Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Chris Priestley [52]
The hair he had thought to be merely wet was clotted with gore and he looked as though he had been scalped by one of the American savages Matthew's grandfather had told him about. But it was the fellow's face that had caused Mathew to gasp in horror.
The features were utterly ruined and looked like something glimpsed in an abattoir or a nightmare. One side of the face was a hideous mass of gristle and torn flesh, like a sheep carcass after the rooks have worked it. An unblinking eye looked out from the other side.
Matthew immediately thought that the stranger must have been the victim of some terrible assault - but by whom, or what? He had passed that way himself only half an hour earlier and had seen no one save old Mr Beckett. Besides, this fellow looked as though he had been mauled by a lion.
Why did he not cry out for help, thought Matthew, and how, when he was so badly injured, could he move like that? Matthew could not run up that track if the devil himself was behind him, and he was fully fit. He looked through the telescope once more, and once more he almost dropped it.
The stranger was not looking behind him as a terrified person might do, and neither was he looking up, as Matthew had previously thought, to check his path. As Matthew looked through the telescope the stranger looked up, not at the path, but at Matthew himself, and with an expression that managed to force itself through the ruined face - an expression of fanatical intent. He was not running away from someone. He was running towards Matthew.
Matthew scrabbled to his feet and stuffed the telescope into his pack. As he walked away from the crag's edge a scattering of snowflakes began to fall, but his thoughts were completely focused on the ghoul that was pursuing him. He had been on the fells in snow many times before. He knew these paths as well as anyone.
But within seconds the scattering of flakes had become a blizzard. He had never seen anything like it in his life. He had to narrow his eyes to slits to see at all; the view ahead was a blur of whirling snow.
The wind was so intense that he was forced on more than one occasion to turn his back on it and shield his face, and the wind seemed to be grabbing him and shaking him and trying to turn him about. Then he saw the shadowy image of the thing that was following him and he turned and ran.
He had some vague notion of trying to double back on himself and head for the path that might lead him back down to the safety of the valley and to his home. He would gladly take any punishment his father might hand out or suffer the scorn of his brothers, if only he might escape this hideous creature.
But as soon as Matthew began to run, he realised that he no longer had any idea in which direction the path lay, or in fact which direction anything lay. The snow was like a huge shroud winding about him until he could see no landmark at all, familiar or otherwise.
Still he ran, however blindly. The horror of the creature overtook any other fear he might have had. The snow stung his face, ice against burning flesh. Only once did he turn round, and there he saw the thing only yards behind him. He cried out weakly as a child might and then skidded to a halt, the toes of his boots hanging over the edge of a crag. As he turned, the ghoul walked slowly forward.
Matthew looked right and left, but there was no escape except through the creature that now loomed out of the swirling snow. Matthew began to sob and then yelled in despair.
'What are you? What do you want with me?'
The creature shuffled forward until he was only a foot or so from Matthew. The full horror of the injuries was now all too apparent, as was the fact that the clothes the creature wore were identical to Matthew's - so too was the pack that hung across his crippled shoulder. This realisation hit