The Hammer Horror Omnibus by John Burke

course, he explored Castle Borski. He had not dared to approach the villagers too frankly after all that he had heard of their previous behavior, but even in passing them he could not have failed to notice how they kept their eyes averted from the castle, how the houses themselves were built in such a way that their windows did not face towards the commanding turrets. He had not collated the references to Castle Borski in the various books which his father had left, but its appearance in several scribbled notes left no doubt that in the Professor’s mind it had played an important part in recent events.
    Paul, determined to shake off his languor of frustration, got up and went out on to the garden steps.
    The rain had coaxed a fresh, pungent smell from the grasses and the trees. It was still not heavy, and when Paul strolled down towards the fishpond he lifted his face into the cooling shower.
    Thunder throbbed again, and the moon edged a turbulent mass of clouds with silver. Somewhere far away, lightning flickered.
    Paul looked down into the fishpond. The rain mottled the surface only faintly, not hard enough to distort the reflection of the wall, the edge of the millhouse, and his face.
    And that other face . . .
    At first he saw it as curling strands of weed below the surface of the pond. Then, as the moonlight brightened, he knew that it was a reflection of something behind him, looking down from a height—from one of the lower steps.
    He almost turned. But when the features swayed gently into their hideous clarity, he was transfixed. There in the water was the face that no painter, no sculptor, no creative madman could ever have conceived. It was a warped, dead thing, drowned in the pond; and yet it was alive. Its lips drew back and those drifting tendrils became serpents. The eyes held Paul’s: he tried to look away, but if he looked away he would behold the reality of which this was only the palest reflection.
    The snakes appeared to twist upwards in an effort to break the surface like slimy creatures of the pond. Paul could bear it no longer. He put his arm across his eyes and turned to run. But even as he began to lurch towards the house he knew that it . . . she . . . was waiting for him.
    He tottered to one side. There must be a way round this side of the building to the front. He tried to shout for help, to arouse Hans, but then stifled the sound. If Hans were to come out now he might be face to face with the creature without warning.
    Paul dared to lower his arm and search for the way alongside the millhouse. It came to an end in a jagged wall. He couldn’t get over. He pushed himself away from it, and his feet caught in a tangle of tall weeds. The world was going round. A clap of thunder was like some devilish jubilation. Paul felt himself reeling sideways, keeping his balance as he went but waiting to fall, until at last he struck the wall of the fishpond and sagged over it. His head smacked into the staring reflection of abomination and broke it into a swirl of ripples . . .
    Somewhere there was an uncontrollable screaming. He drowned in a nest of weed and serpents, and all the time he was fighting to claw his way back to the surface that screaming went on.
    His eyes, strangely, were tightly shut. He tried to open them. The serpents relaxed their grip, but the water still obscured his vision. Then a face began to form in it. Paul recognized the screaming voice as his own, and screamed louder as the face took on substance. If this time he was to see the Gorgon full face, he must die; and he didn’t want to die.
    Then the fear drained away and he felt the cool sheet over him, the pillow under his head. Carla Hoffmann looked down at him.
    “It’s all right,” she said gently.
    “She was behind me,” he babbled, “waiting for me to turn. The heads of the snakes were plunging . . .”
    “It was a dream,” she said. “Only a dream.”
    “No.”
    A door opened. Dr. Namaroff came into the neat, aseptic