Faces of Fear Read online

  After a long, rigid silence, the plump nurse came up and touched Marcus’s shoulder. “I think it’s time to go now. He does get rather tired, when he talks about the old days, don’t you, Duncan?”

  Marcus walked across the thickly-shingled driveway and climbed the steps to the front door. Hastings House was huge, with crenellated battlements, and turrets, and spires. Its west wall was overgrown with ivy, as though somebody had casually thrown a huge green blanket over it. Marcus pulled the doorbell and waited.

  After a very long time, a thirtyish man in a mustard-coloured tweed waistcoat and brown corduroys appeared from around the side of the house, accompanied by two slavering bull terriers. He was very pale, with an almond-shaped head and slicked-back hair.

  “Can I help?” he asked, briskly, as if he wasn’t at all interested in doing any such thing.

  “I don’t know,” said Marcus. “I’m looking for Mr Gordon Vane.”

  “I’m Gordon Vane. You don’t have any kind of appointment, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. But I’m afraid that I’ve lost my dog.”

  “I can’t see what that has to do with me.”

  “It ran into your woods, I’m afraid. I was wondering if you’d seen it. It’s a Sealyham cross.”

  Gordon Vane shook his head. “If it’s gone into those woods, I doubt if you’ll ever see it again.”

  “I was wondering, if you hadn’t seen it, whether I could go and look for it.”

  “Out of the question, I’m afraid.”

  “I wouldn’t do any damage.”

  “That’s not the point. Those woods are very marshy in places, and really quite dangerous.”

  “They don’t look dangerous,” Marcus persisted.

  “Well, I’m afraid they are, and if anything were to happen to you, we’re not insured. If you leave me your telephone number, I’ll let you know if your dog turns up.”

  “I saw somebody else in the woods,” said Marcus.

  Gordon Vane had been patting his dogs, but now he sharply looked up. “You saw somebody? Who?”

  “I don’t know … somebody very tall. Enormously tall, and all dressed in black.”

  Gordon Vane stared at Marcus as if he could see right through his eyes into his brain. Then, without a word, he took a gold mechanical pencil out of his waistcoat pocket, along with a visiting-card, and said, “Here. Your telephone number.”

  He stood and watched as Marcus walked away, his feet scrunching on the shingle. Marcus wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing by pretending to have lost a dog. Maybe he shouldn’t have alerted the Vanes at all. But he couldn’t think of any other way of flushing out Duncan Greenleaf’s “terrible black creature”. If the Vanes thought that there was a stray dog wandering in the woods, and that there was the strong possibility that its owner might be wandering in the woods, too, looking for it, then they might let the creature out.

  What was more, if the Vanes were concerned that Marcus had actually seen the creature, and might report it, they might let it out to silence him.

  Except, of course, that Marcus was ready for it. He had brought a camera, and a large scouting knife, and a baseball bat. He had tried to persuade Roger to lend him his shotgun, on the pretext that he wanted to go clay-pigeon shooting, but he didn’t have a licence and Roger was a stickler for things like that.

  More than anything else, though, Marcus wanted to go back to Duncan Greenleaf and show him that he hadn’t imagined the creature in black, and that he had done his very best for the tiny boy in the mouth of the hungry moon.

  He waited until well past midnight before he walked past Roger’s house and along the lane that led to the woods. The night was clear and still and the moon shone like a lamp. He left the lane just where the sign said ‘Strictly Private’ and began to crunch and rustle his way through the dry leaves and the blackberry bushes. He was tense, and a little jumpy, especially when a bird suddenly fluttered out of the undergrowth right in front of him, but he wasn’t especially afraid. It seemed as if he had been destined to do this, ever since he had first seen the hungry moon on the cereal packet. It seemed as if he had been chosen all those years ago to right an outstanding wrong.

  He had looked up more about the witches of Thessaly, and Duncan Greenleaf was quite right about their appearance, and what they could do. Apparently they could also transform themselves into birds and animals, and they had an intimate knowledge of aphrodisiacs and poisonous herbs. A Thessalonian witch’s den would be filled with incense, and strange engravings, and the beaks and claws of birds of prey, as well as pieces of human flesh and small vials of blood taken from the witch’s victims. They particularly relished the noses of executed men.

