The Haunting of Toby Jugg (10 page)

It seemed certain, too, that the unseen presence could have no connection with anything that took place at the meetings in the crypt. I mean, I have little doubt now that my having seen the ‘burglar’ at The Willows was the result of the séances that were held there. Of course I was not aware of that explanation when I was at Weylands, because I had not yet run into Florrie Meddows, But by the time I was sixteen I had read quite a few ghost-stories, and heard tell of séances at which spirits were said to blow trumpets and that sort of thing. So it did cross my mind for a moment that the Masonic meetings might have something to do with the occult; but only for a moment. It was so obviously absurd to think of the masters at Weylands dabbling in spiritualism.

They were all dyed-in-the-wool materialists, and if one does not believe in God one cannot believe in the Devil, or the existence of any supernatural beings; so the last thing they would
have done was to meet for the purpose of calling on the spirits. They would have laughed at the very idea; and, anyhow, I had heard enough about the Fellowship to know that it was a very down-to-earth affair. It was no secret that its object was to ensure mutual co-operation in worldly matters, so that by assisting one another all its members could achieve wealth and position; and, of course, it was owing to its activities that Weylands was such an immensely rich institution.

Then, as I sat warming myself in front of the fire, a new thought struck me. I recalled that tripping on my shoe-lace had caused me to fall forward and clutch at the top of the tomb, and that under the sudden pressure it had given way. Perhaps my having opened the grave had enabled something to escape from it.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that I had hit upon the right solution. A year or so earlier I had read
Dracula
and, at the time, I had taken all the stuff about vampires and the undead as pure invention; now I thought of it again in a very different light.

The gaping tomb had been behind me as I knelt; and when I swivelled round I had looked across it and all round it, but not down into it. About half the stone lid had remained intact and the open portion of the grave, into which the rest of the lid had fallen, had been obscured by deep shadow. It seemed possible that I had aroused some horrid, corpse-like thing that had been lying there in a state of suspended animation. Or perhaps, by some ancient mystery, the soul of an evil abbot had been imprisoned with his body in the grave—just as in the
Arabian Nights
the powerful Djinn had been sealed up in a bottle—and I had released a diabolical force that had been straining to get free for centuries, so that it could exact vengeance on humanity.

Such bizarre ideas were a world away from the atheism which we were taught to regard as enlightenment at Weylands. But human instincts and old traditions die hard; and most of us, while ready enough to sneer at religion, still retained a sneaking feeling that there might be something in the tales of ghosts and haunted houses we had heard. In any case, after what I had been through myself that night, no explanation of it sounded too fantastic. I was still vaguely speculating upon what sort of horror
it could have been that had come up at me out of the grave when, mentally and physically exhausted as I was, I fell asleep.

Tuesday, 12th May

Last night I had the horrors again. I saw the shadow, but it was mixed up with all sorts of other beastliness in a nightmare. I do not mean that I actually had another visitation of the sort that I first had early in April, and almost persuaded myself were nightmares until their recurrence at the beginning of this month. I mean a genuine bad dream.

It must have been due to the vividness of the recollections that I conjured up yesterday, while writing an account of my terrifying experience at Weylands. Anyhow I dreamed that I was there again among the graves of the long-dead monks, and that the Thing that has recently been haunting me was chasing me towards the red glow that came from the wrought-iron gates.

Although the beast was behind me as I ran, I seemed to have eyes in the back of my head, for I could see it as it leapt from mound to mound in my tracks. Its body was the big, round, multi-limbed patch of blackness that I always see, but it had the caricature of a human face—and the face was Helmuth’s, with his eyes multiplied to ten times their normal size and his fleshy nose changed into a great curved beak.

Julia was there too. She was standing by the glowing gates calmly watching the brute hunt me, and she made not the slightest move to come to my assistance when I screamed to her for help.

I suppose her appearance in my dream, and the callous attitude she displayed, are to be accounted for by a subconscious projection of the black fits of depression that I get from the thought that she seems to have abandoned me in my present plight. Why she did not arrive over the weekend, or at least answer my letter, I simply cannot think.

