BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY BRIAN BALL

      The Baker Street Boys: Two Baker Street Irregulars Novellas

      The Evil at Monteine: A Novel of Horror (Ruane #2)

      Mark of the Beast: A Novel of Horror (Ruane #1)

      The Venomous Serpent: A Novel of Horror

      COPYRIGHT INFO

      Copyright © 1974 by Brian Ball

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      To Bob and Brenda Burkill

      CHAPTER ONE

      Thin moonlight streaked the high white tower. Then black rain slashed and its massive bulk was hidden. A growl of thunder told the hurrying men that the storm was gathering; though their cloaks were sodden through and through, they did not welcome the thought of the shelter ahead. Tonight the church was no sanctuary.

      The priest at the head of the small procession waved his lantern in encouragement, then lost his footing in the mud. A watcher might have thought the sight comical, for he was a tall, thin, ungainly man with the unsteady gait of a heron. He picked himself up from the slimy mud, careful to keep the lantern upright and more careful yet to keep the wafer in his left hand dry. It might have brought a smile to the face of a watcher but for the ghastly white of his face and the strained, haunted look in his eyes.

      One look at his countenance would have stilled a ribald comment, dismissed a smile; for, like the men who followed, he was afraid. More, he was in a state of terror. He was engaged in an undertaking that was beyond his understanding. That night, forces that must forever be a mystery to him would assemble. He sweated with terror. In the archaic phrase of his day, he was afraid unto death.

      Behind him a man groaned aloud in a torment. The priest turned, his voice a shriek above the wind’s howling:

      “No turning back, masters! See, we are in the care of Holy Church! I have the blessed wafer and the water both! No harm can befall us, if we but keep our hearts!”

      Nevertheless, one of the men stumbled as the priest had done before. The hurdle swayed, and the shrouded still form might have fallen off the rough platform.

      “Have a care!” growled a burly, thickset man. “Our work is yet to be done—if once the moonlight falls on the Beast, the foul thing is loose again!”

      He balanced the massive wooden hurdle against his thigh until the bearer was on his feet again. The man sobbed in fright, but he took comfort from the resolution of the thickset man.

      The priest raised his lantern,

      “All is well, Master Priest!” the thickset man said. “Lead on, and let us be done with this foul thing!”

      The men looked at the priest’s face and found no comfort. There was true dedication and real religious fervour in it, but he was terrified, just as they were. They saw his soft hands and remembered his high-pitched voice. The men of the parish had taken matters into their own hands: the priest would officiate, as was his duty, but they would make sure that the brutal and hideous thing that had to be done was carried through by their own hard, powerful hands. Butcher’s work needed their strength.

      When they reached the new church porch, they had recovered something of their earlier determination. The hurdle they carried was heavy, but there were enough of them to make the burden light for each man there: what lay on it added little to the beams and wet planks. The wife of the Lord of Stymead had not been a large woman. And this thing she called her lapdog was little larger than the cub of a hound. Both lay wrapped in the grave-windings.

      It was the priest who was near the end of his strength. Terror—stark, soul-ripping terror—had drained him. Perhaps because he had more knowledge of the thing they faced, he was enfeebled almost to the point of exhaustion. Yet something sustained him when they reached the porch.

      “Put fear aside,” he said, in his natural voice. He swung back the oaken doors and gestured to the men. “All is ready.”

      He lit a dozen lamps. The bearers had not put down the hurdle. They stood before the chancel staring down into the gaping pit.

      “Mine is the worst part,” said the burly man. “But all must do theirs. So let us be done!”

      The priest looked at the men of the Parish as they handled the tools of their various trades. There were masons, a smith, a carpenter, and a butcher. His face showed revulsion as the burly man fingered the edge of a heavy chopping-knife. Now that he was in his own church, the priest felt more assured. He could busy himself in the preparations for the lengthy rituals that were indicated in the sacred books. In his dripping robes, he moved with more confidence now; much of the terror that had been with him since the villagers had taken him to the night-creature and its frightful familiar had been dissipated.

      He no longer thought of what lay within the shroud.

      “God be with us this night, and all His angels, my masters,” he called when all was ready. “We have need of all His Grace and Powers to preserve us from the Enemy of Mankind.”

      H« shuddered as the men knelt before the altar. A memory of their shocked and bewildered faces came back to him. They had found the evil creatures by chance. Too drugged to stir from the spot, the creatures of night had been easily captured and enshrouded. But what when they should wake! He gabbled his words in fresh fear:

      “The Almighty has this night delivered unto us the foul pests that have haunted our village for the past year. You have discovered the lair of the venomous serpent, yet it is right that the Lady of Stymead should lie beside her husband, the gallant knight Lord Humphrey de Latours, when the foul spirit that holds her soul in thrall has been duly exorcised!”

      He would have said more, had not the burly man interrupted:

      “Exorcise away, priest! I would be home before dawn’s light.”

      The others murmured in agreement. More than one looked to the dripping hurdle and its still burden.

      “So be it,” said the priest. He looked again to the knife in the burly man’s grip. With it, the swine-killer could sever the head of a boar at one stroke. “Strike for the evil heart, then truly cut off her head!”

      “I am ready, priest.”

      The thunder crashed out at that moment, a heavy and sullen roaring that shook the beams of the high chancel. Crisp, blue-white light flared through the narrow windows as lightning played in a vast sheet across one entire side of the horizon, bathing the church and the village beyond in a ghastly glow. Huge thunder-peals followed, leaving the assembled men stunned and reeling from the effect of the successive shocks. Some called out to God and the saints. Others rushed to the porch, only to run back in helpless terror as more thunder-claps roared over the church. And still the lightning bathed the chancel and the narrow, sinis-ter pit in a wash of corpse-light.

      The priest gathered his wits.

      “Fear nothing, men of Stymead!” he cried, his voice shaking. “It is a trick of the Adversary. It is a show to seize your hearts and allow the venomous serpent to be free! You are safe in this house—come forward and hear the words of the Holy Book! Listen to the words that will send this evil into the Pit from which it came!”

      Several turned and knelt again before the altar. But the swine-killer’s nerve had failed. The heavy knife slipped from his grasp, to fall with a ringing clatter on the flagstones. As it jangled into silence, the priest intoned the prayers that would contain the undead things that had plagued the village so foully.

      He broke the wafer and sprinkled holy water. He took the nail that was assuredly from the Cross itself; it would pin the brass plate in place and keep the night-creatures within if all else failed. All was ready.

      “Courage!” he called, and he was stronger