"He was a funny little thing!" Zoe Murphy laughed, shook her head and set her blonde hair flying in the breeze from the car's half-open window. "Do you remember when we had him that year?"326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4gm0e6eANw
It was late in the summer of 1978 and they were driving down to stay with Cornelia and Dragos for a week. The last time they'd seen them was two years ago. John had thought the boy was strange then, and he'd said so on numerous occasions---not to Cornelia and surely not to Dragos himself, of course not, but to Zoe in private. Now he said so again:
"Funny little thing?" He cocked an eyebrow. "That's one way of putting it, I guess. Weird would be a better way! And from what I remember of him last time we came down he hasn't changed---what was a weird baby is now a weird young man!"
"Oh, John, that's ridiculous. All babies are different from one another. Dragos was, well, more different, that's all."
"That's not all," said John. "That child wasn't two months old when he came to us---and he had teeth! Teeth like little needles---sharp as hell! And I remember Cornelia saying he was born with them. That's why she couldn't breastfeed him."
"John," said Zoe warningly, a little sharply, reminding him that Penelope sat in the back of the car. She was their daughter, occasionally precocious girl of sixteen.
Penelope sighed, very deliberately and audibly, and said, "Oh, mum! I know what breasts are for---apart from being natural attractions for the opposite sex, that is. Why must you put them on your taboo list?"
"Ta-boob list!" John grinned.
"John!" said Zoe again, more forcefully.
"1978," Penelope scoffed, "but you'd never know it. Not in this family. I mean, feeding your baby's natural, isn't it? More natural than letting your breasts be groped in the back row of some grubby flea-pit cinema!"
"Penelope!" Zoe half-turned in her seat, her lips compressing to a thin line.
"It's been a long time," John glanced at his wife, semi-ruefully.
"What has?" she snapped.
"Since I was groped in a flea-pit cinema," he said.
Zoe snorted her exasperation. "She gets it from you!" she accused. "You've always treated her like an adult."
"Because she is an adult, very nearly," he answered. "You can only guide them so far, Zoe m'love, and after that they're on their own. Penelope's healthy, intelligent, happy, good-looking, and she doesn't smoke pot. She's worn a bra for nearly four years, and every month she----"
"John!"
"Taboo!" said Penelope, giggling.
"Anyway," John's irritation was showing now, "we weren't talking about Penelope but Dragos. Penelope, I submit, is normal. Her cousin---or cousin once removed, or whatever----is not."
"Give me a for-instance," Zoe argued. "An example. Not normal, you say. Well then, is he abnormal? Subnormal? Where's his defect?"
"Whenever Dragos crops up," Penelope joined in from the back, "you blokes always end up arguing. Is he really worth it?"
"Your mother's a very loyal person," John told her over one shoulder. "Cornelia's her cousin and Dragos is Cornelia's son. Which mean's they're untouchable. Your mother won't face simple facts, that's all. She's the same with all her friends: she won't hear a word against them. Very laudable. But I call a spade a space. I find---and have always found---Dragos a bit much. As I said before, weird."
"You mean," Penelope pressed, "a bit nine-bob notish?"
"Penelope!" her mother protested yet again.
"I get that one from you!" Penelope stopped her dead in her tracks. "You always stalk about gays as nine-bobbers."
"I never talk about----about homosexuals!" Zoe was furious. "And surely not to you about them!"
"I've heard Daddy----in conversation with you, about one or two of his man-friends---say that so-and-so is gay as a defrocked vicar," said Penelope matter-of-factly. "And you've replied: "What, so-and-so, nine-bobbish? Really?"
Penelope rounded on her and might well have lashed out physically if she could have reached her. Red-faced, she cried, "Then in the future we'll have to lock you in your blood room before we dare have an adult conversation! You horrid girl!"
"Perhaps you better had." Penelope was equally quick to rise. "Before I also start to swear!"
"All right, all right!" John quietened them. "Points taken all round. But we're on holiday, remember? I mean, it's probably my fault, but Dragos's a sore point with me, that's all. And I can't explain why. But he usually keeps out of the way most of the time we're there, and I can't help it but hope it's the same this time. For my peace of mind, at least. He's just not my sort of lad. As for him being how's-your-father..." (Penelope somehow contrived not to snigger) "---I can't say. But he did get kicked out of that boarding school, and...."
"He did not!" Zoe had to have her say. "Kicked out, indeed! He got his qualifications a year early, left a year before the rest. I mean to say, do qualifications----does being intelligent above the average----certify someone as a raving---homosexual? Heaven forbid! Cleaver Miss Know-it-all here has a couple of second class 'A' Levels, which apparently make her near omniscient; in which case Dragos has to be close to godlike! John, what qualifications do you have?"
"I fail to see what that's got to do with it," he answered. "The way I hear it, more gays come out of the universities than ever came out of all the secondary moderns put together. And...."
"John?"
"I was an apprentice," he sighed, "as you well know. Trade qualifications, I've got 'em all. And then I was journeyman---an architect earning money for my boss, until I got into business for myself. And anyway...."
"What academic qualifications?" she was determined.
John drove the car, said nothing, wound down his window a little and breathed warm air. After a while---"The same as you, darling."
"None whatsoever!" Zoe was triumphant. "Why, Dragos's cleverer than all of us combined. On paper, at least. I say give him time and he'll show us all a thing or two. Oh, I admit he's quiet, comes and goes like a ghost, seems less active and enthusiastic about life than a boy his age should be. But give him a break, for God's sake! Look at his disadvantages. He never knew his father, was brought up by Cornelia entirely on her own, and she's never been altogether with it since George died, has lived in that gloomy old mansion of a place for twelve years of his young life. Little wonder, he's a bit, well, reticent."
She seemed to have won the day. They said nothing to dispute her logic, had apparently lost all interest in the argument. Zoe searched her mind for a new topic, found nothing, relaxed in her seat.
Reticent. Penelope turned her own thoughts over in her mind. Dragos, reticent? Did her mother mean backward? Of course not, her argument had been all against that. Shy? Retiring? Yes, that's what she must've meant. Well, and he must seem shy---if one didn't know better. Penelope knew better, from that time two years ago. And as for queer---hardly. She would greatly doubt it, anyway. She secretly smiled. Better to let them go on thinking it, though. At least while they thought he was a woofter they wouldn't worry about her being in his company. But now, Dragos wasn't entirely gay. AC/DC, maybe.
