‘Ill?’ The old man laughed smugly. ‘Ne’er ’ad a day’s illness in my life. Ne’er!’

He coughed and spat more phlegm on the ground. Lamson looked away from it.

Perhaps mistaking the reason for this action, the tramp said: ‘But I don’t want to ’old you up. I’ll walk alon’ with you, if you don’t mind me doin’. That’s all I called you for. It’s a lonely place to be by yoursel’. Too lonely, eh?’

Lamson was uncertain as to whether this was a question or not. Relieved that the man was at least not against continuing down the lane, he nodded curtly and set off, the old man beside him.

‘A raw night, to be sure,’ the old man said, with a throaty chuckle.

Lamson felt a wave of revulsion sweep over him as he glanced at the old man’s face in the glimmering light of one of the few lampposts by the lane. He had never before seen anyone whose flesh gave off such an unnatural look of roughness. Batrachian in some indefinable way, with thick and flaccid lips, a squat nose and deeply sunken eyes, he had the appearance of almost complete depravity. Lamson stared at the seemingly scaly knuckles of his one bare hand.

‘Have you come far?’ Lamson asked.

‘Far?’ The man considered the word reflectively. ‘Not really far, I s’ppose,’ he conceded, with a further humourless chuckle. ‘And you,’ he asked in return, ‘are you goin’ far, or just into Pire?’

Lamson laughed. ‘Not walking, I’m not. Just on to the bus stop at the end of the lane, where I should just about catch the seven fifty-five for the centre.’ He looked across at a distant farm amidst the hills about Pire; its tiny windows stood out in the blackness like feeble fireflies through the intervening miles of rain. He glanced at his watch. Another eight minutes and his bus would be due. As he looked up, Lamson was relieved to see the hedgerow end, giving way at a junction to the tarmac road that ran up along the edge of the moors from Fenley. The bus shelter stood beside a dry-stone wall, cemented by Nature with tangled tussocks of grass. Downhill, between the walls and lines of trees, were the pinpointed lines of streetlights etched across the valley floor. It was an infallibly awe-inspiring sight, and Lamson felt as if he had passed through the sullen voids of Perdition and regained Life once more.

On reaching the shelter he stepped beneath its corrugated roof out of the rain. Turning round as he nudged a half empty carton of chips to one side he saw that the man was still beside him.

‘Are you going into Pire as well,’ Lamson asked. He tried, not too successfully, to keep his real feelings out of his voice. Not only did he find the tramp’s company in itself distasteful, but there was a foetid smell around him which was reminiscent in some way of sweat and of seaweed rotting on a stagnant beach. It was disturbing in that it brought thoughts, or half thoughts, of an unpleasant type to his mind. Apparently unaware of the effect he was having on Lamson, the tramp was preoccupied in staring back at the moors. Willows and shrubs were thrown back and forth in the gusts, intensifying his feelings of loneliness about the place.

Finally replying to Lamson’s inquiry, the tramp said:

‘There’s nowhere else a body can go, is there? I’ve got to sleep. An’ I can’t sleep out in this.’ His flat, bristly, toad-like head turned round. There was a dim yellow light in his eyes. ‘I’ll find a doss somewhere.’

Lamson looked back to see if the bus was in sight, though there were another four minutes to go yet before it was due. The empty expanse of wet tarmac looked peculiarly lonely in the jaundiced light of the sodium lamps along the road.

Fidgeting nervously beside him, the old man seemed to have lost what equanimity he’d had before. Every movement he made seemed to cry out the desire to be on his way once more. It was as if he was morbidly afraid of something on the moors behind him. Lamson was bewildered. What could there be on the moors to worry him? Yet, whether there was really something there for him to worry about or not, there was no mistaking the relief which he showed when they at last heard the whining roar of the double-decker from Fenley turning the last bend in the slope uphill, its headlights silhouetting the bristling shrubs along the road and glistening the droplets of rain. A moment later it drew up before them, comfortingly bright against the ice-grey hills and sky. Climbing on board, Lamson sat down beside the nearest window, rubbing a circle in the misted glass to look outside.

The tramp slumped down beside him.

He was dismayed when, in the smoke-staled air, the smell around the old man became even more noticeable than before, whilst his cold, damp body seemed to cut him off from the warmth he had welcomed on boarding the bus.

Apparently unconcerned by such matters, the tramp grinned sagaciously, saying that it was good to be moving once more. His spirits were blatantly rising and he ceased looking back at the moors after a couple of minutes, seemingly satisfied.

In an effort to ignore the foetor exuded by the man, Lamson concentrated on looking out of the window, watching the trees and meadows pass by as they progressed into Pire, till they were supplanted by the gardened houses of the suburbs.

‘’Ave you a light?’ The frayed stub of a cigarette was stuck between the tramp’s horny fingers.

His lips drawn tight in annoyance, Lamson turned round to face him as he searched through his pockets. Was there to be no end to his intolerable bother? he wondered. His eyes strayed unwillingly about the scaly knuckles of the man’s hand, to the grimily web-like flaps of skin stretched at their joints. It was a disgustingly malformed object, and Lamson was certain that he had never before seen anyone whose every aspect excited nothing so much as sheer nausea.

Producing a box of matches, he struck one for him, then waited while he slowly sucked life into his cigarette.

When he settled back a moment later, the tramp brought the large hand he had kept thrust deep in his overcoat pocket out and held it clenched before Lamson.

‘Ever seen anythin’ like this afore?’ he asked cryptically. Like the withered petals of a grotesque orchid, his fingers uncurled from the palm of his hand.

Prepared as he was for some forgotten medal from the War, tarnished and grimy, with a caterpillar segment of wrinkled ribbon attached, Lamson was surprised when he saw instead a small but well-carved head of dull black stone, which looked as though it might have been broken from a statue about three feet or so in height.

