By Horror Haunted Read online

  Mary seemed surprised, for the tiniest fraction of a second, that Graham should suggest that their next outing should be to the Downs beyond Eastbourne—the glorious, desolate stretch of cliffs on which they had walked so often, and with such joy, before the coming of the dark. But if she felt any reluctance for such a journey into nostalgia, she suppressed it in a flash; and soon she was busy and happy, clinking cutlery, packing sandwiches, humming, piling things into the car, and all the time talking about how bright the sunshine was, and how green the summer roads. She must have been pleased to see a spark of enthusiasm in his face at last, a glimmer of interest in where they should go and what they should do, after all these months of apathy, of following dully where she led….

  And now, they were here. Already he could feel the soft, springy turf under his feet, could feel the wind catching at tendrils of his hair. On the one side, he knew, was the curved sweep of the downs against the sky; and on the other—well:

  “The beach is almost empty, darling—miles and miles of it, with just one man and a girl, walking. She’s wearing a blue dress, and he’s in some kind of a striped thing. They look so tiny from up here—like two little ants! Oh, and they’ve got a dog! A sort of retriever, I should think—you know, reddish. It’s bouncing along, it wants them to throw it a stick…. I wonder if they will…?”

  On and on she went, and for once Graham listened, with all the attention he could muster, for only thus could he pick up clues as to exactly where they were on the cliff-top. Because, of course, he couldn’t actually ask her if they were getting near that highest point of all, where the cliff fell sheer to the shingle a hundred feet below, and where there was only a rail, that any man could vault, to protect walkers from the dizzying drop. Beyond that, there was just a strip of turf two or three feet wide before the cliff-edge; a single stride, and he would be over….

  He would have to be quick, though, as well as cunning. One false move, one bit of clumsiness or hesitation as he vaulted the rail, and his chance would be over: Mary would be clutching him, wild with fear and horror, and using her fiendish power of sight to outwit his man’s strength, to drag him back and back, away from the cliffedge, away from his last hope of escape.

  That it would be the last was certain. She would never take him near a cliff again, nor up a high building. Razors—tablets—anything that could possibly be lethal—would henceforth be kept hidden—or maybe not even hidden—maybe in full view, somewhere in the mocking darkness, where he would never find them….

  If he failed now, he would have failed for ever. There would be no second chance. And it was at this moment that he felt Mary’s arm gently steering him to a halt.

  “Just feel the air!” she said. “Right here on the top! Do you remember, darling, how we stood here that day, after we’d walked all the way up from Nettleden, and you said it was like standing on the top of the world? The distance …! The horizon …!”

  This was it. This was the place. Now,—now—was the time. But first, he must get his bearings—where exactly was the railing? Somehow, he must get Mary to lead him right up to it, so that he could touch it … get a grip on it … tense himself for the lightening spring … and all this without rousing in her the faintest flicker of suspicion….

  He breathed deeply, pretending to be savouring the high, bright air of which she spoke.

  “Wonderful!” he said—and at once was conscious of a tiny tremor in the arm that clutched his own. Pleasure, he reassured himself; surprise and pleasure at his response. This must be the first time he had called anything “wonderful” since he became blind.

  But careful, careful! He mustn’t behave in any way differently from usual, or she would begin to wonder…. With that damned extra sense of hers, she’d be spying on the expression of his face … watching that tiny muscle twitching in his temple….

  Be still, muscle, be still! Calmness, calmness …!

  “Would it be safe to go nearer the edge, dear?” he asked carefully—surely that would allay her suspicions, if he pretended to be nervous?—“Is that safety rail still there, that we used to lean on!”

  “Of course. Come on!” Light as a feather, Mary’s arm rested on his, guided him across the grass, set his hand upon the rail alongside her own.

  “There!” she said softly. “Just like it used to be! The tide’s out, darling—those rocks where we used to look for anemones are just beginning to appear. Just the tips of them, like a mountain chain in the water. It’s so calm, Graham, there’s barely a ripple anywhere! Just a tiny line of white along the edge of the blue, and miles and miles of sand…. It’s a perfect, perfect day….”

