The Hammer Horror Omnibus (7 page)

“A day or two!”

“You’re in a very weak condition. I don’t want you to overtax your strength.”

This time Paul succeeded in struggling up to a sitting position.

“For pity’s sake, I must know more about this. I’m sorry I wasn’t up to it for a moment just then. Look, let’s talk about it. We must get to the bottom of this whole thing. I must—”

“You’re suffering from shock,” said Namaroff, “and it’s essential that you should rest.”

“I tell you I’ll be all right.”

“Miss Hoffmann, please.”

Carla gave Paul a sympathetic glance and went to the door with the Doctor. When Namaroff had gone out she stood with the door open for a moment, smiling as though offering a promise—a promise to return, to listen to him, to make things somehow all right.

Paul realized how weak he was. Just the effort of sitting up was a strain. He let himself sink back.

Before Carla closed the door he heard an excited burst of conversation in the corridor outside, dominated by Namaroff’s sharp, savage questions.

“Not quite dead when you found her—is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s right, sir,” a man’s surly voice responded.

“Did she speak? Tell you anything?”

“She’d enough strength left to spit in my face. And then she died.”

Paul groped for some meaning in this, but it didn’t fit into the hazy pattern of his own experiences. Some other patient, he supposed. Some other unfortunate trapped in a physical or mental nightmare.

He tried to stay awake. He wanted a clear head in order to sort things out logically. But he was unable to concentrate. Consciousness slipped away and he floundered once more through hideous fantasies before waking again in a sweat. Carla Hoffmann was there. Carla was there whenever he needed her during the next couple of days—or was it weeks, or only interminable minutes?—and when he implored her to stay and talk to him and help him, the touch of her hand on his grew more responsive.

Hans came timidly in to see him. In a fit of clear-cut decisiveness, Paul told him to go back to Berlin. Hans was obviously going to fall ill himself if left alone in that millhouse. Although he tried dutifully to argue, the loyal servant was only too glad to be ordered away.

Dr. Namaroff commented approvingly on this.

“And you yourself will be returning to Leipzig when you leave here?”

“No,” said Paul, wiping the approval off the Doctor’s face. “I’m staying in Vandorf.”

He found that he had spent three days here since regaining consciousness. It had seemed longer, and he was impatient to be out of the place. His impatience mounted when he heard from Carla that the inquest on his father had been held a week ago, just after he himself had been brought in to the Institution. “I sent a wreath on your behalf,” said Carla. “I hope that was right?” He thanked her, but his mind was elsewhere. It was impossible not to wonder whether his protracted coma had to some extent been induced by Namaroff so that the inquest and burial could be over and done with before he was on his feet again.

Yet this would make Namaroff a positive accomplice in some gruesome plan; and Paul was reasonably certain that such was not the case. In some way Namaroff was just as frightened as he was, but for different, inexplicable reasons.

He challenged the Doctor with this on the day of his discharge. “Doctor, I think you’d like to unravel this mystery as much as I. Why can’t we work together?”

Namaroff fussed with papers on his desk as though to show that he was a very busy man with no time to spare. But by nature he was not a fussy person, and the effect was unconvincing. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “What mystery?”

“Don’t treat me like one of your neurotic patients. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.” Namaroff stacked several sheets of paper meaninglessly into a pile, and then stood up with his hand out. “Goodbye, Mr. Heitz. I recommend a convalescence in your own country.”

“But, Doctor—”

“Good day.”

“You’re afraid of her,” Paul accused him, “just like the rest of them. A man of the twentieth century—as scared as any of the ignorant illiterates of Vandorf. Aren’t you?”

Namaroff stood rigidly behind his desk, waiting for Paul to go.

From the door, Paul hurled one last promise. “I intend to find this creature.”

“Indeed.”

“And destroy it,” said Paul.

He was fuming with impotent rage as he left. That a man of Namaroff’s status should be afraid seemed monstrous to him. And there was no doubt that he
was
afraid. But as Paul walked back to the millhouse his first brisk stride faltered. He slowed, trying to analyse the expression that had come into Namaroff’s face during those last few minutes. Certainly it had been fear, but it was not the superstitious fear that warped the minds of the villagers: there was something more complex than that in it.

