Bats Out of Hell (7 page)

"I'm not going to die, damn you!" he yelled, and switched on the light.

The bats had gone. They had all been in his mind, imagination. Yet he was certain he hadn't been asleep. They had been so real. He decided he would not put out the light again. The darkness was terrifying.

He lay there trying to think of sane things, mundane matters such as assemblies, school reports, examinations. The Common Entrance exams were only a short time away. Confirmation classes were due to begin the following week, too. But always his thoughts returned to the bats. The Bishop had assured him that the contractors restoring the main spire would endeavour to remove any of the repulsive creatures they came across. The pest extermination people would be called in if necessary. There was nothing to worry about.

Twice during the night he had to stagger across the landing to the toilet, retching into the bowl. The lavatory light didn't work. The bulb must have blown, but he had neither the inclination nor the energy to go and search for a replacement. Nevertheless, he had to prop the door open whilst he was being sick—otherwise so his fevered mind told him, the cubicle was full of bats. Minute ones crawled all over the cistern. Big ones perched on the pipes, and hung on the walls. But they didn't like the light. Even that which filtered in from the landing dispelled them. That was the answer. Keep the light on.

Sometime towards dawn he fell into a restless slumber, tossing and turning, trying to complete that brief address which had been cut short so abruptly the other morning. Bats swooped at him, struck him, landed on his shoulders, clung to his cassock. But he was not going to be deterred this time. He forced the words out, shouting to make himself heard above the incessant squeaking. "The forces of darkness are present at all times . . . even during daylight . . . we must make a stand against them . . ."

His voice trailed off. The pews were empty. There was no congregation. His own boys had deserted him in his very hour of need. The Bishop, too. He would go and find them, remonstrate with them, if only he could find the way out. There were no doors. He ran blindly down the aisle. Where was Bryant? It was the Head Verger's job to lock and unlock the doors. But he couldn't blame the fellow if there were no doors. Just unending stonework, leering gargoyles with bats clinging to them . . .

The jangling of the telephone in his study below saved him from the ultimate terror as the winged creatures began to close in on him. He struggled out of bed. His limbs seemed reluctant to respond and it needed a conscious physical effort to move one foot in front of the other. There was a red haze before his eyes and he was dizzy. The stairs presented a problem, but he solved it by clinging to the banister with both hands. He had once caned a boy for sliding down the rail in the Palace. He regretted that action. It had been unjust. The boy, he couldn't remember his name, had been right. It was by far the best method of descending a staircase.

The phone was still ringing as he entered the study, flopped down gratefully in his mahogany swivel chair and lifted the receiver.

"Headmaster." His speech was slurred. The formation of that single word had been an effort. Somebody might think he'd been drinking.

"Matron here, headmaster." The voice at the other end gave no indication that she had noted anything strange about him. "I've had six boys brought into the sanatorium during the night. I'm going to ask the doctor to make an early call, but I think . . . well, I'd like you to have a look at them first."

A sudden sense of foreboding seemed to assist the Reverend Francis Jackson with his speech, and the words came more easily.

"What's . . . what's the matter with them?"

"They're . . . well, I thought it was the beginning of a summer flu epidemic, but three of them appear to be paralyzed, and . . . oh, I'd be glad if you'd come across, headmaster!"

"I'll be with you as soon as I can." Jackson sensed a constriction of his vocal cords, a tightening in his throat. He replaced the receiver, but in so doing misjudged the cradle and the instrument fell on to the desk with a clatter, slid over the edge and hung suspended by the coil. There was a pain in his back, travelling upwards to the base of his neck. That part of his anatomy had ached throughout the night, but now, suddenly, it was bordering on agony. He could not move his head. He tried to lift himself up out of the chair but it was impossible. The muscles would not respond to the urgent calls from his brain.

The Reverend Francis Jackson was very frightened indeed. What on earth had happened to him? The curtains were still drawn, and he had not bothered to switch on the light as he stumbled through the doorway. Now he sat in the gloom. The dawn was coming fast, its grey light filtering into the study through the chinks in the curtains, but everything was obscured by a red film, a haze that hovered in front of his eyes.

