The Phantom Hound
© Andre Michael Pietroschek, all rights reserved
Significant changes to the `Occult Holmes & Watson´: Herein, older Warlock Holmes is less financially bolstered, and graduated as a medical doctor aka physician. Dr. John Watson focused his studies on more forensic measures, like a coroner or pathologist. Hence, he makes sense as an extension and is less the dumb-ass lackey or retarded elderly some haters made of him. Professor Moriarty invented several `Steampunk NOT Cyberpunk´ means to improve the criminals of his era. Be that only, to have more useful (and easier controlled) minions.
This version is a legal derivative of the expired copyright (1997) Dion Fortune’s `The Death Hound´, and I want to add that it purposely blends-in between `The Hound of the Baskervilles´ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & `The Hounds of Tindalos´ by Frank Belknap Long. The occult rituals are not dog-bound, albeit shamanism & witchcraft are not far behind on knowing the secret trick. If their original is not even more efficient.
Disclaimer:
No warranties! This is a work of fiction only and folklore, occult knowledge, people, institutions, and places are used fictitiously! All pictures used were labeled `Free to modify, share, and use non-commercially´!
The story begins:
“Well?” said my patient, when I had finished to stethoscope him, “have I got to go softly all the days of my life?”
“Your heart is not all it might be,” I replied, “but with the care, it ought to last as long as you want it. You must avoid all undue exertion, however.”
The man made a curious grimace. “Supposing, exertion seeks me out?” he asked.
“You must so regulate your life that you reduce the possibility to a minimum.”
Warlock Holmes’s voice came from the other side of the room. “If you are finished with his bodily examination, Watson, I will make a start on assessing his mind.”
“I have a notion,” said our patient, “that the two are rather intimately connected. You say I must keep my body quiet,“—he looked at me—“but what am I to do, if my mind deliberately gives it shocks?” and he turned to my colleague.
“That is, where I come in,” said Warlock Holmes. “My friend has told you what to do; now I will show you how to do it. Come, and tell me your symptoms.”
“Delusions,” said the stranger, as he buttoned his shirt. “A black dog of ferocious aspect, who pops out of dark corners and assails me, or tries to. I haven’t done him the honor to run away from him yet; I dare not, my heart’s too unstable, but one of these days I am afraid I may, and then I shall probably drop dead.”
Warlock Holmes raised his eyes to me in a silent question. I nodded. It was quite a likely thing to happen, if the man ran far or fast.
“What sort of a beast is your dog?” inquired my colleague.
“No particular breed at all. Just a plain dog, with four legs and a tail, about the size of a mastiff, but not of the mastiff build.”
“How does he make his appearance?”
“Difficult to say; he does not seem to follow any fixed rule, but usually after dusk. If I am out after sundown, I may look over my shoulder and see him padding along behind me. Or, if I am sitting in my room between daylight fading and lamp lighting, I may see him crouching behind the furniture awaiting his opportunity.”
“His opportunity for what?”
“To jump at my throat.”
“Why does he not take you unawares?”
“This is, what I cannot make out. He seems to miss so many chances, for he always waits to attack until I am aware of his presence.”
“What does he do then?”
“As soon, as I turn and face him, he begins to close in on me! If I am outdoors, walking, he quickens his pace, so to overtake me, and if I am indoors he sets to work to stalk me around the furniture. I tell you, he may only be a product of my imagination, but he is an uncanny sight to watch.”
The speaker paused and wiped away the sweat that had gathered on his forehead during this recital. Such a haunting is not a pleasant form of obsession for any man to be afflicted with, but for one with a heart condition like our patient’s, it was peculiarly dangerous.
“What defense do you offer against this creature?” asked Warlock Holmes.
“I keep on saying to it “You’re not real, you know, you are only a beastly nightmare. I’m not going to let myself be taken in by you.”
“As good a defense as any,” said Warlock Holmes. “But, I notice you talk to it, as if it were real.”
“Holy Lord, so I do!” said our visitor thoughtfully; “that is something new. I never used to do that. I took it for granted that the Phantom Hound, the beast wasn’t real, was only a product of my own brain, but recently doubt has begun to creep in. Supposing, the thing is real after all? Supposing, it really has the power to attack me? I have an underlying suspicion that my hound may not be altogether harmless after all.”
