Faces of Fear by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

in the lowest of voices, “The boy was my younger brother Miles. When I was fourteen and he was twelve, we both wanted to be artists and we both wanted to be adventurers. We decided to go exploring at the back of Hastings House. I presume you saw the back of Hastings House?
    â€œMiles and I had heard all kinds of stories about the family who lived there, the Vanes. Some of our friends said they were only half-human. They looked quite normal by day, but by night they turned into some kind of dreadful beast. Of course, being boys, we went by night, so that we could see them at their worst.
    â€œWe crawled through all of that appalling undergrowth. I lost count of the times I scratched my face and ripped my clothing. It was a bright moonlit night, you know, but parts of those woods were so dense that we lost sight ofeach other, and we had to keep in touch with our famous owl noises.
    â€œWe found ourselves descending into a very swampy part of the wood. The ground was so muddy that I thought that I was going to sink right up to my waist. There were brambles, too – worse than barbed wire. We stopped and decided to turn back; but just as we did so we heard a whimpering noise not far away. It sounded like an animal in pain, so we made our way towards it. After a long search we found a golden retriever lying on the ground. Both of its front legs were caught in a man-trap. Not a gin-trap, mark you, but an actual man-trap with metal teeth. One of its paws was almost completely severed, and the other leg was almost certainly broken.
    â€œMiles and I tried to open the trap with a stick, but we couldn’t find anything strong enough. In the end Miles said that he would run for help if I stayed behind and tried to comfort this unfortunate dog.”
    Duncan Greenleaf stopped for a moment. He sipped a little tea, and then he said, “You are only the third person to whom I have told this story. On the night that it happened, I told an inspector of Lewes Police. I told my father. Neither of them believed me, and for that reason I decided that I would never tell it again. The only way in which I could commemorate the events of that night was to include them in my work … and even now, of course, Moon Brand Wheat Flakes have gone by the board. All these sugary cereals they have these days … and the packaging – so lurid!”
    â€œThe hungry moon is a work of art,” said Marcus.
    â€œThe hungry moon, as you call it, is a work of explanation, and of love.”
    Duncan Greenleaf appeared to be losing the thread, soMarcus asked, “What happened then, when Miles went for help?”
    â€œI waited. The poor dog was in such a state that I was sure it was going to die. I stroked it and tried to reassure it. I was appalled that anybody could have sprung such a trap and left it in the woods where any animal could have walked into it. I was still waiting when I heard the noise of somebody coming through the woods – not from the direction by which Miles and I had entered them, but from the direction of Hastings House. At first I thought I ought to call out ‘help!’ But then something deterred me. It was the
heaviness
of the person who was approaching. It was the way that they came crashing through the bog and the brambles as if they weren’t even worried about being scratched.
    â€œI regret to say that I abandoned the dog and ran to hide between some nearby trees.
    â€œI didn’t have long to wait. The undergrowth seemed literally to
burst
apart, a whirlwind of leaves and branches and brambles flailing around like spiky whips; and out of this whirlwind came the most appalling apparition that I had ever seen, or ever
will
see. It was a human figure, of sorts, dressed in a black cowl and billowing black robes. It was immensely tall, but I could see its eyes glittering inside its cowl, and I could see that it had a huge downturned mouth like a shark’s. I was so frightened that