Two years ago, yes....
It had taken Penelope ages to get him to speak to her. She remembered the circumstances clearly.
It'd been a beautiful Saturday, their second day of a ten-day spell; her parents and Aunt Cornelia gone of to Brighton for a day's sea- and sun-bathing; Dragos and Penelope were left in charge of the house, he with his Alsatian pup to play with and she to explore the gardens, the great barn, the crumbling old stables and the dark, dense copse. Dragos wasn't into bathing, indeed he hated the sun and sea, and Penelope would've preferred anything rather than to spend time with her parents.
"Walk with me?" she'd pressed Dragos, finding him alone with the gangling pup in the dim, cool library. He had shook his head.
Pale in the shade of this one room which the sun never seemed to reach, he'd lounged awkwardly on a settee, fondling the pup's floppy ears with one hand and holding a book in the other.
"Why not? You could show me the ground."
He'd glanced at the pup. "He gets tired if he walks too far. He's not quite steady on his legs. And I burn easily in the sun. I really don't care much for the sun. And anyway, I'm reading."
"You're not much fun to be with," she had told him, deliberately pouting. And she'd asked, "Is there still straw in the hayloft over the barn?"
"Hayloft?" Dragos had looked surprised. HIs long, not unhandsome face had formed a soft oval against the dark velvet of the back of the settee. "I haven't been up there in years."
"What're you reading, anyway?" She sat down beside him, reached for the book held loosely in his long-fingered, soft-looking hand. He drew back, kept the book from her.
"Not for little girls," he said, his expression not changing.
Frustrated, she tossed her hair, glanced all around the large room. And it was large, that room; partitioned in the center, just like a public library, with floor to ceiling shelves and book-lined alcoves all around the walls. It smelled of old books, dusty and musty. No, it reeked of them, so that you almost feared to breathe in case your lungs got filled with words and inks and desiccated glue and paper fibers.
There was a shallow cupboard in one corner of the room and its door stood open. Tracks in the threadbare carpet showed where Dragos had dragged a stepladder to a certain section of the shelving. The books on the top shelf were almost hidden in gloom, where old cobwebs were collecting dust. But unlike the neat rows of books in the lower shelves, they were piled haphazardly, lying in a jumble as if recently disturbed.
"Oh?" she stood up. "I'm a little girl, am I? And what does that make you? We're only one year apart, you know...." She went to the stepladder, began to climb.
Dragos's Adam's apple bobbed. He tossed his book aside and came easily to his feet. "You leave that top shelf alone," he said unemotionally, coming to the foot of the ladder.
She ignored him, looked at the titles, read out loud: "Coates, Human Magnetism, or How to Hypnotize. Huh! Mumbo-jumbo! Lycan-----er, Lycanthropy. Eh? And----The Erotic Obsession!" She clapped her hands delightedly. " What, dirty pictures, Dragos?" She took the book from the shelf, opened it. "Oh!" she said, rather more quietly. The black and white drawing on the page where the book had opened was rather more bestial than erotic.
"Put it down!" Dragos hissed from below.
Penelope put down the Obsession, read off more titles. "Vampirism---gross! Sexual Powers of Satyrs and Nymphomaniacs. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. And----Parasitic Creatures of the Netherworld? How diverse! And not dusty at all, these old books. Do you read them a lot, Dragos?"
He gave the ladder a shake and insisted, "Come down from there!" His voice was very low, almost menacing. It was guttural, deeper than she'd heard it before. Almost a man's voice and not a youth's at all. Then she looked down at him.
Dragos stood below her, his face turned up at a sharp angle just below the level of her knees. Her eyes were like holes punched in a paper face, with pupils shiny as black marbles. She stared hard at him but their eyes didn't meet, because he wasn't looking at her face.
"Why, I do believe," she told him then, teasingly, "that you're quite naughty, really, Dragos! What with these books and everything...." She had won her short dress because of the heat, and now she was glad.
He looked away, touched his brow, turned aside. "You----you wanted to see the barn?" His voice was soft again.
"Can we?" She was down the ladder in a flash. "I love old barns! But your mum said it wasn't safe."
"I think it's safe enough," he answered. "Cornelia worries too much." He had called his mother Cornelia since he was a little boy. She didn't seem to mind.
They went through the rambling house to the front, Dragos excusing himself for a moment to go to his room. He came back wearing dark spectacles and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. "Now you look like some pallid Mexican brigand," Penelope told him, leading the way. And with the black Alsatian pup tumbling at their heels, they made their way to the barn.
In fact it was a very basic outbuilding of stone, with a platform of planks across the high beams to form a hayloft. Next door were the stables, completely rundown, just a derelict old huddle of buildings. Until five or six years ago the Mateis had let a local farmer winter his ponies on the grounds, and he'd stored hay for them in the barn.
"Why on earth do you need such a big place to live?" Penelope asked as they entered the barn through a squealing door into shade and dusty sunbeams and the scurry of mice.
"I'm sorry?" he said after a moment, his thoughts elsewhere.
"This place. The whole place. And that high stone wall all the way around it. How much land does it enclose, that wall? Three acres?"
"Three and a half," he answered.
"A great rambling house, old stables, barns, an overgrown paddock---even a shady copse to walk through in the fall, when the colors are growing old! I mean, why do two ordinary people need so much space just to live in?"
"Ordinary?" he looked at her curiously, his eyes moistly gleaming behind dark lenses. "Do you consider yourself ordinary?"
"Of course."
"Well I don't. I think you're quite extraordinary. So am I, and so is Cornelia---all of us for different reasons." He sounded very sincere, almost aggressive, as if daring her to contradict him. But then he shrugged. "Anyway, it's not a question of why we need it. It's ours, that's all."
"But how did you get it? I mean, you couldn't have bought it! There must be so many other, well, easier places to live."
Dragos crossed the paved floor between piles of old slates and rusty, broken-down implements to the foot of the open wooden stairs. "Hayloft," he said, turning his dark eyes on her. She couldn't see those eyes, but she could feel them.
Sometimes his movements were so fluid it almost seemed as if he were sleepwalking. They were like that now as he climbed the stairs, slowly, step by deliberate step. "There is still straw," he said, voice languid as a deep pool.
She watched him he passed out of sight. There was a leanness about him, a hunger. Her father thought he was soft, girlish, but Penelope guessed otherwise. She saw him as an intelligent animal, as a wolf. Sort of furtive, but unobtrusive, and always there on the edge of things, just waiting for his chance....