“He will certainly be exceedingly dangerous to you, if you lose your nerve and run away from him. So long, as you keep your head, I do not think he will do you any harm.”
“Precisely. Yet, there is a point beyond which one may not keep one’s head. Supposing, night after night, just as you were going off to sleep, you wake up knowing the creature is in the room. You see his snout coming around the corner of the curtain, and you pull yourself together and get rid of him and settle down again. Then, just as you are getting drowsy, you take a last look around to make sure that all is safe, and you see something dark moving between you and the dying glow of the fire. You dare not go to sleep, and you can’t keep awake. You may know perfectly well that it is all imagination, but that sort of thing wears you down, if it is kept up night after night.”
“You get it regularly every night?”
“Pretty nearly. Its habits are not absolutely regular, however. Except that, now you come to mention it, it always gives me Friday night off; if it weren’t for that, I should have gone under long ago. When Friday comes I say to it: ‘Now, you brute, this is your beastly Sabbath,’ and go to bed at eight and sleep the clock around.”
“If you care to come down to my nursing home at Highgate, we can probably keep the creature out of your room and ensure you a decent night’s sleep,” said Warlock Holmes. “But, what we really want to know is...,” he paused almost imperceptibly, “Why your imagination should haunt you with dogs, and not, shall we say, with scarlet snakes in the time-honored fashion.”
“I wish it would,” said our patient. “If it was snakes I could ‘put more water with it’ and drown them, but this slinking black beast...” He shrugged his shoulders and followed the butler out of the room.
“Well, Watson, what do you make of it?” asked my colleague after the door closed.
“On the face of it,” I said, “it looks like an ordinary example of delusions stressing the patient out, but I have seen enough of your weird cases, not to limit me to the internal mechanism of the mind alone. Do you consider it possible that we have another case of a real mental attack?”
“You are coming along,” said Warlock Holmes, nodding his head at me approvingly. “When you first joined me, you would unhesitatingly have recommended bromide for all the ills the mind is heir to; now you recognize that there are more things in heaven and earth than were taught to us in the medical schools.”
“So, you think we have a case of a mental attack? I am inclined to think so, too. When a patient tells you about his delusions, he stands up for them. And, often explains to you that they are psychic phenomena, but when a patient recounts psychic phenomena, he generally apologizes for them and explains that they are delusions. But, why doesn’t the creature attack and be done with it, and why does it take its regular half-holiday, as if it lives under the Shop Hours Act?”
Suddenly, he slapped his hand down on the desk.
“Friday is the day the dark covens meet. We must be on their trail again; they will get to know me before we have finished. Someone, who got his occult training in a dark coven is responsible for that ghost hound. The reason that Qatari gets to sleep in peace on Friday night is that his would-be murderer is in meditation or partakes ritual that evening and cannot attend to his subversive private affairs.”
“His would-be-murderer?” I questioned.
“Precisely. Anyone, who sends a harrowing like that to a man with a heart condition like Qatari’s knows that it means his death. Sooner, or later. Supposing, Qatari got into a panic and fought or ran, when he found the dog behind him in a lonely place?”
“He might risk cardiac arrest within seconds,” I said, “but I doubt such is possible still.”
“This is a clear case of mental assassination. Someone, who is a skilled occult practitioner has created a thought form of a black hound, and he is sufficiently in touch with Qatari to be able to convey it to his mind by means of mental attack. Hence, Qatari senses, or thinks he sees, the image that the other man is visualizing.”
“The actual thought form itself is harmless, except for the fear it inspires, but should Qatari lose his head and resort to vigorous physical means of defense, the effort would precipitate a heart attack and he would drop dead without the slightest evidence to show, who caused his death. One of these days we will raid those dark covens, Watson. They endanger too many people. Ring up Qatari at the Hotel Cecil and tell him we will drive him back with us tonight.”
“How do you propose to handle the case?” I asked.
“The house is covered by a psychic globe ward, so the thing cannot get at him while he is under its protection. We will then find out, who is the sender, and see, if we can deal with him and stop it once and for all. It is no good disintegrating the creature, its master would only manufacture another; it is the man behind the dog that we must get at.
