Read Online Charnel House by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

from their sockets, leaving nothing but glutinous bone.
    Jane, her voice trembling with nausea, said, “Oh, John. Oh, my God, what’s happened?”
    Dr. Jarvis carefully laid Bryan’s body down. The skull made a sickening bonelike sound on the tiles. Dr. Jarvis’s face was as white and shocked as mine must have been.
    â€œI’ve never seen anything like it,” he whispered. “Never.”
    I looked up toward the dark maw of the old Victorian fireplace. “What I want to know is what did it . For Christ’s sake, Doctor, what’s up there?”
    Dr. Jarvis shook his head mutely. Neither of us was prepared to take a look. Whatever it was that had ripped the flesh off Bryan’s head, whether it was a freak accident or some kind of malevolent animal, neither of us wanted to face it.
    â€œJane,” Dr. Jarvis said, taking a card out of his breast pocket, “this is the number of the Elmwood Foundation Hospital where I work. Call Dr. Speedwell and tell him what’s happened. Tell him I’m here. And ask him to get an ambulance around here as fast as he can.”
    â€œWhat about the police?” I said. “We can’t just—”
    Dr. Jarvis glanced cautiously across at the fireplace. “I don’t know. Do you think they’ll believe us?”
    â€œFor Christ’s sake, if there’s anything up that chimney that rips people apart, I’m not going to go up there and look for myself. And neither are you.”
    Dr. Jarvis nodded. “Okay,” he said to Jane. “Dial the police as well.”
    Jane was just about to leave the room when there was a soft knock at the door. Seymour Wallis’s voice said, “Are you all right in there? I thought I heard shouting.”
    I went across to the door and opened it. Wallis stood there pale and anxious, and he must have seen from the look on my face that something had gone wrong.
    â€œThere’s been an accident,” I told him. “It’s probably better if you don’t come in.”
    â€œIs someone hurt?” he asked, trying to look around my shoulder.
    â€œYes. Bryan is badly injured. But please, I suggest you don’t look. Its pretty awful.”
    Wallis pushed me aside. “It’s my house, Mr. Hyatt. I want to know what goes on here.”
    Well, I guess he was right. But when he walked into the bedroom and saw Bryan’s body lying there, its skull grinning up at the ceiling, he froze, and he could neither speak nor move.
    Dr. Jarvis looked up. “Get that ambulance,” he told Jane tersely. “The sooner we find out what happened here the better.”
    Wallis sat down heavily on the narrow bed, his hands in his lap, and stared at Bryan in unabating horror.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mr. Wallis,” said Dr. Jarvis. “He thought he heard some kind of noise in the chimney, and he poked his head up there to see what it was.”
    Wallis opened his mouth, said nothing, then closed it again.
    â€œWe had the feeling that something or someone attacked him,” I explained. “When his head was up there and we were trying to tug him out, it was just like someone equally powerful was pulling him back.”
    Almost furtively, Wallis turned his eyes toward the dark and empty fireplace. “I don’t understand,” he said hoarsely. “What are you trying to say?”
    Dr. Jarvis stood up. There was nothing more he could do for Bryan now, except try to discover what had killed him. He said seriously, “Either he got his head caught in some kind of freak accident, Mr. Wallis, or else there’s a creature up there, or a man, who tore the flesh off Bryan Corder’s head in some sort of psychopathic attack.”
    â€œUp the chimney? Up the chimney of my house?”
    â€œI’m afraid it looks that way.”
    â€œBut this is insane! What the hell lives up a chimney, and tears people apart like that?”
    Dr. Jarvis