The Devils of D-Day by Graham Masterton Page A

very dark along that corridor. Somehow the atmosphere
was different, as if someone else had recently walked down here, disturbing the
chilly air. I went as softly as I could, but my own breathing seemed almost
deafening, and every floorboard had a creak or a squeak of its own.
    I was halfway down the corridor when I saw something down at
the far end. I stopped, and strained my eyes. It was difficult to make out what
it was in the shadows, but it looked like a child. It was standing with its
back to me, apparently gazing out of the small leaded window at the snow-covered
yard. I didn’t move. The child could have been an illusion – nothing more than
an odd composition of light and dark. But from thirty feet away it appeared
remarkably real, and I could almost imagine it turning around and JOT one
moment in my nightmare I had seen a face that grinned like a goat with hideous
yellow eyes.
    I took one very cautious step forward. I said: ‘You!’ but my
voice only came out as a whisper.
    The small figure remained still. It was solitary and sad, in
a way, like a ghost over whose earthly body no prayers had ever been spoken. It
continued to look out over the yard, not moving, not turning, not speaking.
    I took one more step nearer, then another. I said: ‘Is that
you?’
    One moment the figure seemed real and tangible, but then as
I came even closer, the hooded head became a shadow from the top of the
casement, and the small body melted into a triangle of dim light from the snow
outside, and I stepped quickly up to the window and saw that there was nobody
and nothing there at all.
    I looked round, but I knew it was useless. I was so crowded
with fears and superstitions that I was seeing things that weren’t even there.
I walked back to Father Anton’s bedroom door, waited for a moment, and then
softly knocked.
    ‘Father Anton? It’s Dan McCook.’
    There was no answer, so I waited for a while and then rapped
again.
    ‘Father Anton? Are you awake?’
    There was still no answer. I gently tried the door. It
wasn’t locked, and so I pushed it open and peered into the darkness of his
bedroom. It smelled of mothballs and some mentholated rub that he obviously put
on his chest at night. On one side was a tall mahogany wardrobe, and on the
other was a chest-of-drawers, above which hung a large ebony crucifix with an
ivory figure of Christ hanging on it. Father Anton’s oak bed was set against
the far wall, and I could just make out his pale hand lying on the coverlet,
and his white hair on the pillow.
    I crept across the worn rug on the floor, and stood a few
feet away from him. He had his back turned to me, but he looked all right. I
was beginning to think that I was suffering from nightmares and delusions and
not enough sleep. I whispered: ‘Father Anton?’
    He didn’t stir, didn’t turn around, but a voice said: ‘Yes?’
    My grip tightened on my candlestick. It sounded like Father
Anton, but on the other hand it didn’t. It had some of that dry, sardonic
quality that I had heard in the voice upstairs. I came a little nearer the bed,
and tried to lean over so that I could see Father Anton’s face.
    ‘Father Anton? Is that you?’
    There was a second’s pause. Then Father Anton rose up in his
bed as if he was being pulled upright on strings, and he turned to face me with
his eyes glassy and his white hair dishevelled . He
said, in that same unnatural voice: ‘What is it? Why did you wake me?’
    I felt there was something curiously and frighteningly
wrong. It was the way he was sitting there in his white nightshirt, as if he
was unsupported by gravity or anything at all. And it was his peculiar manner,
partly calm and partly hostile. There was nothing of the rambling old priest
about him. He seemed strangely self-possessed, and his eyes seemed to be
observing me as if there was someone else behind them, staring through.
    I took a few steps back. ‘I think I must have made a
mistake,’ I said. ‘Just a nightmare,