“We shall have to be careful, however, not to let Qatari think we suspect he is in any danger, or he will lose his one defense against the creature, a belief in its unreality. That adds to our difficulties, because we shall not dare to question him much, less we arouse his suspicions. We shall have to get at the facts of the case obliquely.”
On the drive down to Highgate, Warlock Holmes did a thing I had never heard him do before: Talk to a patient about his occult theories. Sometimes, at the conclusion of a case, he would explain the laws underlying the phenomena in order to rid the unknown of its terrors and enable his patient to cope with them, but at the outset, never. I listened in astonishment, and then I saw what Warlock Holmes was fishing for. He wanted to find out whether Qatari had any knowledge of occultism himself, and used his own interest to waken the others—if he had any.
My colleague’s diplomacy bore instant fruit. Qatari was also interested in these subjects, though his factual knowledge was nonexistent. Even I could see that.
“I wish, you and Keystone could meet,” he said. “He is an awfully interesting chap. We used to sit up half the night talking of these things at one time.”
“I should be delighted to meet your friend,” said Warlock Holmes. “Do you think he could be persuaded to come down one Sunday and see us? I am always on the lookout for anyone I can learn something from.”
“I… I am sorry, I could not get hold of him now,” said our companion, and lapsed into a preoccupied silence from which all Warlock Holmes’s conversational efforts failed to rouse him. We had evidently struck some painful subject, and I saw my colleague make a mental note of the fact.
As soon, as we got in, Warlock Holmes went straight to his study, opened the safe, and took out a card index file:
“Maffeo, Montague, Keystone,” he muttered, as he turned the cards over. “Anthony William Keystone. Initiated into the Order of the Hooded Gentlemen, October 1912; took office as Armed Guard, May 1915. Arrested on suspicion of espionage, March 1916. Prosecuted for exerting undue influence in the making of his mother’s will. (Everybody seems to go for him, and no one seems to be able to catch him.) Became Grand Magister, Temple of Set the Destroyer. Knocks, two, three, two, password, ‘Jackal.’
“So much for Mr. Keystone. A good man to steer clear of, I should imagine. Now I wonder what Qatari has done to upset him.”
As we dared not question Qatari, we observed him, and I very soon noticed that he watched the incoming posts with the greatest anxiety. He was always hanging about the hail, when they arrived, and seized his scanty mail with eagerness, only to lapse immediately into despondency. Whatever letter it was that he was looking for never came. He did not express any surprise at this, however, and I concluded that he was rather hoping against hope than expecting something that might happen. Then, one day he could stand it no longer, and for the twentieth time I unlocked the mailbag and informed him that there was nothing for him, he blurted out:
“Do you believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ Dr. Watson?”
“It depends on the personality,” I said. “But, in years past I have observed that, if you have fallen out with someone, you are more ready to overlook his shortcomings, when you have been away from him for a time.”
“But, if you are really fond of someone?” he continued, half-anxiously, half-shamefacedly.
“It is my belief that love cools, if it is not fed,” I said. “The human mind has great powers of adaptation, and one gets used to, sooner or later, to be without one’s nearest and dearest.”
“I think so, too,” said Qatari, and I saw him go off to seek consolation from his pipe in a lonely corner.
“So, there is a woman in the case,” said Warlock Holmes, when I reported the incident. “I should rather like to have a look at her. I think, I shall set up as a rival to Keystone; if he sends black magick mental attacks, let me see what I can do with a white magick one.”
I guessed that Warlock Holmes meant to make use of the method of silent suggestion, of which he was a practiced adept. Apparently, Warlock Holmes’s magic started immediately, for a couple of days later I handed Qatari a letter, which caused his face to light up with pleasure, and sent him off to his room to read it in private. Half an hour later he came to me in the office and said:
“Dr. Watson, would it be convenient, if I had a couple of guests to lunch tomorrow?”
I assured him that this would be the case, and noted the change wrought in his appearance by the arrival of the long-wished-for letter. He would have faced a pack of black dogs at that moment.
The next day, I caught sight of Qatari showing two ladies round the grounds, and when they came into the dining room he introduced them as Mrs. and Miss Rendlesham. There seemed to be something wrong with the girl, I thought, as she was so curiously distraught and absent-minded.