Lamson looked at the tramp as the bus trundled to a momentary stop and two boisterous couples on a night out climbed on board, laughing and giggling at some murmured remark. Oblivious of them, Lamson let the tramp place the object in his hand. Though he was attracted by it, he was simultaneously and inexplicably repelled. There was a certain hungry look to the man’s face on the broken head which seemed to go further than that of mere hunger for food.

Lamson turned the head about in his fingers, savoring the pleasant, soap-like surface of the stone.

‘A strange thing to find out there, you’d think, wouldn’t you?’ the old man said, pointing his thick black stub of a thumb back at the moors.

‘So you found it out there?’ Somehow there was just enough self-control in Lamson’s voice to rob it of its disbelief. Though he would have wanted nothing more a few minutes earlier than to be rid of the man, he felt a yearning now to own the head himself that deterred him from insulting the tramp. After all, there was surely no other reason for the man showing the thing to him except to sell it. And although he had never before felt any intense fascination in archaeology, there was something about the head which made Lamson desire it now. He was curious about it as a small boy is curious about a toy he has seen in a shop window.

Intent on adding whatever gloss of credibility to his tale that he could, the old tramp continued, saying:

‘It were in a brook. I found it by chance as I were gettin’ m’self some water for a brew. It’d make a nice paperweight, I thought. I thought so as soon as I saw it. It’d make a nice paperweight, I thought.’ He laughed self-indulgently, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his coat. ‘But I’ve no paper to put it on.’

Lamson looked down at the carving and smiled.

When the bus drew up at the terminus, Lamson was surprised, though not dismayed, when the tramp hurriedly climbed off and merged with the passing crowds outside. His bowlegged gait and crookedly unkempt figure were too suggestive of sickness and deformity for Lamson’s tastes, and he felt more eager than ever for a salutary pint of beer in a pub before going on home to his flat.

Pressing his way through the queues outside the Cinerama on Market Street, he made for the White Bull, whose opaque doors swung open steamily before him with an out blowing bubble of warm, beery air.

One drink later, and another in hand, he stepped across to a vacant table up in a corner of the lounge, placing his glass beside a screwed-up bag of crisps.

A group of men were arguing amongst themselves nearby, one telling another, as of someone giving advice:

‘A standing prick has no conscience.’

There was a nodding of heads and another affirmed: ‘That’s true enough.’

Disregarding them as they sorted out what they were having for their next round of drinks, Lamson reached in his pocket and brought out the head. A voice on the television fixed above the bar said:

‘You can be a Scottish nationalist or a Welsh nationalist and no one says anything about it, but as soon as you say you’ re a British nationalist, everyone starts calling out "Fascist!"’

Two of the men nodded to each other in agreement.

Holding the head in the palm of his hand, Lamson realized for the first time just how heavy it was. If not for the broken neck, which showed clearly enough that it was made out of stone, he would have thought it to have been molded from lead. As he peered at it, he noticed that there were two small ridges on its brows which looked as though they had once been horns

As he studied them, he felt that if they had remained in their entirety, the head would have looked almost satiric, despite the bloated lips. In fact, the slightly raised eyebrows and long, straight nose — or what remained of them — were still reminiscent of Pan.

He heard a glass being placed on the table beside him. When he looked up he saw that it was Allan Sutcliffe.

‘I didn’t notice you in here before. Have you only just got in?’ Lamson asked.

Sutcliffe wiped his rain-spotted glasses on a handkerchief as he sat down, nodding his head. He replaced his glasses, then thirstily drank down a third of his pint before unbuttoning his raincoat and loosening the scarf about his neck. His face was flushed as if he had been running.

‘I didn’t think I’d be able to get here in time for a drink. I have to be off again soon to get to the Film Society. What have you got there, Henry? You been digging out your garden or something?’

Almost instinctively, Lamson cupped his hands about the head.

‘It’d be strange sort of garden in a second floor flat, wouldn’t it?’ he replied acidly.

He drew his hands in towards his body, covering what little still showed of the head with the ends of his scarf. Somehow he felt ashamed of the thing, almost as if it was obscene and repulsive and peculiarly shameful.

‘Where did you say you were off to?’ he asked, intending to change the subject. ‘The Film Society? What are they presenting tonight?’

‘Nosferatu. The original. Why? D’you fancy coming along to it as well? It’s something of a classic, I believe. Should be good.’

Lamson shook his head.

‘Sorry, but I don’t feel up to it tonight. I only stopped in for a pint or two before going on home and getting an early night. I’ve had a long day already, what with helping my brother, Peter, redecorating the inside of his farmhouse. I’m about done in.’

Glancing significantly at the clock above the bar, Sutcliffe drained his glass, saying, as he placed it back on the table afterwards: ‘I’ll have to be off now. It starts in another ten minutes.’

‘I’11 see you tomorrow as we planned,’ Lamson said. ‘At twelve, if that’s still okay?’

Sutcliffe nodded as he stood up to go.

‘We’ll meet at the Wimpy, then I can get a bite to eat before we set off for the match.’

‘Okay.’

As Sutcliffe left, Lamson opened his sweat-softened hands and looked at the head concealed in the cramped shadows in between. Now that his friend had gone, he felt puzzled at his reaction with the thing. What was it about the thing that should affect him like this? he wondered to himself. Placing it back in his pocket, he decided that he had had enough of the pub and strode outside, buttoning his coat against the rain.

Sunlight poured with a cold liquidity through his bedroom window when Lamson awoke. It shone across the cellophane that protected the spines of the hardbound books on the shelves facing his bed, obscuring their titles. It seemed glossy and bright and clean, with the freshness of newly fallen snow.

