The Hand of the Devil Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  The Hand of the Devil

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter I: Proposition

  Chapter II: Initiation

  Chapter III: Exploration

  Chapter IV: Presentation

  Chapter V: Abomination

  Chapter VI: Revelation

  Chapter VII: Desperation

  Chapter VIII: Trepidation

  Chapter IX: Defamation

  Chapter X: Absolution

  Chapter XI: Congregation

  Chapter XII: Incarceration

  Chapter XIII: Manipulation

  Chapter XIV: Salvation

  Chapter XV: Disassociation

  Chapter XVI: Extermination

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407097848

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Hand of the Devil

  A CORGI BOOK 978 0 552 55297 4

  First published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  Bodley Head edition published 2006

  Corgi edition published 2007

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Dean Vincent Carter, 2006

  The right of Dean Vincent Carter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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  Set in Adobe Garamond

  Corgi Books are published by Random House Children’s Books,

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

  For Mum and Dad . . . for everything.

  We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  PROLOGUE

  Zaire

  2 July 1932

  The old hut stood alone on the shore. Low mist from the water floated like a shroud across the sand, swirling around the small wooden structure before dissipating into the line of trees behind it. Cutter could hear the sound, even from his position several metres away. He swabbed his brow with the sodden rag from his pocket, then turned and nodded at his guide, Obi. They approached the hut slowly, hesitantly, only too conscious of what lurked within.

  Obi stopped, inhaled deeply, then gave the white man a cautious glance. Cutter smiled before realizing with some alarm that his companion was trembling.

  ‘You’ve been very brave to have come this far,’ he assured him. ‘Stay here. I’ll go in alone.’ He put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘I can’t move,’ Obi murmured, the shame unmistakable in his voice.

  ‘Don’t worry. I understand.’ Cutter turned and looked back at the hut. It would be a ghostly sight even without the graveyard mist from the river. Now the buzzing, the maddening cacophony, was playing tricks with his mind. He could swear that the small building was expanding, swelling in size from the noise building up within.

  ‘If you call out,’ Obi said, his voice full of regret, ‘I may not come to your aid, my friend.’

  ‘I know,’ Cutter replied. ‘It’s all right.’

  He continued forward, parting the fog with his feet, until he reached the wooden door. The sound was awful now. He tried hard to ignore it as he lifted his hand to the door handle. Going in would require a tremendous effort and at that moment he seemed to lack the necessary strength of will. His mind was hindering his body with visions of what awaited him on the other side of that door. He applied pressure to the handle. The door didn’t move.

  Cutter was consumed with the same paralysing terror that had so stricken his guide. The Lady was in there, and she was waiting for him. This he knew beyond all doubt. He closed his eyes and ordered his body to push, to fight.

  Somehow his hand moved as though guided by some unseen force and pushed down the handle. It took some effort, but the door eventually yielded. Voices were screaming inside his head, ordering him to stop, to turn away. He knew that the cold, sickening fear, coupled with lack of sleep, was feeding his already wild imagination, but he couldn’t stop now. Even though he was closer to death than ever before, he couldn’t turn back. She already had him in her grasp. He knew he should have returned to the village for assistance. He knew he should have kept his promise to his wife and steered clear of such danger. He knew a lot of things.

  The crack between the old door and its warped frame widened. At once the noise erupted from the dark confines of the hut, encompassing the man and disrupting all thought. He stood still, barely able to see anything inside the dim structure, but knowing all the while that she was there.

  Obi still couldn’t move. He was renowned among his people for his strength and courage, but that was before he’d learned that the monster was real. This was something he could never have prepared for. He had grown from boy to man with the legends of his tribe, but not until this day had he imagined that they held any truth. Seeing Cutter standing with his hand on the door of the hut, he knew. The terror on the white man’s face was clear. It was in his eyes, in the pallor of his flesh. Something landed on Obi’s upper lip, but he couldn’t even blow it off. The white man was shaking now. He’d opened the door wide enough to step inside the hut.

  The walls were alive. Cutter saw dark, ever-changing shapes smothering the sides of the hut. Waves, odd phantasms formed by thousands upon thousands of tiny, whining insects. An old bed frame and a wooden box were also covered in the creatures, leaving no patch of wood visible. Then he saw her, and his heart nearly stopped. On a crude shelf fashioned from a section of bark sat a huge red mosquito. In appearance she was not dissimilar to the millions of bodies around her, but her size was incredible. She was easily as large as a child’s hand. Undisturbed by the frenzy of her followers or the arrival of the intruder, s
he just sat there, facing him.

