The Fog - James Herbert [11]
When at last he lay sprawled semi-conscious on the muddied grass, they herded together, and crushed the life from his battered body with their hooves.
The poacher gazed at the house from his hiding place in the undergrowth. He’d emerged from the fog, but instead of returning to his ramshackle house on the outskirts of the village he’d walked along the main road towards the gates of the Colonel’s huge country home. He’d skulked up the long, winding drive and hidden in the bushes, waiting and peering through the leaves at the house. After a while his eyes, strangely glazed, looked from left to right. He rose and crept stealthily towards the back of the building. He knew where to go for he’d done casual work for the Colonel’s head gardener years before. That was how he knew the grounds so well, the best places to poach, the best places to hide. He walked down towards a wooden hut at the end of the long garden. He pushed open the door, his eyes now developing a fixed stare, no longer worrying about the noise he was making, his movements controlled, steady. He reached for an axe, rusted with time, but the blade still sharp. As he turned to leave the hut, his gaze fell on a box of three-inch nails used for fencing. He scooped up a handful and put them in his pocket.
He walked back up the garden, not bothering to hide, walking in a straight line towards the house. As he reached the back door, the Merediths’ cook was just opening it to let the steam from her kitchen escape. She’d just cooked the Colonel and his wife breakfast and the maid had taken it up to them. Now it was time for her morning tea before she started to make preparations for their lunch. There were lots of guests coming, so there was much to do.
She had no chance to scream before the axe hit her, only a fleeting look into the eyes of a madman, a chance for fear to begin to rise but never to reach its peak, for in the next instant she was dead.
Tom Abbot entered the kitchen and climbed the stairs that led to the hall. He’d never been in the house before and only the sound of voices drew him towards the dining-room. He opened the first door he came to and went in, not stopping till he was in the middle of a large sitting-room, bigger than the whole of the ground floor of his tiny house. He stood there, gazing ahead.
The sound of footsteps passing the open door caused him to turn and retrace his steps. He heard the sound of voices again and walked towards another door.
The maid hummed to herself as she descended the stairs to the kitchen, holding her tray with half-eaten grapefruit and crusts of toast aloft so that she could see the steps beneath her.
‘Put the kettle on, Mrs Peabody,’ she called out as she approached the kitchen door. ‘Let’s have a nice cuppa’ while they’re noshing their bacon and eggs.’
Discovering the kitchen empty, she looked around curiously. The kettle was already steaming away. She put down her tray and walked over to the gas stove to turn the kettle off. The door to the garden was open so she assumed the cook had stepped outside for a breath of fresh air or to empty some food scraps into one of the dustbins. She walked around the large centre table to the door so she could call for her. A scream broke from her lips as she saw the body, lying there just outside the doorway, its skull cleaved open to the bridge of the nose. Before she fainted, she realized it was the cook, recognizable only because of her build and clothes, her face covered in blood, her features in a frozen grimace of terror, bearing no resemblance to the face it had once been. As she collapsed, the maid’s brain just registered the other scream, the scream from upstairs that pierced the still air.
When she regained consciousness, she couldn’t at first recollect what had happened. Then her body stiffened as she remembered. She saw the corpse, her foot almost touching it, and she backed away shuddering, trying to call for help but her vocal cords paralysed with fear. She somehow