Of course, the only possible explanation is that she is no longer at Queensclere and has not had my letters yet. I
know
that she would come here on the very first train if she was aware of what I am up against. So it seems futile to write to her again. I can only thank God that we are now entering the dark quarter of the moon,
which means I’ll be safe for a bit, and pray that one of my letters catches up with her in the next few days, as it surely must.

Yesterday the village barber came to cut my hair. I am afraid I have always been a bit casual about my appearance, and I often got ticked off for letting my hair grow too long when I was in the ranks of the R.A.F., and later too, during my year’s training as a Pilot-Officer. Once I became operational no one bothered me about it any more as we Fighter boys still had a bit of a halo round our heads—even those of us who had come in only for the tail-end of the Battle of Britain—and we rather prided ourselves in going about dressed any-old-how, our caps on the backs of our heads and the top buttons of our tunics undone. It was all rather childish, I suppose, but in an inverse way it had the same sort of effect that super-smartness has on the Brigade of Guards, and added quite a bit to our morale.

Still, as my hair is unusually silky for its reddish colour and dead straight, it is apt to fall forward over my forehead and bother me when it gets too long; so every few weeks I kick myself into sending for the local clipper-wielder, and submit myself to his inartistic ministrations.

It is raining today, so as I have a clear morning in front of me I’ll polish off my account of that affair at Weylands. I see that I had got to the point where I had fallen asleep in the cottage while waiting for Julia and Uncle Paul to return.

I was woken by the sound of the sitting-room door opening with a rattle, then being swiftly shut again. The lights were still on but the fire had gone out, so I must have been asleep for a considerable time. I felt very cold, and shivered as I stood up. The memory of the night’s earlier events was just flooding back to me when I heard voices outside in the hall. Someone was muttering something, then Julia’s voice came to me quite distinctly as she said:

‘So that’s why the lights were on! What on earth can Toby be doing here? Thank goodness he’s asleep and didn’t see me like this. Quick, pull yourself together, now! It’s up to you to hold the fort, while I do something to my face.’

Instinctively I had moved towards the door, and she had scarcely finished speaking when I pulled it open. Out of the
corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of her back as she hurried into her bedroom, but I found myself looking straight at Uncle Paul.

He was leaning against the wall on the other side of the narrow hallway; and it was clear that Julia’s admonition, to pull himself together, had not been given without good reason. He was as drunk as an owl.

Uncle Paul must have been about thirty-seven then. He is a biggish man with red hair and a ‘Guards’ moustache, brushed stiffly up. He has a ruddy face and pale, rather poppy, blue eyes. Brains have never been his long suit, and he is a weak rather than a bad man. The ‘Demon Drink’, alas, has always been his failing, and it was the cause of most of the scrapes that he got himself into with my grandfather, when he was younger.

After he married Julia he took a pull on himself. At least, as she is the dominant partner I suppose she made him toe the line. But he continued to have lapses now and then, and it was by no means the first time that I had seen him when he had had one over the eight. Fortunately he is the friendly type of drunk; and as he had always been kind to me in a casual sort of way it made no difference to the mild affection I felt for him.

Bringing himself upright with a shove of his broad shoulders, he grinned at me and said: ‘’Lo, old man! How—how are you?’

‘I’m all right, thanks, Uncle,’ I replied, ‘but you’re looking a bit part-worn. You seem to have been making a night of it.’

‘That’s it,’ he hiccuped. ‘Li’le party.’

‘It must have been a pretty rough one,’ I smiled, as I took in the details of his dishevelled appearance. There were grease-stains down one of the lapels of his dinner-jacket, his collar was a crumpled rag, his bow tie had disappeared, and there were obvious marks of lipstick all round his mouth. I had never seen him in such a state when tight before.

‘That’s it; li’le party,’ he repeated. ‘Was a bit rough. Played Kiss-in-the-ring.’

I had no idea that the parents who were up for a visit indulged in either high jinks or childish games at the Club-house in the evenings; but when one is in the middle teens one is still constantly learning unexpected things about the behaviour of grownups, so I made no comment.