Qatari, however, was in the seventh heaven; the man’s blatantly-obvious pleasure was almost amusing to witness. I was watching the little comedy with a covert smile, when suddenly it changed to tragedy.
As the girl stripped her gloves off she revealed a ring on the third finger of her left hand. It was undoubtedly an engagement ring. I raised my eyes to Qatari’s face and saw that his were fixed upon it. In the space of a few seconds, the man crumpled; the happy little luncheon party was over. He strove to play his part as host, but the effort was pitiful to watch, and I was thankful when the close of the meal permitted me to withdraw.
I was not allowed to escape, however. Warlock Holmes caught my
arm as I was leaving the room and drew me out on the terrace.
“Come along,” he said. “I want to make friends with the Rendlesham family; they may be able to throw some light on our problem.”
We found that Qatari had paired off with the mother, so we had no difficulty in strolling around the garden with the girl between us. She seemed to welcome the arrangement, and we had not been together many minutes before the reason was made evident.
“Dr. Warlock Holmes,” she said, “may I talk to you about myself?”
“I shall be delighted, Miss Rendlesham,” he replied. “What is it you want to ask me about?”
“I am so very puzzled about something. Is it possible to be in love with a person you don’t like?”
“Quite possible,” said Warlock Holmes, “but not likely to be very
satisfactory,”
“I am engaged to a man,” she said, sliding her engagement ring on and off her finger, “whom I am madly, desperately in love with when he is not there. And, as soon, as he is present I feel a sense of horror and repulsion for him. When I am away, I long to be with him, and when I am with him, I feel, as if everything was wrong and horrible. I cannot make myself clear, but do you grasp what I mean?”
“How did you come to get engaged to him?” asked Warlock Holmes.
“In an ordinary way. I have known him nearly as long, as I have known Kumar,” indicating Mr. Qatari, who was just ahead of us, walking with the mother.
“No undue influence was used?” asked Warlock Holmes.
“No, I don’t think so. He just asked me to marry him, and I said I would.”
“How long before that had you known that you would accept him, if he proposed to you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it. In fact, the engagement was as much a surprise to me, as to almost everyone else. I had never thought of him in that way till about three weeks ago. And then, I suddenly realized that he was the man I wanted to marry. It was a sudden impulse, but so strong and clear that I knew it was the choice for me to make.”
“And, you do not regret it?”
“I did not. Until today, but as I was sitting in the dining room, I suddenly felt how thankful I should be, if I had not got to go back to Anthony.”
Warlock Holmes looked at me. “The psychic isolation of this house has its uses,” he said. Then he turned to the girl again. “You don’t suppose that it was Mr. Keystone’s forceful personality that influenced your decision?”
I was secretly amused about Warlock Holmes’s shot in the dark, and the way the girl walked blissfully into his trap.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I often get those impulses; it was on just such a one that I came down here.”
“Then,” said Warlock Holmes, “it may well be on just such another that you got engaged to Keystone. Henceforth, I may as well tell you that it was I, who was responsible for that impulse today.”
The girl stared at him in amazement.
“As soon, as I knew of your existence, I wanted to see you. There is a soul over there that is in my care at present. I think, you play an important part in his welfare.”
“I know I do,” said the girl, gazing at the broad shoulders of the unconscious Qatari with so much wistfulness and yearning that she clearly betrayed with who her real feelings lay.
“Some people send telegrams, when they wish to communicate, but I don’t. I send suggestive thoughts, because I am certain they will be obeyed. A person may disregard a telegram, but he will act on a thought, because he believes it to be his own. Though, of course, it is necessary that he should not suspect he is receiving a covert suggestion, else he would probably turn around and do the exact opposite.”
Miss Rendlesham stared at him in astonishment. “Is such a thing possible?” she exclaimed. “I can hardly believe it.”
“You see that vase of scarlet geraniums to the left of the path? I will make your mother turn aside and pick one. Now, watch!”
We both gazed at the walking woman, as Warlock Holmes concentrated his attention upon her, and sure enough, as they drew abreast of the vase, she turned aside and picked a scarlet blossom.
“What are you doing to our geraniums?” Warlock Holmes called out to her.
“I am so sorry,” she called back, “I yielded to a sudden whim.”
