I truly believe that that day was the longest and worst I ever managed
to live through.
The aliens who ringed the castle did not attack in force: but they
maintained a kind of sullen, dangerous watchfulness over the place, and
every time one of us showed himself at a window, a rifle cracked and
a slug spread itself on a wall nearby or buried itself in the ceiling
above him.
"What are they doing?" Marion asked me again and again. "Why are they
waiting?" And I could not tell her.
The night came, but our sleep was no more than an occasional leaden
doze which left us unrefreshed, with gummy aching eyes and minds gnawed
by worry.
Where in hell was Geoff?
Had they slipped in and abducted him, right out from beneath our noses?
Hardly. The doors and windows were still bolted.
Had he left of his own free will? And if so, _how_? And why?
"The place is haunted," Alec had said somberly at dinner; and in my
heart I half agreed with him.
That night we had renewed our barricades at the head of the stairs, and
kept our watches as before. About six in the morning I was starting to
tear down the lumber once more when a hand was laid on my arm, and the
Colonel, his face gray and drawn, said, "Leave 'em, boy."
"Why?"
"Come and look out the window. They've gathered. There must be two
hundred if there's a one. We can't hold that great hall against them
when they come. We've got to make a stand up here."
It was true. The groves and the unkempt lawns swarmed with them, their
loathsome bodies all gay and shining in the sunlight.
"Still clerks and shopkeepers?" I asked.
"No, this is a rather less appetizing lot. More like the mugs you
were always spying on in pubs," said Alec. "They look--well, pretty
competent."
"We'll give them a reception," said the Colonel grimly. "Spread out,
front and back, and fire into the brown of 'em when I give the word.
Empty your rifles and then your revolvers as fast as you can; the fools
are bunched so that we can't miss. There's not a military man in the
lot, I'll be bound."
* * * * *
I went to the farthest corner of the east wing, many rooms away from
our G.H.Q. by the main stairwell: I swung open a window as gently as
possible, then waited for the Colonel's signal. I imagined he would
fire his 450-400. I was forgetting that for development of the lungs
there's nothing to compare with half a lifetime of commanding the
sepoys of India. To say merely that he shouted "Fire!" in a stentorian
voice is like saying that the Last Trump will be rather loud. His
bellow rattled the beams of oak in their stone sockets. Even the aliens
on the lawns turned to look in his direction.
I thrust out the muzzle of my pachyderm blaster and let it speak twice
in rapid fire; dropped it, threw down on the milling crew with my two
Colts, and picked off three more usurpers before they could gather
their wits and make for the groves. When the guns were empty I counted
seven bodies. If my friends had had as good luck, I thought exultantly,
the foe had lost more than thirty of their number! I found subsequently
that our total for the surprise attack was twenty-four or -five.
This decimation must have shaken them to their toes, for the morning
wore on and no assault came.
Johnson brought each of us a bowl of soup and a plate of biscuits at
noon. Staying at my post in the eastern corner, I watched the trees and
thought of Geoff Exeter.
Could that have been Geoff whom I followed down the secret stair
two nights since? Certainly it was not one of _them_; and Geoff of
all people would have known of its existence, for he had spent his
childhood here in the castle. If it was him, where had he gone from the
great hall? And what had moved in the black shadows of the fireplace?
Had Geoff been spirited away by ghosts? I could credit anything, after
these past months of hellish experience.
As I was chewing my last biscuit, firing broke out at the front of the
castle; first a single shot or two, then heavy volleys, as though all
my friends were engaged in it. I shifted from foot to foot, wondering
what to do. Finally, after a searching look at the groves and lawns
where nothing moved, I ran for the hallway.
* * * * *
Marion and Alec were shooting from the windows of our sitting room.
