The Undead Page 4

  Breathless, stumbling. Falling, picking herself up, ignoring the pain of scratches that bled, her jeans torn so that the denim flapped as she ran and made a noise like a panting hound at her heels. There was a roaring in her ears as though an angry dragon had joined the pursuit.

  A fork in the narrow track. She hadn't noticed it earlier. Right or left? You could be lost in here forever, Marie Halestrom! She took the right path, prayed that it would bring her out into sunshine and flowers, flies that would crawl on her bloody wounds and she promised not to swat them.

  Staggering now, the stench of stink-horn heavy in her nostrils, that fungus with the aroma of decomposing flesh - the smell of death! Retching, almost giving up and flinging herself to the ground, surrendering to the living evil forces of Gabor Wood.

  Only the thought of Amanda kept her going, for without Marie, Amanda would surely be lured here, dragged down into that awful pool so that her face stared up for eternity at any who chose to venture close to its shores, mouthing a plea that would go unheard. Help me!

  Oh God, she was surely lost. That twisted oak, its knotted trunk resembling a devilish leering face; she would not have passed it earlier without recoiling in horror. Trees that seemed to move, closing in on her; trees that had been here in the days of Bemorra!

  She thought she was going to faint, the blackness before her eyes deeper now than the dank gloom of the wood, red spots that shimmered and had her swaying uncertainly on her tired feet. Not daring to clutch at branches for support in case they seized her, dragged her back to be cast into those murky unfathomable depths to await the coming of Amanda. But Amanda was never going to come to this place.

  And suddenly there was sunlight, a blinding aura that Marie Halestrom met on turning a sharp bend. She rushed forward with all her remaining strength, felt the flies swarming at her as though they had remained in the nearest vegetation to await her return, themselves barred from entering that wood where nothing lived.

  Sobbing, falling to the ground, just strength enough for one glance behind her to ensure that she was not pursued. Then, with a sigh of relief, Marie felt consciousness slipping from her, a huddled scratched and battered shape lying in the tall trees, almost invisible beneath the mass of black crawling flies that smelled blood and hastened to the feast.

  CHAPTER TWO - BEGUILDY

  Ron Halestrom resisted the temptation to enquire what mishap had befallen his wife for it had become a custom on both sides of their marital partnership not to concede these periodic sullen silences, a kind of childish game in which the first to speak became the loser.

  He had watched Marie's return from the elevated position of his study window, noted with alarm the weals and scratches on her arms and face, the tattered jeans, the way she walked with obvious discomfort. She'd stormed off in a tantrum, fallen into a patch of blackberry bushes by the look of her, he decided. Nothing serious but it might just teach her a lesson. Damn it, he was going to pretend that he didn't notice, prop the paper up on the table at dinner and read something so devilishly intriguing amidst a background of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ that he really wouldn't be a party to these juvenile sulks. And doubtless Marie would build her own façade so nothing more would be said until they drifted slowly back to normality in a few days' time. And he would never find out exactly what his wife had been up to that day, but he didn't care, so it didn't matter, and that was that. He left the window and went back to his typewriter.

  Ron had certainly written the script correctly in his own mind for that one-act play he had title ‘Dinner’. The food was impeccable: spaghetti bolognese followed by fresh raspberry flan, all in the shadow of yesterday's Telegraph. If Marie was putting on an act then her efforts were wasted; she might just as well have saved herself the bother, for apart from a cursory glance that told him she had changed into a blouse and skirt and attempted to soothe her wounds with some kind of ointment, he did not look at her again. Had he done so he could hardly have failed to notice the distraught expression in her blue eyes, the mark of terror stamped on her features.

  Bedtime used to be fun, sometimes it still was. But not tonight. Conflict between partners was not conducive to love making and Ron could sense the anger simmering inside Marie as she lay facing away from him, the tautness of her body which would not relax, its aversion to sleep and to his own nearness.

