Possessors, The by Christopher John

Author:Christopher, John [Christopher, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-fi, Fiction, Horror, Novel, Fantasy
Publisher: Unofficial e-book edition
Published: 1966-10-09T03:00:00+00:00

In the morning, he told George and Douglas about the appearance at the window, although not, of course, that Diana had been downstairs at the time.

Douglas said, “Not trying to get in?”

“No. Merely looking.”

“Seeing what you were up to,” George said. Selby glanced at him sharply, but there was nothing behind the remark. “A recce party.”

“Something like that.”

“No sign of them this morning?” Douglas asked.

“No. Not that one would see much, in this.”

They were in the bar. Selby gestured toward the window. Outside, gray mist swirled in small currents of air. The mist had come down or, more likely, up from the valley cloud, toward dawn, and was thick all around the house. Visibility was about ten yards at most.

Douglas said, “One really does feel cut off.”

There was an uneasiness in his voice which reflected, Selby felt, the mood of all of them. They had been looking to have their anxieties put to rest by day, by the sight of the empty sunlit snow slopes, the reasssuring immutability of the distant peaks. Instead they had the mist all around them, cutting them off from the world more completely than the night’s darkness did. At night there was a chance of seeing the moon, stars, the lights of St. Gingolph on the faraway shore of the lake. Now there was nothing to see but the mist itself, eddying, coldly seething, but never changing. It was depressing, and unnerving.

George said, “I thought they might have come back.”

A silence followed. Each minute that went by, Selby reflected, hammered one more nail in the coffin of the comfortable satisfying solution they all so desperately wanted to find. He said sharply, “What sort of weapons do you have in the house?”

George looked up. “Weapons?”

“Any guns?”

“A twelve-bore. I do a bit of rabbiting in the summer.” “Cartridges?”

“A couple of boxes. Look, Selby, what are you driving at? There are only three of them, one a kid. They’re not likely to attack us.”

“Not when we’re together, I agree. We outnumber them too greatly. But if anyone were to go out on his own, I thing he would need protection.”

Douglas said incredulously, “Protection? From the Deepings?”

But there was apprehension in his voice, as well as incredulity. There was a danger, Selby thought, which was independent of any particular menace the metamorphosed Deepings might present: the danger of panic here in the house. To that extent, George had been right the previous evening, and he had been wrong. But they had to realize a menace existed. He thought wearily, I’m not seeing straight, probably. Two nights running with no more than a few hours’ sleep. He shook his head, and drank the coffee Mandy had brought them.

George said, “No one’s going out. It would be lunacy to go out in this, anyway. All we can do at present is sit tight, and see what happens. In the end, they’ll have to come to us. Hunger will bring them. At the rate they rushed out, they didn’t have time to pick up any rations.

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