The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [61]
Bella had left the room. She came back now, carrying a white cock. It was alive and struggling to be free.
Now with white chalk she knelt down and began to draw signs on the floor round the brazier and the copper bowl. She set down the cock with its back on the white curving line round the bowl and it stayed there motionless.
She drew more signs, chanting as she did so, in a low guttural voice. The words were incomprehensible to me, but as she knelt and swayed, she was clearly working herself up to some pitch of obscene ecstasy.
Watching me, Thyrza said: “You don’t like it much? It’s old, you know, very old. The death spell according to old recipes handed from mother to daughter.”
I couldn’t fathom Thyrza. She did nothing to further the effect on my senses which Bella’s rather horrible performances might well have had. She seemed deliberately to take the part of a commentator.
Bella stretched out her hands to the brazier and a flickering flame sprang up. She sprinkled something on the flames and a thick cloying perfume filled the air.
“We are ready,” said Thyrza.
The surgeon, I thought, picks up his scalpel….
She went over to what I had taken to be a radio cabinet. It opened up and I saw that it was a large electrical contrivance of some complicated kind.
It moved like a trolley and she wheeled it slowly and carefully to a position near the divan.
She bent over it, adjusted the controls, murmuring to herself:
“Compass, north-northeast…degrees…that’s about right.” She took the glove and adjusted it in a particular position, switching on a small violet light beside it.
Then she spoke to the inert figure on the divan.
“Sybil Diana Helen, you are set free from your mortal sheath which the spirit Macandal guards safely for you. You are free to be at one with the owner of this glove. Like all human beings, her goal in life is towards death. There is no final satisfaction but death. Only death solves all problems. Only death gives true peace. All great ones have known it. Remember Macbeth. ‘After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.’ Remember the ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde. Love and death. Love and death. But the greatest of these is death….”
The words rang out, echoing, repeating—the big box-like machine had started to emit a low hum, the bulbs in it glowed— I felt dazed, carried away. This, I felt, was no longer something at which I could mock. Thyrza, her power unleashed, was holding that prone figure on the divan completely enslaved. She was using her. Using her for a definite end. I realised vaguely why Mrs. Oliver had been frightened, not of Thyrza but of the seemingly silly Sybil. Sybil had a power, a natural gift, nothing to do with mind or intellect; it was a physical power, the power to separate herself from her body. And, so separated, her mind was not hers, but Thyrza’s. And Thyrza was using her temporary possession.
Yes, but the box? Where did the box come in?
And suddenly all my fear was transferred to the box! What devilish secret was being practised through its agency? Could there be physically produced rays of some kind that acted on the cells of the mind? Of a particular mind?
Thyrza’s voice went on:
“The weak spot…there is always a weak spot…deep in the tissues of the flesh… Through weakness comes strength—the strength and peace of death… Towards death—slowly, naturally, towards death—the true way, the natural way. The tissues of the body obey the mind… Command them—command them… Towards death… Death, the Conqueror… Death…soon…very soon… Death… Death… DEATH!”
Her voice rose in a great swelling cry… And another horrible animal cry came from Bella. She rose up, a knife flashed…there was a horrible strangled squawk from the cockerel… Blood dripped into the copper bowl.