Max_Writer

“We are hearing the howl very loudly,” Dusseldorf went on. “Zhat means it is about to break through the veil and come into our vorld. However, ve may be able to keep it away! Zhese symbols, the symbols on zhe cards, I recognize it now! It is a symbol of protection! If ve trace zhis symbol on zhe floor, ve may be able to keep zhe hound avay!”

“Well do it!” I said.

“She’s bleeding!” Taggart said, pointing at Jean-Pierre.

“In blood!?!” Sister Mary Bernadette sounded appalled.

“Why not?” Jean-Pierre said.

Cooper used her torn shirt to get blood from Jean-Pierre’s leg and start to make the symbol near the door closest to the study while I asked the nun to bless my shotgun shells.

“Ve have to cover every entranceway into zhis area vith a symbol,” Dr. Dusseldorf said. “Zhere are four vays into zhis room. Ve must all take turns drawing!”

I pulled one of the cards from my pocket, then moved to the door further from the study and tried to draw the symbol from the card in the thick dust on the floor. After I had done what I thought was a sufficient job, I took up my shotgun again and moved to the center of the room once more. The others had used whatever they had at hand to make the strange symbol in front of the other door and the two windows of the place.

Suddenly, the most horrible and sickly smell of brimstone and sulfur filled the room.

“It is about to come through!” Dr. Dusseldorf yelled. “Hurry up!”

The growl seemed to shake the entire house. The nun was reciting psalm 23 as the rest of us watched the door near the study. Everything went deathly still and even the nun stopped her praying. Then a chanting came through the outside window that was open. I turned and moved towards the window as something growled in the hall behind me.

I shined my electric torch out the window and into the darkness.

“There was a figure by the cottages!” James said.

Taggart was suddenly by my side, also looking out into the darkness.

The clatter of an animal’s nails on wood came from the hall. Then a growl as the thing came closer and closer. Jean-Pierre appeared next to Taggart.

“You need this Olver,” he whispered, shoving a handgun into the man’s hand.

A loud throaty growl came from the door and Lord Guffield started screaming. Taggart and I ignored it for the time being and continued trying to find whoever was chanting outside. Taggart leaned out of the window and looked down, as did I, but there was no one there.

Behind us, James started to giggle and laugh.

“You’re all it!” he said.

Taggart and I turned around as he fired his pistol at Dr. Dusseldorf! As Taggart flung himself into the room at Bradshaw, I saw Winifred Bradshaw rush her brother as well.

“What are you doing James?” I shouted.

“James!” his sister called.

Something growled from the doorway.

“Bradshaw!” I shouted, aiming my shotgun at the lad. “Stand down! Dusseldorf, get over here!”

I saw Miss Cooper, at the other window, turn towards the door even as Jean-Pierre fired a shot at the doorway. Bradshaw fired another shot and Dusseldorf stumbled as he moved towards me. Then Taggart ran into Bradshaw and grabbed him, taking the man to the floor as he struggled to get free. I moved towards the small group.

“In the name of God I smite thee!” Sister Mary Bernadette screamed from the doorway.

She and swung a candle stick at the shadow that was standing in the shadow of the doorway but it seemed to go right through the thing’s head!

“Guns don’t hurt it!” Jean-Pierre shouted.

The thing growled and lunged at the nun but seemed to be held back. It turned and disappeared back into the hallway. Jean-Pierre ran across the room to the spot where I’d drawn that strange circle in the dust as Guffield continued screaming.

“Close your eyes and think of England, Guffield!” I shouted over the din.

Dusseldorf had gotten behind me, keeping me between himself and Bradshaw. Jean-Pierre was fiddling with the symbol I’d made, apparently using his own blood as the palette for the paintbrush that was his finger.

Bradshaw went limp and shook his head.

“What the hell is happening?” he said.

“James, are you okay?” his sister asked.

“You shot the Hun!” Taggart told him.

“I shot a wolf!” James replied.

The growling moved towards the second door.

“Mon Dieu,” Jean-Pierre said.

He looked up and the thing was standing almost over him, though still, mercifully, hidden by the shadows. He screamed like a woman and I recognized the scream from the attic. The thing lunged at him but stopped as if it had struck a wall. Cooper lit the wick on a bottle and flung it at the doorway. It disappeared from my sight but then I heard glass breaking and saw blue flames in the hall, casting a horrible shadow there. The flames didn’t seem to affect the thing at all.

“Sacre Bleu!” the Frenchman said.

The thing fled from the hall and when we next heard it howl, only moments later, it was outside.

Dr. Dusseldorf moved to the window and started to look at the symbol drawn near the closed one. Then he knelt and, like the Frenchman, used the blood oozing from his shoulder as ink to add to the drawing. Taggart let loose of Bradshaw as the nun told the professor that he was making mistakes. Then Dusseldorf looked up and screamed.

The chanting began outside again.

The thing burst through the window. It was horrible and though shaped like some massive and horrible hound, the resemblance to anything natural or normal ended there. It had a face that was vaguely human or perhaps simian and the entirety of the thing was covered with slime, more of which dripped from a terrible mouth that seemed too large for its horrible face. It seemed simply wrong, as if I were only seeing part of it, the rest somehow twisted into the darkness of some alien dimension.

“What the hell is that!?!” I shrieked.

The thing was perched in the window and it looked down at Dr. Dusseldorf for a moment, and then scanned the room. Its eyes, if they could even be called such, seemed to lock onto the screaming Guffield, who was sitting in the center of the room.

“Noooooo!” he screamed. “Noooooo!”