Yawning contentedly, he stretched, then drew his dressing gown onto his shoulders as he gazed out of the window. Visible beyond the roof opposite was a bright and cloudless sky. He felt the last dull dregs of sleep sloughing from him as he rubbed away the fine granules that had collected in his eyes. Somewhere he could hear a radio playing a light pop tune, though it was almost too faint to make out.

Halfway through washing he remembered the dreams. They had completely passed from his mind on wakening, and it was with an unpleasant shudder that they returned to him now.

The veneer of his cheerfulness was dulled by the recollection, and he paused in his ablutions to look back at his bed. They were dreams he was not normally troubled with, and he was loath to think of them now.

‘To Hell with them!’ he muttered self-consciously as he returned to scrubbing the threads of dirt from underneath his nails.

The measured chimes of the clock on the neo-Gothic tower, facing him across the neat churchyard of St. James, were tolling midday when Lamson walked past the Municipal Library. Sutcliffe, who worked at a nearby firm of accountants as an articled clerk, would be arriving at the Wimpy further along the street any time now. Going inside, Lamson ordered himself a coffee and took a seat by the window. He absent-mindedly scratched his hand, wondering nonchalantly, when he noticed what he was doing, if he had accidentally brushed it against some of the nettles that grew up against the churchyard wall. A few minutes later Sutcliffe arrived, and the irritation passed from his mind, forgotten.

‘You’re looking a bit bleary eyed today, Henry,’ Sutcliffe remarked cheerfully. ‘An early night, indeed! Too much bed and not enough sleep, that’s your trouble.’

‘I wish it was,’ Lamson replied. ‘I slept well enough last night. Too well, perhaps.’

‘Come again?’

‘Some dreams—’ Lamson started to explain, before he was interrupted by Sutcliffe as the waitress arrived.

‘Wimpy and chips and coffee, please.’

When she’d gone, Sutcliffe said: ‘I’m sorry. What was that you were saying?’

But the inclination to tell him had gone. Instead, Lamson talked about the Rovers’ chances this afternoon in their match against Rochdale. As they spoke, though, his mind was not wholly on what they were talking about. He was troubled, though he did not know properly why, by the dreams he had been about to tell Sutcliffe about, but which, on reconsideration, he had decided to keep to himself.

He was glad that he had a full day ahead of him, what with the football match this afternoon and a date with Joan at the Tavern tonight. Sutcliffe was taking his fiancé with them, and it promised to be an enjoyable evening for them all. He only wished that his relationship with Joan, who he had been going out with now for three months, wasn’t so peculiarly Platonic. Whether this was his fault or hers, he did not know. A bit of both, he supposed, when he thought about it. Yet, if things did not improve very soon, he knew that their relationship, whatever his own inner feelings might be, would start to cool. Was this the cause of the dreams? he wondered, as he tried to concentrate on what Sutcliffe was saying. There did not seem to be any other reason he could think of at the moment that could account for them, and he decided that this must be it.

As Lamson walked home through the vaporous gloom beneath the old street lamps along Beechwood Avenue, after leaving Joan at her parents’ home, his mind was deep in thought. It had been, as he had expected, an enjoyable evening, but only because of the new folk group they had been able to listen to at the Tavern. Joan had been no different than before: friendly and feminine in every way that he could wish, talkative — but not too much so — intelligent, amusing, and yet… and yet what was missing? Or was it him? What was it, he wondered, that made him feel so fatherly towards her, instead of the way in which at all other times he wished, even yearned, to be?

If not for the unexpected sound of someone slipping on the pavement some distance behind him, he would not have been brought out of his reverie until he reached Station Road and the last, short stretch to his flat. As it was, he half intentionally, half instinctively turned round to see if someone had fallen.

But all he glimpsed on the otherwise deserted avenue was the vague impression of someone merging hurriedly with the shadowy privet bushes midway between the feeble light of the lamp posts further back. So fleeting was the impression, though, that he would have taken it for the blurred motion of a cat that had raced across the avenue, but for the distinct recollection of something having slipped on the footpath.

For a moment or two he waited and watched in vain, certain that whoever or whatever hid in the gloom of the privet had not moved since he turned, and was only waiting for him to turn back again to emerge. It was disturbing, and he tried to play down his nervousness with the thought that it was probably only some kids playing an idiotic game of hide-and-seek in the dark. Unconvinced though he was by this explanation, it was substantial enough for him as an excuse to turn round with at least the pretense of indifference and continue on his way home. Even so, it was with a definite feeling of relief, however, when he reached Station Road, where the bright shop windows, neon signs and the passing cars and buses brought him back into reality. With more speed than he usually employed he strode along to the door leading into his flat and raced up the two flights of stairs to his rooms.

As he closed the door behind him he noticed the small black head he had bought from the tramp perched where he had left it on the dresser, its outline gleaming in the reflection of the streetlights outside.

It was looking towards him, crooked at an obtuse angle on its broken neck. He threw his overcoat onto the bed and stepped to the window to draw the curtains together before switching on the light. He felt at the radiator opposite his bed by the bookcase. It was just lukewarm.

As he stared morosely about the room, he wondered what had made him buy the head. What perverse attraction had struck him about it before had gone, and all he could see in it now was ugliness and decay. He picked it up. It wasn’t as if he could legitimately claim he’d bought it out of some kind of archaeological interest. It was years since he’d last pottered in that subject at school, and what enthusiasm he may have once had for it had been lost to him long ago. For a moment he rubbed the small lumps on its brows, but he felt too tired suddenly to study it tonight. There was a nagging ache in his back and his arms felt stiff, while the rash-like irritation had returned to tingle on the back of his hands.

Lamson dropped the stone head back on the dresser and began to change into his pajamas. He felt too tired now to think or even place his clothes folded up, as he normally did, on the table beside his bed.

