The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (46 page)

One of them turned, pushed at him, sent him staggering backwards. Then her bloodied teeth returned to their mutilated victim.

Jeremy’s vision blurred, the pain was unbearable. He jerked, writhed, struggled but they were too strong for him. Harsh gutteral laughter came from improvised lungs, their cries of pleasure squelched through mouthfuls of raw human flesh.

Consciousness was slipping from him. His head lolled to one side, afforded him a glimpse of the one who had perpetrated this atrocity. The man was slumped in a seat, holding his head as if he shared his victim’s agony. Anguished moans, the eyes were closed in utter despair.

“As before,” he shrieked against the background of the train’s klaxon. “It is always the same.
Cannibalizm is the strongest urge, destroys everything that I have created
!”

The blood-streaked females reared up from their inert prey, turned upon each other with a ferocity that defied the instincts of human existence. One lust had been appeared, the other was insatiable.

Their master slumped, waited. In his hour of triumph he had lost all control. Whatever remained of a lifetime of experimenting would take him, too, this time.

Peter Tremayne is one of the pseudonyms of historian and Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis. Under the Tremayne alias he has published more than twenty-five books in the horror, fantasy and detective fiction fields. His most recent novel is
Absolution By Murder,
the first full-length work featuring his new detective Sister Fidelma, a 7th century Irish religieuse who is also a
dalaigh
or advocate of the ancient Brehon Courts of Ireland. Fidelma has already appreared in half-a-dozen short stories on both sides of the Atlantic
.

The Hound of Frankenstein
was the first Tremayne book ever to be published
(
by Mills & Boon in August 1977
).
However, it was not the first ever written. Tremayne had already produced the novel
Dracula Unborn (
aka
Bloodright),
which was published by Corgi three months later
.

The setting of this story is Cornwall, a favourite area of Tremayne’s and from where he devised his pseudonym. Tremayne
(
Cornish
tre =
habitation
, mayne/maen =
stone
)
is the name of a little hamlet just north of Penzance which, according to the author, is the site of the best Italian restaurant in Cornwall and the only reason why he chose this, a favourite watering hole, as his
nom-de-plume.

The short novel which follows introduces the reader to a fictional village named Bosbradoe on the wild north Cornwall coast beyond the desolate Bodmin Moor. Based on a combination of real places, Bosbradoe and its scenic tavern, The Morvren Arms
(morvren =
mermaid
),
also feature in Tremayne’s novels
The Vengeance of She (
1977
)
and
The
Morgow Rises! (
1982
),
as well as in his short story “The Hungry Grass”
.

A
MAN WAS
running across the dark moorland; running in terror of his life.

Dark storm clouds hurried westward across the night sky, across the pale orb of the moon. The clouds seemed to fly fast and thick as the wind whipped the topmost branches of the trees. Far down on the eastern horizon, lightning spat into the sky, and thunder reverberated the air. And the rain splattered heavily down in isolated showers.

In the distance the man could hear the low, mournful howl of a hound hunting its quarry.

He paused to rest a moment against the wet granite of a boulder; paused to try to catch his breath and ease the awful pain in his side.

He was an elderly man; his clothes had once been well tailored, but now they were torn and mud stained. Blood dripped from a great gash in his forehead and his hair was matted with dirt and rain water. His eyes stood wide and stark out of his pale, death white face and his mouth hung open, half in fear and half in an attempt to regain his lost breath.

The mournful howl reached his ears again. This time it was close, very close.

The man turned, almost sobbing, and set off over the desolate night landscape.

He did not know where he was making for. All he knew was that he had to flee, to escape, to run.

A hill before him stood black and gaunt in silhouette. Atop the hill he could see the great stone monoliths of a former age and civilization. Large granite menhirs, standing as a memorial to the religion of the ancients. Unthinking, the man began to ascend the hill, gasping and sobbing in his terror, his heart beating wildly within him.

Gorse and thorn bushes tore at him, scratching his hands and face and tearing at his already tattered clothing. He did not heed them.

Scrambling, sometimes upright, sometimes on his hands and knees, the man forced his way to the top of the hill and into the moonlit stone circle.

He flung himself forward on a black menhir which had fallen on its side and now lay, altar-like, to one side of the circle.

For a while he tried to breathe deeply, to regulate the pattern of his gasping, shallow breaths. He tried to silence his rasping lungs and listen.

A low growl made him whirl round.

Never before, even in the most horrific nightmares of a delirious mind, had he envisaged such a beast as that which slunk forward into the pale moonlight and stood glaring malevolently at him from vicious red eyes.

It was a hound. No; a grotesque parody of a hound, large as a lion and black as jet. Its eyes gleamed with an unholy aura like glowing red coals. Its great white fangs were bared, and its muzzle, hackles and dewlap were dripping with saliva which was tinged with blood.

As the man stood before it, frozen in terror, the great beast threw back its muzzle and gave up its low, mournful howl.

Then it sprang upon him, its mighty jaws snapping and tearing.

Along a darkened moorland road, a coach came clattering and swaying dangerously, pulled by four sturdy horses whose necks strained forward and hooves pounded in unison, urged by the harsh cries of their driver and the stinging crack of his whip about their flattened ears. Their eyes rolled in terror and there was a suspicion of white lather where their teeth ground against the metal bit of the harness.

Now and again, the roadway was lit starkly in black and white by flashing lightning, but for the most part, the coach plunged into darkness. Its two side lanterns were nothing more than thick candles placed in a storm glass, and cast little illumination to show the driver the way along the desolate road.