She suddenly felt stifled and took three deep, deliberate gulps of air before following him. Going carefully up the wooden stairs, she said, "Now I remember! It was your great-grandfather's, wasn't it? The house, I mean."
She emerged into the hayloft. Three great bales of hay, blanched with age, stood dusty and withered in a pyramid. One end of the loft stood open, where projecting gables protected it from the weather. Thin, hot beams of sunlight came slanting in from chunks in the tiles, trapping dustmotes like flies in amber, forming yellow spotlights on the floorboards.
Dragos took out a pocket knife, sliced deftly at the binding of the uppermost bale. It fell to pieces like an ancient book, and he dragged great deep armfuls down onto the boards.
A bed fit for a gypsy, thought Penelope. Or wanton.
She threw herself down, was conscious that her dress rode up above her knickers where she lay down. She did nothing to adjust it. Instead she spread her legs a little, wriggled her backside and contrived to make the movement seem perfectly unconscious----even though it was not.
Dragos stood still for long moments and she cold feel his eyes upon her, but she just cupped her chin in her hands and stared out of the open end of the loft. From here you could see the perimeter wall, the curving driveway, the copse. Dragos's shadow eclipsed several discs of sunlight and she held her breath. The straw stirred and she knew he was right behind her, like a wolf in the forest.
His flopped hat fell in the straw on her left, his sunglasses plopped down into the hat; he got down beside her on her right, his arm falling casually across her waist. Casually, yes, and light as a feather, but she could feel it like a bar of iron. He lay not quite so far forward, propping his jaw in his right hand, looking at her. His arm, lying across her like that, must feel very awkward. He was taking most of its weight and she could feel it starting to tremble, but he didn't seem to mind. But of course he wouldn't, would he?
"Great-grandfather's yes," he finally answered her question. "He lived and died here. The place came down to Cornelia's mother. Her husband, my grandfather, didn't like it and so they rented it out and lived in London. When they died it fell to Cornelia, but by then it was on a life-lease to the old colonel who lived here. Eventually it was his turn to go, and then Cornelia came down to sell it. She brought me with her. I wasn't five years old yet, I think, but I liked the place and said so. I said we should live her, and Cornelia thought it a good idea."
"You really are remarkable!" she said. "I can't remember anything about when I was five." His arm had slid diagonally across her now, so that his fingers barely touched her thigh just below the curve of her bottom. Penelope could feel an almost electric tingle in those fingers. They held no such charge, she knew, but that's how it felt.
"I remember everything almost from the moment I was born," he told her, his voice so even it was almost, well, hypnotic. Maybe it was hypnotic. "Sometimes I even think I remember things from before my birth."
"Well, that might explain why you're so 'extraordinary,'" she told him, "but what is it makes me different?"
"Your innocence," he at once replied, his voice a purr. "And your desire to be otherwise." His hand caressed her rump now, the merest touch of electric fingers tracing the curve of her buttocks, to and fro, to and fro.
Penelope sighed, put a piece of straw between her teeth, slowly turned over onto her back. Her dress rode up even more. She didn't look at Dragos but gazed wide-eyed at sloping rows of tiles over head. As she turned so he lifted his hand a fraction, but didn't take it away.
"My desire to be otherwise? To not be innocent?" What makes you think that?" And she thought: because it's so obvious!
When he answered, Dragos's voice was a man's again. She hadn't noticed the slow transition, but now she did. Thick and dark, that voice, as he said, "I've read it. All girls of your age desire not to be innocent."
His hand fell on her belly, lingered over her naval, slipped down and crept under the band of her knickers. She stopped him there, trapping his hand with her own. "No, Dragos. You can't."
"Can't?" the word came in a gulp, choking. "Why?"
"Because----you're right. I am innocent. But also because it's the wrong time."
"Time?" he was trembling again.
She pushed him away, sighed abruptly and said, "Oh, Dragos----I'm bleeding!"
"Bleed---?" He rolled away from her, snatched himself to his feet. Startled, she stared at him standing there. He shivered as if in a fever.
"Bleeding, yes," she said. "It's perfectly natural, you know."
There was no pallor in his face now: it was red with blood, burning like a drunkard's face, with his eyes narrow slits dark as knife wounds. "Bleeding!" this time he managed to choke the word out whole. He reached out his arms towards her, hands hooked like claws, and for a moment she thought he would attack her. She could see his nostrils flaring, a nervous tic tugging the corner of his mouth.
For the first time she felt afraid, felt something of his strangeness. "Yes," she whispered. "It happens every month...."
His eyes opened up a little. Their pupils seemed flecked with scarlet. A trick of the light. "Ah! Ah---bleeding!" he said, as if only just understanding her meaning. "Oh, yes...." Then he reeled, turned away, went a little unsteadily down the steps and was gone.
Then Penelope had heard the puppy's wild yelp of joy (it had been stopped by the steps, which it couldn't climb) and its whining and barking fading as it followed Dragos back to the house. And finally she began to breathe again.
"Dragos!" she'd called after him then. "Your sunglasses and hat!" But if he heard, he didn't bother to answer.
She wasn't able to find him for the rest of the day, but then she hadn't really looked for him. And because she had her pride---and also because he'd failed to seek her out---she hadn't much bothered with him for the rest of their holiday. Maybe it'd been for the best; for she had been innocent, after all. She wouldn't have known what to do, not two years ago.
But when she thought of him, she still remembered his hand burning on her flesh. And now, going back to Devon with the countryside speeding by outside the car, she found herself wondering if there was still straw in the hayloft.....
John, too, had his secret thoughts about Dragos. Zoe could say what she liked but she couldn't change that. He was weird, that lad, and weird in several directions. It wasn't the only creeping-Jesus aspect that irritated John, though surely the youth's furtive ways were annoying enough. But he was sick, too. Not mental, maybe not even sick in his body, just generally sick. To look at him sometimes, to catch him unawares with a side-glance, was to look at a cockroach surprised by a switched-on light, or a jellyfish steaming away, stranded on the beach when the tide goes out. You could almost sense something seething in him. but if it wasn't mental or physical, and yet encompassed both, then what the hell was it?
Hard to explain. Maybe it was both mind and body---and soul too? Except John wasn't much of a one for believing in souls. He didn't disbelieve, but he would like evidence. He'd probably be praying when he died, just in case, but until then....
