THE KILLER OF THE DARKNESS

EPISODE THIRTEEN

THIRTEEN

During the night, the weather deteriorated, but the wind which got up during the evening abated again until it became an ugly soft moan in the aerials.

About two-thirty I got out of bed, my throat dries from the heavy bout of whisky drinking that finished the evening. It also drove me to the lavatory.

I stood sleepily before the toilet, holding myself still with a hand on the pebble-dash wall before me. When I was done, I slouched quietly on my bare feet into the kitchen. I drank a tumbler of cold water, then re-filled it to take back to my bedside.

As I passed down the short corridor to my room, I heard a faint sound. For a moment I thought, a faulty fluorescent tube, then I realized the gloomy lighting is an ordinary bulb.

I stood listening. The noise came from the room where Turner's body rested on its centrally placed table. Uncertainly, I put my ear near to the door. The buzzing seemed even louder.

I put my hand on the cold handle and started to open the door. As it gave inwards the noise increased to a roar. I am normally a rational, sane man, but my scalp began to prickle with fear.

The room pitch black, only the small window visible, a light blue square. My searching hand found the light switch. Instantly all became reversed, the small window a velvet black square in the dimly lit room.

The body of Turner, wrapped and tied so tightly that his figure is clearly discernible, lay stiff and straight on the table. The buzzing noise, filling the whole room, came from the body.

I did not want to go near, but I found myself irresistibly drawn to the hideous, loathsome shape, my legs moving even though I screamed in my mind for them to stop.

The noise grew into a roar, and coming from the head, the cloth wrapped sinister looking head of the Corporal.

I came to a halt beside it, sweating with fear, my own head moving from side to side as I tried to prevent what happened.

But I bent forward, getting nearer and nearer to the awful frightening canvas bag with a human face-shape. The noise tremendous, and a smell like embalming fluid filled my nose and down into my throat and mouth, making me retch.

I stopped, my face poised inches above the pointing canvas-covered nose of the cadaver, held there as if by some pulsating force emanating from the skull itself.

It happened with swiftness and silence. The bandaged eye sockets filled with blood, and the head raised from the bench.

I screamed and snatched back, but the body moved, the arms encircling me in a bear hug as it sat up. I fought wildly, mouth and nose pressed into the chemical smelling bandages...