At intervals, the coach bucked and pitched and threatened to turn over, as the driver edged it too near the grassy embankment, or a stone caused the entire carriage to make a wild leap into the air.

“I swear the idiot will have us over before long,” gasped the young man who constituted one of the two passengers in the coach. The other, a pale-faced girl, gave an involuntary cry as the coach gave a sudden lurch, and seemed to leave the roadway altogether.

“Sir, I pray you,” she gasped. “Please ask the driver to slow his horses, for I fear that I shall faint if he maintains this speed much longer.”

The young man leant forward in concern. He wished he had some
light by which to observe his travelling companion. He had not seen her until he climbed into the mail coach,
The Bodmin Flyer
, at the coaching station in Bodmin, and she had sat in a shadowy corner of the coach, hardly speaking since then. If voices were anything to go by, she was surely young and pretty.

“Madam, I am a doctor. Doctor Brian Shaw at your service. Are you unwell?” His tone was solicitous.

The girl clung tightly to the passenger straps of the coach and replied in a soft, breathless voice.

“I was perfectly well, sir, when we left the town of Bodmin. But this man drives as if the furies of hell were at his heels, and I feel quite upset. So I pray you, sir, please ask him to slow the coach.”

Brian Shaw stood up, balancing himself precariously, holding on to a passenger strap with one hand, and pushing open the flap in the roof of the coach through which driver and passengers could communicate.

“Hey, hey there! Driver! Slow down!” he called.

His voice seemed drowned by the clatter of the coach and the thunder of the horses’ hooves on the stone of the roadway.

“Damn me,” cursed the young man. “Is the fellow deaf or drunk?”

He banged agitatedly on the roof.

“Driver! D’you hear me? Slow down!”

Just then the coach careered around a corner, tipping over at an alarming angle before righting itself. The young man was thrown on to the floor and struck his head against the far door, stunning himself momentarily. The girl gave a low cry and, hanging on her strap with one hand, bent forward in the gloom. The young man was aware of the fragrance of her perfume.

“Are you all right, sir?”

Brian shook his head doubtfully.

“I believe so, madam. No thanks to the idiot of a driver. Ye gods! I believe the fellow is drunk. I’ll put a stop to this.”

The young girl suddenly raised a fist to her mouth and suppressed a cry of alarm, as the man opened one of the doors of the swaying coach and climbed on to the iron footrest outside.

“Have a care, sir!”

If the young man heard, he did not reply, but with teeth clenched, he hauled himself out, clutching the railings which protected the passengers’ baggage on top of the coach. Then, placing a foot on the sill of one of the windows, he heaved himself on to the roof and lay panting for a second or two, spreadeagled among the baggage. Regaining his breath, he swung himself down on the driving box, by the side of the red faced driver.

The man gave an inarticulate cry, almost of terror, and raised his whip as if in protection.

Brian snatched it from his hand and grabbed at the reins which suddenly hung loose in the driver’s nerveless fingers. It took him all his strength to haul back the four stout horses, and bring them shuddering to a halt, snorting and blowing, with sweat glistening on their dark bodies.

The driver sat huddled in his seat as if he had collapsed from the exertion of his drive.

Brian turned to him with a stern eye.

“What do you mean by this, man?” he demanded. “Are you trying to kill us all?”

The man muttered something which Brian could not understand, and reached into the folds of his greatcoat, brought forth a bottle, uncorked it and put it to his lips.

Brian snorted in disgust.

“I thought so. Drink. Well, I tell you, my man, I shall bring this to the attention of your employers. Do you realize that you have scared the young lady half to death? Do you realize that you have made her ill with your infernal driving?”

“Better to be ill, better to be alive to be ill, young sir,” muttered the man, wiping his mouth with the back of a calloused hand. “There be some things worse.”

Brian gave him a hard look.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You be an upcountry man, sir. You be from beyond the Tamar, eh? Ah, I knows. Well, you be in Cornwall now, sir. Bodmin Moor, and it don’t do to dawdle across the moor at night. There be many a strange thing loose on the moor at night.”

The young man laughed.

“What superstitious nonsense is this, man? How much of that bottle have you had?”

“Scarcely a drop, young sir. Scarcely a drop. And it be no superstitious nonsense, that I tell ’ee. The road to Bosbradoe is a wild, desolate road, and it don’t do to dawdle along it at night . . . especially this night of all nights in the year.”

The driver shuddered.

“What do you mean – this night of all nights?” demanded Brian.

“Why, sir,” said the man wonderingly. “It be the last day of October . . . have you forgotten what night this is? It be the Eve of All Saints, when evil marches across the world, when spirits and ghosts set out to wreak their vengeance on the living.”

The driver rolled his eyes wildly and raised his bottle once again.

Brian grabbed it from him and threw it into the darkness and cursed the man for a drunken fool.

Just then, there seemed a pause in the storm, and it became quiet except for the soft patter of rain. And – it seemed as if the sound emanated from nearby – their ears were filled by the long, drawn-out baying of a hound. The sound was cut short by the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder.

The driver leant forward, and grasped the young man tightly by the sleeve.

“You hear it, sir? You hear it? ’Tis the hound of hell, sir. I tell ’ee. The hound of hell! Old Tregeagle’s hound!”

Brian was surprised to note that the man was positively shaking with fright.

“Look, my man, if you paid more time to your driving, and less to your drinking, then the hound of hell, or where ever, would not bother you.”

“Ah, ah,” the driver rocked to and fro in his seat, his arms wrapped across his chest, “you upcountry people are alike; you mock things which you cannot understand. Look out there, sir . . . look!”