I dashed in, said foolishly, "What is it, an attack?" and looking
out saw line after line of the beast-folk advancing rapidly on the
castle, their numbers not bunched this time but spread out so that they
presented more difficult targets. I judged them to be at least two
hundred and fifty strong. "Shoot low," I snapped, even as I brought
the elephant gun to bear on a blue octopus-like brute and sent him
sprawling. "Remember you're aiming downhill."
The thunder of a battering-ram smiting at the big door seemed to jar
the floor beneath our feet. It ceased in a moment, and I heard the
Colonel bawl, "They're in! Come to the stairs!"
We gathered there behind our lumber-and-furniture barricade, six
against an army. We did not say anything coherent, I believe, but
continually shouting encouraging noises to one another, we fired
and fired until our weapons grew hot to the touch. The beasts were
thronging the hall below us, converging on the stairs and tearing at
the mass of impeding obstacles which the Colonel and John had strewn
down the length of the steps that morning. It was at once a hideous
and a thrilling sight. The monsters were swarming up at us, a foot at
a time, clawing at planks and barrels and broken chairs, hurling them
back onto their comrades' heads; none of them seemed to be firing at
us, though in the heat of battle I may not have noticed if they had.
It looked to me as if they were too infuriated to bother with guns.
Like so many enraged baboons, they wanted to get at us and tear us to
bloody tatters with their hands and teeth alone. As they fought upward,
those in the fore exploded soundlessly, horribly, and quickly, like
multicolored bags of gaudy rubber stabbed with sharp knives, leaving
their dead robots to roll and flounder to the bottom again. I had run
out of ammo for the big gun; howling with a kind of mad glee, I blazed
away into the thick of them with my twin Colts, putting my bullets into
the dark human forms within the hybrid monsters. The castle rocked and
echoed with the fury of the fight. Cordite and spilt blood reeked in
my nostrils. One of the devils, a rhinocerous-brute with a towering
ivory-tinted "horn" that wobbled as he moved, came scrambling on all
fours up over the mess of wreckage toward us; I took him for my very
own, waiting until he was within a yard of me and then presenting both
my revolvers to his face and pulling the triggers.
My guns were empty!
* * * * *
Before I could recover from my surprise, he had gathered himself--he
must have been an especially athletic fellow--and leaped straight
for me. I went down under his weight, flailing my arms wildly. I was
unprepared for a scuffle and for a few seconds could do nothing to
defend myself properly. Before I had rallied, the body of the creature
went limp and sagged down onto me, while his true form flickered away
into nothingness. I struggled out from under him to see old Johnson
pulling back a bloodied pig-sticker. He grinned at me complacently.
"Still a trace of the old skill left, Mister Chester!"
They were the last words he ever spoke. A volley crashed out below us,
and he swayed and fell at full length, like an ancient tree cut at the
roots. I knelt over him, and saw that he was dead.
I peered over the railing, while feverishly loading my guns, and saw
that we were nearly done; for the aliens, sacrificing scores of their
men in that wild attack, had almost cleared the staircase. Now they
were pulling back the corpses and the last of the impeding furniture,
and only our barricade at the top remained between them and our
garrison of five. Any of them who were in good shape and in the least
degree agile could clear this barrier with ease. I knew we were almost
done.
Now there occurred one of those queer, inexplicable pauses that come in
the thick of the wildest battles, when the men of both sides seem to
draw back an imperceptible inch or two, cease firing and yelling, suck
in a deep swift breath, and tauten their muscles for a final foray or a
last furious defense. The usurpers in the hall and on the stairs fell
silent as though by prearrangement; while we humans, as it chanced,
were all either loading or taking careful sights over our gun barrels.
And in that comparative silence, broken only by the susurrus of heavy
breathing, we all suddenly pricked up our ears and listened. The pause
lengthened, by a sort of unspoken mutual agreement between the two
parties. I looked at the Colonel, and he gestured imperiously toward
the nearest room that faced on the drive. I flew into it, making for a
window.
Because there had come to us the sound of many automobiles, driven at
high speed down the country lane that led to Exeter Castle.