  It was now that he should be doing it, of course. Now, while she was off her guard, her patient eyes roving the distant scene, scavenging for bits and pieces of visual flotsam with which to regale him; now, while she was still talking … she wouldn’t go on for ever. Now! Now!

  But still he did not move. His tensed muscles quivered, and were still; and it came to him, with slow, incredulous horror, that perhaps he, who lacked the courage to live, also lacked the courage to die!

  No! No! Dear God, let it not be so!

  “… and a tiny little boat, right on the horizon! I do believe, darling, that it’s a sailing boat … I think I can see the sails … sort of cream-coloured….”

  In a single flash of movement, he had wrenched his arm out of the crook of hers, and was over the low barrier. It was easy, just as he had known it would be! Easy, too, was the next stage, for already the fear was gone! Already he was over the hurdle, the tigerish clutch of life already behind him, and before him only the beckoning, empty sky. One single stride across the soft turf, and he would be away. Away, away into the blue air, out of the darkness for ever.

  He took the single stride. He leapt, leapt like a fish, or a bird, high into the shimmering air—and landed on a gravel path, not two inches below the level of the lawn from which he had jumped.

  Miles from any cliff-top! Some park or recreation-ground!

  The shock was indescribable. His limbs, his whole body, tensed for hurtling to his death, seemed to crumple and shatter … yet left him still standing. And while the physical shock still whistled in his bones, so the shock to mind and spirit now smashed across his consciousness. His brain rocked at the horror of the trick she had played on him. Then:

  “You knew! You knew!” he stormed at her. “You fiend, you witch, you led me here on purpose, because you knew what I meant to do! Yes, you knew! Don’t deny it—don’t lie to me—because I can see the guilt in your eyes….”

  See? Only now did he realise what he was saying, and that it was true. He was seeing her! The shock had brought back his sight! That one in a million million chance that happens in California and Tibet—it had happened here, to him. He could see!

  *

  But what was it he saw? Who was this woman, her bright hair grown grey, her once round and cheerful face now tortured and thin, aged almost beyond recognition?

  Mary. His wife. So he had not, after all, travelled his dark road alone; she had been with him, every nightmare inch of the way. Underneath the bright chatter, the maddening optimism, she had all the time been enduring with him every last twist of the knife. She had walked with him into the black depths, and never flinched; unnoticed, uncomplaining, she had gone forwards beside him into the very jaws of despair.

  “Mary …!” he tried to say, but could not; and during the long seconds before his power of speech returned, and while his brain still reeled under the glory of returning light—during these seconds, he felt lifting from his soul a cloud dark as any blindness—the cloud of self-absorption that had engulfed him all these months, turning him into a monster of selfishness and incomprehension.

  “Mary!” he managed to whisper, in a hoarse, strange voice, “Mary … my darling…!”

  Just as she had shared with him the darkness, so, now, she was to share the light.

  GATE OF DEATH

  “…FLIGHT 102. WI
LL passengers for Flight 102 for New York proceed immediately to Gate B. Gate B. Will passengers for …”

  On one of the comfortable, well-upholstered seats in the Departure Lounge, Harvey sat very still, clinging desperately to these last few seconds of security. For this was it. This was where it was going to begin: the awful, senseless panic; the absurd, unfounded terror, that went beyond all sense and reason.

  All around him, the other passengers swayed and rustled to their feet, towering suddenly like a field of corn grown from seed to maturity in some fantastically speeded-up film. On every side, hand-luggage swung upwards from the floor: summer coats, boarding cards, handbags jerked and swooped, and settled into place … and now the whole crowd was on the move, all except Harvey. In unison, at sheep’s pace, in the grip of that strange, hypnotic blend of tension and boredom which characterises air passengers all over the world, they moved impassively towards the Gate of Death.