As for what John had said about Dragos at school: well, it was true, as far as it went. He had taken all of his exams early, and passed all of them, but that wasn't why he'd left early. John had a draughtsman, Giles Sayer, working for him in his London office, and Sayer had a young son in the same school. Zoe would hear none of it, of course not, but the stories had been wild. Dragos had "seduced" a male teacher, a halfway-gone gay he'd somehow switched on. Once over the top, the fellow had apparently turned into a raver, trying to roger every male thing that moved. He'd blamed Dragos. That was one thing. And then:
In his art classes, Dragos had painted pictures that caused a very gentle lady teacher to attack him physically; she'd also stormed his bed-space and turned his art folios. Out nature rambling (John hadn't known they still did that) Dragos had been found wandering on his own, his face and hands smeared with filth and entrails. Dangling from one hand he'd carried the remains of a stray kitten. Its carcass was still warm. He'd said a man had done it, but this was out on the moors, miles from anywhere.
And that wasn't all. It seemed he walked in his sleep and had apparently scared the living shit out of the younger boys, until the school had had to put a night-guard on their dorms. But by then the head had spoken at length with Cornelia and she'd agreed he could leave. It was that or expulsion---for the sake of the good name of the school.
And there'd been other things, lesser things, but that hadn't been the gist of it.
These were some of the reasons why John didn't like Dragos. But of course there was one other thing. It was something very nearly as old as Dragos himself, bit it had fixed itself in John's mind indelibly.
The sight of an old man clutching his sheets to his chest as he died, and his final whispered words: "Christen it? No, no---you mustn't! First have it exorcized!"
Zoe couldn't be strident if she had to be, but she was good through and through. She would never say a thing to hurt anyone, even though she might think certain things. To herself----if only to herself---she had to admit that she'd thought things about Dragos.
Now, lying back a little in her seat and stretching, feeling the cooling draught from the half-open window, she thought them again. Funny things: something about a big green frog, and something about the pain she'd get now and then in her left nipple.
The damn thing was hard to focus on; rather, she didn't like to focus on it. Personally she couldn't hurt a gnat. Of course a child, a mere five-year-old, wouldn't realize what he was doing. Or would he? The trouble was that as long as she'd known Dragos he'd always seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Even as a baby.
She'd called him a "funny little thing," but in fact John was right. Dragos had been more than just funny. For one thing, he never cried. No, that was exactly true, he had cried when hungry, at least when he was very small. And he had cried in directly sunlight. Photophobia, evidently, right from infancy. Oh, yes, and he'd cried at least one other time at his christening. Though that had seemed more rage (or outrage) that crying proper. As far as Zoe knew, he'd never had a proper christening.
She let her thoughts take hold, carrying her back. Dragos had just started to walk----to toddle, anyway----when Penelope came along. That was a month or so before poor Cornelia had been well enough to go home and take him back. Zoe remembered that time well. She'd been heavy with milk, fat as butter and happier than at any other time in her life. And now? What a picture of health she'd been!
One day when Penelope was just six weeks old, while she was feeding her, Dragos had come toddling in like a little robot, looking for that extra ounce of affection of which Penelope had robbed him. Jealousy even then, yes, for he was no longer all important. On impulse---feeling a pang of pity for the poor mite---she'd picked him up, bared her other breast to him, her left breast, and fed him.
Even remembering it, the twinge of pain in her nipple came back like a wasp sing to bother her. "Oh!" she said, stirring when she had fallen half-asleep.
"You okay?" John was quick to inquire. "Wind you window down a little more. Get some fresh air."
The steady purr of the car's engine brought her back to reality. "Cramp," she liked. "Pins and needles. Can we stop somewhere---the next café?"
"Sure," he answered. "There should be one any time now."
Zoe slumped, returned half-reluctantly to her memories. Feeding Dragos, yes----She'd sat down with both babies, nodded off while they fed, Penelope on the right, Dragos on the left. It'd been strange, a kind of languor had come over her, a lethargy she had no will to resist. But then, when the pain came, she'd come quickly awake. Penelope had been crying, and Dragos had been---bloody!
She'd stared at the toddler in something close to shock. Those weird black eyes of his fixed unwaveringly on her face. And his red mouth, fixed like a lamprey on her breast! Her milk and blood had run down the curve of her breast, and his face had been smeared and glistened red with it; so that he'd looked like a dark-eyed gorging leech.
When she'd cleaned herself up, and cleaned up Dragos too, she'd seen how he'd bitten through the skin around her nipple; his teeth had left tiny punctures. The bites had taken quite a while to heal, but their sting had never quite gone away....
Then there had been the frog episode. Zoe didn't really want to dwell on that, but it formed a persistent picture in her mind that she simply couldn't wipe clear. It'd happened after Cornelia had sold up in London, on the last day before she and Dragos had left the city and gone down to Devon to live in the old manor house.
John had built a pond in the garden of their Greenford home when Penelope was one; since when, with a minimum of help, the pond had stocked itself. Now there were lilies, a clump of rushes, an ornamental shrub bending over the water like a Japanese picture, and a large species of green frog. There were water snails, too, and at the edges a little green scum. Well, Zoe called it scum, anyway. Midsummer and there would normally be dragonflies, but that year they'd only seen one or two, and they'd been small ones of their kind.
She had been in the garden with her kids, watching Dragos where he played with a soft rubber ball. Or maybe "played" is the wrong word, for Dragos had trouble playing like other children. He seemed to have a philosophy: a ball is a ball, a rubber sphere. Drop it and it bounces, toss it against a wall and it returns. Other than that it's got no practical us, it cannot be considered a source of lasting interest. Others might argue the point, but that summed up Dragos's feelings on the subject. Zoe really didn't know why she'd bought the ball for him; he never really played with anything. He had bounced it, however, twice. And he'd tossed it against the garden wall, once. But on the rebound it'd rolled to the pond's edge.
Dragos had followed it with eyes half-scornful, until suddenly his interest had quickened. At the edge of the pond something leaped: a big frog, shiny green, poising itself where it'd landed, with two legs in the water and two on dry land. And the five-year-old child froze, becoming still as a cat in the first seconds that it senses prey. It was Penelope who ran to retrieve the ball, then skipped away with it up the garden, but Dragos had eyes only for the frog.
At that point John had called out from inside the house; something about the kebabs burning. They were to be the main course in a farewell meal for Cornelia. John was supposed to be doing chef duty.