For a moment he struggled to keep awake, but he could not resist. He did not want to resist. All he wanted to do was to surrender himself, his body and soul, to the dull black nothingness of sleep.

Sleep quickly overcame him as he lay on his bed and closed his eyes.

And in his sleep he dreamed.

There was a wood in his dream, a great, deep, darkly mysterious wood that filled him with unease as he listened to its decrepit oaks groaning in the wind.

He stood before it alone. But he did not feel alone. He could sense something watching him malevolently from the gloomy depths of the wood.

The twilight passed into the darkness of night. Shadows glided silently through the trees, gathering as if to stare out at him with small, round, rubicund eyes. Or was it his own eyes playing tricks with the dark?

Then he saw something emerge from the waist high ferns, crawling on all fours across the ground. It was almost black, its naked flesh dry and coarse, strung tight about its jutting bones. Its legs, though hairless, were as the legs of a goat, whilst shrunken breasts, some twelve in number, hung limply from its chest. They swayed as it moved, its jaundiced eyes gleaming from the deep black depths of their sockets with a foul anticipation. There was a convulsive twitching in its long, thin, bony hands.

Unable to move, Lamson watched it crawl towards him. Its penis was hard with lust, the dark nipples of its breasts enlarged and tight. Its lips were wet with overflowing saliva as it drew towards him.

Though partially human, it was hideously inhuman, a foul, unearthly, cacodaemoniacal Pan. Stiff black horns curved upwards from its brows; a scaled and rat-like tail flicked from its spine. He could see the mounting tension of its poised phallus.

He tried to scream.

With all his strength he tried to scream, to cry out and tear himself away from the hideous creature creeping towards him, but there was nothing he could do. He was paralyzed and defenseless.

A murmured chanting sibilantly issued encircling trees, flitting with the wind.

‘Ma dheantar aon scriosadh, athru, gearradh, lot no milleadh ar an ordu feadfar diultu d’e a ioc.’

The rhythmic chanting began to mimic the frenzied beating of a heart, faster and deeper, as the satyr, swaying its lean torso to the rhythms of the chants, came upon Lamson. Its left hand grasped him about the thigh, pulling him down till he knelt on the ground. Its foetid breath blew hot into his face like the searing gusts of a newly opened furnace. He could see the wrinkles in its clammy flesh and the sores suppurating on its lips.

With renewed urgency he wrenched himself free and tried to roll out of its way across the grass. But before he even saw it move he felt its hands grasping him once more. He kicked out at it, whimpering. Its talons tore a deep gash in his trousers and its palm slid searchingly down his leg.

Once more he kicked.

With a slow deliberation it reached out for the buckle of his belt and ripped it free.

It was crouched over him, its softly repulsive underbelly almost touching his legs. In the feeble light its body seemed huge.

With a sudden exertion Lamson managed at last to emit a scream.

As its hand reached for him between his legs darkness sprang up about him like a monstrous whirlpool.

He felt dizzy and sick, shuddering with horror as he awoke, his body drenched with perspiration in the tangled blankets of his bed. At the same time he felt the final climax of an orgasm clasp hold of him.

He lay back and gasped, weak with the intensity of his ejaculation. He felt suddenly fouled, as if he’d been dragged through demoniacal cesspools of sin.

Nauseated, he looked across from his bed at the carving. Its coarse features seemed even more hideous to him now than before, and he did not doubt but that in some repulsively Freudian way its lecherous features — mirrored, as he now realized, on the demon creature of his nightmare — had influenced his sleeping mind. As he looked at it he found it difficult to understand how he had failed to notice the unclean lust rampant about its face before, like some infernal incubus roused by the harlots of Hell. As he washed himself clean a few minutes later he wondered if it would not be better to get rid of the head, to throw it away and forget it, and in doing so, hopefully, rid himself of the dreams.

Only once, while he dressed, did a discordant thought make him wonder if, perhaps, the dream wasn’t connected in some way with his unsatisfactory relationship with Joan. But the two things were at such extremes in his mind that he could not connect them with anything other than shame. As he looked at the stone this shame transferred itself to this object, intensifying into a firm resolve to get rid of the thing. How could he possibly make any kind of headway with Joan, he told himself, with such a foul obscenity as that thing troubling him?

When Lamson left his flat a short time later, carrying the head in his raincoat pocket, it was with steps so unsteady that he wondered if he was coming down with something. The irritation on his hands had, if anything, become even worse, while aches and pains announced their presence from all over his body while he walked. He wondered if he had overstrained himself when he was helping his brother redecorate his farm, though he’d felt fit enough the day before. The Sunday morning streets were agreeably deserted as he walked along them. The only cars in sight were parked by the kerb. In a way he was glad that the dream had woken him as early as it had. Just past eight thirty now, it would be a while yet, he knew, before the city would start stirring into life today.

‘Dirt-y o-o1d ma-an, dirty o-old ma-an!’ He looked across to where the singsong voices came from. Two small boys of about ten or eleven years in age, perhaps less, were stood at the corner of the street in a shop doorway. Cheeky little brats, Lamson thought to himself as he noticed the shuffling figure their jeers were directed against, a stooped old man slowly making his way down a street leading off from the main road past a line of overfilled dustbins.

Although Lamson could not see his face he could tell that the old man knew the boys were calling out at him. Slow though his pace was, it was also unmistakably hurried, as if he was trying to get out of their way as quickly as he could on his old, decrepit legs.

‘Clear off!’ Lamson shouted angrily, feeling sorry for the old man.

The kids yelped and ran off down an alley, laughing.

If he had not felt so weary himself he would have run after them. How could they act so callously? He watched the old man as he continued up the street. There was something about the painful stoop of his back and the way his legs were bent, that struck a chord of remembrance somewhere. He could almost have been the tramp he met on the moors, except that he hadn’t been anything like as decrepit as this man obviously was, not unless his health had failed disastrously over the last couple of days.

