after all. Smugglers, Customs officers from the eighteenth century, ghouls who once walked the mists of Droy Wood and its adjoining marshlands. It was the mist that was responsible for all these happenings.'
'Whatever are you talking about?' She clutched at his arm. 'You're talking in riddles, Andy. I never saw any Customs officers. It was the German pilot who imprisoned me here.'
'A German pilot!'
'That's right. After I fled from this man James Foster it was like the whole sky was ablaze. There was bombing and firing and then this plane crash. A German plane but the pilot managed to bale out. He claims that the war isn't over yet, that Britain is tottering on the brink of defeat. He locked me up for the Gestapo to deal with me when the Nazis overrun Britain.'
'Christ Alive!' Andy Dark's brain reeled with this latest piece of information, 'Right now we're locked in ancient dungeons, there's a Nazi and a sex maniac at large, not to mention a gang of ghoulish things prowling about with cudgels spiked with nails!'
'Oh, what's it all mean, Andy?' Carol Embleton's whole body was shaking. She couldn't take much more.
'I don't know,' he confessed. 'Only that the mists that blanket the wood and the marsh from time to time are responsible, somehow having retained past evils, kept them alive. Like those old films they keep showing on the television from time to time. I guess the dead live on here, ensnaring any who get caught up in the wood in the fogs. Like a sort of time-machine. I can't offer any other explanation.'
'It's ghastly.' She didn't want to go into details of her encounter with Foster, that could all come later.
'We've got to get out of here,' he muttered. 'We'll try the trap door first. Maybe I can smash a way through it. Now hold on to me and we'll try and find our way back to the entrance.'
Once again Andy Dark led the way, one arm at full stretch in front of him, the other holding Carol's hand, feeling his way along the damp mossy wall, testing each step before putting his full weight on it. Tense, skin prickling all the while, afraid that at any second an icy hand would reach out and grab him, or he would hear that boy whimpering with pain, trying to scream with his lacerated mouth from which no blood poured. But there was no sign, no sound of anybody.
'Here are the steps,' he said with hope in his voice, fearful lest the Droy curse might bring them another terrible phase from its evil past. One at a time up the steps until he touched the trap door, felt its studded iron bands and his hopes began to fade. So heavy, so strong, a square of reinforced seasoned oak which had probably withstood the frenzied onslaughts of scores of prisoners over the centuries. 'I'll have to find something to smash it with.'
And that meant going back down to the dungeon, groping around in the pitch blackness. He should have thought of it in the first place. His hands explored the trap door, pushed upwards, and felt it move. Those rusty hinges squealed, a crack of grey daylight appeared. Heaving, afraid that he was mistaken, that it was some kind of cruel trick designed to demoralise the damned. Another six inches, the hinged door lifting, finally thudding back against the stone wall of the hallway. *I can't believe it.' He still didn't, hauling Carol up behind him, both of them scrambling out of that evil-smelling hole in case at any second the trap door decided to slam back shut. 'It wasn't even bolted! We're out, girl, my God, we're out!'
They crouched there blinking in the faint daylight; it might have been dawn, dusk, any time of day. Winter daylight, darkened by the presence of a thick fog outside.
'We'd better get back to the road,' Carol found herself whispering. 'It can't be far.'
'No, I'm sure it isn't.' He licked his lips, remembered only too well what it was like out there, the same as it had been for centuries, a dark stunted wood where the foul marshes had infiltrated, where people got lost and were never heard of again. 'We'd better make a move. Here,' he said, slipping off his muddy thornproof jacket, 'put this around you. Now, we'll go as fast as we can, take a direct line.' And I hope to God we're going in the right direction. They had barely taken half-a-dozen steps across the stone-flagged hall when they heard footsteps coming from the balcony above, the slow measured footfalls of hard leather soles, something eerily positive about them.