  He contemplated trying to make amends. An encircling arm around her would have been a start but it would also have been a blow to his pride. You were right and I was wrong, darling. I'm too stubborn, that's my trouble. Inflexible. We'll leave Gabor, won't we, Ron? Hell, give a woman an inch and she'll take a mile. Having conceded ground the next thing he'd be doing would be putting Gabor House up for sale. Oh, it'd sell, but not for the price he'd paid for it. The market was depressed and they'd end up back in the city about all square. No, he decided, this one had to be sat out. Amanda would be home tomorrow night and that would help. Marie and Amanda were a complete unit. He was the odd one out.

  But Marie Halestrom's anger had died in Gabor Wood. It had been replaced by something else - fear! Something she couldn't share with her husband because he wouldn't understand and they'd be back to square one bickering over trivialities. Oh God, for once she wished Amanda wasn't coming home. All that had happened in the wood hadn't been a trick of her imagination. There was something evil there. They couldn't fight it so they had to run from it but it extended further than just eight acres of trees and a stinking pool; it enveloped the whole place, this house, the village and the people in it. The Halestroms were caught up in this inexplicable mesh of malevolence that somehow dated back over two centuries. Arguing with Ron was useless; if he didn't see sense soon then there was only one solution - she would have to leave and take Amanda with her, for the sake of the child.

  She felt her body starting to relax, knew that sleep was coming at last. God, she ached, those scratches burned as if they were infected. If they were still smarting tomorrow then she would have to find a doctor somewhere and let him look at them.

  Marie was dreaming. Subconsciously she knew it was all a dream, like those waking nightmares she used to have as a child when she was ill. The wood, of course, where else? Trees with faces scowling at her, branches that had supple fingers reaching out for her. And she was running again, a panic-stricken flight which would terminate in a fall that would jar her back to wakefulness, to lie trembling in the silence of the bedroom listening to the pounding of her own heart.

  Then she heard it; it began like the roaring in her ears had that afternoon, the dragon-like sound she'd always imagined those mythical creatures made, a steady bellow rising to a crescendo. Coming from somewhere close by only she couldn't see anything apart from the trees.

  Louder, so that she was clasping her hands over her ears, trying to shut it out because it was reverberating in her brain, hurting her. Animal-like yet somehow human!

  Suddenly she awoke, not with the expected tumble in her dreams, but surfacing slowly, the quilt slipping off her as she tossed and turned. Only then did the awful realisation dawn - she could still hear that roaring sound, a harsh bellowing coming from somewhere in the grounds of Gabor House!

  She froze, tried to tell herself that it was the echoes of her nightmare lingering in her tortured brain. But it wasn't. It was real!

  Marie lay rigid with horror trying to identify the noise. There was no doubt that it was the same sound she had heard earlier that day in Gabor Wood, a kind of braying a donkey might make only … more human! It was close now, seeming to come from directly below the window. Oh God, what kind of creatures roamed these grounds by night?

  She sat upright, felt herself trembling violently. Silvery beams of moonlight shafted in through the windows where she had not yet had time to make and fit curtains, the soft light so sinister as it lit the bedroom. Ron was sleeping soundly, totally unaware of the unearthly sounds that came from outside. A brief interval; another roar then silence again.

  ‘Ron!’ Marie shook
her husband's shoulder, heard him groan and mumble something unintelligible. ‘Ron, wake up. There's … something outside!’

  ‘Uh … what …’ He stirred, tried to push her hand away but she shook him again, more roughly this time until his eyes flickered open. ‘What the hell's up with you?’

  ‘Just listen.’ Anger mingled with terror now. ‘There's some kind of … animal roaring outside.’

  ‘I can't hear anything.’ He raised himself up on an elbow. ‘Look, stop getting in a panic. You've got to get used to animals making noises at night when you live in the country. Foxes bark and screech, enough to frighten the life out of you until you get used to them. It was probably a vixen.’

  ‘No, it wasn't,’ she snapped. ‘Ron, I want you to go and look out of the window!’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ He threw the quilt back angrily. ‘This really is the limit. It's probably gone by now, anyway.’

  Ron Halestrom's feet had just touched the floor when the sound came again, electrifying, a primordial cry of the wild such as might have been heard in these parts when Man was very young and still inhabited the caves of Gabor Mountain. A bestial snarl escalating to a roar that hung in the air vibrating every nerve, numbing the brain. Beginning again before it had died away, gathering in volume like the rushing water from a burst dam.

