The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror by Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, David A. Riley Read Free Book Online

dropping and swooping with incredibly quick, furtive motions above him.
    And then the moon was gone. The cold darkness swiftly closed in again like the wings of one of those flitting creatures grown suddenly to monstrous proportions.
    Albert, eyes closed, was shivering. The air was biting cold against his face and hands; yet, all over his body he could feel the sweat running down his flesh in sudden sticky streams. In his mind’s eye he could still see the things which had been illuminated by that brief wan glow, a glow which, now vanished, made the night seem even blacker than before. Above him he imagined the dark shapes still whipping gently to and fro. All around him he felt he could still see the drooping foliage in which his imagination now placed numerous unseen horrors, rustling and creeping, shifting ominously nearer to where he sat, alone, in the darkness at the water’s edge.
    Albert trembled and clenched his teeth.
    From somewhere came the tiny sound of water dripping, and then it was gone.
    Alone. That was the trouble. This night was darker and more frightening than any he had known, and here he was, all alone, with his usually placid imagination working at double-speed. Well, now that he was here he’d have to put up with it. Self-control, that was what was needed. He just had to pull himself together.
    He concentrated on the float, the tiny spot of luminescence that floated unmoving before him on the black surface of the water. Why the hell hadn’t he had a bite yet? The float hadn’t moved since he got here. How long ago was that? Three hours? Ten minutes? He couldn’t tell; time seemed to lose its meaning here at night on the lakeside.
    He sat on the stool, hands in his lap, and stared at the float. But now the darkness was not quite silent: faintly, just on the edge of his hearing, came little whisperings and rustlings; as of tiny creatures stirring in the grass and the reeds. Or was it something else—something more sinister—coming closer?
    The float. Concentrate on the float. Don’t let your imagination play games with you. Albert’s eyes stared into the blackness, yet he could still see the pictures that the brief touch of ghostly moonlight had painted: the flat water, the pointed reeds, the tiny, candle-wax leaves on the softly illuminated branches of the trees. The branches: crooked and long like reaching hands, like clawing fingers, like writhing snakes, like long worms…
    Like long worms. Albert thought about the fat worm on the end of his line, squirming with the hook through it, waiting for the black shape of the fish to come looming through the dark water, the fish whose mouth would be open to engulf the worm, to suck at it; to suck out the nourishing innards and leave the skin empty and dead on the barbed hook. To suck…
    Albert saw the float-tip suddenly move. Automatically he reached out for the rod, and then he froze. His mouth opened and closed, and his eyes became wide with horror. He could feel it. By God, he could feel it!
    It was crawling over his flesh, a cold pulsing stickiness like a wet hand trying to grip him. Needles of pain were suddenly piercing his chest and an oozing dampness was all over him, as if… as if something were trying to suck at him, trying to suck out his insides…
    Albert screamed once, briefly, and then be grabbed his rod. He yanked it sideways, and suddenly the feeling was gone. The sucking grip had vanished from his flesh and streams of fire were no longer surging through his chest.
    Albert let go of the fishing rod and the float bobbed gently, once more down into the water, His body racked with shudders, Albert Jordan sat down on the stool and closed his eyes tightly against the darkness.
    He just couldn’t believe it. For a moment there he had actually thought he was the worm, the hook piercing through him, the line pulling at him as he squirmed desperately this way and that, and the fish sucking at him, trying to draw out his innards.
    Albert