Free Ritual by Graham Masterton

after another.
    Raising the
walking stick, he retraced his steps along the corridor. The clouds had suddenly
moved away from the moon, and the kitchen was illuminated in cold, luminous
blue, knives and grinders and mincers gleaming, like some spectral abattoir.
There were two panes of Flemish glass in the kitchen door, and through their
watery distortion Charlie could make out the shadows of two people, earnestly
engaged in conversation. A thin, boyish figure, which must
have been Martin, and another smaller figure, which must have been wearing a
hat or a hood, because it was strangely rhomboidal in shape, like an
old-fashioned coal scuttle.
    Charlie tiptoed
close to the door and listened. The whispering voice went on and on, as endless
and insistent as water running over a weir; yet peculiarly seductive, too, in a
way that Charlie found it very hard to understand. It wasn’t erotic, yet it
gave him a thrill that was almost entirely physical. It was a voice that knew
the desires of the flesh, and pandered to them. It was frightening, but at the
same time irresistibly alluring.
    You shall find
happiness; you shall find joy. You shall find friends and lovers. You shall
find the most complete fulfilment known to man, and the name of that fulfilment
is written where nobody can find it but you.
    Charlie waited
for almost a minute. Then he reached out and clasped the cold brass doorknob.
    He wasn’t sure
if he could be seen from the yard or not. It depended on the angle of the
moonlight. He took a breath, and then tugged the door open – at the very
instant a huge grey cloud rolled over the moon and obscured it completely.
    He saw
something. He wasn’t quite sure what it was. A face, or a mirror reflecting his own face.
    A white
transfixed face, with eyes that glittered at him. A
blue-white tongue lolling between blue-white lips. Then a white blur of
fabric, a hood tugged hurriedly over, and a small crooked figure crab-hopping
away; then darkness. No sound, no cry, no noise at all. Only
the breeze blowing boisterously over the yard, and the irritating banging of an
upstairs shutter.
    Squeeak-shudder-clop!
    Martin was standing
in his dressing gown, his thin-wristed hands down by his sides, his face
concealed by shadow. Charlie looked back down the yard, in the direction the
hunched-up creature had fled, and said quietly, ‘You want to tell me what’s
going on here?’
    Martin said
nothing. Charlie took two or three steps into the yard, but it was too dark for
him to see very much. The moon remained hidden behind the clouds. The washing
line sang a low vibrant tenor. At last Charlie turned back to Martin and said,
‘Who was that? Are you going to tell me who that was?’
    ‘It wasn’t
anybody.’
    ‘Don’t bullshit
me!’ Charlie yelled at him. ‘I saw him and I heard him! A
little guy – no more than four feet tall!’
    ‘I was here on
my own,’ said Martin. His voice was flat and expressionless.
    ‘Martin, don’t
try to kid me, I saw him for myself. It was ^the same boy who was looking into
the window at the Iron
    Kettle, wasn’t
it? It was the same boy you were talking to in the parking lot. You didn’t
really think I believed that guitar stuff, did you? I
saw him again this afternoon, on the green, and now here he is, in the middle
of the night, at Mrs Kemp’s.’
    Martin lowered
his head. The very faintest touch of moonlight illuminated the parting in his
hair.
    ‘Martin,’ said
Charlie. ‘I’m your father. You have to tell me. It’s my duty to look after you,
whether I like it or not. Whether you like it or not.’
    ‘You don’t have
to look after me,’ said Martin.
    ‘I’m your
father.’
    Martin raised
his head. Charlie couldn’t make out his face at all. ‘You’re a man who happened
to fuck my mother, that’s all,’ Martin snapped at him. Then he wrenched open
the kitchen door and ran inside. He left the door ajar, and Charlie standing in
the dark back yard, feeling more isolated than ever