He tried to flop back in the chair, but even relaxation was denied him. His eyelids were heavy, but they would not close. It was as though they had been fixed in position by some kind of quick-drying glue. They were smarting, burning. Agony.

He could sense spittle in his mouth, welling out of the saliva glands, slipping back down his throat and threatening to choke him. Some of it trickled out between his lips and down his chin, falling in sticky strings down the front of his pajama jacket and on to his lap.

The room was becoming darker. Not black, but filled with a claret mistiness. He could still see, but his vision was restricted to that area immediately in front of him. And the bats were back. The tiny ones first, crawling all over the walls like thunder-bugs at harvest time, millions of them. They were on his face and neck, inside his pajamas causing him to itch from head to foot, a sensation that was driving him insane. He wanted to scratch himself but couldn't.

Then came the big ones, appearing silently from nowhere on slow, flapping wings that folded as they landed. They jostled for position on the desk, a mass of horrible faces, unblinking eyes. Gloating. He couldn't shut them out. He tried to pray, but the cohesion of thought was slipping from him. He was the living dead. A zombie. His body was dead, and only a tiny spark of life remained somewhere in his brain, just enough to kindle the terror.

Now he wanted to die, just so that he could shut out these ghoulish creatures. After that they could do what they liked with his body. Feed on it. Drink his blood. He didn't care. His mind burned with a craving for death that wouldn't come.

It took the Reverend Jackson almost an hour to die. And when his release finally came there was no outward sign of change. He sat rigid, eyes wide and staring sightlessly. Not a single muscle had relaxed; even his bowels remained taut against all the laws of Nature.

The Sanatorium consisted of a separate block at the rear of the Palace which housed the school. There were two wards for segregating different ailments, and small, self-contained flat in which Miss Boston, the plump, kindly matron, lived.

Miss Boston had returned to her quarters to make herself a cup of tea and prepare for an early call from one of the local doctors. She was concerned about the six boys who had been admitted at intervals since midnight, but there was nothing she could do until the doctor arrived. She wondered how much longer the headmaster was going to be. It was an hour since she had telephoned him. He had sounded strange, she recalled. His speech had been slurred. Perhaps he was a secret drinker? She smiled at the thought. He was constantly preaching teetotalism. He even refused to have a glass of sherry at the Old Boys' Reunion. She sighed, shook her head in bewilderment, yawned, and poured herself a cup of tea.

The small ward stank of vomit and diarrhoea. The curtains were still closed, and the six boys aged from nine to fourteen, lay in various postures on the beds, their pajamas undone, their bodies glistening with sweat.

Montgomery, the youngest, was crying softly to himself. He didn't like boarding schools anyway, and they were a thousand times worse when one was ill. This last half-hour his body had been stiffening from the base of the spine upwards, a creeping numbness that alleviated his earlier agony. He stared up at the ceiling, mentally tracing the cracks in the plaster, going all round them and back again, just for something to do. He hoped that the doctor might send him home. That would have made the suffering worthwhile.

Ursin-Davies sweated profusely. He always sweated anyway, on account of his size. Rolls of fat were visible to the others through his open pajama jacket. He hated this school, but most of all he loathed sport. What use were football and cricket to a fellow with brains? Yet they did not seem to appreciate his academic qualities. The fact that he came top of 5B in almost every subject did not appear to compensate for his failure at everything physical. Master, prefects and fellow pupils ridiculed him, went out of their way to make his life a misery. He hated every one of them, and particularly Bryce-Janson.

Ursin-Davies turned his head and looked across at the head boy. BJ was groaning in agony, grinding his teeth. Good! If his own pain was anything to go by, Ursin-Davies decided, then BJ was going through hell. It was almost worth putting up with to watch the swine suffer.

Ursin-Davies draped an arm over the side of the bed. His fingers brushed against something metallic, and with some difficulty he managed to grasp it and slowly draw it upwards. It was a knife, an ordinary item of cutlery, the blade matted with congealed gravy. It smelled bad, and he wrinkled his nose. Some earlier patient had obviously dropped it, and it had never been recovered. He grinned to himself. That just went to prove that old "Bossy" wasn't as thorough as she made out. She kidded 'em all, the idle old bitch. Even Jackson, Christ—how he hated Jackson. But not as much as he despised Bryce-Janson. The head-boy was a legal bully. He could take it out of you, and justify his actions. He could think up all sorts of sadistic punishments and get away with them. His word always counted with the Head against anybody else's.