“All thoughts are not generated within the mind that thinks them,” said Warlock Holmes. “We are constantly giving each other intuitive suggestions, and influence minds without knowing it. And, if a person, who understands the power of thought deliberately, trains the mind in its use, there are few things one cannot do.”
We had regained the terrace in the course of our walk, and Warlock Holmes took his farewell and retired to the office. I followed him and found him with the safe open and his card index on the table.
“Well, Watson, what do you make of it all?” he greeted me.
“Qatari and Keystone after the same girl,” said I. “Vile Keystone uses for his carnal triumphs the same methods that you use on your patients.”
“Exactly, “said Warlock Holmes. “An excellent object lesson in the ways of toxic and legitimate occultism. We both study the human mind, we both study the hidden forces of nature. I use my knowledge for society and Keystone uses his for abusing the gullible.”
“Warlock Holmes,” I said, facing him, “what is to prevent you also from abusing your occult prowess for personal ends?”
“Several things, my friend,” he replied. “In the first place, those, who are taught as I am taught are selected men, carefully tested. Secondly, I am a member of an organization that would assuredly exact retribution for the abuse of its training. And, thirdly, knowing what I do, I dare not abuse the powers that have been entrusted to me. There is no such thing as a straight line in the universe; everything works in curves; therefore it is only a matter of time before that which you send out from your mind returns to it. Sometimes, with a proverbial vengeance!
Sooner or later, Qatari’s dog will come home to its master.” Qatari was absent from the evening meal, and Warlock Holmes immediately inquired about his whereabouts.
“He walked over with his friends to the crossroads to put them on the bus for Hazlemere,” someone volunteered, and Warlock Holmes, who did not seem too well satisfied looked at his watch.
“It will be light for a couple of hours yet,” he said. “If he is not back by dusk, Watson, let me know.”
It was a gray evening, a threatening storm, and darkness set in early. Soon after eight I sought Warlock Holmes in his study and said:
“Qatari isn’t back yet, Holmes.”
“Then, we had better go and look for him,” said my colleague. We went out by the window to avoid observation on the part of our other patients, and, making our way through the shrubberies were soon out upon the moor.
“I wish, we knew which way he would come,” said Warlock Holmes.
“There is a profusion of paths to choose from. We had better get on to the high ground and watch for him with the field glasses.”
We made our way to a bluff topped with wind-torn bushes, and Warlock Holmes swept the heather paths with his binoculars. A mile away he picked out a figure moving in our direction, but it was too far off for identification.
“Probably Qatari,” said my companion, “but we can’t be sure yet. We had better stop up here and await events. If we drop into the hollow, we shall lose sight of him. You take the glasses; your eyes are better than mine. How infernally early it is getting dark tonight. We ought to have had another half-hour of daylight.”
A cold wind had sprung up, making us shiver in our thin clothes, for we were both in evening dresses and hat-less. Heavy gray clouds were banking up in the west, and the trees moaned uneasily. The man out on the moor was moving at a good pace, looking neither to right nor left. Except for his solitary figure the great gray waste was empty.
All of a sudden the swinging stride was interrupted. He looked over his shoulder, paused, and then quickened his pace. Then, he looked over his shoulder again and broke into a half trot. After a few yards of this, he dropped to a walk again, and held steadily on his way, refusing to turn his head.
I handed the glasses to Warlock Holmes.
“It’s Qatari, right enough,” he said; “and he has seen the dog!”
We could make out now the path he was following, and, descending from the hill, set out at a rapid pace to meet him. We had gone about a quarter of a mile when a sound arose in the darkness ahead of us; the piercing, inarticulate shriek of a wild creature being hunted to death.
Warlock Holmes let out such a halloo that I did not think human lungs were capable of. We tore along the path to the crest of a rise, and as we raced down the opposite slope, we made out a figure struggling across the heather. Our white shirt fronts showed up plainly in the gathering dusk, and he headed towards us. It was Qatari, running for his life while chased by the phantom hound.
I rapidly outdistanced Warlock Holmes and caught the hunted man in my arms, as we literally cannoned into each other in the narrow path. I could feel the played-out heart knocking like a badly-running engine against his side. I laid him flat on the ground, and Warlock Holmes came up with his pocket medicine case. We did what we could to help.