The millhouse was unnaturally quiet when he reached it. Hans had left everything tidy and had packaged up Professor Heitz’s books ready for dispatch when the time came to send them away. There was a disturbing finality about this neatness: it urged Paul to pack up and go, never to return to Vandorf.

He sat in the garden during the late afternoon, regaining his strength. The steps and the fishpond were innocent enough by daylight. He was able without more than a slight tremor to assess the relative positions of himself and the monster by studying the angle of refraction, making a scientific exercise out of it in order not to succumb to fright once more.

When the sky darkened, however, he was glad to go back indoors.

It took a great effort of will to force him out of the house again late that night and through the sleeping village to the cemetery beyond.

He had brought a spade. The earth was still soft and had not been packed down, but even so it was strenuous work digging, and he was certainly not in the best condition. Sweat was pouring off him, while at the same time his arms and legs shivered. When the lid of the coffin was uncovered he had to rest a moment before stooping to lift it off.

In that pause he was sure that he was being watched. He peered round, between the pallid monuments and tilting, neglected gravestones. Nothing moved. He mustn’t let the sombre atmosphere affect him too acutely. Once more he bent over the coffin and prised open the lid.

He reached for the lantern that he had set beside the open grave.

There was a rustle of feet between the tombs, and a woman stood above him.

He stared at her ankles, not daring to look up. A violent spasm of trembling attacked him. If he were to raise the lantern and look straight into that face which had so far appeared to him only as a dulled reflection . . .

Carla said: “Somehow I knew you’d be here.”

Paul gasped. “Another of your premonitions?” he managed to blurt out.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Carla knelt beside the piled earth and held the lantern for him. Paul turned back to the open coffin and pulled the shroud from his father’s face.

The noble features were unexpectedly calm. Whatever pain and horror there might have been at the end, the lines of the face had somehow settled into a stern tranquillity. Professor Heitz’s stoicism had asserted itself in his final agony, and the face was that of a dignified statue.

A statue . . . Paul touched the head, and his fingers met unyielding stone. He ran them down to the neck. There was no decay here, no dissolution; not even the softness of living flesh.

He looked up at Carla.

“Why did Namaroff issue a false death certificate? Who is he trying to shield?”

While Carla held the lantern high he scrambled out of the grave. She took his arm to steady him, and together they went to sit on the step of a grandiosely columned tombstone.

“ ‘Our whole history is incredible,’ ” Carla quoted, “ ‘filled with monsters and fear.’ ”

That was exactly what his father had said. All at once Paul realized, too, where they had been said. He stared at Carla.

She nodded sadly. “Yes. I’m sorry. I read your father’s letter. Doctor Namaroff wanted me to memorize as much of it as possible.”

“But why?”

“He was hoping there would be something in it which would throw new light on . . . on Medusa . . . the legend . . .”

The name came out only as a whisper, as though Carla feared that merely to utter it was to bring the Gorgon down upon her.

“Why are you telling me all this now?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Everybody here’s afraid.”

“Yes, but this is new. It’s not just the castle and the . . . the creature . . . that’s not all I’m afraid of.”

“Of Namaroff?” he said.

“Yes.” Again it was only a whisper.

“But why?” When her head sank in dejection he commanded: “Go on—tell me!”

“You asked me just now who he’s trying to shield. There
is
somebody—or something. And I don’t know who. He used me to spy on you—he’d use anyone who suited his purpose—and he must want to know more than he does. But he already knows more than anyone ought to. I’m sure of that. There’s something in him . . . something too secretive, too contriving. And possessive . . .”

The note in her voice struck a resonance in Paul’s mind. He said: “Is Namaroff in love with you?”

“Yes.”

“And jealous?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you leave the Institution? It can’t be very pleasant, working in this atmosphere and with that man coveting you—”

“I can’t leave. I owe him a great deal. He plays on my gratitude, and I know he’s doing it, but I can’t leave.”