Lamson crossed the road and headed up past St. James church, putting the old man out of his mind. The pleasant singing of the birds in the elms that filled the churchyard helped to ease his spirits, and he breathed in the scent of the grass with a genuine feeling of pleasure. He only wished that his legs didn’t feel so stiff and tired. He wondered again if he was coming down with a bug of some kind.

He paused suddenly by the wall and felt in his pocket, his fingers moving speculatively about the small stone head. Though he did not know properly why, he decided that the churchyard was too near his flat for him to get rid of the stone here. It would be better if he made his way to the canal where he could lose it properly without trace.

As he turned round to leave, he noticed a slight movement out of the corner of his eye. With a feeling of trepidation he paused, turned round and anxiously scanned the solemn rows of headstones.

Nothing moved, except for a light film of drizzle that began to filter down through the overhanging boughs of the trees. Yet, even though he could not see anything to account for what he seemed to have glimpsed, like a blurred shadow moving on the edge of his sight, he was sure that he was not mistaken. He stepped up the street to where a narrow gate led into the churchyard. He looked across it once again, and wished that he could make himself leave this suddenly disturbing place, but he could not. With slow, but far from resolute steps, he walked down the asphalt path between the headstones, his senses attuned to the least disturbance about him: the cold moisture of the drizzle on his hands and face, the hissing of the leaves as the rain passed through them, the singing of the birds that echoed and re-echoed about him, and the distant murmur of a car along Station Road as the clock tolled a quarter to nine. The air seemed strangely still. Or was it his own overwrought imagination, keyed up by the horrendous nightmare, scenes from which still flickered uncomfortably in front of him? He felt a fluttering sensation in his stomach as he looked along the roughhewn stones of the church with its incised windows of stained glass.

Quickening his pace, as the drizzle began to fall with more weight, he passed round the church. As he walked by the trees on the far side of the building, where they screened it off from the bleak back walls of a derelict mill, he again noticed something move. Was it a dog? he wondered, though it had seemed a little large. He whistled, though there was no response other than a thin, frail echo.

He strode between a row of ornate monuments of polished marble. Was that someone there, crouched in the bushes?

‘Excuse me!’ he called enquiringly. Then stopped. Calling out to a dog, indeed! he thought as he glimpsed what he took to be a large black hound — perhaps an Irish wolfhound — scutter off out of sight between the trees.

As he walked back to the street, he decided that it was about time he got on his way to the canal before the rain got any worse.

The rain did worsen. By the time he reached the towpath of the canal, he was beginning to regret having come out on a morning like this on such a pointless exercise. The rain covered the fields on either side of the canal in a dull grey veil. What colours there were had been reduced to such a washed-out monochrome that the scene reminded him of that in an old and faded photograph. Facing him across the dingy waters of the canal were rows of little sheds and barbed wire fences. Crates of neglected rubbish had been abandoned in the sparsely grassed fields, together with the tyreless carcasses of deserted cars. The fields rose up to the back of a grim row of tenements whose haphazard rooftops formed a jagged black line against the sky. Only the moldering wood of the derelict mills and their soot-grimed bricks on his side of the canal stood out with any clarity.

A dead cat floated in a ring of scum in the stagnant water at his feet, its jellied eyes sightlessly staring at the sky with a dank luminescence.

As he took the stone head from his pocket, Lamson heard someone move behind him. Having thought that he was safely alone, he spun round in surprise. Crouched deep in the shadows between the walls of the mill, where a gate had once stood, was a man. A long, unbuttoned overcoat hung from about his hunched body. It was a coat that Lamson recognized instantly.

‘So it was you those kids were shouting at,’ Lamson accused, as the tramp tottered out into the light. ‘Have you been following me?’ he asked. But there was no response, other than a slight twitching of the old man’s blistered lips into what he took to be a smile, though one that was distinctively malignant and sly. ‘You were following me last night, weren’t you?’ Lamson went on. ‘I heard you when you slipped, so there’s no point denying it. And I saw you this morning when those kids were having a go at you. I thought they were being cruel when they shouted out at you, but I don’ t know now. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps you are a dirty old man, a dirty, insidious and evil old man.’ Even now there was no more response from the tramp than that same repugnant smile. ‘Haven’t you got a tongue?’ Lamson snapped. ‘Grinning there like a Gargoyle. Well? You were talkative enough when we met on the moors. Have you taken vows of silence since then? Come on! Speak up, damn you!’ He clenched his fists, fighting back the impulse to hit him in the face, even though it was almost too strong to resist. What an ugly old creature he was, what with his pockmarked face all rubbery and grey and wet, and those bloated, repulsive lips. Was he some kind of half-breed? he wondered, though of what mixture he could not imagine. A thin, grey trickle of saliva hung down from a corner of his mouth. There was a streak of blood in it. As he stared at him he realized that he looked far worse, far, far worse than before, as if whatever disease had already swollen and eroded his features had suddenly accelerated its effect.

The tramp stared down at the stone in Lamson’ s hand.

‘Were you after gettin’ rid of it? Is that why you’ve come to this place?’ he asked finally.

‘Since it’s mine, I have every right to, if that’s what I want to do,’ Lamson said, taken aback at the accusation.

‘An’ why should you choose to do such a thing, I wonder? You liked it enough when I first showed it to you on the bus. Couldn’t ’ardly wait to buy it off o’ me then, could you? ’Ere’s the money, give us the stone, quick as a flash! Couldn’t ’ardly wait, you couldn’t. An’ ere you are, all ’et up an’ nervous, can’t ’ardly wait to get rid o’ the thing. What’s the poor sod been doin’ to you? Givin’ you nightmares, ’as it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What should I mean? Just a joke. That’s all. Can’t you tell? Ha, ha, ha!’ He spat a string of phlegm on the ground. ‘Only a joke,’ he went on, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

‘Only a joke, was it?’ Lamson asked, his anger inflamed with indignation at the old man’s ill-concealed contempt for him. ‘And I suppose it was only a joke when you followed me here as well? Or did you have some other purpose in mind? Did you?’

