Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Chris Priestley [21]
'The gardener has a canvas bag in the tool shed.
Put me in that!' cackled the demon.
Thomas's ears were stinging from the demon's onslaught. The demon's voice had wormed it's way into his brain and Thomas found it difficult to distinguish which were his thoughts and which were the demon's promptings. He found it hard to think about anything but the tinker and the heavy axe that he now held in his hands as he ran, head bowed and teeth clenched, towards the open fields.
I took a sharp intake of breath when my uncle finished, as if I had been underwater for a little too long.
'I wonder what the demon would say to me, Uncle,.' I said, expecting my uncle to say something comforting along the lines of, 'Those without secrets or wicked desires would be safeguarded from its attentions.' Instead he leaned forward and held both my hands in his. His face was ashen and there was a haunting earnestness about his expression.
'Pray that you never know, Edgar,.' he said, his eyes fixed on mine. 'Pray that you never know.'
'Yes, Uncle,.' I said, prising my hands gently from his grasp and getting to my feet once more. I must confess that at this point I had begun to have some concerns about my uncle's mental state. He seemed to be in danger of losing his ability to distinguish between the real and the imaginary.
I walked across to the framed engraving again and took another look. Having heard Uncle's story, the grotesque features and leering expression of the wooden demon seemed even more sinister than before, if that were possible.
At that very moment, I heard the faintest of creaks and, looking round, saw that the door handle was slowly turning.
'Go away,.' said my uncle, so quietly and matter-of-factly that at first I thought he might be talking to me.
The door handle stopped and then, after a pause, began to turn again.
'Leave us!' said my uncle with more force this time. The handle rattled as it was released.
I had assumed that our visitor must have been Franz coming to see if his master required any further assistance, but it seemed to my ears that more than one pair of feet moved away down the hall and I was sure that I had once again heard whispers.
'Does anyone else live here, Uncle?' I asked tentatively.
'Live?' said my uncle oddly. 'No, Edgar.'
A log fell from the grate on to the hearth with a splutter and crackle and the potency of the fire's glow suddenly faded. It was as if all the shadows in the room reached out towards me. Out of the corner of my eye I fancied I saw the demon in the engraving move.
I forced myself to study its gruesome features once more, but it remained resolutely immobile, as I knew it must. I smiled to myself at my foolishness.
'Come away, Edgar,.' said my uncle quietly. 'There are some things that should not be looked at too much.'
'Yes, Uncle,.' I said, humouring him in this fanciful conceit.
There was a small oil painting nearby, overpowered by a heavy moulded frame of mahogany or some such oppressive wood. But the painting at least was a more attractive image than that of the demon bench end.
I am no great judge of paintings, and certainly had no real appreciation of the arts as a boy, but this seemed rather fine, though the varnish had darkened with time and rendered the scene - a fine house and gardens - somewhat more sombre perhaps than originally intended. The gardens to the rear of the house in particular were almost black. I could just make out the signature: A. Trewain.
'It was painted by a young doctor,.' said Uncle Montague from his armchair. 'He had real talent, I think.'
'It has a strange atmosphere,.' I remarked.
'Yes,.' said Uncle Montague. 'Yes, it does. Come and rejoin me by the fire, Edgar, and I shall tell you why.'
The vicarage of Great Whitcot in Suffolk was a rather grand house, built in the 1750s, of warm marmalade-coloured bricks and pantiles. The house bulged forward in two curved bays and the windows of this bow front were tall and wide, separated into a grid of smaller, white-framed panels that looked out on to the gravelled driveway and the orchard