  Duncan Greenleaf was quite right about the woods, too: the brambles were worse than barbed wire. Marcus hadn’t ventured more than a hundred feet into the woods before his hands and his face were scratched, and he had torn the shoulder of his jacket. It seemed almost as if the undergrowth were viciously alive, cutting and tearing and catching at him.

  He kept criss-crossing the undergrowth in front of him with his torch, in case of man-traps. It might be absurd to suspect that they were still set here, after more than sixty years, but it was no more absurd than suspecting that a Thessalonian witch-creature was lying in wait for him in the half-darkness, with glittering eyes and teeth like a shark.

  After ten minutes of struggling forward, he began to reach the edges of the boggy ground. He heard an owl hooting, and then a quick, loping rustle through the bushes. His heart beating, he pointed the torch up ahead of him, and it reflected two luminous yellow eyes. He said, “Ah!” aloud, and almost turned and ran, but then the creature loped off in the opposite direction, and he glimpsed the heavy swinging brush of a large fox.

  He hefted his baseball bat and continued to edge slowly forward over the soft, muddy ground. He wondered how far the bog extended, and how deep it was. He tried to walk quietly, but his boots made a thick, sucking sound with every step.

  He took one more step, and the mud began to drag him in, right up to his knees. He tried to pull his left foot out, but he overbalanced, and fell forward, dropping his baseball bat and stretching out his hands to save himself.

  He heard it before he felt it. A ringing, metallic chunk! Then suddenly his left hand was ablaze with pain, as if he had thrust it directly into an open fire. He tried to pull his hand out, but the steel trap had caught him by the wrist, half-chopping his hand off. By the light of his fallen torch, he could see tendons and bone and bright red muscle. The man-trap was splattered with blood, and he could actually feel his arteries pumping it out onto the mud.

  Don’t panic don’t panic. It’s bad, but it’s not terminal. These days they can do wonders with microsurgery. That policeman’s hand, they sewed that back on. That woman who lost her hands in a wallpaper trimmer, they sewed hers on too. Don’t panic, think.

  With his free left hand, he reached out for his baseball bat. Aluminium, make a good lever, pry this fucking thing apart. But the bat had bounced too far away, and he couldn’t get anywhere near it without causing himself so much pain that he bit right through the end of his tongue.

  Tourniquet. First thing to do is to stop the bleeding. With his left hand, he unbuckled his belt and tugged it off. After three tries, he managed to flip it over his wrist, and then buckle it up. He gripped the end of it in his teeth and pulled it and pulled it until his veins bulged out. The flow of blood seemed to slow to a steady drip. He pulled even tighter, and it stopped altogether.

  Now, think. Try to attract attention. He picked up his torch and waved it wildly from side to side, but he couldn’t shout out because that would have meant releasing his grip on the tourniquet.

  Think. What can I do now?

  But it was then that he heard a rustling sound, somewhere in the woods. A fast, relentless rustling, like something coming through the undergrowth with blood on its mind. Oh Jesus it’s the witch. It’s the witch and I’m trapped here the same way y
oung Miles Greenleaf was trapped.

  The rustling sounded heavier and quicker, and Marcus could hear branches breaking and bushes shaking.

  There was nothing else for it. He scrabbled into his pocket and took out his scouting knife. He could bite his belt, that would stop him from screaming and from biting his tongue any more. He just hoped that he could cut himself free before the black-cowled creature came exploding out of the woods and tore him to pieces.

  He placed the blade of the knife against the teeth of the man-trap. Then he began to cut into his wrist. The first cut felt freezing cold, and hurt so much that he started to sob. But he could hear the witch roaming through the woods, nearer and nearer, and even this was better than a violent death.

  He cut through skin and nerves and muscle, but when he reached the wristbone he couldn’t cut any further. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and rolled himself over in the mud, so that his bones were twisted apart, and he was free.

