Mark of the Beast. Brian Ball
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whispered Alan. “What’s she talking about? What’s happening, Mrs. Pierce?”
In the deep silence the medium’s strange voice again called out; this time it was a hopeless, wailing cry:
“—can’t help now, the thing-that-never-was-life is too strong—can’t keep it away from dear life-that-is-your-life—danger!”
“I’ve had enough,” said Alan. He tried to release his hands. He had large, strong hands, yet he could not break free. And then he did not wish to, for something that defied all reason took shape in the gloom.
About the head of the medium, a thin, insubstantial grey-white shape was forming, weirdly, from spinning white and grey motes like black sunshine.
“Jan, let’s go,” whispered Alan. “Help me, Jan!”
Janice smiled her most brilliant smile.
“Whatever for, darling? The fun’s only just beginning.”
CHAPTER THREE
ALAN Charnock was an educated man, who, by virtue of his professional training, had the ability to observe and then describe what he saw. Later he was to attempt to recall what his senses impressed on his mind; it was to prove difficult. He could remember his wife’s calm voice: he had no trouble in recapturing the initial stunned horror of the congregation; but what caused their horror—and his own—was a thing of such insubstantial appearance that it was to defy a complete analysis.
A shape seemed to hover behind the medium, a rearing, upright figure. There was the suggestion of a shape—no features, yet unquestionably a head and a torso. It was as though a large shadow had been cast which then took on a third dimension, solidity. There was a body and a head. Even the features were there somewhere. Within the mistiness of the shape, they lay as in a rough-hewn block of stone. There was menace too.
Alan knew that something had gone terribly wrong with the séance. Calling on a spirit guide was part and parcel of the business of Spiritualism. The simple folk in the hall had made the kind of request he had expected them to make, small enquiries about someone they had loved and who had died. It had been rather a joke that the enquiries should extend to the state of health of a dead pet, but the comic side of it had passed.
A grim and evil thing was taking shape before the frightened congregation.
Mrs. Worrall’s lips moved again. Alan could see bright drops of blood on the medium’s chin. Sounds grated in her throat.
It was not the cultured tones of the spirit guide, nor did the sounds appear especially human. They were much worse than the noises that Alan had taken to be a rather poor effort at projecting a mystical voice. A harsh, croaking issued from the bitten lips, a jangling wild sound that rang round Alan Charnock’s head with a vicious insidiousness.
As the words spewed out a penetrating and vile odour filled the immediate area around the medium. Alan felt his gorge rising as the stench of outlandish and poisonous fumes crept to his nostrils. Unbelieving, yet unable to deny the validity of what was happening, Alan Charnock knew that the stench came from the grotesque, misty shape. And that the guttural sounds emanated from it too, for no longer did the medium’s lips move. She slumped in her chair without movement.
On either side of her, the middle-aged women who had supported her when she had first gone into her trance were themselves dazed and nerveless. Yet the hands held, as if fused together. No matter the horror they were experiencing—and Alan knew they saw as he did—they were quite incapable of freeing themselves from the grip of their neighbours in the dreadful circle.
No one could move.
It was at the moment of heart-stopping terror that Alan Charnock turned to Janice. When he saw the shining eyes the great wide smile, the rise and fall of bosom, and the sheer joy in her face, he panicked.
“Janice, Jan?” he said aloud. “Janice, let’s go, darling—please? Christ, Jan, what’s wrong!”
Janice’s eyes were like jewels. She did not see him. She did not hear his words. The ghastly apparition had altogether entranced her.
“Jan!”
Her lips moved as slowly and agonizingly as Mrs. Worrall’s:
“Keli—Kelipoth—Kelipoth? I hear, I hear!”
“Christ, Jan—”
As he spoke, Alan felt the hands in his become convulsively alive. A rippling, surging current passed through his palms, first from the right hand, then from the left. Backwards and forwards it raced, and all the time, the thing behind Mrs. Worrall raised itself to the dark skylights, snuffling seeking, smelling out the soul that might respond to its call.
Alan Charnock’s senses reeled.
He caught a glimpse of Jan’s face again. She was radiant He saw the insubstantial beast looming larger and larger in the darkness of the hall. He retched as the rottenness of the pit assailed him. He found himself sinking forward towards the floor, and still the hands on either side of him bit deep the fierce current shooting through and through his body its source the hands.
Minutes passed like this, in a half-state between unconsciousness and a waking dream. Shapes merged, figures writhed, horrific sounds came to his ears; and not all of it registered on his battered mind. He knew there was more that strange and weird events were taking place around him, just beyond the edges of what had seemed a normal world.
And then it was over.
He blinked and it was gone.
“Wake up,” he heard Janice saying. “Alan. You’ve let me down again! Oh, look at him, Linda, he’s dozed off.”
Alan Charnock blinked again. He raised his hands to rub his eyes.
“Dozed off? Have I, Jan? Then what about—”
He stopped. Self-control reasserted itself. He would not make a fool of himself. He looked at Janice, at Linda Pierce, and around the circle; and then, fearfully towards Mrs Worrall. The medium was hidden from his view.
To gain time, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Jan. You know me. I’ve not felt too well.” He attempted a laugh, though to his own ears it sounded hysterical. “I must have—well, I thought—”
Janice stared at him with no affection in her gaze. “What?”
Alan Charnock floundered. His eyes darted about the hall. No one seemed to be unduly alarmed. There was no hint of the strange terror that had gripped the Spiritualists. Mrs. Pierce sat calmly, her hands in her lap. The stout woman was perspiring a little, though she had done so from the moment she sat down. Why, when they had been so profoundly disturbed by the monstrous apparition, did they now seem so calm? It couldn’t be that the thing was expected was a commonplace visitation? And Mrs. Worrall—what of her? The women still hid her from his view.
He shuddered and looked down at his trembling hands. A dream? He had been asleep?
“What, Alan?” repeated Janice.
Alan Charnock kept a tremor from his voice: “It was the—I saw the—” He couldn’t go on.
“Alan!”
“But I heard it— The message!”
It wasn’t what he meant to say. He wanted to tell her that the thing had grunted and snarled, that it stank of substances he could no longer put a name to; and especially that the others had seen it too.
“I don’t see how you could have heard much,” said Janice. “You dropped off when it was getting interesting.”
“Getting interesting—that’s what you said, Jan! Don’t you remember—you said something like ‘The fun’s just starting’?”
Janice sighed and got to her feet.
“Linda, don’t pay any attention to him. I think he might be sickening for something.”
Linda