‘P’raps I was only tryin’ to make sure you came to no ’arm. Wouldn’t want no ’arm to come to you now, would I? After all, you bought that ’ead off o’ me fair an’ square, didn’t you? Though it does seem an awful shame to me to toss it into the canal there. Awful shame it’d be. Where’d you get another bit o’ stone like that? It’s unique, you know, that’s what it is right enough. Unique. Wouldn’t want to throw it into no canal, would you? Where’s the sense in it? Or the use? Could understand if there was somethin’ bad an’ nasty about it. Somethin’ unpleasant, like. But what’s bad an’ nasty about that? Don’t give you no nightmares, now, does it? Nothin’ like that? Course not! Little bit o’ stone like that? An’ yet, ’ere you are, all ’et up an’ ready to toss it away, an’ no reason to it. I can’t understand it at all. I can’t. I swear it.’ He shook his head reproachfully, though there was a cunning grin about his misshapen mouth, as if laughing at a secret joke. ‘Throwin’ it away,’ he went on in the same infuriatingly mocking voice, ‘Ne’er would ha’ thought o’ doin’ such a thing— old bit o’ stone like that. You know ’ow much it might be worth? Can you even guess? Course not! An’ yet you get it for next to nothin’ off o’ me, only keep it for a day or so, then the next thing I knows, ’ere you are all ready to toss it like an empty can into the canal. An’ that’s what you’ve come ’ere for, isn’t it?’

‘And if it is, why are you here?’ Lamson asked angrily. The old man knew too much — far, far too much. It wasn’t natural! ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘And why have you been spying on me? Come on, give me an answer!’

‘An answer, is it? Well, p’raps I will. It’s too late now, I can tell, for me to do any ‘arm in lettin’ you know. ’E’s ’ad ’is ’ands on you by now, no doubt, Eh?’

Lamson felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered the dream he had woken from barely two hours ago. But the old man couldn’t mean that. It was impossible for him to know about it, utterly, completely, irrefutably impossible! Lamson tried to make himself leave, but he couldn’t, not until he had heard what the old man had to say, even though he knew that he didn’t want to listen. He had no choice. He couldn’t. ‘Are you going to answer my questions?’ he asked, his voice sounding far more firm than he felt.

The tramp leered disgustedly.

‘’Aven’t ’ad enough, ’ave you? Want to ’ear about it as well?’

‘As well as what?’

The tramp laughed. ‘You know. Though you pretend that you don’t, you know all right. You know.’ He wiped one watering, red-rimmed eye. ‘I ’spect you’ll please ’im a might bit better ’n’ me. For a while, at least. I wasn’t much for ’im, even at the first. Too old. Too sick. Even then I was too sick. Sicker now, though, o’ course. But that’s ’ow it is. That’s ’ow it’s got to be, I s’ppose. ’E wears you out. That ’e does. Wears you out. But you, now, you, you’re as young as ’e could ask for. An’ fit. Should last a while. A long, long while, I think, before ’e wears you out. Careful! Wouldn’t want to drop ’im now, would you?’

It seemed as if something cold and clammy was clenching itself like some tumorous hand inside him. With a shudder of revulsion, Lamson looked down at the stone in his hand. Was he mistaken or was there a look of satisfaction on its damnable face? He stared at it hard, feeling himself give way to a nauseating fear that drained his limbs of their strength.

‘I thought you were o’ the right sort for ’im when I saw you on that lane,’ the tramp said. ‘I’m ne’er wrong ’bout things like that.’

As if from a great distance Lamson heard himself ask what he meant.

‘Right sort? What the fucking hell do you mean: the right sort?’

‘Should ha’ thought you’d know,’ he replied, touching him on the hand with his withered fingers.

Lamson jerked his hand away.

‘You dirty old sod!’ he snapped, fear and disgust adding tension to his voice. ‘You — you…’ He did not want to face the things hinted at. He didn’t! They were lies, all lies, nothing but lies! With a sudden cry of half hearted annoyance, both at the tramp and at himself for his weakness, he pushed past and ran back along the towpath. He ran as the rain began to fall with more force and the sky darkened overhead. He ran as the city began to come to life and church bells tolled their beckoning chimes for the first services of the day.

‘I can’t understand you,’ Sutcliffe said as he collected a couple of pints from the bar and brought them back to their table by the door. ‘Excuse me,’ he added, as he pushed his chair between a pair of outstretched legs from the next table. ‘Right. Thanks.’

Loosening his scarf, he sat down with a shake of his tousled head.

‘Like the Black Hole of Calcutta in here,’ he said. He took a sip of his pint, watching Lamson as he did so. His friend’s face looked so pale and lifeless these days, its unhealthiness emphasized by the dark sores that had erupted about his mouth.

‘In what way can’t you understand me?’ Lamson asked.

There was a dispirited tiredness to his voice which Sutcliffe could tell didn’t spring from boredom or disinterest.

Folding his arms, Sutcliffe leant over the table towards him.

‘It’s two weeks now since you last went out with Joan. And that was the night we all went to the Tavern. Since then nothing. No word or anything. From you… But Joan has called round to your flat four times this week, though you weren’t apparently in. Unless you’ve found someone else you’d better know that she won’t keep on waiting for you to see her. She has her pride, and she can tell when she’s being snubbed. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t like you to think I’m interfering, but it was Joan who asked me to mention this to you if I should bump into you. So, if you have some reason for avoiding her, I’d be glad if you’d let me know.’ He shrugged, slightly embarrassed by what he’d had to say. ‘If you’d prefer to tell me to mind my own bloody business I’d understand, of course. But, even if only for Joan’s sake, I’d rather you’d say something.’