  Towards Gate B, that is to say—with a mighty effort, Harvey checked his galloping imagination. Death, indeed!—how could he be so idiotic—he, Harvey, fifty years old, the respected head of an important company! How could he be so absurd, so childish, as to be afraid of flying?

  What on earth would they all say at the office if they knew? What would his secretary, Miss Furnival, have said if she had known how his heart was thundering under his immaculate suit as he ordered her, so casually, to book this flight? What would his colleagues on the Board have said—and, above all, what would young Withers have said? Young Withers, who (as the whole office was aware) had been hoping to be sent on this mission himself. A clever young man—a young man who would go far—but not just yet, thank you very much! Not while Harvey was in charge, and at the very peak of his powers. This American deal was a tricky one: a couple of million pounds hung in the balance. These New York people needed careful handling. It just wasn’t an assignment for a subordinate, however promising.

  “Sorry, Withers, I’ll have to handle this myself,” he’d said. “It’s not that I don’t have every confidence in you—you know very well that I do; but I do feel, and so does the Board, that I should be there in person in case anything crops up…. Sorry, old man…. Perhaps some other time….” And he had reached casually, dismissively, for the phone. Not by the flicker of an eyelid, not by the faintest quiver of his crisp voice, had he revealed to Withers the awful fear that was already gnawing at his stomach: the fear of flying.

  It was not as if he was unused to air travel—that was the ridiculous part of it. He had been back and forth over the Atlantic a dozen times—not to mention his holidays abroad, in Greece, in Italy, in the Bahamas. Surely, by now, he should be used to it, should have begun to take it as a matter of course? This, somehow, was the most frightening thing of all—the dawning realisation that repeated experience of flying was not making him less afraid each time, but more.

  At first, he had thought—indeed, he had taken for granted—that dogged persistence would beat this problem just as it had beaten all the others in his career. He would get used to it, he had assured himself, just as one got used to anything if one just kept on at it. It was only quite recently—on his last trip but one, in fact—that it had finally been borne in upon him that he was not getting used to it; and would not, ever.

  What, exactly, had been the incident that had triggered off this certainty, on that particular flight? It was hard to remember; because there was always something. On every single flight, there was always some trivial little hitch or other, some tiny episode, that would be enough to set the mindless, idiotic terrors thundering in his breast. Maybe there would be a delay in taking-off—and he would picture to himself the taut-faced engineers, secretive as cancer surgeons, wrestling with some dark flaw, deep in the plane’s vitals: tapping, testing, adjusting, getting on with their job, oblivious of the quiet, middle-aged business man plunging to death after death a few feet above them. Or maybe the plane would go up on time, and in fine style, and then, in the midst of its serene journey above the clouds, it would begin, strangely, to dip, and sag, and droop towards the jigsaw fields, tiny as toys, beneath them. Only Harvey ever seemed to notice this mysterious flagging, the inexplicable drop in height and speed: only he would hear the low tattoo of panic that began to beat beneath the familiar mutter of the engines. It was extraordinary the way the others would just sit there, reading their papers, sipping their cooling coffee, for all the world as if they were all secretly ganged up together in a vast, unspoken conspiracy to kid Harvey that the plane was not crashing; that the sickening, spinning sense of falling was all in his imagination!

  Which it was, of course. Because always he survived. Always the plane would land safely, without fuss, and more or less on schedule, and Harvey himself would live to take another flight.

  And on that next one, of course, something else would happen. Maybe they would have to circle the airport, marooned in the overcrowded skies, for minute after sickening minute, until there should be space for them to land. Or maybe, far above the Atlantic, the pilot’s voice would burst like doom itself from the loudspeaker:

  “Please fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. We are running into a low-pressure something-or-other, and so I will have to ask you to something—something—”—Oh, it didn’t matter what he said, because at the very first baleful crack of his vocal chords, Harvey’s nerves would be tearing at him like rusted wire, his very soul would be battering like a caged bird at the walls of his skull, seeking to glimpse the direction from which Death would come whistling out of the blue and empty sky….

