Mark of the Beast. Brian Ball

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      “Wake up,” he heard Janice saying. “Alan. You’ve let me down again! Oh, look at him, Linda, he’s dozed off.”

      Alan Charnock blinked again. He raised his hands to rub his eyes.

      “Dozed off? Have I, Jan? Then what about—”

      He stopped. Self-control reasserted itself. He would not make a fool of himself. He looked at Janice, at Linda Pierce, and around the circle; and then, fearfully towards Mrs Worrall. The medium was hidden from his view.

      To gain time, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Jan. You know me. I’ve not felt too well.” He attempted a laugh, though to his own ears it sounded hysterical. “I must have—well, I thought—”

      Janice stared at him with no affection in her gaze. “What?”

      Alan Charnock floundered. His eyes darted about the hall. No one seemed to be unduly alarmed. There was no hint of the strange terror that had gripped the Spiritualists. Mrs. Pierce sat calmly, her hands in her lap. The stout woman was perspiring a little, though she had done so from the moment she sat down. Why, when they had been so profoundly disturbed by the monstrous apparition, did they now seem so calm? It couldn’t be that the thing was expected was a commonplace visitation? And Mrs. Worrall—what of her? The women still hid her from his view.

      He shuddered and looked down at his trembling hands. A dream? He had been asleep?

      “What, Alan?” repeated Janice.

      Alan Charnock kept a tremor from his voice: “It was the—I saw the—” He couldn’t go on.

      “Alan!”

      “But I heard it— The message!”

      It wasn’t what he meant to say. He wanted to tell her that the thing had grunted and snarled, that it stank of substances he could no longer put a name to; and especially that the others had seen it too.

      “I don’t see how you could have heard much,” said Janice. “You dropped off when it was getting interesting.”

      “Getting interesting—that’s what you said, Jan! Don’t you remember—you said something like ‘The fun’s just starting’?”

      Janice sighed and got to her feet.

      “Linda, don’t pay any attention to him. I think he might be sickening for something.”

      Linda Pierce got up too.

      “It’s a pity my Charlie didn’t get through. I’ll have to ask him about his chest next week.”

      Alan began to believe that he had fallen asleep. There was no sign that the terrible apparition had affected anyone else. Small groups of women chatted to one another. Someone had turned on the lights, and the hall no longer had the tomb-like atmosphere of so short a time before

      But what about Mrs. Worrall? Alan nervously scrambled to his feet, and took a few steps towards the knot of women about the medium. Surely she at least must show some evidence of the thing that had used her as a channel from God knew what other world? Even as he caught sight of Mrs. Worrall’s kindly smiling face. Alan started to explain everything away.

      She was grey-brown rather than the muddy coffee colour she had been; yet her white smile was firmly in place. Her lips were slightly ragged in two places, yet she appeared to suffer no distress on that account. There was no blood. And she was listening to the admiring congratulations of her small circle of devotees with every sign of enjoyment

      Alan remembered the grunting, the half-formed sounds of incantation that might have been the language of a savage. A dream? It had to be a dream. Janice was looking at him with less distaste now. He shook his head.

      “I’m sorry, Janice,” he said again. “It sounds crazy, but I’ve had some kind of hallucination. I suppose the atmosphere and everything did it—I thought Mrs. Worrall had a sort of fit, and that we all saw a sort of—”

      “Sort of what, Mr. Charnock,” asked Linda Pierce.

      “Well, I thought I saw a bloody ghost!”

      “We don’t talk about such things!” Linda Pierce told him frostily. “The dear departed are not to be mixed up with that sort of talk!”

      It was with a sense of relief that Alan Charnock heard his wife apologizing to the nearest of the Spiritualists. She was invited to return on another occasion, but the offer pointedly excluded him; he felt wretched, humiliated and yet troubled. A small remnant of masculine pride made him insist on driving to a pub on the outskirts of the small town.

      “Where do you think you’re going, Alan?” asked Janice.

      “I felt like a drink.”

      “You don’t drink.”

      “I feel like one now—I feel a bit shattered.”

      “You’ll feel worse in the morning.”

      “Jan, I just want one drink, that’s all! I didn’t feel too well at the séance.”

      Alan saw his wife’s pale face set in harsh lines, so that it was in a state of some melancholy that he escorted Janice into the Lounge Bar of the ‘Coach and Horses’.

      “A large brandy,” he told the landlord. “And a sweet sherry for my wife.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      JANICE Charnock felt drowsy. She was annoyed with her husband, but not as much as he thought. The evening had excited her, though she would not admit as much to Alan. It didn’t do to let men know what you thought. They knew too much already.

      She cast her mind back to the events of the séance.

      Linda Pierce had promised a strange kind of communication—it seemed somehow thrilling and stimulating to hold a conversation with a person who had died. Charlie Pierce. He had been in his grave for years; and yet Linda believed that she could talk to him as if he was a customer in the shop. Alan was not impressed, of course.

      His scorn at the questions of that old fool who had wanted to have his dog bark back at him was only too apparent. If she hadn’t felt so excited—so odd—Janice could have laughed. Alan wouldn’t have liked that. But there had been the other feeling.

      Janice clenched her hands secretly into her thighs. She was sure that the skin on her palms was broken. It was a frightening experience, that sudden jolt of burning and yet soothing force that had flowed through and through her. She didn’t want to feel it again. Once was enough.

      She cleared her throat. Alan was annoyed with her. He had finished one brandy—a double—and if she didn’t conciliate him a little he would drink more. She said:

      “Alan, what on earth’s bothering you? You’re morbid tonight. Let’s go. I’m tired.” To reinforce her point, she added: “I’ve got a headache.”

      “You can have an aspirin when we get back.”

      Alan Charnock’s confusion of mind had resolved itself to some extent. He knew he would be sick СКАЧАТЬ