Suppressing a cough, Lamson wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, held ready in his hand. He wished he could tell Sutcliffe the reason why he was avoiding Joan, for a deliberate avoidance it was.

‘I haven’t been feeling too good recently,’ he replied evasively.

‘Is it anything serious?’

Lamson shook his head. ‘No, it’s nothing serious. I’ll be better in a while. A bad dose of flu, that’s all. But it’s been lingering on.’

Sutcliffe frowned. He did not like the way in which his friend was acting these days, so unlike the open and friendly manner in which he had always behaved before, at least with him. Even allowing for flu, this neither explained the change in his character nor the peculiar swellings about his mouth. If it was flu, it was a flu of a far more serious nature than any he’d ever had himself. And how, for Christ’s sake, could that explain the way in which his skin seemed to have become coarse and dry, especially about the knuckles on his hands?

‘Have you been eating the right kinds of foods?’ Sutcliffe asked. ‘I know what it can be like living in a flat. Tried it once for a while. Never again! Give me a boarding house anytime. Too much like hard work for me to cook my own meals, I can tell you. I dare say you find it much like that yourself.’

‘A little,’ Lamson admitted, staring at his beer without interest or appetite as three men wearing election rosettes pressed by towards the bar. One of them said:

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t something all these Asians have been bringing into the country. There’s been an increase in TB already, and that was almost unheard of a few years ago.’

‘It’s certainly like nothing I’ve ever heard of, that’s for sure,’ one of the other two said.

As the men waited for their drinks, one of them turned round, smiling in recognition when he saw Lamson.

‘Hello there. I didn’t notice you were here when we came in.’

‘Still working hard, I see,’ Lamson said, nodding at the red, white and blue National Front rosette on the man’s jacket.

‘No rest for the wicked. Someone’s got to do the Devil’s work,’ the man joked as the other two smiled in appreciation of his joke. ‘It’s the local elections in another fortnight,’ he added.

Collecting their drinks, the men sat down at the table beside Lamson and Sutcliffe.

‘I overheard you talking about TB. Has there been a sudden outbreak or something?’ Lamson asked.

‘Not TB,’ the man said. ‘We’ve just been talking to an old woman who told us that a tramp was found dead in an alleyway near her house earlier this week. From what we were able to gather from her, even the ambulance men themselves, who you’d think would be pretty well-hardened to that kind of thing, were shaken by what they saw.’

‘What was it’’ Sutcliffe asked. ‘A mugging?’

‘No,’ Reynolds — the man who had spoken — said with a dull satisfaction. ‘Apparently he died from some kind of disease. They’re obviously trying to keep news about it down, though we’re going to try to find out what we can about it. So far there’s been no mention in the press, though the local rag—Billy’s Weekly Liar—isn’t acting out of character there, especially with the elections coming up. So, just what it is we don’t know, though it must be serious. Sickening, is how the old woman described him, though how she got a look at him is anybody’s guess. But you know what these old woman are like. Somehow or other she managed to get a bloody good look — too good a look, I think, for her own peace of mind in the end! According to what she told us there were swellings and sores and discolourations all over his body. And blood dripping out of his mouth, as if his insides had been eaten away.’

Lamson shuddered.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sutcliffe asked as he lit a cigarette.

Lamson smiled weakly.

‘Just someone stepping over my grave, that’s all,’ he said. He took a long drink of his beer as the three men drained theirs. Putting his glass down, empty, Reynolds stood up. ‘We’d better be off back to our canvassing or someone’ll be doing a clog dance on our graves. And we’ll be in them!’

As the men left, Lamson said that he could do with a whisky.

‘Just because of what you heard about some poor old sod of a tramp?’ Sutcliffe asked.

‘It’s not him,’ Lamson replied. ‘God help his miserable soul, but he was probably better off dead anyway.’ Though what he said was meant to sound offhand, his voice lacked the lightness of tone to carry it off successfully. Realizing this, he pushed his glass away. ‘I’m sorry — I must seem like poor company tonight. I think it would perhaps be better if I set off home. Perhaps we’ll meet up again tomorrow night? Yes?’

‘If you say so,’ Sutcliffe replied amicably. ‘You do look a bit under the weather tonight.’ A Hell of a lot under the weather, he added silently to himself. ‘Anyhow, now that you mention it, it’s about time I was on my way as well. I’ll walk along with you to my bus stop. It’s on your way.’

As they stepped out of the pub, Sutcliffe asked if he had been sleeping well recently.

‘What makes you ask?’

‘Your eyes,’ Sutcliffe said as the wind pushed against them, a torn newspaper scuttering along the gutter. ‘Red-rimmed and bleary. You ought to get a few early nights. Or see if your doctor can prescribe some sleeping pills for you. It’s probably what you need.’

Lamson stared down the road as they walked along it. How cold and lonely it looked, even with the cars hissing by through puddles of rain, and the people walking hurriedly along the pavement. There was a smell of fish and chips and the pungent aroma of curry as they passed a takeaway, but even this failed to make him feel at home on the street. He felt foreign and lost, alienated to the things and places which had previously seemed so familiar to him. Even with Sutcliffe he felt almost alone, sealed within himself.

As they parted a few minutes later at Sutcliffe’s stop outside the Unit Four on Market Street, his friend said:

‘I’ll be expecting you tomorrow. You’ve been keeping far too much to yourself recently. If you don’t watch out you’ll end up a hermit, and that’s no kind of fate for a friend of mine. So mind you’re ready when I call round. Okay?’

