The Hammer Horror Omnibus (20 page)

Paul looked earnestly, piercingly into my eyes.

“Have you?”

“Yes.” I took his coat from him and waved towards the stairs. “Would you like to go up and see?”

“Victor!” Elizabeth protested. “The very moment Paul arrives . . .”

“We shall not be long,” I said, moving up behind Paul so that he should not be tempted to turn back.

We went up to the laboratory. Once Paul glanced back inquiringly as though asking for some indication of what he might expect. But I intended that he should see for himself, without preamble.

At the door I took out my key.

“Still keeping the place locked?” said Paul. “Is that necessary?”

“You can judge for yourself.”

I opened the door and stood back as he entered.

The creature was crouched in a corner, staring at the floor. When it became aware of us it turned its face to the wall.

Paul stared mutely.

“Nothing to say?” I challenged him.

“So it wasn’t killed,” he said softly.

“It was. At least, life had passed from its body. But I was the one who put it there in the first place, and it was I who restored it.”

Paul turned away. He headed for the door.

“No, wait,” I said. “I want to show you something else.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

“Wait!”

Grudgingly he stayed where he was. He seemed to have difficulty in facing the hunched, huddled body of the creature in the corner. In his face there was no scientific curiosity, no spark of reawakened interest; only loathing.

I stood over the creature. “Get up.” It shivered slightly and tried to compress itself into an even tighter ball. “Come on,” I ordered; “get up.”

Slowly it clambered to its feet. It glanced at Paul and then quickly away at me, waiting for the next command.

I said: “Now come here.”

It came towards me and stood a few inches away.

“Sit down,” I said.

The creature pondered this, then with an ungainly lurch it lowered itself to the floor with its knees under its chin.

“Is this your creature of superior intellect?” said Paul. “Your perfect physical being . . . this animal?” He drew his hand across his brow, and his eyes narrowed in pain. “Ask it a question in advanced physics. It’s got a brain with a lifetime of knowledge behind it. That was the theory, wasn’t it? Go on, ask. It should find it simple.”

This sneer was the most monstrous thing of all. I felt anger like a burning poison in my throat.

“Do you know why it looks like that—behaves like that? There you see the result of
your
handiwork, Paul. Yours as well as mine. I gave it life . . . I put a brain in its head . . . but I chose a good brain—a brilliant one . . .” I took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was you who damaged it, you who put a bullet in it. This is your fault—do you understand? Your fault.”

“Yes,” said Paul sombrely, “I understand.”

“But you won’t stop me, Paul. You won’t force me to stop, to despair. I’m going to carry on. I’ll try further brain surgery. If that fails then I shall seek another brain—”

“No, Victor.” Abruptly he was shouting. “No, you will not.”

“And another if necessary,” I said, “and another and another, until—”

“No!”

He turned and tried to rush through the doorway. I was so accustomed now to anticipating the creature’s erratic movements that I acted instinctively. Before Paul could escape I had grasped his shoulder and twisted him back towards me.

“What are you going to do?”

He pushed at me with all his might. I held firm, and we staggered back into the centre of the room. He stopped and I could tell that he was trying to keep his voice steady.

“For your sake and to protect Elizabeth I’ve kept silent so far,” he said. “But now I’m going to the authorities. That creature must be destroyed—and you must pay for your atrocities.”

I could have laughed if it had not been for the deadly seriousness of it. Absurdity and tragedy go so often together.

Paul flung me away with a sudden lunge, and my hip jarred nauseatingly against the bench. Before I could get my breath, he was out of the door and running along the passage.

I stumbled after him. As he raced down the stairs, Elizabeth came out into the hall.

“Paul, where are you . . .”

Her question died on her lips as she saw me in hot pursuit. I followed Paul out into the open, and our feet scuffed up dust from the drive. His pace was slowing. In spite of the pain in my side I forced myself to keep going, and overtook him as he reached the path to the village.

“Paul, wait a minute.”

He swung towards me on the defensive, ready to strike if I tried to grab him.

