Read The Haunting of Toby Jugg Online
Authors: Dennis Wheatley
Satan has become rather a figure of fun these days, or, at worst, a bogeyman with whom wicked old women sometimes frighten children; but, all the same, he still remains our ultimate expression for the most concentrated form of Evil, and everything else that is evil must in a greater or lesser degree partake of his attributes. Therefore, in endeavouring to get to grips with my own problem, it may be worth speculating on him a little, and on the reasons for the apparent decline in his powers.
In this year of Grace—save the mark; I should have said this year of world-wide death and destruction, 1942—how many people, I wonder, believe in the Devil? I mean as a definite personality with hoofs and horns and a barbed tail, waving a pitchfork and breathing brimstone over everything? I suppose a few very religious rather backward people do; lonely, timid spinsters living in remote country districts, particularly in Scotland and
down here in Wales, and the older generation of peasants in Central and Southern Europe.
I can’t myself. I think that all those accounts of monks and other characters coming face to face with the Devil in the Middle Ages were, as old Gibbon put it: ‘The product of an empty stomach on an empty brain’; or else deliberate lying. In those days religion played such a large part in everybody’s life that people thought of Heaven and Hell as only just round the corner; so the easiest way to obtain a little cheap notoriety was to come down one morning with your shirt on inside-out, and declare to a wide-eyed audience that the Devil had visited you in the middle of the night with some tempting proposition.
On the other hand one can never be certain—absolutely certain—that all such records are the ravings of unbalanced minds or pure invention. After all, why do we disbelieve them? Mainly, I think, because it seems improbable that such a V.I.P. as the Prince of Evil could be bothered to torment, or accept the homage of, quite ordinary people.
But his demons were said to be legion, and it may be that they sometimes assumed their master’s form when appearing to the Godly, or attending a witches’ sabbath as the guest of honour. That may be the explanation; for, while it must remain an open question whether any human being has even seen the Devil, it seems impossible to doubt the existence of demons. Cases of demonic possession still occur from time to time, as any Roman Catholic priest will testify; and during the Middle Ages such happenings were regarded as almost everyday affairs.
The reason for their much greater frequency in the past is not far to seek. Life was so very different then, and everyone was so much more concerned with the things of the spirit. Whether they were in a state of grace or not was of vital importance to people, because they were daily reminded at morning prayers and evening Bible readings—as well as during the whole of every Sunday—that, should they meet with a sudden death, they would get no second chance, but have to give an account of their acts to date when hauled naked and trembling before their Creator.
Such constant preoccupation with thoughts of miracles and martyrs, angels and demons, must have made their minds much
more open to supernatural influences than ours are today. It is, therefore, one thing to be a bit sceptical about the accounts of Old Nick putting in a personal appearance and quite another to brush aside as trash the whole vast literature dealing with Christian mysticism.
There are innumerable accounts of people who became so obsessed with the question of the Life to Come that they gave themselves up to a special devotion to their favourite Saints, and as a result of their whole-hearted fervour developed miraculous powers of their own. And of others, the bad-hats and natural rebels, who dabbled in witchcraft, Satanism and alchemy. It is certainly incontestable that there was hardly a village in Europe where someone or other was not credited with the power to cast spells and bring calamity on their enemies by ill-wishing them. The bulk of testimony to such happenings is overwhelming, and it simply is not credible that for hundreds of generations the whole population of Christendom was fooled by a succession of liars and lunatics.
Of course, in these days, there are plenty of sceptics who regard all accounts of occult phenomena as bunkum; and due either to people imagining things when in an abnormal condition, or to the machinations of rogues and charlatans who make a dubious living out of tricking the credulous.
But the opinions of such bigoted materialists do not prove anything. They are simply the outcome of the present widespread lack of Faith. It is only natural that people brought up, as I was, to believe that there are no such places as Heaven and Hell should be strongly prejudiced against any evidence which might convince them of the existence of some fearsome Otherworld, inhabited by mysterious forces and the spirits of the dead. To accept it would compel them to abandon their comfortable philosophy—or lack of one. They would begin to get the wind up at the thought that they must have souls themselves, and the frightening question of what might happen to them when they die.
