At last, in a place where the ground beneath the trees was of sliding shale and scree, where their humped roots stuck up above the surface like thick-bodied serpents, suddenly the ride as such came to a halt. With a jarring crash the bottom of the box was ripped out from beneath Boris and the sides quite literally disintegrated in his clutching, terrified fingers. He was thrown not quite head-on into the bole of a tree and sent spinning. Tumbling head over heels, bouncing and sliding, Boris hardly felt the many brittle branches flying into shards as he plunged through them; he was aware only of glimpses of a whirling sky scanned through the tops of frowning pines, of a sick plunging and jolting that seemed to go on forever, and finally of shooting over a lip or ledge of rock and hurtling into dark, dusty space.
Then the impact and after that nothing. Nothing for a time, anyway . . .
Boris might have been out for one minute, for five, or fifty. Or he might not have been out at all. But he was shaken up, and badly. If he hadn’t been, then what happened next could easily have killed him. He might have died of fright.
‘Who are you?’ asked a voice in his reeling head. ‘Why Have you come here? Do you , . . offer yourself to me?’
The voice was evil, utterly evil. In it were elements of everything horrific. Boris was only a boy; he did not Understand words like bestial, sadistic, diabolic, or the of phrases like ‘the Powers of Darkness’, or the by which such Powers are invoked. To him there was fear in a creaking tread on a dark landing; there was terror in the tapping of a twig on his bedroom window, when all the house was asleep; there was horror in the sudden squirm or hop of a toad, or the startled freezing of a cockroach when the light is switched on, and especially in
its scurrying when it knows if is discovered!
Once, in the deepest cellar under the farm, where his foster-father kept wines in racks and cheeses wrapped in muslin on cool shelves, Boris had heard the rustling cheep of crickets. In the beam of a tiny torch he’d seen one, leprous grey from the sightlessness of its habitation. As he moved closer, to step on it, the insect jumped and disappeared. He found another and the same thing happened. And another, and so on. He saw a dozen and stepped on none. They had all vanished. Climbing the steps out of the place, as daylight filtered down from above, a cricket had jumped from Boris’s shorts. They were on him! They had jumped onto him! That way he couldn’t step on them. And oh how Boris had danced then!
That was his idea of nightmare: the knowledge of sly intelligence where none should be. Just as it should not be here. . .
‘Ah!’ said the voice, stronger now. ‘Ah! – so you are one of mine! And because you are one of mine, you came here. Because you knew where to find me . . .’
It was then that Boris knew he was conscious and that the voice in his head was real! And its evil was the slimy touch of a toad, the leaping of crickets in darkness, the slow tick of a hated clock, which seems to talk to you in the night and chuckle at your fears and your insomnia. Oh, and it was much worse than that, he was sure – except he didn’t have the words or knowledge or experience to describe it.
But he could picture the mouth which spoke those guttural, clotted, sly and insinuating words in his head. And he knew why it was clotted and gurgling. In his mind’s eye the picture was vivid and monstrous: the mouth dripped blood like liquid rubies, and its gleaming incisors were pointed as those of a great hound!
‘What… is your name, boy?’
‘Dragosani,’ Boris answered, or at least thought the answer, for his throat was too dry for speech. In any case, it was enough. ‘Ahhhh! Dragosani!’ The voice was a hoarse sigh now, like autumn leaves skittering on cobbles. A sigh of dawning realisation, of understanding, of satisfaction.’ Then indeed you are one of mine. But alas, too small, too small! You have not the strength, boy. A child, a mere child. What can you do for me? Nothing! Your blood runs like water your veins. It has no iron . . .’