Mr Jones was horrified by his unintentional act of vandalism. He felt like a child who has broken some valuable ornament which he has been told not to touch, and at the same time the repressed memory which had been beating vainly against the barriers of consciousness grew more insistent, colouring his emotional tone. It was a memory of something that had happened in his childhood, he felt sure—something connected with the dark: perhaps a dream. Yes, it must have been a dream. He did not want to remember it. He felt frightened lest it should come back.
Then his eyes became rivetted to the hole. It was a queer elongated sort of hole. Darkness seemed to be pouring out of it, filling the church. With curiosity and alarm he struck a match and bent down to examine the hole more closely. Thus he became aware of a change in the figure of the demon into whose vitals it seemed to lead. Surely the colours were more distinct! The hole itself—he had not noticed the face before—had a curious likeness to a mouth. This perception gave the clue to other lines and markings. It was a mouth. There, at the lower end of the demon’s back was a face—a horrible face—malignant, bestial, with greedy eyes and lustful lips. Mr Jones gazed upon it fascinated. Then the veil that had rested on his memory quivered and lifted. His senses swam. The hole appeared to be rapidly enlarging and contracting like a horrible sucker. The match burnt his fingers and he dropped it; this restored to him his powers of movement; he fled and left the church.
Jackie Cosstick, a half-witted urchin of twelve, who had been on an errand for his mother and was returning along the lane past Godstanely church, had that December afternoon the fright of his life. It was nearly dark in the lane, which was overshadowed by elms on both sides. Up the lane came dashing a gentleman, coat-tails flying. ‘Go it!’ shouted Jackie with the irreverence of youth, ‘you’ll catch him.’ ‘Stick it, mister!’ he yelled after the retreating figure. At that moment he was aware of a rustling in the hedge behind him, and picking up a stone he threw it in the direction of the sound. Then something bounded out of the ditch, something that might have been a big dog but for its extraordinary mode of progress; for it went suddenly up a tree, moving by bringing its hindquarters to its head and then elongating its body swiftly, just as if it were released by a spring, ‘like them caterpillars,’ thought Jackie afterwards, ‘a-goin’ up bluebells, but, ’struth, what a size!’ He stared up into the branches. Then he caught sight of two eyes looking down at him—two luminous awful eyes. He darted off in the opposite direction to the path of Mr Jones’s flight and never ceased running till he reached his mother’s cottage in New Godstanely.
Mr Jones had instinctively run in the direction of Hopton, looking fearfully on either side. He saw nothing, but he was conscious of some terrible danger from something which was tracking him, keeping pace with him behind the hedgerows. Yet he had an odd sort of assurance that he was invisible to it, that he and his pursuer were engaged in a psychic game of hide and seek, and that he might escape its notice if he did not commit some false move. Physically he was running away; mentally he was dodging down byways of the spirit, instinctively making use of occult means of protection. He was in two separate modes of existence at once. The danger would come if these existences were unified and his enemy became aware of him on the physical plane.
Suddenly he reached the main road to Hopton, and the sight of some other pedestrians brought him sharply over the border-line into the world of everyday life. In a short time he reached the railway station and found himself in due course in the train for home.
There were several people in the compartment, a third smoker. ‘How close it is this evening,’ said a lady to her husband. ‘I hadn’t noticed it; yes, now you mention it, it does seem stuffy,’ the husband replied. ‘Shockin’ bad, these carriages on the South-Eastern,’ said another passenger, addressing the company generally, ‘smell always bad, though I’ve never noticed one worse than this.’ ‘Sulphur—so many tunnels—terrible amount of smoke!’ remarked another.
Mr Jones said nothing. He was conscious of an oppressiveness in the atmosphere. He looked at the faces of his companions; they all showed signs of nervous tension. A grimly unattractive female in the corner was regarding him with disapproval.
The train stopped at the next station, and everybody got out immediately except the unattractive female and Mr Jones. A stout middle-aged man was on the point of entering when the lady jumped up exclaiming, ‘I want to get out, let me get out, please.’ The stout man made way for her and then took his seat. ‘She don’t like travelling with young fellows like you and me,’ he said roguishly to Mr Jones. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t like travelling in a smoker,’ Mr Jones protested feebly. ‘She’s got into a smoker next door,’ was the answer. The stout man chuckled and then sniffed. His expression changed. The puzzled look had not left his face when the train drew up at the Junction and Mr Jones got out.
He did not go straight to his flat. His daily housekeeper regularly took her evening out on Saturdays, not putting in an appearance again till Sunday morning in time to prepare breakfast. He first went to a Lyons’ restaurant for some tea. In the brilliant glare of the streets his fantastic experience began to fade into unreality. Could he have been the victim of an hallucination? Had he been working too hard, and was his odd feeling the result of over-wrought nerves? What he wanted was amusement. The ‘Pictures’? No, a rattling good farce—something to make him forget: that was the best way of spending the evening. He boarded a motor-bus for the Hilarity.
In the pleasure of witnessing the performance Mr Jones for a time completely lost his burden of fear; and, afterwards, at a restaurant, he did justice to a nice little supper. Like Tam O’Shanter he sallied forth little caring for the miles that separated him from home; but the courage with which he mounted the bus had nearly evaporated by the time he got off at the nearest point to his destination and thought of his cold and cheerless home-coming. Unhappy bachelor! Better an irate spouse, ‘nursing her wrath to keep it warm,’ than the empty flat, reached by five flights of stairs and unlit by any glow of welcome, where he must get for himself such comfort as a man needs after an hour’s ride on a bus in winter, or go uncomforted straight to bed. The electric light on the staircase in the block of flats where he lived, pretentiously styled Duke’s Mansions, was always switched off at 11 p.m., and it was now past midnight.
Mr Jones picked his way up the staircase with the help of matches, which he struck one after another, and kept alight as long as he could. There were anxious intervals between the going out of one match and the lighting of the next. What if something were awaiting him at the top and were even now peering down at him over the balustrade? He with difficulty refrained from looking upwards. Instead, he fell to doing odd things to protect himself from the unseen terror—odd occult things, prompted (who knows?) by inherited memories: the sort of things children do in dread of the dark. He crossed his fingers in an odd fashion; it was difficult to do this properly while holding the matchbox. Then, he must put his foot down on the staircase linoleum on a particular portion of the pattern. And he must touch every third banister. Above all, he must reach the landing at the top of each flight with his right foot first. All these difficulties he surmounted, with a consciousness of his cleverness in outwitting his antagonist. He had never before counted the number of stairs in each flight. Odd or even? The even number would be lucky. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Thank Heaven there wasn’t a thirteenth! He reached his front door safely; but what might lie behind it? He inserted his key softly in the lock, the match in his left hand lasting just long enough for him to do this; for a few seconds he listened in the darkness; then, taking a deep breath—which he must hold until he reached the safety of his room—he threw the door open to its full extent and rushed for the switch of the electric light in the hall. In another second he was panting and safe behind the locked door of his study.