The extraordinary decline in the practice of all religions during the past thirty years no doubt accounts for the comparatively few people who now ever pause to ponder such questions seriously. Yet it would be absurd to assume that a fundamental change has
taken place in the composition of human beings, and that because great numbers of them rarely think about their souls they no longer have them.
Moreover, the age of materialism has brought us no new answers to such riddles as: What took place ‘in the beginning’, and what is meant by ‘the end of time’, or, how did it come about that life started on our own small planet? Yet the more we learn of the universe the more apparent it becomes that everything in it is regulated by unchanging laws, and that chemical conditions alone are incapable of producing any form of life whatsoever.
Yet the origin of these mysteries has been questioned only in recent times. Previously, in every country and in every age since the beginning of recorded history, it has been the first article in the creed of man that the Creation was the work of a Supreme Intelligence. In addition, all religions also held in common that the souls of men were immortal, and that the unceasing struggle for them between the eternally warring forces of Good and Evil was all part of the Great Plan.
World-wide tradition asserts that these beliefs were based on a series of Divine revelations made for man’s guidance; and, all modern thought having failed to produce any other tenable theory, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to reject them.
But to accept them carries with it an awe-inspiring thought; for it then becomes unthinkable that in the past hundred years or so any part of this vast and complex system can have altered. Therefore, although the Devil may no longer appear to people—even if he ever did so in person—he cannot have become inactive, and his power for evil must remain as potent as of old.
No one has ever denied him intelligence, so it is reasonable to assume that he is clever enough to adapt his methods to suit every advance in modern thought. If wars, revolutions, the mushroom growth of the herd mentality and their resulting miseries can be attributed to a supremely evil intelligence working secretly upon the greed, fears and follies of man, he has good reason to congratulate himself on the monstrous reaping of hate and violence that his sowing has brought him in the past quarter of a century. In fact, if looked at from that point of view, it seems that the general decline of religion since the end of the Victorian era has
enormously facilitated the Devil’s age-long task of replacing order by chaos and, at last, entering into his Principality of this World as the Lord of Misrule.
Even to suggest that he is now taking a personal interest in myself would be atrociously conceited; but, unless I am suffering from delusions, I can only suppose that either I or this room have recently become a focus for the activities of one of his innumerable lesser satellites. How otherwise can one possibly explain the shadow; or the stark terror that has gripped me, holding me rigid in a paralysis of fear, on each of the five occasions that I have seen it—and, God forbid, may do so again tonight?
I could not write anything this morning. I tried to as soon as I was alone, but my hand shook so much that it would not hold the pencil firmly. Then, at half-past eleven, I had to go out with Deb.
It has been a lovely day and the bright sunshine in the garden restored me a little. Those sharp black eyes of Deb’s don’t miss much, though, and it is hardly surprising that she noticed how haggard I look.
‘I haf begome quite vorried about you,’ she remarked. ‘I cen-not t’ink vot is de metter mid you des pars’ few tays. You haf develop’ a nervous twitch an’ you look zo peeky.’
That is an absurd exaggeration of her accent, so I shall not attempt further renderings of it. As she is quite an intelligent woman, and has been a refugee here since 1933, she actually speaks pretty good English for a German Jewess.
Naturally I don’t want to put the idea into her head that I’ve got bats in the belfry, so I did my best to pull myself together, and simply said:
‘You know quite well that I’ve been sleeping badly lately. I’m only looking a bit off-colour because I had another restless night.’
What a masterpiece of understatement! With the aid of a triple bromide I got off all right; but I woke about half-past one, and I knew instantly that the Thing was outside the window again.