Zoe had rushed in to save the day, along the crazy-paving, under the arch of trees on their trellis to the paved patio area at the rear of the house. It had taken a minute, two at the outside, to lift the steaming meat from the grill onto a plate on the outside table. Then Cornelia had come drifting downstairs in that slow get-their-someday fashion of hers, and John had appeared from the kitchen with his herbs.
"Sorry, darling," he'd apologized. "Timing is everything, and I'm out of practice. But I've got it all together now and all's well..."
Except that all had not been well.
Hearing Penelope's cry of alarm from the lower garden, Zoe had breathlessly retraced her steps.
At first, as she reached the pond, Zoe hadn't quite known what she was seeing. She thought Dragos must have fallen down in the green scum. Then her eyes focused and the picture firmed. And however much she'd tried to forget it, it had remained firm to this day.
The tiny white mosaic tiles at the pond's edge, slimed with blood and guts; and Dragos slimed, too, his face and hands sticky with goop. Crosslegged by the pond like a Buddha, Dragos, the frog like a torn green plastic bag in his inexperienced hands, slopping its contents. And that child of----of innocence?---studying its innards, smelling it, listening to it, apparently astonished by its complexity.
Then his mother had come wafting up from behind, saying; "Oh dear, oh dear! Was it a live thing? Oh, I see it was. He does that sometimes. Opens things up. Curiosity. To see how they work."
And Zoe, aghast, snatching up the whining Penelope and turning her face away, gasping, "But Cornelia, that's not some old alarm-clock---it's a frog!"
"Is it? Is it? Oh dear! Poor thing!" She fluttered her hands. "But it's a phase he's going through, that's all. He'll outgrow it....."
And Zoe remembered thinking, God, I really do hope so!
"Devon!" said John triumphantly, jogging her elbow, startling her. "Did you see the sign, the country boundary? And look, there's your café! Cream teas, fudge, clotted cream! We'll top the car up, have a bite to eat, and then we're on the last leg. Peace and quiet for a whole week. Lord, how I could use it....
Arriving at the house and turning off the Paignton road into its grounds, the party in the car found Cornelia and Dragos waiting for them on the gravel driveway. At first they very nearly failed to notice Cornelia, for she was overshadowed by her son. As John stopped the car, Penelope's jaw fell open a little. Zoe simply stared. John himself thought, Dragos? Yes, of course it is. But what's he been doing right?
Getting out of the car, finally Zoe spoke, echoing John's thought. "Dragos! My, but what a couple of years have done for you!" He held her briefly, taller by inches, then turned to Penelope where she got out of the back seat and stretched.
"I'm not the only one who's grown," he said. His voice was that dark one Penelope had heard on a previous occasion, apparently his natural voice now. He held her at arm's length, stared at her with those unfathomable eyes.
He's as handsome as the devil, she thought. Or maybe handsome was the wrong word for it. Attractive.....Yes! But unnaturally attractive. His long, straight chin, not quite lantern-jaw, high brow, straight, flattish nose----and especially his eyes----all combined to form a face that might seem quite odd on anyone else's shoulders. But coupled with that voice, and with Dragos's mind behind it, the effect was quite devastating. He looked somehow foreign, almost alien. His dark hair, flowing naturally back and forming something of a mane at the back of his neck, made him seem even more wolfish than she'd remembered. That was it---wolfish! And he was getting tall as a tree.
"You're still slim, anyway," she finally found something to say, however uninspired. "But what's Aunt Cornelia been feeding you?"
He smiled and turned to John, nodded and held out his hand. "John. Did you have a good trip? We've worried a little---the roads get so crowded down here in the summertime."
John! John groaned inwardly. First names, just like with Mum, hey? Still, it was better than being shied away from.
"Oh, it was a fine drive." John forced a smile, checking Dragos out but unobtrusively. The youth topped him by a good three inches. Add his hair to that and he looked taller still. Seventeen and he was already a big man. Big-boned, anyway. But give him another stone in weight and he'd be like a barn door! Also, his handshake was iron. Hardly limp-wristed, no matter the length of his fingers.
John was suddenly very much aware of his own thinning hair, his little paunch and slightly stodgy appearance. But at least I can go out in the sun! he thought. Dragos's pallor was one thing that never changed, even here he stood in the shade of the old house, like part of its shadow.
But if the last two years had improved Dragos, they'd not been as kind to his mother.
"Cornelia!" Zoe had meanwhile turned to her cousin, hugging her. Beneath the hug she had felt how frail she was, how trembly. The loss of her husband almost eighteen years before was still taking its toll. "And----and looking so well!"
Liar! John couldn't help thinking. Well? She looks like something clockwork that's about wound itself down!
It was true----Cornelia seemed like an automaton. She spoke and moved as though programmed. "Zoe, John, Penelope----so good to see you again. So glad you accepted Dragos's invitation. But come in, come in. You can guess what we've got for you, of course. A cream tea, naturally!"
She led the way, floating light as air, and went inside. Dragos paused at the door, turned and said, "Yes, do come in. Feel free. Enter freely and leave behind some of the happiness you bring." The way he said it, somehow ritualistically, made his welcome sound quite odd. As John, at the rear, made to pass him, Dragos added, "Can I bring in your luggage for you?"
"Why, thanks," said John. "Here, I'll give you a hand."
"Not necessary," Dragos smiled. "Just give me the keys." He opened the boot and took out their cases as if they were empty and weighed nothing. It wasn't just show, John could see that. Dragos was very strong....
Following him inside the house, and feeling just a shade useless, John paused on hearing a low growl of warning which came from an open cloakroom in an alcove to one side of the entrance hall. In there, in the deepest shadows behind a dark oak coatstand, something black as sin moved and yellow eyes glared. John looked harder, said, "What in....?" and the growling came louder.
Dragos, halfway down the corridor towards the stairs, turned and looked back. 'Oh, don't let him intimidate you, John. His bark is worse than his bite, I promise you." And in a harsher tone of command: "Come, boy, out into the light where we can see you."
A black Alsatian, almost full grown (was this monster really Dragos's pup?) came slinking into view, baring its teeth at John as it slid by him. The dog went straight to Dragos, stood waiting. John noticed that it didn't wag its tail.
"It's okay, old chap," the youth murmured. "You make yourself scarce." At which the vicious-looking creature moved on into the house.
"Good God!" said John. "Thank goodness he's well trained. What's his name?"
