Once more the deep bull-cry welled up from the dark centre of the arc of watchers. It was palpable, a sound that actually had body; they could feel it pushing against their flesh. It repelled, yet summoned. From some of the women escaped whimpers of fright.
Mrs Pentatuke was the first to descry the point of dusky red, no bigger than a firework fuse, that had winked into being in the patch of darkness at which they all had been staring.
She breathed a long, hoarse, ecstatic “Ahhh!”
Very slowly, the spark grew in size until it looked like the end of a strongly-drawn cigar. It became bigger still and started to elongate. The shape the light assumed was that of a flame, but it was a strangely steady, very red flame, as if it burned in a closed and vitiated room instead of the open air. It was three or four feet above the ground.
As the power of the flame increased, it become more and more angrily crimson. Now there could be seen on each side of it something erect and curved and tapering. And below, limned in red, the lumpish outline of a vast cranium.
What the assembly saw was a beast, or a man masked in the semblance of one, with that sullenly burning candle set between its horns.
The spectacle set off a medley of cries, groans and liturgical recitals, with Mrs Pentatuke’s constantly reiterated “Take me, Master!” beating the others by several decibels.
The name Asmodeus was called out most often, but Apollyon could be heard occasionally, while one discriminating diabolist—a spindly, meek-looking young man who affected the curious sartorial conceit of a brassiere worn as buttock-sling—piped “Angra Mainyu!” whenever he got a chance.
The ex-recorder player sturdily rooted, vide St John the Divine, for “Abaddon Six Six Six!” It sounded as if she were trying to acquaint the horned figure with her telephone number.
Whoever had taken possession of the drum began now to beat it with steady, businesslike rhythm and the dance was resumed. This time the circle was tighter, with the impassive and sinister bulk of the Master at its centre.
After a round or two, some of the celebrants became afflicted with giddiness and either fell over or staggered out of orbit.
Near the abandoned scene of the fire, someone gave a long, raking cough. Then another coughed, and another. A stench of burning sulphur drifted about the circle. Mrs Pentatuke’s eyes were watering. She took no notice. She contrived to pass nearer and nearer the horned man with every circuit.
The ignition of the sulphur had induced a heap of half-charred branches and dry twigs to burst into flame. For several seconds the object of tribute could be clearly seen.
His head, surmounted by the great horns with the red flame between them, was black but gleamed wetly, as if it had just been dredged from ancient and noisome pickle. The face was a fairly even compromise between bovine and human, save that the teeth were characteristic of neither; they were small, needle-like, and bright green. The huge eyes were suggestive of a pair of hard-boiled eggs that had been jammed into raw wounds.
The Master’s body seemed small at first, a mere appendage to the great head, but it was actually that of a plump, heavily built man of average or a little over average height. The skin was of light cinnamon colour and greasy as if it had been rubbed with a cosmetic tanning oil. A pelt, possibly of a goat or a dog, was tied round the lower part of his paunch. His chest hair was black, thick and curly. He was sitting with legs apart in a folding canvas chair of the kind favoured by film directors. There lay on the ground close by his right foot a conical object, presumably the instrument that had produced the bellowing noise.
Before the renewed blaze spent itself, three of the women broke, one after another, from the ring of dancers and rushed up to the Master.
The wearer of the black bathing costume was one; her demeanour was a good deal bolder than it had been earlier, the costume had a long split in one side and a shoulder strap had parted. Kneeling, she shut her eyes and held out her arms unsteadily.
With a swirl of black cloth, there landed like a raven at her side the woman in boots and widow’s veil.
The third arrival was the best preserved-looking member of the nude extremists. She made a few sensuous pirouettes, then curled herself neatly into the Asmodean lap and entwined determined fingers in the goatskin.
There were cries of encouragement. Whoever had captured the recorder forced from it a succession of strangled shrieks. The pace of the drumming increased. Those who were still dancing tried at first to keep step, then either switched into spasmodic individual leaps and jigs or surrendered to exhaustion and dropped to the ground.
The veiled woman and the one in the bathing costume moved off in attitudes of mutual commiseration towards what remained of the liquor supply.
The fire flickered and died.
For a while the satanic candle continued to glow. Its rays falling on the limbs of the woman contentedly grappled to the torso of the Master rendered them the colour of pottery. Then, startlingly, the light was snuffed out.
It seemed that a great door of darkness had closed upon the focal drama of the rites. No one moved. The only sound was the intoning, deep in the throat of Mrs Pentatuke, of the Lord’s Prayer in reverse.
The orison was correct in form, but her heart was not in it. By the time she got to “...bread daily our day...” the words were being delivered hastily and without thought. She had not yet reached the beginning when her voice was drowned by another.
“I HAVE CHOSEN!”
The words boomed out with a more than human amplitude.
There were murmurs of excitement, accompanied by some thwacks on the drum. A woman in a nightdress looked about her nervously and then after some hesitation, called out: “O mighty Pan!” She pronounced it “Pen”.
Some way off, a car engine started. Headlamp beams swung among trees and disappeared round the end of a driveway. The doors of another car slammed. Small shrieks and giggles were squeezed here and there out of the dark. A bottle splintered musically against stone. In the glimmer of the sole surviving candle, the woman in the bathing costume was dancing dolefully with the empty liquor bucket up-ended over her head.
It was clear that the ceremony, although not yet at an end, had entered the phase of independent interpretation.
Mrs Pentatuke stood alone, statuesque, indifferent to the slight chill borne now in the breeze from the east. She stared at the point in the distance where she knew to be a small grove of ash trees, the trees of the Old Religion whose magic was still respected by those otherwise hard-headed farmers who left them undisturbed even in the middle of ploughland. She waited.
Ten minutes had passed when a pinhead of dusky red appeared exactly in the line of Mrs Pentatuke’s steady gaze. Quickly it bloomed to incandescence. Stems and branches of trees stood out in scarlet tracery against the blackness beyond. Up and down and about, the devil’s candle moved. A squeal, as of shocked discovery, rose from the grove. Soon another followed, but this second cry was succeeded by a series of short whoops not at all indicative of distress.