  Now, summoning more control over his body, he took a net and a large jar from the bag slung around his shoulder. After all the years he’d spent in the field, his tools remained simple, crude but effective. He unscrewed the top from the jar and slipped it into his pocket. The mosquitoes were now swarming over his shoes, some deciding to venture up his legs. He shuddered, nearly losing his grip on the jar. Raising the net above his head, he advanced towards the shelf, treading on countless tiny bodies, praying he wouldn’t provoke a mass reaction. She seemed to be tracking him with her eyes, her wings lifting and lowering slowly. He readied himself to bring the net down, and that’s when he heard the terrible shriek.

  It seemed to be inside and outside his head simultaneously. The blood-curdling sound was like the agonized scream of a lunatic. The atmosphere changed within the hut: the dark patches on the wall dissolved, and thousands of small shapes took to the air, forming a thick cloud around him. The Lady remained silent and still. Cutter now realized that the scream he’d heard must have been a premonition: it was identical to the sound now tearing from his lungs.

  After the Lady’s followers had gorged themselves on the man’s blood it was her turn to feed. By the time she had finished there was little more than a drop of red fluid left in the deflated body.

  From the shore, Obi heard the chilling cry. Once the screaming had stopped, sensation returned to his body, along with a feeling of sickening guilt. He stood there for some seconds, willing himself to turn and run. Then, as if from the air itself, came a voice. A female voice.

  Come – do not be afraid. I don’t wish to harm you . . .

  His jaw dropped. His breathing became irregular. He’d heard the words, but he couldn’t believe them. Could the myth be a reality? Could the creature really enter the mind of a man? It was impossible. But he hadn’t imagined it, there was no doubt about that. She had called out to him.

  Well?

  Something was pulling him towards the hut. He had no wish to approach it, but he felt compelled. He looked from the hut to the setting sun, then back again. He closed his eyes and pictured his home, his family. Even as he thought he was breaking free from the hold on him, his feet began moving him closer and closer to the hut. Please, he prayed, his eyes still closed. Please let me go. His hand, no longer his own, reached for the door handle. Inside her lair it felt cooler. He awaited her embrace, and all it promised.

  Two miles downriver, Ernest Faraday sat in the shade, wiping sweat from the freckled folds of skin above his eyes. In Africa he enjoyed none of the comforts he was used to at home, and each day brought some new horror, some new discomfort. He loathed the oppressive heat; it felt as if he were being steamed alive. He’d dreamed, the night before, that he was trapped inside the spout of his grandmother’s old kettle, unable to escape the endless steam. Although it was early, the temperature was a constant distraction. He hated it here. Even in the shade he was in hell.

  And from hell he watched the natives haul the supplies up the riverbank from a boat moored nearby. They moved like one large, segmented creature, chanting a low mantra as they worked. From somewhere behind Faraday came a voice. It was female, although as far as he knew there weren’t any women in the area. The only ones he’d seen in weeks were all back at the village some miles away. He twisted round and peered into the darkness of the trees. Nothing. He turned, pushed the sweat sideways from each eyebrow with his thumb and continued supervising the activity on the beach. He was convinced the heat was making him hear things.

  Burke and Pollard, Faraday’s two assistants from his London office, were busy arguing over the quickest method of transporting the goods up the beach. Burke was nothing if not enthusiastic, gesturing wildly with his hands as he followed the bemused workers up and down the sand.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘they’re in a nice, orderly chain. I fail to see any merit in—’

  ‘They should be carrying the stuff in pairs,’ Pollard interrupted, proving yet again that he could never agree with his colleague. ‘In pairs they could carry twice—’

  A dog started barking somewhere out of Faraday’s view. It was Carruthers, Burke’s Yorkshire terrier.

  Pollard winced. ‘Can’t you muzzle that filthy beast? You know what I think of dogs!’

  ‘Well, it can hardly be any worse than what they think of you,’ Burke snapped.

  Pollard held his tongue, merely shaking his head in distaste.

  Faraday sighed. He looked forward to sunset and a brief respite from the terrible sun. Swatting an insect away from his face, he watched the overworked natives, wondering why they hadn’t deserted him weeks ago. Something landed on the back of his neck, escaping his notice. One of the workers started shouting and waving his arms about as Carruthers began chewing part of the wide breeches he was wearing. Faraday swore, got to his feet and started walking down to the water.

  ‘Burke! If you can’t control—’

  The mosquito clinging to his neck chose that moment to insert its feeding tube.