  Halestrom stiffened, felt Marie's hand on his arm, her fingernails digging into his flesh, her muffled ‘Oh, my God!’ Then he was leaping for the window, dragging her with him, knowing he had to see what was out there however awful the sight might be, steeling himself for that which his mind was already rejecting as being impossible in twentieth-century Britain.

  It was a man … at least the shape was human! A gaunt, bowed figure, almost luminous in a shaft of moonlight, sensing the watchers at the window above him. It was difficult to discern the features through the mass of straggling grey hair, the chest-length beard that parted to emit yet another of those vibrating roars, showing a line of broken blackened teeth. A hat of indeterminable design managed somehow to remain perched at a precarious angle on the head of thick wavy hair. Ungainly in appearance but agile, moving lightly on bare feet, crouching, springing back, clad in ill-fitting ragged garments, jacket almost down to the thighs, trousers ending in frayed edges as though they had been torn off six inches above the ankles. Grotesque, a nightmarish apparition that had Marie clinging to Ron, whispering, ‘What in the name of God is it!’

  He did not reply, just a sharp intake of breath, knowing what Marie was thinking, trying to find an alternative answer; failing because he had already described such a character in his book, his description almost identical to the being that stared defiantly up at them, mouth opening and twisting in readiness for yet another bestial cry. For this was how Bemorra, the Gabor child-killer, had been, a tramp-like creature of sheer malevolence roaming the countryside during the night hours so that all locked and barred their doors against him!

  ‘It's him, isn't it?’ Marie breathed. ‘Mrs Mainwaring was right, the ghost of Bemorra still lives!’

  ‘That's ridiculous.’ Ron Halestrom tried to make himself heard above the ear-splitting cry of animal anger. ‘It's some vagrant … or else these bloody locals are playing a trick, trying to get rid of us, scare away outsiders from their morbid community.’

  Even as they looked down their strange visitor was already departing, a bounding shuffle, bent low as though sniffing the ground in search of a scent, moving with incredible speed across the ragged untidy lawn, the shrubs on the far side swallowing him up as if he had never existed, a nightmare that had evaporated on waking.

  Marie was trembling violently as Ron led her back to the bed, fighting to control the hysteria that was building up after the initial shock of what they had seen.

  ‘We're not staying here!’ She had not meant to shout but that was how her frustration and fear came out. ‘I'm not going to have Amanda come here. A sight like that could turn her mind, make her an imbecile for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Let's not jump to conclusions.’ He lit a cigarette and drew the smoke gratefully down into his lungs. ‘First, it can't be a spook because there aren't such things. Second, whoever it was was trespassing and in a small community like this it shouldn't be too difficult to find him. That'll be my first job in the morning, and when I know who it is I'll have him warned off in no uncertain terms.’

  ‘And how d'you think you're going to find him? If these villagers are hostile towards us they won't just produce him at your say-so.’

  ‘No,’ Ron smiled. ‘but I know somebody who might be able to help us. I've never had much time for clergymen but I think there's a fair chance that the Reverend Pickering might be able to throw some light on this business.’

  Marie Halestrom extricated herself from her husband's encircling arm, lay back on the bed and turned away from him. Oh Christ, he was becoming impossible. With a devilish thing like that on the loose he was still going to stick it out. In which case she would have to do something about it herself. She wasn't staying and Amanda was never going to come to this place. Leaving her husband seemed to be the only choice open to her.

  ‘Oh dear me, I really am sorry.’ The Reverend Pickering wrung his hands together and his glasses slipped an inch or so down from the bridge of his nose. ‘I do apologise most profusely, Mr and Mrs Halestrom. All my fault, and if I wasn't so absent-minded I would almost certainly have told you and saved you so much anguish.’

  Ron and Marie stared in surprise at the clergyman who was covering his embarrassment by moving papers and magazines off the settee in the vicarage, motioning to them to sit down.

  ‘What slipped your mind, Reverend?’ Ron felt his pulses starting to speed up, had to curb his impatience.