'There's. somebody coming down the stairs.' Carol Embleton clutched at him, dared not look, felt him whirling round, heard his gasp of fear and amazement. Half-way down the stairs the tall figure, clad in an immaculate grey- green uniform, the tunic unbuttoned, stood watching them with cold unblinking pale blue eyes. And in his hand, held almost casually, the barrel trained unwaveringly on them, was a Luger automatic pistol.
'So,' Bertie Hass smiled but there was no humour in the stretching of his thin lips, 'you think you can escape from my castle, eh! My friends, I think that it would be easier for you to escape from Colditz!'
The German began a slow descent, laughed gloatingly. 'Consider yourselves prisoners-of-war, caught in the act of trying to escape and for that there is only one penalty!'
Eight
Reluctantly James Foster had abandoned his search for Carol Embleton. Several times he had heard her splashing on ahead of him through the dense reed-beds, was confident that he would overtake her. So he would have done had it not been for this damnable fog. Now she was lost and he had to face up to the fact that so was he. He had lost all sense of direction. His priority was a reasonably dry place in which to pass the rest of the night; once daylight carne he would soon catch her. He shivered with cold, eventually located a large alder tree growing out of a hummock of ground above the level of the marsh. He settled himself down and once his anger had simmered he began to feel drowsy, almost relaxed.
He would kill her, he had to. He would never forget the sheer thrill of his last killing, that tall dark-haired girl who had eventually given up her struggles and let him do what he wanted. As his orgasm mounted his hands had encircled her throat, begun to squeeze. It had made her thresh beautifully beneath him, her death throes in time with his own thrustings. He had ejaculated and she had died, a perfect combination. He did not regret it one little bit. It had served to whet his appetite for another killing. Had Carol not been riding him then she would have died the same way. Damn the cow, he had intended to screw her a second time and throttle her at the very peak of his orgasm but she had jumped and run. Which was why they were both spending the night in this damn awful place.
Just thinking about her gave him another erection. Tomorrow he would find her, fuck her, and kill her. That was a foregone conclusion. He… Something had him opening his eyes, staring up at the sky in bewilderment. There was a fire somewhere, a big one that lit up the heavens. Explosions, firing, the sound of aircraft whining and droning. He sat up. And then he saw the blazing bomber, watched it fall like a stone out of the sky, explode somewhere not far away with a force that vibrated the ground. In the ethereal reflection of the blazing aircraft he saw the parachutist gliding down, decided that he had better go and investigate. Hell, he should have minded his own bleeding business. Now he was floundering in this bloody morass again, looking for another dry place to pass the night for he had not located the man who had parachuted down and he would never find that patch of higher ground beneath the alder again. Then, unbelievably, he chanced upon a stretch of almost dry ground beneath some taller oaks, trod his way through a carpet of dead leaves and ferns that were brittle beneath his feet. The rain had stopped and for a moment the moon shone down brightly through the entwining branches. A little way ahead of him he could make out a clearing, an area where it was almost as light as day. He walked on forward, emerged into the clearing, and suddenly became uneasily aware that he wasn't alone, felt the presence of others before he saw the shadowy shapes grouped around the clearing in a circle, some of them having moved so that they ringed him completely.
Fear, searching for a gap in the circle through which to make a run for it but there was none. Staring from one cowled figure to the next, trying to count them and losing count; there were dozens of them!
'Who are you?' Jesus, they gave him the creeps just standing there looking at him, pairs of eyes that seemed to glow balefully in the moonlight like a pack of wolves that had crept up and surrounded an unwary traveller. 'I said who the fuck are you? Are you dumb or something?'
As though at some prearranged signal the watchers began to converge on him, the circle diminishing, crowding him. He backed away, turned one way then the other. He wanted to scream. Suddenly they halted and a tall cloaked figure, his face shadowed by his voluminous cowl, detached himself from the rest and stepped forward a few paces.
'We were expecting you,' he said, his voice deep and resonant. 'For we are the Oke Priests who rule this
