The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [7]
23
But Jeremy refused to be jollied along. ‘Where would you suggest?’ he said bitterly, peering through the gathering twilight at the firmly closed trattoria, with its ice-cream parlour, and the blank faces of the shuttered houses. There was not a person in sight and the only light was a single bare bulb by the harbour steps.
It soon became clear that the Italian tradition of hospitality to the stranger was in abeyance on San Stefano Minore. Hearty knocks on several doors produced no result other than the lonely cry of a scared child and a menacing shout of ‘ Se ne vada! ’
By the time they had retraced their steps to the castello and crossed the broken stones (with grass growing through the cracks) of the bleak emptiness between the gate tower and the heavy front door of the keep – what else could they do? She’d just have to face the Brigadier and apologize –
Sarah wasn’t sure whether the tears in her eyes were really the effect of the harsh wind. Darkness had descended as suddenly, it seemed, as nightfall in Africa the time she’d travelled from the Caribbean to the old Slave Coast on the Voodoo Witch-Doctor story which got her the job on Metropolitan.
As she yanked the bell – an old-fashioned pull-it‐and-hope job – she could see Jeremy’s face in the moonlight, wide-eyed and wan. She should never have brought him.
24
He’d probably catch pneumonia and die or something, and then she’d have to organize flying his coffin home and all; and what would she tell his Mama?
She pulled the bell again. There was no reply. She couldn’t even hear the jingle-jangle of the bell inside. There was no sound at all, bar the distant howling of a village dog, and the soughing of the wind in the trees. But then…
‘What was that?’ said Jeremy, his head jerking round in fright.
A cry of alarm; a shriek of fear; a voice calling a name in a frenzy of desperation.
‘It came from round there,’ said Sarah, and set off towards the left side of the keep.
‘Come back!’ cried Jeremy as she disappeared.
There was nobody in sight round the corner. But the moonlight was bright enough for her to make out what seemed to be a garden wall behind the house. Where it joined on to the back wall of the perimeter, the whole thing seemed to have collapsed. It was from down there that the voice seemed to be coming.
She could still hear it as she arrived at the ruined bit: a keening hopeless wail. She clambered precariously up the heap of stones. ‘Hang on, I’m coming!’ she cried.
25
Her foot turned on a loose stone and she fell, rolling down the decline to her left, where the ground fell away in a five-hundred‐foot drop to the sea.
Pulling herself back from the abyss, she lay clutching at the stones in a spasm of terror. But the voice came yet again, crying the name in a crescendo of despair.
Forcing herself to move, she pulled herself to the very top – in time to catch a glimpse of a figure, a girl in a white frock, plunging over the cliff to a certain death.
Scrambling down the stones, careless of painful scuffs and certain bruises, Sarah made her way to the edge.
Clinging frantically to the coarse grass to save herself from the tearing wind, she tried to look down. The moonlight showed her the sheer rock-face and the cruel breakers smashing themselves against the massive stones which had fallen from the broken wall. But there was no sign of the white dress.
Through the howl of the gale, she became aware of another sound, an inhuman cry, a high-pitched snarl. Still hanging on for her very life, she managed to turn her head enough to see the cause: crouching on the stones behind her, a glowing creature half ape, half carrion bird, reaching out with impossibly extended scaly arms to seize her in its vulture claws.
26
Three
Much to the. Brigadier’s surprise, the arrival of the TARDIS
did not seem to upset Uncle Mario at all. But then,