CHAPTER 22
n the hours that passed after the
others had gone, the women watched TV. The professor had sternly instructed
them not to leave the pentacle again, and they were adhering to his orders. Their
memories of what happened in Winnie's room last night were far too vivid for
either of them to underestimate the danger they were in.
By
half eleven, though, they had both become weary of the television, and Marian
nipped outside the pentacle to switch it off. As soon as she had done it she
hastened back to the pentacle, her heart racing in her chest. She stared at
Winnie for a moment, then burst into giggling laughter. Winnie watched her,
white-faced, then she started to laugh as well. Hysteria lurked near the edge
of their laughter, as they were both too well aware. Yet they laughed till
tears began to stream from their eyes, and they clung to each other like two
young girls in a dormitory frolic.
"A
few weeks ago and we would have laughed our sides out, seeing us here, out of
our wits with fear," Marian said, when some of their laughter had died
away.
Winnie
nodded, though she would have given anything to exchange that for the fear that
gripped so tight to her heart, giving it a squeeze now and then out of
viciousness as if to remind her that it was still there, waiting to show itself
again. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and stared round the room.
"Marian,"
she whispered softly - too softly for Marian to hear. "Marian," she
repeated, louder this time, some of her fear showing itself in her voice. "Is
it my eyes, or is the light growing dim?"
"Growing
dim?" Marian gazed round the room. She narrowed her eyes as if to pierce
the greyness that seemed to be flowing into it, like a mist whose presence
could only be detected by a lessening brilliance of the light.
Within
several minutes neither of them had any doubt that the room was growing darker.
Shadows lengthened. The harsh glare of the light bulbs became pale and sickly. While
the air became chill. Icily chill. Winnie clamped her arms about her, and
shuddered as she breathed.
"Marian,
it's starting - it's starting again - like last night," she whispered. The
women clung together again, silent now as they stared into the grey shadows
drawing in about them.
"We're
safe within the pentacle," Marian said in a shaky voice that lacked
conviction. Her plump face mirrored this as she held onto Winnie. "We're
safe," she repeated.
The
shadows thickened in the air as the light grew dimmer, as if gaseous grey
tendrils of darkness were reaching out, coiling about each other into an
interwoven network of gathering greyness that blurred what light there was as
it seeped across the floor. As the gloom drew up to the thin lines of the
pentacle, so there developed a distinction now between the colour of the floor
within the star and that outside. Instinctively the women drew even nearer the
centre, their arms wrapped tight about each other as their bodies shivered at
the intensifying coldness of the air and the fear they felt building inside
them. Winnie's face, its urbane sophistication long since drained away from it,
was drawn with terror. Thin lines, cut deep into her flesh like long-worn
wrinkles, marked the edges of her mouth as she strained against the scream she
felt coiled inside her throat. Her hair hung dishevelled about her shoulders,
tangled with sweat. Her finger nails tightened into Marian's shoulders, drawn
to a hair-trigger tenseness.
"Marian,"
she whispered, "you'll not let it come - not again - not here..."
Marian
brushed a hand through Winnie's hair as she pressed her head to her shoulders,
her own fears smothered for the moment as she concentrated on her friend's
distress.
"We're
safe here, Winnie; trust in what the professor told us. He knows what he's
doing. We're safe. Quite safe. Stay here with me and whatever happens out there
can't hurt us. Can't hurt us at all."
They
rocked back and forth in each other's arms as the cold grew dank, like the damp
chill deep inside a disused sewer. A smell of decay drew about them, rancid and
foul. The thickening darkness rose on every angle of the pentacle, pressed tight
against it, as if it was trying to crush it inwards. Higher and higher the
gloom began to weave itself, and to their eyes, as they watched, it was as if a
dense layer of spiders' webs was being built all around them. Soon most of the
room was hidden behind it, and its density, as it piled up higher and higher,
increased with it, as if it was adding inches to its thickness as it rose, foot
by foot from the floor.
For
maybe an hour it coalesced, rigidly mirroring the geometric lines of the
pentacle, so that it seemed, after a time, as if the network of webs was part
of the pentacle's protective walls, paradoxically adding to their appearance of
security, and Marian could feel Winnie's tension gradually subside. She relaxed
her own grip as their fears started to fade.
"Do
you feel better?" she asked, and Winnie nodded, not trusting herself to
speak, her throat too dry. Marian peered at the webs of darkness - they looked
solid, as if she could reach out and feel them, like matted lengths of hair,
thick and grey.
Gradually,
she eased herself from Winnie's arms and stood. The cold was still as severe as
before, and her fingers and toes were becoming numb from it. The air misted
before her mouth as she breathed.
"Some
air conditioning this place has!" she muttered to herself in an attempt at
humour. With a sudden stab of determination she took two steps towards the
pentacle walls and stared at the webs - or whatever they really were, she
thought, repelled by their coarseness. If they were real webs, they were old
ones, heavy with dust. Nearer to, they were more like hair, tangled, unwashed,
knotted hair woven into mats. Reinforcing this image, she noticed thousands
upon thousands of small insects crawling through them. She squeezed her eyes
with the knuckles of her hands and looked again. There they were: minute
insects, round, white, hump-backed bodies and wriggling rows of almost
invisible legs. Mites - or lice. Like head lice. Hair - she felt almost tempted
for some insane reason to test the reality of the stuff surrounding them,
despite the thousands of mites swarming across it. Her fingers twitched, and
she had to make a conscious effort to restrain her hand from touching it - the
professor's words came back to her, and she knew if she touched the strands her
fingers would have passed beyond the protection of the pentacle. She held back
and took a deliberate step away from it. Winnie stood close by beside her.