I wonder if I can bring myself to describe it? Anyhow, I must
try. But first I must explain how it comes about that I know it to be there in spite of the blackout.
Down here in Wales people are supposed to observe the A.R.P. regulations as strictly as elsewhere, but we are over three miles from the village, and there is no one to enforce them. I don’t think the Boche has ever dropped a bomb within thirty or forty miles of Llanferdrack, so when I came down here after two-and-a-half years of war I found that everyone had got pretty slack about such matters.
The room I occupy used to be the library—it still is for that matter—and I was glad that Helmuth had chosen it for me, as it makes a splendidly spacious bed-sitting-room, and as I am very fond of reading I like being surrounded with rows and rows of books. It must be close on forty feet long and has big bay windows at both ends. Those to the south have a glorious view over miles of wild country-side, and the middle one, being a glass-panelled door, gives me easy access to the garden.
All six windows of the room were originally furnished only with brocade pelmets, and hanging drapes that do not draw. On the garden side blackout curtains were added soon after the beginning of the war, but as the room was rarely used it was evidently not considered worthwhile to do anything about the north windows, because they cannot be seen from outside the building and look out on to a courtyard.
When Helmuth had the room prepared for me last March, as a glorified bed-sit, I suppose material was already getting scarce; so instead of having proper curtains fitted to each of the three windows on the courtyard side he had a big piece of brown stuff rigged up, which is drawn right across the bay at night. But it is a good six inches too short, so when there is a bright moon its light seeps in underneath and forms a broad band along the floor.
It is that damned strip of moonlight that gives me such appalling jitters. Actually it is three strips, as the mullions between the windows throw great black shadows that divide it into sections. Of course it is not the moonlight itself that unnerves me but—No! It’s no good. I can’t do it. I’ve broken out in a muck sweat at the very thought of what I see. I must think of something else.
Madagascar! There was good news today on the wireless. It is
cheering to know that despite all Hitler can do we still have enough punch left, and a long enough arm, to land a blow so far afield. Ever since the Chinese overran Malaya it has been quite on the cards that they would have a go at South Africa, and if the Vichy French had let them occupy the island it would have made a perfect base from which to launch an invasion of the Union.
Thank goodness it looks now as if we have put paid to that one in advance. The report says that at dawn today British naval and military forces arrived off the north-west coast of the island, landed in Courier Bay, and proceeded inland across the neck of the isthmus towards the naval base at Diego Suarez.
Well, good luck to them. How I wish I were there, instead of here! Of course, naval aircraft must have been used to cover the landing; slow, unwieldy old kites compared with the types I used to fly. Still, I’d cheerfully take up even a Gladiator against the enemy, rather than have to face this loathsome, inhuman thing that haunts the courtyard, and has recently been trying to find its way into this room.
How do I know that? I cannot say. But something inside myself tells me positively that it is so. That something can only be a supersensory apparatus which, to give it is medical name, is called man’s higher consciousness; but old-fashioned people would say it was my spirit—or soul—that, knowing itself to be in danger, sends me these frantic warnings.
As I was brought up to be an atheist, the last thing I should have admitted to, up to the age of eighteen, was that I had a soul; but since then my horizons have broadened a lot; and only yesterday, on arguing matters out with myself, I reached the conclusion that, logically, one must accept the eternal verities. That too, even in these materialistic times, is still a fundamental belief held by the vast majority of educated, as well as uneducated, people.
Judging by those I met during the two-and-a-half years that I was free of Helmuth’s tutelage, genuine atheists must be very rare. Most of the young men I knew were pretty hard cases—they had to be or they would have cracked under the strain—but most of them became quite offended when sometimes, for the fun of
getting up an argument, I suggested that they had no souls. To have agreed with me would have been to degrade themselves to the level of animals—or rather, a bag of salts and a few buckets of water kept going only by a series of chemical reactions—and, in their heart of hearts, they were convinced that they possessed some intrinsic quality which lifts mankind above all other species of creation.