  It felt as though someone had jabbed a long, ice-cold needle into his flesh. Then, as the long, long seconds passed, the pain escalated and Faraday started to jump about in terrible agitation. He slapped the back of his neck repeatedly in a desperate and futile attempt to remove whatever was causing the agony.

  His yells attracted the attention of Burke and Pollard, who now looked on in obvious confusion.

  ‘What on earth is he doing?’ Burke turned and began walking towards his boss.

  ‘I don’t know, but at least he’s got off his lazy backside for once,’ Pollard muttered, following behind. They approached their employer, unsure of what to do or say.

  ‘What the devil’s wrong, Mr Faraday?’ Pollard stopped, his mouth hanging open. Burke had seen it too.

  Fastened to the back of Faraday’s head was what appeared to be a mosquito, but its size was wrong. Very wrong. It was huge. The two men stepped back, open-mouthed. Faraday was now making the most dreadful sounds, his suffering clearly immense. The workers had ceased all activity and were staring sombrely at the white man, as though they’d witnessed such a spectacle before.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Faraday shrieked. ‘Get it off me! Get it—’ He staggered around blindly, then fell backwards onto the sand, his eyes bulging, limbs twitching. In seconds he was dead.

  Burke and Pollard locked eyes, then stared in disbelief at the body. Faraday’s skin was quickly turning green. As they watched, horrified, the grotesque insect, now maroon in colour from all the blood it had consumed, crawled out from under the man’s head, flew up onto his forehead and crouched there, regarding the two men. Steam was rising from Faraday’s wound. As the two men watched, liquid began soaking into the sand around the dead man’s head. Some of it was blood; the rest was something else.

  ‘Oh my Lord Jesus.’ Pollard started retching. Faraday’s head, it seemed, was dissolving.

  The wings buzzed momentarily to life, then stopped, then buzzed again. The creature rose into the air. Burke and Pollard were only vaguely aware of the dog barking as he bounded up the beach towards them. Without warning the monster flew straight at them. In his panic to flee, Burke stumbled and fell, cracking his head open on a sharp rock. The pain was terrible but short, as death came upon him swiftly. Pollard, following suit, tripped over Carruthers and hit the sand. Turning, swearing and scrabbling about, he glimpsed the insect’s long sharp feeding tube instants before it plunged into him. The sound it made was only faint, but Pollard’s cries travelled miles.

  Carruthers sniffed around his master’s head, whimpering. He couldn’t accept that he was dead. The natives were gone. Some of the supplies they’d been carrying were left abandoned halfway up the shore; some were starting to float down the river. After Pollard had stopped screaming and Carruthers had stopped whimpering, there was silence, save for the sound of the water, and a faint whine.

  I: PROPOSITION

  London

  September 2005
>
  My name is Ashley Reeves and I’m extremely lucky to be alive.

  It’s one thing to be told a scary story, and quite another to be right in the middle of one. But that was where I found myself only a few days ago, and I’m worried that if I don’t write down each and every detail of my horrifying experience on Aries Island, I may end up convincing myself that it was all fiction, the diseased imaginings of a young man on the brink of madness.

  That I survived the ordeal is a mystery in itself, for I stared death in the face more than once. But perhaps the most worrying aspect of it all is what drove me to visit that island in the first place. I’m a journalist, and therefore naturally predisposed to pursue stories. But this story should have made me cautious right from the beginning, and I realized too late that I had let my ambition lead me into more trouble than I could handle.

  This account is of an extraordinary creature. A creature so dangerous that if it had been able to reproduce, it could have wiped us all from the face of the earth.

  Mosquitoes are just insects. Nothing more than tiny biological machines. But they are also carriers. They communicate diseases like malaria, yellow fever, West Nile virus, dengue and encephalitis. Transmitting infection seems to be their primary function. Mankind is perhaps the herd that mosquitoes are destined to thin: millions of lives have been claimed by malaria alone. But mosquitoes don’t know what they are doing. They don’t know they are carrying terrible diseases. It would be an incredible thing indeed if a mosquito, or any insect, were capable of thought.

  But one thing I’m reminded of time and time again is that Mother Nature loves a paradox.

  I think many journalists must come to a point in their career when they think they’ve heard everything. I came to that point surprisingly early, with stories about three-headed pigs, blue sheep and talking plants; the only thing that shocked me was the audacity of the idiots behind them.

  The magazine I work for, Missing Link, was launched a few years ago. My editor, Derek Jones, left a newspaper he’d been with for several years and started up Link on his own, to cash in on the public’s fascination for all things ‘inexplicable’.