"What
is it?" Winnie asked. Her voice trembled even now, though Marian felt
calmer, reassured by the inability of the grey fibres to pass beyond the thin
protective lines of salt.
"Something
they've sent against us," Marian answered. "What it's supposed to do
to us, I don't know. It looks harmless enough, despite those disgusting
creatures crawling through it, but looks don't mean anything, I don't
suppose."
The
cold grew worse - impossibly worse. And Marian wished they had thought
to bring extra clothes with them inside the pentacle, but the earlier warmth of
the hotel's air conditioning had lulled them.
"Something
else must be happening," Winnie said. Her eyes seemed to open unnaturally
wide, till their whites could be seen all around them. "This cold -
something else is here - something worse." Her memories of the thing at
the window last night, beckoning her with the leprous remnants of its fingers,
rolled back across her mind, and she shuddered. Her knees felt weak and she had
an overwhelming urge to urinate.
Something
stirred behind the webs in front of them. First one, then two gaps were ripped
through them. Fingers - dead fingers
- curled into them, bunching them into balls that were tugged back and
violently scattered to the side. More hands - more dead hands - joined in the work. Larger gaps were torn in the webs,
as if this barrier, separating them from whatever horror had crept into the
room, was being destroyed so whatever was there could reach and attack them.
"It's
getting through!" Winnie screamed. She pulled herself from Marian. "It's getting through!"
Marian
glanced from Winnie to the webs. Rotten fingers, their nails like chewed-up
claws, tore down the webs. Only half-seen, leprous, swollen faces peered at
them. She felt her stomach muscles tighten, and she knew one glimpse more and
she would throw up.
"They're
coming through!" Winnie cried. Through her nausea, Marian realized that
Winnie was in a state of hysteria. She tugged her eyes away from the creatures
tearing at the webs.
"We're
safe," she said to Winnie, but the woman wouldn't listen.
"They're
coming through, I tell you. They're coming through!" She grovelled before
them, mewling through trembling, bloodless lips.
"They're
not! We're safe."
Winnie
screamed. She jumped to her feet in panic.
"We've
got to get out of here. They'll trap us. Kill
us!" She punched Marian's hands away from her and ran across the
pentacle to where the webs still stood as a solid, implacable barrier between
them and the rest of the room. "We've got to get out of this place!"
Winnie shrieked.
She
reached for the untouched webs.
"For
God's sake, stop!" Marian
screamed out to her.
But
her hands were already at the webs. For a moment Winnie ripped into them, then
her screams rose even higher into an ear-splitting shriek of terror. Hands,
like the decaying claws of a score of lepers, fastened themselves to her arms. Thick
fingernails scratched, then caught in her skin. There was blood from the wounds
they gouged into her. Blood that dripped onto the floor. Winnie shook her head
violently from side to side as she desperately tried to tug her arms back
inside the pentacle, but more hands gripped her, tugging her to them with a
hard, relentless strength that dragged her feet, scrabbling uselessly, across
the floor.
"Marian!
Help! Help me, please!"
Marian
leapt to her. She hooked her fingers in the belt around her jeans and pulled. Bent
double, she tried to use all her weight to slow her, to stop her, to pull her
back into safety again, but it was no use. Her own feet slithered on the floor,
unable to gain a purchase as she saw the webs being torn apart in front of
them, and more dead faces stared at them. Hands, held back by the pentacle,
hung poised in the air, splintered fingernails, like blackened shards of
splintered wood, ready to reach out and grab them once they were past the
pentacle.
Her
stomach felt as if it was going to burst as she tugged and tugged at Winnie's
belt, all her strength concentrated in the grim effort. It hurt. It hurt bad. And
her teeth were ground into a grimace as she strained to hold on, to pull her
friend back, to keep her feet from being dragged across the floor. Winnie's
shrieks rose even higher as she writhed and twisted her lithe body in an effort
to wrench herself free of the hands. But it was no use. Marian saw this - felt
this - as her hands reached the edge of the pentacle. She hung on even now,
unwilling to give up, to let her friend be dragged from her grasp. Then the
pain hit her arms as nails scraped and gouged thick grooves into her flesh. She
saw her blood flow to her elbows as the fingers scratched her arms. She
strained, opened her mouth in a last minute protest of despair as she felt her
grasp start to weaken, releasing the belt. She kicked herself backwards. The
fingers made a grab for her arms, and her hands were torn as she rolled into a
sobbing, huddled ball in the centre of the pentacle. She clutched her hands to
her and felt the hot wetness of her blood as it soaked through her jumper. A
howling, shrieking Bedlam of hysteria swirled around the room beyond the
pentacle, but she screwed her eyes shut against what was there. She doubled up
till her knees were pushed against her chin and her eyes were pressed into the
damp, dark heat of her hands.
"Oh,
Lord have mercy," she mumbled to herself, as if this and only this could
save her sanity from whatever was going on around her. "Oh, Lord have
mercy, have mercy. Oh, Lord have mercy."
It
was the beginning of the longest night of her life.