It was a grotesque place for it to happen, but suddenly she was in his arms. Paul held her close, and knew that, whatever else happened, when he left Vandorf he would take Carla with him.

Aloud he said: “You’ll come with me. We’ll leave Vandorf together.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be afraid. When you’re with me there’s no need to be afraid.”

She lifted her mouth to his. They kissed, and through her shuddering body he felt both her desire for him and that incommunicable terror which permeated this whole accursed valley.

“Paul,” she breathed.

He forced himself to hold her away from him. “Carla, there’s no need to be afraid,” he repeated firmly. “You’re a free person. You can leave Vandorf—leave Namaroff—whenever you choose.”

She shook her head.

“But why not?” he demanded, exasperated by the defeatism of it all.

“I don’t know why.”

In this deathly setting Paul could almost begin to believe in other spells, in a general malaise suffusing the entire district. The whole place was in the grip of a disease, a demoniacal possession which drew people into a marsh, drew them gradually towards the centre where the ultimate horror waited for them. All will-power was sapped; nobody would stand up and defy the powers of darkness.

He said: “Carla, the two of us . . . it seems too soon to talk about us, but you know—damn it, you must know—”

“Please . . . please, no!” She cut him short by getting up and backing away. “It would all be so simple,” she said, “loving you.”

“Then make it simple!”

But before he could say any more she had turned and run off into the night. He saw her as a pale wraith flitting between the tombstones, and then she was gone. He could hardly pursue her now. He couldn’t leave his father’s grave open to the sky and the gaze of any inquisitive villager. He set to work to close it up again.

He was exhausted by the time he got back to the millhouse; so exhausted that sleep was impossible. Thoughts whirled round in his head—thoughts of his father, a stone corpse in the earth, and of Carla, warm and alive and incomprehensible.

A heavy knocking at the door jolted him out of his confused reverie.

Paul looked round for a weapon. No one who called at this early hour of the morning could mean any good. He seized a poker from the fireplace and went along the passage.

“Who’s there?”

“My dear boy, do you propose to keep me standing out here all night?”

Paul slammed back the bolts and opened the door. Professor Meister stood in the doorway, stooping slightly from his great, spindly height so that he could see into the passage. He kept his head lowered as he came in, then straightened up with a sigh.

“I can’t tell you”—it came out in a rush from Paul’s stammering lips—“how glad I am to see you.”

Meister was taken aback by this greeting. He studied his young colleague keenly, and his dark features seemed to cloud with even deeper shadows.

“Paul . . . whatever has happened to you?”

“I’ve been ill,” said Paul lamely.

“Ill? You look as though you’ve been in your grave and had to dig your way out.”

It was an unfortunate image. Paul shuddered. To deflect that shrewd, analytical stare he asked: “How did you get here at this time of night?”

Professor Meister stalked on into the sitting room and looked around. Its apparent cosiness provoked a nod of approval. He let Paul take his coat from him, and sat down by the fireplace.

“Transport in this part of the world is somewhat primitive,” he said. “I arrived in Vandorf very late. I have the impression”—he glanced slyly at Paul for confirmation—“that even at the best of times it is not a particularly hospitable village. After dark it does not extend much of a welcome to visitors. It was with the greatest difficulty that I found someone who would direct me to your residence—and then I had to do the journey on foot, taking several wrong turns on the way.” He placed the tips of his fingers together and pursed his lips, as though about to embark on one of his more esoteric philosophical disquisitions. But what came out was a sharp direct question: “What has been happening?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve come a long way to hear it.”

9

T
here was a light on in Namaroff’s laboratory as Carla walked round the side of the building. She hesitated. She didn’t want to talk to Namaroff or run the risk of being questioned by him. She wanted to go to bed. Even more, she admitted to herself, she wanted to turn and retrace her steps; to go back, to say to Paul that she would leave with him at once. Surely that would solve everything? The intangible fears that surrounded her in Vandorf would be dispelled. She would escape from the miasma of this valley.