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Back Devil in the Darkness
Chapters (25)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Introduction by Greg Gbur
  5. Epigraphs
  6. Author's Note
  7. 1
  8. 2
  9. 3
  10. 4
  11. 5
  12. 6
  13. 7
  14. 8
  15. 9
  16. 10
  17. 11
  18. 12
  19. 13
  20. 14
  21. 15
  22. 16
  23. 17
  24. 18
  25. About the Author

‘No, the phenomena went beyond the usual poltergeist repertoire. One night the youngest child, aged seven, a boy, came screaming into his parents’ bedroom. When they calmed him down he sobbed out a story of how he found himself in the cellars of the house. Something terrible – a monster – had tried to strangle him. He fled through the house, up the stairs to his parents’ room with it scrabbling after him.

‘Of course, the parents thought he had had a nightmare. They sent those members of the household who had been aroused by the little boy’s screams back to bed and let their son sleep between them for the rest of the night. But in the morning, in the clear light of day, they saw the smudges on his nightshirt, the dirt on his feet and the purple bruises on his neck.’

Carol, eyes wide, said: ‘You mean to say that there really had been an attack on the child!’

‘It looked like it. Taken in isolation, of course, it was not necessarily paranormal. But other incidents occurred. A maid told how she had been wakened in the night by a feeling of intense cold. The bedclothes had been stripped from her and a dark figure stood beside the bed. She said she was so paralysed with terror that she could not scream. After what seemed an eternity, the figure drifted away and disappeared. She fainted.

‘When she told the cook in the morning, that person, who appears to have been a hard-headed woman, questioned her. She seems to have been satisfied that it was not hysteria and told Sir Henry. The maid was allowed to sleep with another maid there­after. The cook herself began sleeping in the former maid’s room. Within a week she told the Frasers that she had had the same experience.

‘The cook claimed that the dark figure exuded such an aura of power and hate that she felt absolutely helpless.’ Meredith smiled grimly. ‘After that she returned to her former room. It was noticed,’ he added dryly, ‘that the maids showed a decided tendency to go about their work in pairs whenever possible.’ Just as Meredith’s people do, Carol thought, feeling her uneasiness deepen.