We were only just in time. A few more yards and the man would have dropped. As I straightened my back and looked round into the darkness, I thanked God. Grateful, for I had not that horrible power of vision that would have enabled me to see what it was that had slunk off over the heather at our approach.
That something fled I had no doubt about, for half a dozen sheep, grazing a few hundred yards away, scattered to give it passage. We got Qatari back to the house and sat up with him. It was touch-and-go with that ill-used heart, and we had to drug the racked nerves into oblivion.
Shortly after midnight Warlock Holmes went to the window and looked out.
“Come here, Watson,” he said. “Do you see anything?”
I declared that I did not.
“It would be a very good thing for you, if you did,” declared Warlock Holmes.
“You are much too fond of treating the thought-forms that a sick mind breeds! As if, because they have no objective existence, they were innocuous. Now come along and see things from the viewpoint of the patient.”
He commenced beating a tattoo upon my forehead, using a peculiar syncopated rhythm. In a few moments, I became conscious of a feeling. As if a suppressed sneeze was working its way from my nose, up into my skull. Then, I noticed a faint luminosity appear in the darkness, and I saw that a grayish-white fog extended outside the window. Beyond that, I saw the Phantom Hound!
A shadowy form gathered itself out of the darkness, took a run towards the window, and leaped up, only to drive its head against the gray fog and fall back. Again, it gathered itself together, and again it leaped, only to fall back. Baffled. A soundless growl seemed to come from the open jaws, and in the eyes gleamed a light that was not of this world. It was not the green luminosity of an animal, but a purplish gray reflected from some cold planet beyond the range of our senses.
“That is what Qatari sees nightly,” said Warlock Holmes, “only in his case the thing is actually in the room. Shall I open a way through the psychic globe ward it is hitting its nose against, and let it in?”
I shook my head and turned away from that nightmare vision. Warlock Holmes passed his hand rapidly across my forehead with a peculiar snatching movement.
“You are spared a good deal,” he said, “but never forget that the delusions of a lunatic are just as real to him as that hound was to you.”
We were working in the office the next afternoon, when I was summoned to interview a lady waiting in the hall. It was Miss Rendlesham, and I wondered what had brought her back so quickly.
“The butler tells me that Mr. Qatari is ill. I cannot see him, but I wonder, if Dr. Warlock Holmes could spare me a few minutes?”
I took her into the office, where my colleague expressed no surprise at her appearance.
“So, you have sent back the ring?” he observed.
“Yes,” she said. “How do you know? What magic are you working this time?”
“No magic, my dear Miss Rendlesham. Good, old common sense! Something has frightened you. People are not often frightened to any great extent in ordinary civilized society. Hence, I conclude that something extraordinary must have happened. I know you to be connected with a dangerous man, so I look in his direction. What are you likely to have done that could have triggered his enmity?
You have just been down here, away from his influence, and in the company of the man you used to care for. Possibly you have undergone a revulsion of feeling. I want to find out, so I express my guess as a statement; You, thinking I know everything, make no attempt at denial, and therefore furnish me with the information I want.”
“But, Dr. Holmes,” said the bewildered girl, “why do you venture to do all this, when I would have answered your question, if only you had asked me?”
“Because: I want you to see for yourself the way in which it is possible to handle an unsuspecting person,” said he. “Now, tell me what brought you here.”
“When I got back last night, I knew, I could never marry Anthony Keystone,” she said, “and in the morning I wrote to him and told him so. He came straight round to the house and asked to see me. I refused, for I knew that, if I saw him, I should be right back in his power again.
He then sent up a message to say that he would not leave until he had spoken to me, and I got into a panic. I was afraid he would force his way upstairs, so I slipped out of the back door and took the train down here. Somehow, I felt that you understood what was being done to me, and would be able to help. Of course, I know that he cannot put a pistol to my head and force me to marry him. Still, he has so much influence over me that I am afraid he may make me do it in spite of myself.”
“I think,” said Warlock Holmes, “that we shall have to deal drastically with Master Anthony Keystone.”
Warlock Holmes took her upstairs and allowed her and Qatari to look at each other for exactly one minute without speaking, and then handed her over to the care of the matron. Towards the end of dinner that evening I was told that a gentleman desired to see the secretary, and went out to the hall to discover who our visitor might be. A tall, dark man with very peculiar eyes greeted me.