The thing launched itself from the window and I had the shotgun to my shoulder in an instant. I saw Miss Cooper also raise and fire her shotgun even as Jean-Pierre, Taggart, and James Bradshaw fired their handguns. The revolver bullets didn’t seem to affect the beast at all but the blast from my shotgun struck the thing in the gut and tore away a great deal of its flesh. Cooper’s blast did more, and splattered it from head to haunches. It flew apart and splattered all over the room, blown apart.

Guffield’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted.

The thing was gone. I reloaded and could hear the chanting again. I headed for the window, dropping my electric torch, which had been broken in the blast.

“Every damned time I’m with you people …” Taggart muttered.

“Taggart! I need light!” I said to the man.

Jean-Pierre was assisting Dr. Dusseldorf and Miss Cooper seemed to be drawing something on her arm.

“Sister, bless these bullets!” I said.

She seemed to be listening at the window but quickly blessed my gun again.

“Mein Gott in Himmel, it not dead yet!” Dr. Dusseldorf suddenly said.

“What?” Taggart said.

“The hound?” Sister Mary Bernadette said.

“The thing exploded!” Taggart said.

“Sometimes demons do that,” she said.

“It’s reforming!” Dusseldorf cried. “You must shoot it!”

I headed for the window and looked out, trying to figure out where the chanting was coming from. I could see nothing and Taggart appeared at my side with someone’s electric torch. He shined it to the cottages but when I looked, I saw nothing.

“There!” he said.

“Let’s go Taggart!” I said.

The chanting stopped.

“That’s the source of the trouble!” I said. “That’s Agnes.”

There was a strange noise from within the room, almost like the sound of someone dragging dead flesh, as the broken, blow-apart bits started sliding across the floor. I climbed out the window as the nun sprinkled more of her holy water. Taggart was with me but he ran along the back of the house towards the wheelbarrow I’d purchased just that day.

I suddenly felt a tingle on the back of my neck. A voice in my head told me that I had to get everyone out of the house and back to town as quickly as possible. I knew, somehow, that it was right and that we would all die if we stayed there. I followed Taggart to the wheelbarrow and as he fiddled with what lay within, I looked back towards the house.

“It’s too much,” I whispered to him. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get everyone out of here and back to town. It’s the only place we’ll be safe. Come on!”

I ran back towards the dining room window.

“Bertie, where are you going!?!” he shouted after me.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” I whispered back. “Come on! Come on! We’ve got to get the rest!”

“No, we’ve got to get this thing!” he yelled.

“We will, we will!” I hissed back. “We’ll come back tomorrow!”

When I reached the window I yelled within.

“Quick! Everybody out out out out!” I shouted. “Quick! Quick! Come on! Come on!”

They all hesitated but then started doing as they were ordered as I frantically yelled at them to hurry. They all came out in turn: Jean-Pierre, Dr. Dusseldorf, the Bradshaws, Lord Guffield, Sister Mary Bernadette, and Sally. Miss Cooper stopped long enough to shoot the thing that seemed to be reforming in the center of the room! The blast blew it completely apart once again.

“All right, now let’s run!” she said.

“She’s after zhe blood!” Dusseldorf whispered when he got to me, holding up a small bottle. “She needs it for a component for her immortality spell. Zhis is vhat she wants.”

“The blood of the beast?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied. “Use it to lure her out of hiding!”

I merely pushed him towards the motorcars.

“Agnes!” he suddenly screamed. “I have your blood, you scrotum-licking bitch!”

“Professor! There are ladies present!” I said. “Go! Go!”

He continued to yell taunts into the darkness.

I urged them all to get to the motorcars as quickly as possible, and then ran that way myself, leading them and running around the side of the house until I could see the machines out front. I pointed them to the motorcars.

Lord Guffield and Sally Lewes ran to the cards, as did Miss Cooper and Winifred and James Bradshaw. Jean-Pierre stopped at the side of the house as did Dr. Dusseldorf, both saying we couldn’t leave. James talked to his sister briefly at the vehicles before they returned. I did not see Sister Mary Bernadette or Taggart.

“We must go!” I said. “I’ll go get the nun and Taggart!”

I left them there and ran towards the back of the house calling their names. I soon found Sister Mary Bernadette near the window. She was chanting something she was reading out of a book by the light of an electric torch. As I reached her, she held up one finger.

I heard a shot and suddenly wondered what I was doing trying to leave. I turned from the nun and ran back in the direction I thought I’d heard the shot come from, soon spotting Taggart crouched in the bushes near the servants’ cottages. I went to him.

“Taggart, did you get her?” I asked.

“Check it,” he said. “I’ll cover you.”

“Where?”

“Approximately 50 yards.”

He pointed his rifle and I got the electric torch from him and headed over in the direction he was aiming, shotgun at ready. I soon found the thing on the ground. It looked like an old woman and stank of death. The body was still twitching and I aimed the shotgun at her head as she started to crawl away!

“No! Do not shoot!” Dr. Dusseldorf said.

“Why?” I said.

“Mary Bernadette!” he said. “She has cast another summoning spell! The hound will attack Agnes. Ve must get zhe hell out of here!”

“What?” I looked around.

I smelled sulfur and brimstone again and felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I quickly backed away, turning off the electric torch. As soon as it was dark, a window broke on the house and I heard the horrible thing crossing the yard towards us. I looked away as I continued to retreat but I couldn’t help see something leap onto the spot where Agnes lay. She let out a horrible shriek and then there was a fleshy sound of like a melon being crushed. I was splattered with blood with the horrible thing shook her body like a toy! I continued to back away quickly, still averting my eyes.

Then it was gone and all was silent. I went back over and found little left of the mangled body of Agnes. Dr. Dusseldorf suggested burning it and I sent someone to get Lord Guffield and for a hose and petrol can that were in the back of my motorcar. We set the horrid thing on fire.

We spent that night in Larchdale.

* * *