The Hammer Horror Omnibus by John Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

do.”
    “Nobody in Vandorf seems very anxious to do anything for me,” said Paul dourly.
    Carla looked past him, down the steps, and out into the forest. She said: “Did Dr. Namaroff say anything to you about the local superstitions? About the thing that roams the woods?”
    “He didn’t want to talk about anything of the kind. He doesn’t believe in any of it.”
    “Doesn’t he?” said Carla softly. “Perhaps he believes more than he will admit. Your father tried to discuss the fear with him—and although he made a show of brushing it all aside, I know he is beginning to worry about . . . about . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “The creature.”
    “Have you seen her?” Paul demanded. Madness, yes; but they were all afflicted by it, and he had a wild moment of debating whether or not this might be the dark curse of the place—an obsessive, contagious madness, a mass hysteria which one puff of sanity might, under the right conditions, dispel.
    “Nobody,” said Carla, “has seen her and lived.”
    “Do you really think that Namaroff believes in her?”
    “He believes in something that he won’t dare to admit, even to himself. But you . . . Mr. Heitz, you must believe in her.”
    Paul was taken aback. “Why?”
    “If you don’t, you’ll see no reason to leave here at once. And if you stay, you’ll be found like the others. Here, you’re too great a threat. You won’t be allowed to survive.”
    A short time ago Paul had been sanely and sensibly planning to leave because there was nothing to be accomplished here. Now it suddenly became imperative that he should stay. In the span of a few weeks he had lost first his brother and then his father. He could not desert them now. Vandorf had defeated them, but there was still another member of the family to carry on the battle.
    He said: “I’m grateful to you, but I can’t leave.”
    “Please . . .”
    Her concern was so genuine that he felt an impulse to put his arm round her and reassure her. Indeed, he was startled by the force of his own longing to hold her. If things had been different—if he had come to this idyllic setting and met this beautiful girl without any background of menace and hostility—they could have meant something to each other. It was as swift and sure as that.
    Bitterly he thought of Bruno, who had loved and died here.
    Carla said: “I must go. I’m on duty in half an hour. But please do as I say. Please, for your own sake, leave Vandorf.”
    When she had gone he was drawn back despite himself to that perplexing, insane letter. He picked it up and, denying that it could mean any part of what it said, read it yet again.

7
    A t night the bustle of the Institution slackened to the tempo of sleep—a steady, rhythmic breathing in a twilight of shaded lamps. The petulant chatter of the larger wards was hushed. In a private room a sleepless patient tried to read herself into drowsiness. In Namaroff’s office, Carla recited from memory:
    “ ‘If someone in Vandorf is possessed or subject to periodic fits of possession, that person must be found. In my view it will prove to be a woman. Symbolically and metaphysically this is inevitable. A woman who has become only the slave of this ancient evil, enabling it to satisfy its greed for slaughter. I am trying to find rational terms for a phenomenon which is in fact one of pure terror. Perhaps the old, original terms must stand. The Gorgons—heads crowned with living snakes—anyone who looked on them was petrified. Hence the word “Gorgonized”—literally meaning turned to stone. Incredible. But our whole history is incredible, filled with monsters and fear.’ ” Carla stopped. “I’m sorry. He came back into the house just then. That’s all I had time to memorize.”
    She would have liked to add that she had found even this much of the task unpalatable. She had not enjoyed spying on that young man, whose presence in Vandorf was like an affirmation from another world—a saner, cleaner