“I called for Miss Rendlesham,” he said.
“Miss Rendlesham?” I repeated, as if mystified.
“Why, yes,” he said, somewhat taken aback. “Isn’t she here?”
“I will inquire of the matron,” I answered.
I slipped back into the dining room and whispered to Warlock Holmes, “Keystone is here.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I will see him in the office,” he said.
Thither we prepared, but before admitting our visitor, Warlock Holmes arranged the reading lamp on his desk in such a way that his own features were in deep shadow and practically invisible.
Then, Keystone was shown in. He assumed an authoritative manner. “I have come on behalf of her mother to fetch Miss Rendlesham home,” said he. “I should be glad, if you would inform her I am here.”
“Miss Rendlesham will not be returning tonight and has wired her mother to that effect.”
“I did not ask you what Miss Rendlesham’s plans were; I asked you to let her know that I was here and wished to see her. I presume, you are not going to offer any objection?”
“But, I am,” said Warlock Holmes. “I object strongly.”
“Has Miss Rendlesham refused to see me?”
“I have not inquired.”
“Then, by what right do you take up this outrageous position?”
“By this right,” said Warlock Holmes, and made a peculiar sign with his left hand. On the forefinger was a ring of the most unusual workmanship that I had never seen before.
Keystone jumped, as if Warlock Holmes had put a pistol to his head, he leaned across the desk and tried to distinguish the shadowed features, then his gaze fell upon the ring.
“Accursed Inquisition!,” he gasped and backpedaled a step.
Then, he turned and slunk towards the door, flinging over his shoulder such a glance of hate and fear, as I had never seen before. I swear, he bared his teeth and snarled.
“Brother Keystone,” said Warlock Holmes, “the dog returns to its kennel tonight.”
“Let us go to one of the upstairs windows and see that he really takes himself off,” went on Warlock Holmes.
From our vantage point, we could see our late visitor making
his way along the sandy road that led to Thursley. To my surprise, however, instead of keeping straight on, he turned and looked back.
“Is he going to return?” I said in surprise.
“I don’t think so,” said Warlock Holmes. “Now watch, something is going to happen.”
Again Keystone stopped and looked around, as if in surprise. Then, he began to fight. Whatever it was that attacked him evidently leaped up, for he beat it away from his chest. Then, it circled him, for he turned slowly to face it. Yard by yard he worked his way down the road and was swallowed up in the gathering dusk.
“The hound is following its master home,” said Warlock Holmes.
We heard the next morning that the body of a strange man had been found near Brampton. It was thought he had died of heart failure, for there were no marks of violence on his body.
Thus ended the adventure of the phantom hound. Albeit, not without years of staying alert, as the vengeful dark covens did not give up easily. Patriotic people were killed due to their retaliation, we ourselves barely survived attempts to undo us, and I still shed tears, when visiting the gravestones of my deceased wives. Let us hope that our contribution was a less toxic mess of backstabbing & betrayal.
The end
A note on occult theory
Sigils & Servitors have filled many books. The doggy here is a simple psychological trick. Verbal and non-verbal suggestion are not magical at all. Not, because I am opinionated, but because it is just a fantasy. Advanced forms, at least as debated in occult theory, needed energy to keep themselves `alive´. Much, like parasites. Just, that those psychic pseudo-creatures took energy from whence they could.
It was not uncommon that such impacted the results supposed witches & dark magicians (dark magickers would be a more proper term) originally intended, as no video game simplicity logic dominates reality.
Another side effect, at least as a rumor & warning, was that lesser creatures and pathogens seemed to react to the more skilled approaches in their own ways. Possibly, because the psychic construct (dog) drew its energy from those, as conveniently eating the life force of the target (or neighbors) did not happen on a regular basis!
The idea of psychic assassination may henceforth be a dramatized depiction for stage play (theaters & movies), or the boastful money-rip off by gurus, who by now are proven fraudulent & abusive.
There is also a more scientific suspicion that such occult depictions served to cover-up crimes committed and substance abuse having an effect on mindsets & motivations of those supposed `occult masters & mistresses´.
Gifting the author some unconditional financial love:
https://paypal.me/AMPietroschek
Research notes & occult babbling
https://archive.org/details/the-opposite-of-magick-is-sorcery-2023
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