"Vlad," Dragos answered immediately, turning away, cases and all. "It's Romanian, I think. Means 'Prince' or something. Or it did in the old days....."
Dragos wasn't much visible for the next two or three days. The fact didn't especially bother John; if anything he was glad. Zoe merely thought it odd that he wasn't around. Penelope felt he was avoiding her and was annoyed about it, but she didn't let it show. "What does he do with himself all day?" Zoe asked Cornelia, for the sake of something to say, when they were alone together one morning.
Cornelia's eyes seemed constantly dull, but only mention Dragos and they'd take on a startled, almost shocked brightness. Zoe mentioned him now---and sure enough, there was that look.
"He has his interests......" She at once tried to change the subject, words tumbling out of her: "We're thinking about having the old stables down. There are extensive vaults under the grounds---old cellars, wine cellars my grandfather used---and Dragos thinks the stables will crash right through them one day. If we have them down we'll sell the stone. It's good stone, should fetch a decent price."
"Vaults? I wasn't aware of that. You say Dragos goes down there?"
"To monitor their condition," (more words babbling out of her). 'He worries about maintenance....could collapse, make the house unsafe....just old corridors, almost like tunnels, and vaults opening off them. Full of nitre, spiders, rotten old wine racks---nothing of interest."
Seeing the sudden buildup of her---frenzy?----Zoe got up, crossed over to Cornelia, laid a hand on her fragile shoulder. The older woman reacted as if she'd been slapped, jerked away from Zoe. Her eyes suddenly focused. "Zoe," she said, her voice a shivering whisper, "don't ask about that place below. And never go down there! It's not----not safe down there...."
The Sulyards had come down from London on the third Thursday in August. The weather was beastly hot and showed no sign of letting up. On the Monday Zoe and Penelope drove off to buy straw sunhats for themselves in Paignton a few miles away. Cornelia was having her noontime snooze and Dragos was nowhere to be found.
John remembered Zoe mentioning the vaults under the house; wine cellars, according to Cornelia. With nothing better to do he went out, walked around the house to the back, came face to face with a sort of shed built of old stone. he'd noticed it before, had long since concluded that it must be an old, disused outdoor loo and until now had had nothing more to do with it. It had a tiled, sloping roof and a door facing away from the house. Shrubbery grew rank, untended all about. The door was sagging on rotten hinges but John managed to drag it ajar. And squeezing inside, he knew at once that this much be an entrance to the alleged cellars. Narrow stone steps went down steeply on both sides of a ramp perfectly suited for the rolling of barrels. You could find covered delivery points like this in the yard of any old pub. He went carefully down the stairs to a door at the bottom, began to push it squealingly open.
Vlad was in there!
His muzzle came through the first three inches of gap even as John pushed on the door. The snarl of rage preceded it by the merest fraction of a second, and snarl and snout both were the only warning John got. Shocked, he snatched back his hands, and only just in time. the Alsatian's teeth snapped on the doorjamb where his fingers had been, tearing off long splinters of wood. Heart hammering, John leaned on the door, shut it. He'd seen the dog's eyes and they had looked quite hateful.
But why would Vlad be down there in the first place? John could only suppose that Drago had put him there to keep him out of the way while guests were around. A wise move, for obviously Vlad's bark was not as bad as his bite! Maybe Dragos was down there with him. Well, they were a duo John could do well without!
Feeling shaken, he left the ground and walked half a mile down the road to a pub a the crossroads. On the way, surrounded by fields and lanes, birdsong and the normal, entirely pleasant hum of insects in the hedgerows, his nerves slowly recovered. The sun was hot and by the time he reached his destination he was ready for a drink.
The pub was ancient, thatched, all oak beams and horse-brasses, with a gently ticking grandfather clock and a massive white cat overhanging its own chair. After Vlad, John could stand cats well enough. He ordered a lager, perched himself on a barstool.
There were others in the bar: a fashionable young couple seated well away from John at a corner table close to small-paned windows, who doubtless owned the little sports car he'd seen parked in the yard; local youths in another corner, playing dominoes; and two old-timers deep in the conversation over their pints at a nearby table. It was the muttered, lower tones of this latter pair which attracted him. Sipping his ice-cold lager and after the barkeep had moved on to other tasks, John thought he heard the word "Hartley" and his ears pricked up. Hartley House was Cornelia's place.
"Oh, at? That 'in up there, hey? A funny 'in, I'm told."
"Course there ain't a jot o' proof, but she'd bin seen wi' 'em, right enough. An' clean off Sharkham Point she went, down Brigham way. 'Orrible!"
A local tragedy, obviously, thought John. The Point was a headland of cliffs projecting into the sea. He glanced at the two old-timers, nodded and had his nod returned, turned back to his drink. But their conversation stayed with him. One of them was thin, ferret-faced, the other red and portly, the latter doing the storytelling.
Now he continued, "Carryin' o' course."
"Pregnant, were she?" the thin one gasped. "It were 'is, ya reckon?"
"I reckons nuttin'," the first denied. "No proof, like I said. An' anyway, she were a rum 'in. But so young. 'Tis a pity."
"A pity's right," the thin one agreed. "But ter jump like that----what made 'er do it, d'you think? I mean, unwed an' carryin' these days ain't nuttin'!"
Out of the corner of his eyes, John saw them lean closer. Their voices fell lower still and he strained to hear what was said:
"I reckon," said the portly one, "that Nature told 'er it weren't right. You know 'ow a ewe'll cast a puggled lamb? Suthin' like that, poor lass."
"It weren't right, says you? They opened 'er up, then?"
"Oh, arrr, they did that! Tide were out an' she knew it. She weren't goin' in the water that one. She were goin' down on the rocks! Makin' sure, she were. Now 'ere, strictly 'tween you an' me, my girl Emily's at the 'ospital, as ye know. She says that when they brung 'er in she were dead as a mutton. But they sounded 'er belly, an' it were still a'kickin'.....!"
After a moment's pause: "The child?"
"Well what else, you old fool! So they opened 'er up. 'Orrible it were---but there's none but a handful knows of it, so this stops right 'ere. Well, doctor took one look at it an' put a needle in it. He just finished it there an' then. An' into a plastic bag it went an' down to the 'ospital furnace. An' that was that."
"Deformed," the thin one nodded. "I've heard o' such."