  ‘About last night, of course.’ Pickering deposited a pile of papers precariously on a coffee table, adjusted his glasses. ‘Those noises you heard, I'm surprised you haven't heard them before. Old Beguildy must have been mooching up in the mountains this past week or two otherwise you would surely have been aware of his presence. Come to think of it, I haven't heard him lately myself. Well, well, well, fancy me forgetting to tell you.’

  ‘Just who is Beguildy?’ Marie could restrain herself no longer, clenching her fists into tight balls.

  ‘A sad story, really pathetic.’ Pickering finally seated himself on the arm of the dilapidated chesterfield and proceeded to fill his pipe. ‘Beguildy was in Gabor long before I came here. In fact, he was born here. Deaf and dumb, you know.’

  ‘Just deaf,’ Marie interrupted him. ‘Whoever this Beguildy is, the reason he can't speak is because he's stone deaf and doesn't know what words are about.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I'm sure that's the reason.’ There was a touch of impatience in the old clergyman's tone now. ‘His parents lived in that tumbledown cottage on the far side of Gabor Wood. Indeed, Beguildy lives there now, a pitiful existence but he refuses all aid. I've tried to help him by taking him food and other small comforts but he always became abusive so in the end I left him in peace. He prefers to roam the countryside, catching rabbits to eat, smoking dried coltsfoot - in that foul-smelling pipe of his.’ As if it was a cue Pickering paused to light his pipe, only continuing when it was drawing to his satisfaction. ‘He's harmless, though. Wouldn't hurt a fly. The village children and most of the adults are frightened of him but that's only because of his wild appearance and the strange roaring noise he makes. He was much the same as a boy, so Mrs Mainwaring informs me, shunning the company of others and preferring to go off into the mountains for days at a time sometimes. He grew up wild and after his mother and father died he didn't alter. After his mother's funeral he wasn't seen for nearly a month and then he just turned up one day. He doesn't bother anybody except perhaps Major Lester-Mylton. I don't expect you've had a chance to meet the Major yet; he owns the land bordering yours, all of which was once part of the Mainwaring lands until the estate was split up. Just lives for his dogs and his shooting and I hear that young Reece, his new ga
mekeeper, is having a hard time of it. The Major's a real disciplinarian, you know. Reece smokes herbal tobacco and on a fine still day you can smell where he's been walking, just the same as you can Beguildy.’

  ‘Tell me more about Beguildy.’ Ron Halestrom wasn't interested in either the Major or Reece right now. ‘Surely he doesn't spend his life wandering over other people's property?’

  ‘I'm afraid he does.’ Pickering smiled wryly. ‘The Major goes berserk and is pressurising Reece to stop the old boy poaching rabbits on his land, but I'm afraid there's no stopping Beguildy and it'd need a much more experienced gamekeeper to catch him taking a rabbit. But he doesn't touch the deer, I'd swear on the Bible to that, although the Major has already complained to the police about him. It's all a campaign to try and get Beguildy put away but they won't succeed. And I must confess I don't want them to.’

  Marie felt a pang of sympathy, then she remembered what they had seen and heard last night. Oh God, the memory of that ragged figure, his weird roaring noises, had her wishing once again that they could leave this place. And later this afternoon Ron would be driving off to collect Amanda. Marie groaned inwardly.

  ‘Our daughter is coming home for the half-term holiday today.’ She was pale, biting her lower lip. ‘That's what worries me most, that Beguildy might show up and terrify her.’

  ‘I think you're worrying unnecessarily, Mrs Halestrom.’ Pickering smiled. ‘Beguildy wouldn't harm your little girl, I'd stake my life on that.’

  ‘She'd be terrified of him, though. Just suppose she was playing in the garden and he suddenly appeared out of the bushes!’

  ‘Hmm.’ Pickering chewed his pipe thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps she'll get used to him, Mrs Halestrom.’

  ‘If every child in the village is terrified of Beguildy then so will Amanda be,’ Marie retorted. ‘Theyhaven't got used to him.’

  ‘He'll have to be stopped.’ Ron Halestrom shook an angry forefinger. ‘I shall stop him from entering the Gabor grounds. One way or another I'll see he gets the message!’