  Whimpering, holding up the stump of his hand, he started to struggle out of the woods. Without his torch he couldn’t see where he was going, and every time the brambles caught him they put him off course. He staggered around and around, falling, climbing up onto his feet again, staggering, falling.

  He knelt on the ground, shocked and exhausted. A dark shape approached him through the bushes. It seemed to stand in front of him for so long that he thought that time must have stopped.

  Then a dazzling light shone in his eyes, and a voice said, “He’s here! Gordon, he’s here!”

  More footsteps; more lights. Then, “Oh my God, he’s lost his hand. Barker, call for an ambulance, would you, and tell them to bloody well step on it.”

  He was sitting in the waiting room at Roehampton Hospital to have his new hand adjusted when he thought he saw somebody he knew. An elderly, white-haired man, with a large distinctive nose. He was sitting at the opposite end of the waiting room, reading a copy of Country Life. His right hand was covered by a leather glove.

  Marcus frowned at him for a long time, but he couldn’t place him. It was only when the nurse came out and called “Mr Greenleaf, please!” that he realized who he was.

  He waited for him and met him outside the hospital. The traffic was so noisy that they had to shout.

  “Mr Greenleaf? Mr Miles Greenleaf?” he asked him.

  The old man looked surprised. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “No, you don’t. But I know your brother, Duncan.”

  “Well, well. How is he these days?”

  “Don’t you ever see him?”

  Miles Greenleaf pursed his lips. “He writes, but I don’t write back. He wouldn’t understand my letters anyway.”

  “He told me you were dead.”

  “Hmph! Most of the time he thinks that I am. He has his good moments and his bad moments. Mostly bad moments, these days.”

  “He told me about your hand. How you lost it, I mean.”

  “Did he now? And which story was it this time? Not the Thessalonian witches, I trust?”

  Marcus nodded, and lifted his own hand. “I went looking for it, to prove him right. Exactly the same thing happened to me.”

  Miles Greenleaf looked bemused. “My dear fellow, I don’t think you know what happened to me. My brother and I were both naturally talented artists. The truth was, even though I was younger, and even though I say it myself, I was very much better. That was why, when I won the school prize for art and Duncan didn’t, he took me into the woods, knocked me semi-conscious with a hammer, tied me up, and deliberately cut off my right hand with a carpentry saw. It was in all the local papers.”

  Marcus felt himself trembling. “No man-traps? No dog?”

  Miles Greenleaf shook his head. “Just all-consuming jealousy, I’m afraid to say. And a mind that wasn’t altogether balanced.”

  “But there were man-traps. I was caught by one myself. The Vanes told the police that it was just a Victorian relic, left undetected in the woods. But it didn’t work like a Victorian relic.”

  Miles Greenleaf held out his left hand and shook Marcus’s left hand. “As far as the Vanes are concerned, I think it’s wiser to remain ignorant. You never know. I might not be telling you the truth, and there might be a Thessalonian witch there, after all.”

  That night the moon came out and turned the woods to white, the colour of bones and claws. One of Roger’s dogs snuffled through the undergrowth, searching for voles or mice.

  Roger, at his back gate, was whistling and calling, but the dog didn’t pay him any attention, and Roger was too far away to hear the biting mechanical snap!

  Neither did he hear the heavy rushing of something black and cloaked, with glittering eyes, hurrying through the brambles with all the terrible greed of a hungry moon.

  Grief

  Mont St-Michel, France

  Mont St-Michel is a granite islet in the bay of St-Michel, near the mouth of the River Couesnon, in the department of Manche. It is connected to the mainland by a causeway 2 km long, which frequently floods at high tide. The island is 73 m high, and is crowned by a Benedictine Abbey, established in the tenth century, and built by extraordinary effort and loss of life.

  Although it has been featured on thousands of postcards and tourist guides, Mont St-Michel still presents an eerie and uplifting spectacle as you approach it. There is a village on the south-east side protected by ramparts, and these withstood the English in the Hundred Years’ War and the Huguenots in the religious wars. After the French Revolution, the abbey was used as a political prison.