  *

  “I’m a fool! I’m a fool!” screamed Harvey silently to himself, all alone now on the long upholstered seat. “Of course none of those planes were ever in any danger! I was just imagining it all! Why, the odds against a crash are thirty-thousand to one! Safer than a car! Safer even than a train! Safer, almost, than making a cup of tea at home!”

  By now, the Departure Lounge was emptying fast. The passengers for Flight 102, all except Harvey, were crowding tightly round Gate B, oozing through it one by one, with painful slowness, like sand through an hour glass. Within a minute, or less, Harvey would have to join them, or some well-meaning official would come in search of him.

  Yet still he could not move. In that moment, he could no more have brought himself to leave this safe, familiar seat than an astronaut could bring himself to leave his capsule, his last tiny bulwark against the lethal immensity of space.

  Harvey clutched his left hand with his right. His nails bit into his palms, but he did not feel it. Because the last hope was gone: the last, forlorn, flickering hope that somehow, this time, he wouldn’t be quite so frightened.

  He would be more frightened. He knew it now, with absolute certainty, because at last he knew why he was frightened. Those one-in-thirty-thousand odds against a crash had nothing to do with it, because it wasn’t a crash that he was afraid of at all. It was Fear that he was afraid of; and Fear was not a one-in-thirty-thousand chance, it was a certainty; a hundred-per-cent certainty, on every single flight. His very body had learned it by now, had learned like a Pavlov dog, that beyond those gates lay Fear. A fear that grew upon itself; a fear that grew stronger, not weaker, every time he forced himself to face it. Now, on this flight, it was going to be worse than it had ever been, worse than he could even imagine. It would have him in its power, it would not let up for one single second of all the seven hours, hounding him minute by minute towards that border beyond which control snaps, and a man can endure no more.

  “You fool! You lily-livered fool!” he muttered to himself, and forced himself to his feet. Then, steadily, placing one foot in front of the other, he forced himself towards Gate B. He must hurry … already the last of his fellow-passengers had gone through … they were already boarding the plane….

  “Flight 102. Flight 102 to New York…. Slight delay … Engineers working on it…. Will passengers please take their seats on the plane and wait for further instructions … We hope to
take off as soon as …”

  *

  I can’t, said Harvey to himself, shutting his eyes and standing absolutely still. I can’t. I can’t.

  And then, suddenly, like a miracle from Heaven, it came to him that he really couldn’t! If you really can’t, then you don’t have to! Nothing and no one can any longer make you.

  Dazed, as with a blinding light, Harvey staggered back towards the booking desk.

  “Decided I must cancel my flight…. Last-minute change of plans….”

  Lord, how easy it was! They didn’t even ask any questions! They were even going to let him have his money back … his secretary would just have to ring up such-and-such, explain to so-and-so …! Later—perhaps tomorrow—Withers could fly over. He’d be like a dog with two tails—and the twenty-four hours’ delay wouldn’t matter all that much—a few phone calls would sort it out.

  *

  The relief was indescribable. Safety rolled towards him like a fog, it enveloped him, it permeated every fibre of his being; and in that moment he knew, without any doubt at all, that he would never be able to look himself in the face again.

  THE COMBINED OPERATION

  IT WAS ON the third day after the accident that they allowed the police to come to his bedside and question him. His head-injuries were on the mend by now, and the operation on his leg was fixed for this afternoon; and so this morning was the obviously appropriate time for the notebooks, the slow-moving ball-point pens, and the embarrassed, boyish faces atop their uniforms. Lying there, propped against the pillows, stiff with injuries, Mervyn realised for the first time that he had reached the age when policemen begin to look too young for their job.

  An awkward job, no doubt, at any age—this grilling of a sick man as to how, exactly, he had come to drive his car slap across the pavement and through a plate-glass window in the Peckham High Road, at two o’clock in the morning.

  And indeed, it took some explaining. Cudgelling his still-throbbing brain to piece together those last moments of consciousness, Mervyn began to realise that he would have done better to have concentrated his faculties on concocting a plausible lie; so incredible—so plain dotty—was the actual truth.