"Well, this one weren't so much deformed as----as not much formed a-tall!" the florid one informed. "It were----'ow'd me Emily put it?---like some kinda massive tumor in 'er. A terrible sorta fleshy lump, and fibrous. But it were s'posed t' 'ave been a child, for there was afterbirth an' all that. But for sure it were better off dead! Me Emily said as 'ow there were eyes where there shouldn't be, an' things like teeth, an' 'ow it mewled suthin' terrible when th' light fell on it!"
John had finished his lager, the last of it with a gulp. The door of the pub was flung open and a party of young people came in. Another moment and one of them had found a juke-box in some hidden alcove; rock music washed over everything. The barkeep came back, pulled pints for all he was worth.
John left, headed back down the road. Halfway back, his car pulled up and Zoe shouted, "Get in the back."
She wore a straw hat with a wide black band, contrasting perfectly with her summer dress. Penelope, sitting beside her, wore one with a red band. "How's that?" Zoe laughed as John plumped down in the back seat and slammed the door. Mother and daughter tilted their heads coquettishly, showing off their hats. "Just like two village girls out for a drive, we are."
"Around here," John answered darkly, "village girls need to watch what they're doing." But he didn't explain his meaning, and in any case he wouldn't have mentioned Hartley in the same breath as the story he'd overheard in the pub. He took it that he'd just misinterpreted the first few words. However that may be, the unpleasantness of the thing stayed with him for the rest of the day.
The next morning (Tuesday) John was up late. Zoe had offered him breakfast in bed but he'd declined, gone back to sleep. He got up at ten to a quiet house, made himself a little breakfast that turned out quite bland. Then, in the living room, he found Zoe's note:
Darling----
Dragos and Penelope are out walking Vlad. I think I'll drive Cornelia into town and buy her something. We'll be back for lunch.
Zoe
John sighed his frustration, chewed his bottom lip angrily. This morning he'd meant to have a quick look at the cellars, just out of curiosity. Dragos could have perhaps shown him around down there. As for the rest of the day: he'd planned on driving the girls to the beach at Sercombe; a day by the sea might fetch Cornelia out of herself. The salty air would be good for Penelope, too, who'd been looking a bit peaky. Just like Zoe to be cab-happy with the car the minute they were out of London!
Oh, well----maybe there'd still be time for the beach this afternoon. But what to do with himself this morning? A walk into Old Paignton, to the harbor, maybe? It'd be a fair bit of a walk, but he could always drop in somewhere for a pint along the way. And later, if he was tired or pressed for time, he'd just come back by taxi.
John did exactly that. He took his binoculars with him and spent a little time gazing at near-distant Brigham across the bay, returned to Hartley by taxi at about 12:30 and paid the driver off at the gate. He'd enjoyed both the long wall and his glass of cold beer enormously, and it seemed he'd time the whole expedition just perfectly for lunch.
Then, wandering up the driveway where the curving gravel path came closest to the copse---a densely grown stand of beech, birch and alder, with one mighty cedar towering slightly apart----there he came across his car, its front doors standing open and the keys still in the ignition. John stared at the car in mild surprise, turned in a slow circle and glanced all about.
The copse had an overgrown crazy-paving path winding through its heart, and a once-elegant white three-bar fence running around it---like a wood in a book of fairy tales. The fence was leaning now and very much off-white, with rank growth sprung up on both sides. John looked in that direction but he couldn't see anybody. Tall grasses and brambles, the tops of fenceposts, trees. And----something big and black moving stealthily in the undergrowth? Vlad?
It could well be that Zoe, Penelope, Cornelia and Dragos were all walking together in the copse; surely it'd be leafy and cool under the canopy of trees. But if it was only Dragos and the dog in there, or the damn dog all by himself.....
Suddenly it came to John that he feared one as much as the other. Yes, feared them! Dragos wasn't like any other person he knew, and Vlad wasn't like any other dog. There was something wrong with both of them. And in the middle of a quite, hot summer day John shivered.
Then he got a hold of himself. Scared? Of a queer, freakish youth and a three-quarters grown dog? Rubbish!
He gave a loud "''Allooooo!"----and got no answer.
Irritated now, his previously pleasant mood waning, he hurried to the house. Inside---nobody! He went through the old place slamming doors, finally climbed the stairs to his and Zoe's bedroom. Where the hell was everybody? And why had Zoe left his car like that? Was he to spend the whole day on his bloody own?
From his bedroom window he could see most of the grounds at the front of the house right to the gate. The barn and huddled stables interfered with the view of the copse, but.....
John's attention was suddenly riveted by a splash of color showing in the tall grass this side of the fence where it circled the copse. It caught his attention and held it. He moved a fraction, tried to see beyond the projecting cables of the old barn. It wouldn't come into focus. Then he remembered his binoculars, still hanging around his neck. He quickly put them to his eyes, adjusted them.
Still the gables intervened, and he'd got the range wrong. The splash of color was still there----a dress?---but a flesh-pink tone was moving against it. Moving insistently. With viciously impatient hands, John finally got the range right, brought the picture close. The splash of summer colors was s dress, yes. And the flesh-colored tone was---flesh! Naked flesh!
John scanned the scene disbelievingly. They were in the grass. He couldn't see Penelope---not her face, anyway, for he was face down, backside in the air. And Dragos mounting her, frantic in his rage, his passion, his hands gripping her waist. John began to tremble and he couldn't strop it. Penelope was a willing party to this, had to be. Well, and he'd said she was an adult---but God!----there must be limits.
And there she was, face down in grass, naked as a baby---John's baby girl---with her straw hat and her dress tossed aside and her pink flesh open to this....this slime! John no longer feared Dragos (if he ever had) but hated him. The weird-looking bastard would look a sight weirder when he was finished with him.
He snatched his binoculars from his neck, tossed them down on the bed, turned towards the door---and his muscles locked rigid. John's jaw fell open. Something he'd seen, some monstrous thing burned on his mind's eye. With his hands numb to the bone he took up the binoculars, fixed them again on the couple in the long grass. Dragos had finished, lay sprawled alongside his partner. But John let the glasses slide right over them to the hat and messed-up dress.
The straw hat had a wide black band. It was Zoe's hat. And now that fact had dawned he saw it was also Zoe's dress.
The binoculars slipped from John's fingers. He staggered, almost fell, flopped down heavily on his bed. On their bed, his and Zoe's. Willing party---had to be. The words kept repeating in his whirling head. He couldn't believe what he'd just seen, but he had to believe. And she was a willing party. Had to be.