Lamson said that he would be. There was no point in trying to evade him. Sutcliffe was too persistent for that. Nor did he really want to evade him, not deep down. He pulled his coat collar up high about his neck and started off purposefully for his flat.

There was a gloom to his bedroom which came from more than just an absence of light, since even during the day it was there. It was a gloom which seemed to permeate everything within it like a spreading stain. As soon as Lamson stepped inside he was aware of the gloom, in which even the newest of his possessions seemed faded and cheap.

He looked at the stone head.

It drew his attention almost compulsively. Of everything it was the only object in the room that had not been affected by this strange malaise. Was it gloating? he wondered. Gloating at the way in which it had triumphed over everything else in the flat, including (or especially) the framed photo of Joan, with her blond hair curled so characteristically about her face? You’re trapped with me, it seemed to say like some grotesque spider that had caught him on its dusty web, smirking and sneering with its repulsively hybrid, goatlike features. Lamson rubbed his hands together vigorously, trying to push the thoughts out of his mind. I must get rid of the thing, he told himself (as he had continually done, though without result, for the past two weeks).

He glanced at his unmade bed with distaste and a feeling of shame.

‘Oh, God,’ he whispered self-consciously, ‘if only I could get rid of the obsession. Because that is all it is. No more. Only an obsession, which I can and must somehow forget.’ Or was it? There was no way in which he could get away from the doubt. After all, he thought, how could he satisfactorily explain the way in which the tramp had seemed able to read his thoughts and know just what it was that he’d dreamed? Or was he only a part of this same single-minded and delusive obsession? he wondered, somewhat hopefully, as his mind grew dull with tiredness. He glanced at his watch. How much longer could he fight against falling asleep? One hour? Two? Eventually, though, he would have to give in. It was one fight, as he so well knew by now, which no one could win, no matter how much they might want to, or with how much will.

In an effort to concentrate his thoughts he picked out a book from the shelf randomly. It was Over the Bridge by Richard Church. He had quite enjoyed reading it once several months ago, but the words did not seem to have any substance in his brain anymore. Letters, like melting figures of ice, lost form and swam and merged as if the ink was still wet, and slowly soaking through the pages as he watched.

When, as was inevitable, he finally lost consciousness and slept, he became aware of a change in the atmosphere. There was a warmth which seemed womb-like and wrong in the open air. It disturbed him as he looked up at the stars prickling the sky, the deep, black, canopied darkness of the sky.

On every side trees rose from the gloom, their boughs bent over like thousands upon thousands of enormous, extended fingers, black in their damp decay. Their leaves were like limpets, pearly and wet, as they shivered in the rising winds.

Before him a glade led down beneath the trees.

Undecided as to which way he should go, Lamson looked about himself uncertainly, hoping for a sign, for some indication — however faint or elusive — as to which path was the one he should take. There seemed to be so many of them, leading like partially erased pencil lines across a grimy sheet of paper through the over-luxuriant grass. Somewhere there was a sound, though it was so dimmed and distorted by the distance separating him from its source. Sibilantly, vaguely, the rhythmic words wound their ways between the trees.

Finding himself miming them, he turned his back to the sounds and started for the glade. Even as he moved he knew that he had made a mistake. But he knew, also, with a sudden, wild wrenching of his heart, that there was no escape. Not now. It was something which he knew had either happened before or was preordained, that no matter what he did there was no way in which he could escape from what was going to happen next. He felt damned — by God, the Devil and himself.

Crestfallen, as the awfulness of what he knew was about to happen next came over him, he felt a sudden impulse to scream. Something large and heavy rustled awkwardly through the ferns. Fear, like lust, swelled within him. He felt a loathing and a horror and, inexplicably, a sense of expectation as well, almost as if some small part of him yearned for what it knew was about to take place. He began to sob. How could he escape from this thing — how could he possibly even hope to escape from this thing — if some perverse element within him did not want him to be free?

He turned round to retrace his steps up the glade, but there was something dark stretched across his path, barring his way, some yards ahead of him. It turned towards him and rose. Starlight, filtering through the trees, glittered darkly across its teeth as it smiled.

Lamson turned round and tried to run back down the glade, but the creature was already bounding after him like a great black goat. He felt its claws sink into his shoulders as it forced him forwards, knocking him suddenly face down onto the ground. He tried to scream, but his cries were gagged on dried leaves and soil, as his mouth was gouged into them. The creature’s furiously powerful fingers tore at his clothes, strewing them about him. The winds blew cool against his hot, bare flesh as sweat from the lunging, piston-like body ran down the hollow of his spine.

There was a crash somewhere and the dream ripped apart.

The next instant he seemed to blink his eyes open to find the comforting sight of his familiar bedroom in front of him. The book he had been reading when sleep overcame him earlier, lay against his feet on the floor.

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 began. 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 door.’ 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

First published as The Satyr’s Head & Other Tales of Terror

by Corgi Books 1975

This edition © 2012 by David A. Sutton

Cover artwork & design © 2012 by Steve Upham

The Nightingale Floors © 1975 by James Wade

The Previous Tenant © 1975 by Ramsey Campbell

The Night Fisherman © 1975 by Martin I. Ricketts

Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice © 1975 by David A. Sutton

Provisioning © 1975 by David Campton

Perfect Lady © 1975 by Robin Smyth

The Business About Fred © 1975 by Joseph Payne Brennan

Aunt Hester © 1975 by Brian Lumley

A Pentagram for Cenaide © 1975 by Eddy C. Bertin

The Satyr’s Head © 1975 by David A. Riley

The editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, rebound or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author and publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978-0-9539032-3-8

Shadow Publishing, 194 Station Road, Kings Heath,

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http://davidasutton.co.uk

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to

— Mike Ashley -

— Charles Black -

— Steve Upham -