This sudden new surge of hatred was easing the fat boy's pain. He remembered his recent clash with BJ. Dirty shoes and a crumpled tie at the Saint's Day service the other day had earned him a session of detention. Not just ordinary detention like others got, though. Oh, no. BJ knew that that would be no real punishment for him. He'd taken him down to the gym and put him through the lot; the vaulting horse, the horizontal bar, the climbing ropes, ending up with twenty minutes' physical jerks whilst the head boy sat on his arse and smirked.

Ursin-Davies had thought that he might have suffered a heart-attack after that lot. He had coughed and wheezed all night, and then he'd been selected to represent his house on a cross-country run the next day. They knew he couldn't bloody well run. It was all BJ's doing. He had engineered it. The bastard had been waiting at the finishing-point when Ursin had staggered in, a full twenty minutes after everybody else.

"I'll make an athlete of you if it kills you." the head boy had announced in a loud voice, and all the spectators had broken into peals of laughter. You were expected to laugh like hell at any of BJ's sick jokes. "Better a dead athlete than a fat scholar."

"If it kills you." Ursin-Davies winced at the memory of that jibe, and felt the cold steel of the knife in his sweaty palm.

"I say, Bryce-Janson," a thirteen-year-old boy called out, shaking a younger colleague in the next bed, "I think . . . I can't make Burlington hear. He's gone all stiff like . . . like he's got polio or something."

Bryce-Janson sat up hurriedly. He grunted, but somehow managed to slide off the bed and pad across to the boy who had attracted his attention.

"Let me see." He pulled the other aside. "Hey, Burlington. Listen to me." He shook the inert form roughly. "This is Bryce-Janson. Answer me! D'you hear me? If you're fooling, I'll report you to the Head."

Ursin-Davies eased himself up on one elbow with difficulty. The nine-year-old was wailing, and those clustered around the silent boy's bed were beginning to panic. Bryce-Janson was trying to cover up his own fear by using his authority.

The bitterness which had been building up inside Ursin-Davies came to the boil. He gripped the handle of the knife. The back of his most hated, enemy was towards him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of this before. It was all too easy, and no more than the bastard deserved.

A cauldron of hatred seethed inside Ursin-Davies. He forced his knife arm back and upwards. The muscles were stiff and unyielding at first, but sheer determination defeated the semi-paralytic tendons. It just needed one supreme effort.

He brought the knife down with every ounce of his thirteen stone behind it. It took the head boy between the shoulders, the blade buckling but sinking in up to the hilt with the weight of the blow, twisting and tearing as blood gushed out of the jagged wound.

Bryce-Janson screamed, a strangled, unnatural sound that died away in a hiss of spittle. He sank to his knees, clutching at the sheets and pulling them to the floor with him. Boys stared in horror, disbelief on their faces. Ursin wrenched the knife free and held it up, blood dripping on to the floor. He tried to laugh, but no sound came. Just a baring of the teeth, lips drawn back, spittle frothing, bubbling, bursting. Then came brief realization, momentary sanity amidst the madness, as his mouth opened with shock.

He gripped the knife again, exerting unwilling muscles, struggling to turn the bloody blade so that it pointed inwards, forcing it up towards his own jowls. Staccato movements, an inch at a time, beads of sweat rolling down his face with the strain.

"No . . . no . . . Fatty, no!" nine-year-old Montgomery screamed, the only one to realize the full implication of Ursin-Davies's actions.

This time the blade's entry was achieved more easily. It slid into the soft fat without the hindrance of bone, once again going hi up to the hilt, severing the jugular vein, until blood spouted like an oil-geyser, jetting on to beds and boys alike.

The door opened, and Matron entered, a short, middle-aged doctor at her heels.

"These are the boys, doctor," she was saying, "it really is most puzzling . . . and . . . "