How long he sat there in a daze he couldn't tell: five minutes, ten? But finally he snapped out of it. He snapped out of it, shook himself, knew what he had to do. All those stories from Dragos's school; they must be true. The bastard was a pervert! But Zoe, what of Zoe?
Could she be drunk? Or drugged? That was it! Dragos must've slipped her something.
John stood up. He was cold now, cold as ice. His blood boiled but his mind was a white snowfield, with the tracks he must take clearly delineated. He looked at his hands and felt the strength of both God and the devil flowing in them. he would tear out the black, soulless eyes of that swine; he would eat his rotten heart!
He staggered downstairs, through the empty house, reeled drunkenly, murderously toward the copse. And he found Zoe's hat and dress exactly where he'd seen them. But no Zoe, no Dragos. Blood pounded in John's temples; hate like acid corroded his mind, peeling away ever layer of rationality. Still reeling, he scrambled his way through low brambles to the gravel drive, glared his loathing at the house. Then something told him to look behind. Back there, at the gates, Dragos stood watching, then started forward uncertainly.
Something of sanity returned. John hated Dragos now, intended to kill him if he could, but he still feared the dog. There'd always been something about dogs, and especially this one. He ran back towards the house, and coming round a screen of bushes saw Drago striding through the shrubbery towards the rear of the building. Towards the entrance to the cellars.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4lQGAFrPMr
"Dragos!" John tried to yell, but the word came out as a gasping croak. He didn't try again. Why warn the perverted little sod? Behind him, Vlad put on a little speed, began to lope.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQjMh6Y57ro
At the corner of the house John paused for a moment, gulped air desperately. He was out of shape. Then he saw a rusty old mattock leaning against the wall and snatched it up. A glance over his shoulder told him that Vlad was coming, his strides stretching now, ears flat to his head. John wasted no more time but plunged through the low shrubbery to the entrance to the vaults. And there stood Dragos at the open door. He heard Dragos coming, turned his head and cast a startled glance his way.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFawvL7FFtz
"Ah, John!" He smiled a sickly smile. "I was just wondering if perhaps you'd like to see the cellars?" Then he saw John's expression, the mattock in his white-knuckled hands.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFgR3d65ojq
"The cellars?" John choked, almost entirely deranged with hatred. "Yes I fucking would!" He swung his picklike weapon. Dragos put up an arm to shield his face, turned away. The sharper, rustier blade of the heavy tool took him in the back of his right shoulder, crunched through the lower part of the scapula and buried itself to the haft in his body.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFGurKXw035
Thrown forward, Dragos went toppling down the central ramp, the mattock still sticking in him. As he fell he said. "Ah! Ah!"---in no way a scream, more an expression of surprise, shock. John followed, arms reaching, lips drawn back from his teeth. He pursued Dragos, and Vlad pursued him.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN163nK5ltr
Dragos lay face down at the bottom of the steps beside the open door to the vaults. He moaned, moved awkwardly. John slammed a foot down in the middle of his back, levered the mattock out of him. "Ah! Ah!" again Dragos gave his peculiar, sighing cry. John lifted the mattock---and heard Vlad's rumbling growl close behind.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwE8dAE0w3g
He turned, swung the mattock in a deadly arc. The dog was stopped in mid-flight as the mattock smacked flatly against the side of its head. It crumpled to the concrete floor, groaned like a man. John panted hoarsely, lifted his weapon again---but there was no sign of consciousness in the animal. Its sides heaved but it lay still, tongue protruding. Out like a light.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdOa0LpLHPd
And now there was only Dragos.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzcMZi3oz1o
John turned, saw Dragos staggering into the vault's unknown darkness. Unbelievable! With his injury, still the bastard kept going. John followed, kept Drago's stumbling figure visible in the gloom. The cellars were extensive, rooms and alcoves and midnight corridors, but John didn't let his quarry out of sight for one moment. Then---a light!326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsUJCztSfp2
John peered through an arched entrance into a dimly illuminated room. One single dusty bulb, shaded, hung from a vaulted ceiling of stone blocks. John had momentarily lost sight of Dragos in the darkness surrounding the cone of light; but then the youth staggered between him and the light source, and John picked him up again and advanced. Dragos saw him, swung an arm wildly at the light in an attempt to put it out of commission. Injured, he missed his aim, setting the lamp and shade dancing and swinging on their flex.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxq6aqLnk6g
Then, by that wildly gyrating light, John saw the rest of the room. In intermittent flashes of light and darkness, he picked out the details of the hell he'd walked into.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡotxfcmiJks
Light---and in one corner a glimpse of piled wooden racks and cobwebbed shelving. Darkness----and Dragos an even darker shape that crouched uncertainly in the center of the room. Light---and along one wall Cornelia seated in an old cane chair, her eyes bulging but vacant and her mouth and flaring nostrils wide as yawning caverns. Darkness----and a movement close by, so that John put up the mattock to defend himself. Insane light---and to his right a huge copper vat, six feet across and seated on copper legs; with Penelope slumped in a dining chair on one side, her back to the nitre-streaked wall, and Zoe, naked, likewise positioned on the other side. Their inner arms dangling inside the rim of the bowl, and something in the bowl itself seeming to move restlessly, throwing up ropes of doughy matter. Flickering darkness----out of which came Dragos's laughter: the clotted, sick laughter of someone warped irreparably. The light again---which found John's eyes fixed on the great vat, or more properly on the women. And the picture searing itself indelibly into his brain.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ1aEOuXaGO
Penelope's clothing ripped down the front and pulled back, and the girl lolling there like a slut with her lugs sprawled open, everything displayed. Zoe, likewise; but both of them grimacing, their faces working hideously, showing alternating joy and total horror; their arms in the vat, and the nameless slime crawling on their arms to their shoulders, pulsating from its unknown source!326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3gaMdM7W5Y
Merciful darkness---and the thought in John's tottering mind: God! It's feeding on them, and it's feeding itself to them! And Dragos so close now that he could hear his rasping breathing. Light again, as the lamp settled to a jerky jitterbug....and the mattock wrenched from John's nerveless fingers and hurled away. And John finally face to visage with the man he'd intended to kill, who now he discovered to be a hardly a man at all but something more horrible than his worst nightmares.326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxssVlGYFsL
Fingers of rubber with the strength of steel gripped his shoulder and propelled him effortlessly, irresistibly towards the vat. "John," the nightmare gurgled almost conversationally, "I want you to meet something....."326Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpN9tnV9XnQ