“Paul,” I pleaded, “what do you hope to gain by this? You’re as much a part of it as I am.”

“I’ve had nothing to do with it for months.”

“You can’t shed all responsibility for the earlier stages. And if you think that by betraying me you’ll have Elizabeth for yourself, I can assure you you’re mistaken.”

In the evening light it was difficult to make out his features. But he drew himself up stiffly and said: “I want nothing more than to protect Elizabeth. But I have never tried to win her away from you. If you think that—”

“If you want to protect her,” I broke in, “you are going the wrong way about it. How will it help her to learn that the man she is about to marry is in danger from meddling officials? How will it help her to know that his old friend and colleague is a traitor who himself worked on the preliminary stages? If we both suffer at the hands of the authorities—and don’t imagine, Paul, that I shall accept all blame myself—what will she do? She can’t live here alone, the butt of all the malicious tongues in the country. She has nowhere else to go. It is nearly her wedding eve—and you propose to shatter her whole future?”

“You’re falsifying it, Victor.”

“Falsifying it?” I said. “Think of her in that house while the authorities and their booted minions stamp through, examining everything, pulling the place apart, wrecking my laboratory . . .”

The same thought occurred to us both at the same instant.

“The laboratory,” said Paul. “When we came out . . . the door’s still open.”

“She wouldn’t . . .”

“Wouldn’t she?”

Elizabeth had not followed us out. The main door was still open, shedding light on the steps. She could, of course, have gone back into the salon. Or she could, wondering about our wild chase, have taken the opportunity of going upstairs. And I had undoubtedly left the door wide open.

We stared at the house.

“Victor!” Paul clutched my arm.

High up on the roof a light showed, and there was a flicker of movement. It was impossible to distinguish the outlines of the moving shape at first, but in the stillness of the night we heard the clink and rattle of a chain.

The creature had pulled its chain away from the wall. The light came from the open skylight which led out on to the roof. As we got used to the distance and the darkness, we saw the wavering head and the groping arms unmistakably.

The creature came to the edge of the parapet and looked down.

“We must get up there,” I said.

“Not this time,” said Paul. “I’m going to the village for help.”

I seemed to have lost the will to restrain him. Everything was going wrong. As he went away down the path to round up helpers and ruin my schemes once and for all, I returned to the house. I did not even bother to hurry. I was in the grip of a bleak fatalism.

But once I was indoors my steps quickened. There was no sign of Elizabeth. She must indeed have gone upstairs.

I went up the first flight two at a time and called her name along the landing. There was no reply. I pounded on my way up to the laboratory. The door was open, and the lights were burning just as we had left them. But the skylight, which came right down to floor level, was pushed open. A faint breeze stirred the sheets of notes which had accumulated on my desk.

A lantern stood on the parapet just outside the skylight. It must be one which Elizabeth had carried to light her way up the stairs, since I had certainly not put it there. And it meant that Elizabeth had followed the creature out on to the roof.

There was only a low balustrade to save them from the drop to the terrace below.

I opened the desk drawer and took out my pistol. Then I stepped through the open skylight on to the parapet.

Faintly touched with light, almost at the end of the roof, Elizabeth stood looking away from me, looking at something round the corner of the ridge.

“Elizabeth”—I spoke softly, not wanting to alarm her in that precarious position—“come back.”

She turned and stared at me. It was hardly the face of Elizabeth any longer. Horror was written across it—an incredulous, unconquerable horror that included me as well as the other thing she must have seen. This was not how I had meant her to see the creature for the first time. The shock must have dazed her. Coming into the laboratory just as the creature wrenched its chain free from the wall staple, she must have been hypnotically drawn to follow it, to prove to herself that it was real.

“Elizabeth . . .”

She shook her head as though to deny that I existed. I took a step out on to the parapet and she waved me back. She might have been trying to ward me off—concerned with keeping me rather than the creature at bay.

And behind her the creature appeared, clawing and rocking its way back from the edge of the roof.

