The Hammer Horror Omnibus by John Burke Page A

little room. He stood beside Carla and stared at Paul—not, thought Paul through the blur of returning consciousness, like a doctor concerned about his patient but like a man on the defensive, daring him to speak of what he had seen.
    Paul said: “What happened to me?”
    “Miss Hoffmann had some sort of presentiment that something was going to happen to you. We found you lying over the wall of the pool in your garden.”
    The memory of a blasphemous monster stirred below the surface, swaying as the surface swayed—and then Paul fought it back into the depths where it belonged.
    “How long have I been here?” he managed to ask.
    “Five days.”
    Paul, incredulous, tried to sit up. Carla put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
    “Lie still,” said Namaroff. Then he went on, challenging yet reluctant: “Can you remember what happened before you fell?”
    “I . . . I remember seeing . . . in the pool . . .”
    “What? What did you see?”
    Carla’s hand moved down to Paul’s and closed on it comfortingly. He said: “A face. The most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”
    “In the pool?”
    “It must have been there behind me. But all I saw was . . . No!” It was fearful to think of, impossible to speak of. Paul turned over, burying his face in the pillow.
    “You must rest,” said Namaroff in a more conventional, professional tone. “I’ll talk to you again in a day or two.”
    “A day or two!”
    “You’re in a very weak condition. I don’t want you to overtax your strength.”
    This time Paul succeeded in struggling up to a sitting position.
    “For pity’s sake, I must know more about this. I’m sorry I wasn’t up to it for a moment just then. Look, let’s talk about it. We must get to the bottom of this whole thing. I must—”
    “You’re suffering from shock,” said Namaroff, “and it’s essential that you should rest.”
    “I tell you I’ll be all right.”
    “Miss Hoffmann, please.”
    Carla gave Paul a sympathetic glance and went to the door with the Doctor. When Namaroff had gone out she stood with the door open for a moment, smiling as though offering a promise—a promise to return, to listen to him, to make things somehow all right.
    Paul realized how weak he was. Just the effort of sitting up was a strain. He let himself sink back.
    Before Carla closed the door he heard an excited burst of conversation in the corridor outside, dominated by Namaroff’s sharp, savage questions.
    “Not quite dead when you found her—is that what you’re telling me?”
    “That’s right, sir,” a man’s surly voice responded.
    “Did she speak? Tell you anything?”
    “She’d enough strength left to spit in my face. And then she died.”
    Paul groped for some meaning in this, but it didn’t fit into the hazy pattern of his own experiences. Some other patient, he supposed. Some other unfortunate trapped in a physical or mental nightmare.
    He tried to stay awake. He wanted a clear head in order to sort things out logically. But he was unable to concentrate. Consciousness slipped away and he floundered once more through hideous fantasies before waking again in a sweat. Carla Hoffmann was there. Carla was there whenever he needed her during the next couple of days—or was it weeks, or only interminable minutes?—and when he implored her to stay and talk to him and help him, the touch of her hand on his grew more responsive.
    Hans came timidly in to see him. In a fit of clear-cut decisiveness, Paul told him to go back to Berlin. Hans was obviously going to fall ill himself if left alone in that millhouse. Although he tried dutifully to argue, the loyal servant was only too glad to be ordered away.
    Dr. Namaroff commented approvingly on this.
    “And you yourself will be returning to Leipzig when you leave here?”
    “No,” said Paul, wiping the approval off the Doctor’s face. “I’m staying in Vandorf.”
    He found that he had spent three days here since regaining consciousness. It had