For a moment we remained silent, just smiling inanely at one another, then he said: ‘Lesh go into th’ sitting-room—have a drink.’

He had obviously had far more than he could carry already, but it was not my place to tell him so. Accordingly I stood aside and he lurched through the doorway. There were whisky, glasses and a syphon on a small side-table. Swaying slightly, he walked over to it and, with a deliberation that did not prevent him spilling some of the stuff, mixed himself a stiff peg.

Having gulped half of it, he muttered: ‘Tha’s better,’ then relapsed into another longish silence, during which he stared at the carpet.

At length he looked up and asked: ‘What you doin’ here thish time-o’-night? Wash game, old man?’

I had no intention of discussing the matter uppermost in my mind with Uncle Paul while he was in that condition; so I simply said: ‘I knew you and Julia were arriving this evening, so I thought I would slip over and see you. While I was waiting for you to come in I fell asleep in front of the fire.’

‘I shee,’ he nodded ponderously. ‘I shee. Well, here’s all th’ besht,’ and he swallowed the rest of his drink.

A moment later Julia came hurrying in. She had changed into a dressing-gown, and evidently done her best to put her face to rights; but I was much more shocked by her appearance than I had been by that of Uncle Paul.

Her dark eyes looked bigger than I had ever seen them, and her face was dead-white, so that the patches of fresh rouge stood out on her cheeks like the dabs of paint on those of a Dutch doll. Her full red lips were swollen excessively and broken in places, as though they had been savagely bitten, and a heavy coating of powder failed to hide an ugly scratch that ran from beneath her left ear right down across her throat.

‘Good Lord! What on earth has been happening to you?’ I exclaimed in alarm.

She did not kiss me, but bent her head and laid her icy cheek against mine for a second; then she said:

‘Toby, darling; don’t be upset. I’m quite all right, but we’ve had a frightful time tonight. Has Paul told you about it?’

‘Only that you had been hitting it up at a party,’ I muttered, ‘and that you played kiss-in-the-ring.’

‘Paul!’ she said sharply, turning to her husband. ‘Get up at once, and go to bed.’

My uncle had lowered himself into an armchair and closed his eyes; he was already half asleep. At the sound of her voice he blinked, lumbered to his feet, and with a vague wave of his hand by way of good night, walked unsteadily out of the room.

‘I’ve never seen him as tight as that before,’ I said, as he jerked the door to behind him.

‘No, thank goodness,’ Julia agreed, with a sigh. ‘He doesn’t often get really stinking. It’s a mercy, though, that he didn’t kill the two of us tonight. If I’d realised now far gone he was, I would never have let him drive the car.’

‘You had a smash, then?’

‘Of course! How else do you think I came to get my face in such a mess?’

‘I thought you had been down at the Club all this time.’

‘If Paul gave you that impression you must have misunderstood him. He is in no state to know what he is saying. We had a few drinks at the Club before we started, and by now he’s probably forgotten most of what happened after that.’

‘Oh, you poor darling!’ I cried, taking her hand. ‘Are you quite sure that you’re not badly hurt?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I’m all right. He drove us into a ditch, and when I was thrown sideways I hit my mouth against something. I’ve got a few bruises, but nothing to worry about.’ Drawing me down on to the settee beside her, she went on:

‘As we’re coming up here, Paul thought that he would like to see some old friends of his who live about twenty miles away. We wrote and proposed ourselves for dinner. They wrote back and said they would love to have us if we didn’t mind a scratch meal at the end of a children’s party, as it was their eldest girl’s birthday. When we arrived the party was still in full swing. There were quite a number of other grown-ups there and we must have stood about drinking cocktails for a couple of hours at least.

‘It was ten o’clock by the time the children packed up, and
close on eleven before we sat down to supper. Afterwards, somebody suggested that we should play the children’s games. What with our steady cocktail-drinking and the champagne at supper, we were all a bit lit-up by then, and just ripe to let ourselves go at any sort of nonsense. We played kiss-in-the-ring, blind-man’s-buff, postman’s knock, and all the rest of it.