I lifted my pistol. Elizabeth screamed. The creature reached out as though to embrace her, and I fired.

It was a bad, impossible target. Elizabeth jerked as though she had been struck, and even in this light I could see a dark stain begin to spread from her shoulder.

She fell back into the creature’s arms.

I had another shot to fire. This time I could not afford to miss. As Elizabeth’s head drooped to one side I braced myself and took careful aim. The creature stared stupidly, uncomprehendingly at me.

I fired, and this time it was the creature’s turn to flinch. Its arm slid to its side, and Elizabeth crumpled over the edge of the balustrade. She hung there, unconscious, her head swaying over the deadly drop.

The creature touched her once in a puzzled sort of way and then carefully, with a lumbering solemnity, clambered past her and began to come towards me.

“Stay where you are,” I commanded it.

It kept up its slow, steady pace.

“Get back,” I shouted. It must have heard; must know what I was saying. So far its obedience had been unquestioning. “Get back—get away.”

It was within a few feet of me. I backed away until I was in the skylight opening. Still it did not slacken its advance.

I yelled for help, but there was nobody to hear.

I threw the pistol at the creature. It bounced off, and an eternity later I heard the rattle as it hit the ground far below.

Behind me was the laboratory. If I fled across it I could lock the door from outside and make my escape. The door was solid enough to withstand even the strength of this powerful creature. But to leave Elizabeth out there, trapped with the monster . . .

I glanced back over my shoulder in search of a suitable weapon. There was none. The silver-knobbed stick was not something I would care to trust against this solid brute force.

At my feet was the lantern. I felt the warmth of the flame against my ankle.

I stooped and picked it up.

The creature plodded towards me and raised its arms. I swung the lantern twice to give it plenty of impetus, and hurled it full at the creature.

As the spurting, flickering light was launched at it, the creature bared its teeth. If it could have sprung at me it would have done so. But it had not yet learnt such coordination of movements. It made one further step forward and then the lantern smacked into its chest.

There was a moment when nothing seemed to happen. A faint smear of thick black smoke hung on the air. Then flame blazed up from the lamp.

The creature was on fire. The flames licked up greedily, devouring it at a speed which appalled me. Its eyes stared out at me in agonized entreaty, and then were blotted out by crimson fury. A strangled, hideous voice screamed despairingly. The creature’s head jerked back in an effort to dodge the flames, but they were too voracious. Its hands beat vainly on its face. And then, a raging pillar of fire, it came blundering on towards me again.

I stumbled back into the laboratory. The glass of the skylight crashed into splinters, spraying across the parapet and into the laboratory.

And suddenly, rearing up like a living torch, the creature hurled itself forward. In its death throes it sought a respite, something to put an end to the intolerable pain. With one wild, insane leap it plunged into the tank.

The screams went on, reverberating through the laboratory. And the screams were mine. I was yelling like a maniac, trying to stop what had already been done. The tank was no longer full of the fluid in which the creature had once lain. I had recently recharged it with acid. And into that acid plunged the burning creature.

There was an acrid smoke that billowed up and raced like some elemental fiend about the room. In the tank there was a moment of wild thrashing and churning, and acid splashed out over the floor, driving me back into a safe corner.

Then the noise abated. It died to a sizzling and bubbling that went on for some time before finally fading into utter stillness.

My life’s work was destroyed. Destroyed in a moment by the same hand that brought it into existence. Within half an hour there was nothing left of my creature. The acid tank was cloudy, but that, too, would clarify in a short time and there would be no evidence that the creature had ever been in this world at all.

9

T
hat is the true story of what happened. But it is a story which no one will believe. The priest shakes his head and exhorts me to repent. The executioner makes ready, and my hours are numbered.

One man could have saved me. If Paul Krempe had spoken out, then surely the verdict would have gone differently. But Paul had nothing to say. Paul, who was the cause of all that went wrong with the experiment, took Elizabeth away into the quiet countryside and left me to my fate—an undeserved fate.