  Close to the peak of Mont St-Michel, you can see the island and the sea-washed sands around it through a camera obscura. It gives you an unparalleled view of a quiet and rural land where almost anything could happen.

  GRIEF

  Behind Mont St-Michel, the sky had grown thunderously dark, and lightning was already flickering at the spire of the Benedictine Abbey. Yet here on the water-meadows of the Couesnon, less than three miles away, the sun was still shining through the broken clouds, so that the fields and trees were turned into a jigsaw of light and shade.

  All the same, Gerry was never sure why he didn’t see her. He wasn’t even driving particularly fast. One moment the narrow roadway seemed to be completely deserted in both directions. The next she was cycling across it, right in front of him.

  There was a deep thump, followed by the clatter of her falling bicycle. He saw a primrose-yellow dress billow, one arm flapped up, with a wrist-watch on it. He didn’t see her face. He braked so hard that the rented Citroën slewed sideways, with its two front wheels on the opposite verge. Its engine stopped.

  “Oh Christ,” he said, out loud. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

  His chest was rising and falling and he was trembling so much he could hardly open the door-handle. He climbed out of the car and looked back along the road. The bicycle was lying on its side, its old-fashioned handlebars raised like the horns of a skeletal cow. The girl was lying further away, on her side, an impressionistic splash of yellow in the French countryside.

  Gerry walked toward her. He felt as if he were wading knee-deep in clear molasses. Behind him, he could hear the thunder rumbling, and all around him the grass began to quicken and stir.

  He was less than half-way toward her when he stopped. There were no other vehicles in sight for as far as he could see. The only witnesses to what had happened were a herd of Friesians, who stared at him dispassionately, their lower lips rotating as they chewed.

  He thought for a second: supposing she’s still alive? Supposing she’s still alive, and I leave her here to die?

  But he could see the dark-red tributaries of blood that were flowing from the side of her head, and he knew for certain that he had killed her. It was then that he turned around, and walked back to the Citroën, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  He was appalled by what he was doing. How could he knock a girl down, and simply drive away? But what was the logic of staying here? He hadn’t intended to kill
her. He hadn’t been speeding, or driving carelessly. He had drunk a bottle of St Estephe with lunch, but he was sure that he wasn’t drunk. It had been an accident, pure and simple. I mean, why had she cycled across the road like that? Why hadn’t she looked? She must have seen him coming. It was just as much her fault as his.

  He started the engine, and backed the Citroën onto the road again. He glanced up at his rearview mirror and the girl was still lying in the same position. The wind lifted her dress, so that he could see a thin, pale thigh. No doubt about it, she was dead. Even if he went to the French police and gave himself up, that couldn’t bring her back to life.

  He hesitated for one moment more, giving himself a last chance to decide what he was going to do. Then he released the handbrake, and drove very slowly away from the girl, no more than fifteen kph, watching her all the time in his mirror. Two hundred feet away, he stopped. The girl’s dress rose and fell like a windblown daffodil. The sky was darker now, and fat spots of rain began to speckle the Citroën’s windshield.

  “God forgive me,” he said, and drove away.

  That evening, in his flock-wallpapered hotel bedroom in St Malo, he called his sister Freddie in Connecticut.

  “Freddie? It’s Gerry. Just called to say hi.”

  “Gerry? Are you back in the States? You sound so clear!”

  “No, no. I’m calling from France. I probably won’t be back till September or October, the way things are going. We’ve already found three really excellent hotels, and we’re negotiating with a fourth.”

  “That’s wonderful. How are you? I was just saying to Larry that we hadn’t heard from you in a coon’s age.”

  “I’m great, really great. It’s really beautiful here. I love it.”

  He carried the phone over to the window and looked down into the Rue St Xerxes. It was shadowed and angular, like the street outside Joseph Cotten’s hotel in The Third Man, where Orson Welles was waiting in the doorway. Beyond the rooftops, the harbour lights dipped and sparkled in the dark.