Black Hounds of Death

by Robert E. Howard

  “Kirby, you’re mad!”

  “Mad or sane, I’m going to Goshen this night,” I answered dully. I was fully conscious. I knew what I was saying, and what I was doing. I realized the incredible folly of my action, and I realized my inability to help myself. Some shred of sanity impelled me to try to conceal the grisly truth from my companion, to offer a rational reason for my madness. “Saul Stark is in Goshen. He’s the one who’s responsible for all this trouble. I’m going to kill him. That will stop the uprising before it starts.”

  He was trembling like a man with the ague.

  “Then I’m goin’ with you.”

  “You must go on to Grimesville and warn the people,” I insisted, holding to sanity, but feeling a strong urge begin to seize me, an irresistible urge to be in motion — to be riding in the direction toward which I was so horribly drawn.

  “They’ll be on their guard,” he said stubbornly. “They won’t need my warnin’. I’m goin with you. I don’t know what’s got in you, but I ain’t goin’ to let you die alone among these black woods.”

  I did not argue. I could not. The blind rivers were sweeping me on — on — on! And down the trail, dim in the dusk, I glimpsed a supple figure, caught the gleam of uncanny eyes, the crook of a lifted finger. . . . Then I was in motion, galloping down the trail, and I heard the drum of Braxton’s horse’s hoofs behind me.

  4. THE DWELLERS IN THE SWAMP

  Night fell and the moon shone through the trees, blood-red behind the black branches. The horses were growing hard to manage.

  “They got more sense’n us, Kirby,” muttered Braxton.

  “Panther, maybe,” I replied absently, my eyes searching the gloom of the trail ahead.

  “Naw, t’ain’t. Closer we get to Goshen, the worse they git. And every time we swing nigh to a creek they shy and snort.”

  The trail had not yet crossed any of the narrow, muddy creeks that crisscrossed that end of Canaan, but several times it had swung so close to one of them that we glimpsed the black streak that was water glinting dully in the shadows of the thick growth. And each time, I remembered, the horses showed signs of fear.

  But I had hardly noticed, wrestling as I was with the grisly compulsion that was driving me. Remember, I was not like a man in a hypnotic trance. I was fully awake, fully conscious. Even the daze in which I had seemed to hear the roar of black rivers had passed, leaving my mind clear, my thoughts lucid. And that was the sweating hell of it: to realize my folly clearly and poignantly, but to be unable to conquer it. Vividly I realized that I was riding to torture and death, and leading a faithful friend to the same end. But on I went. My efforts to break the spell that gripped me almost unseated my reason, but on I went. I cannot explain my compulsion, any more than I can explain why a sliver of steel is drawn to a magnet. It was a black power beyond the ring of white man’s knowledge; a basic, elemental thing of which formal hypnotism is but scanty crumbs, spilled at random. A power beyond my control was drawing me to Goshen, and beyond; more I cannot explain, any more than the rabbit could explain why the eyes of the swaying serpent draw him into its gaping jaws.

  We were not far from Goshen when Braxton’s horse unseated its rider, and my own began snorting and plunging.

  “They won’t go no closer!” gasped Braxton, fighting at the reins.

  I swung off, threw the reins over the saddle horn.

  “Go back, for God’s sake, Jim! I’m going on afoot.”

  I heard him whimper an oath, then his horse was galloping after mine, and he was following me on foot. The thought that he must share my doom sickened me, but I could not dissuade him; and ahead of me a supple form was dancing in the shadows, luring me on — on — on. . . .

  I wasted no more bullets on that mocking shape. Braxton could not see it, and I knew it was part of my enchantment, no real woman of flesh and blood, but a hell-born will-o’-the-wisp, mocking me and leading me through the night to a hideous death. A “sending,” the people of the Orient, who are wiser than we, call such a thing.

  Braxton peered nervously at the black forest walls about us, and I knew his flesh was crawling with the fear of sawed-off shotguns blasting us suddenly from the shadows. But it was no ambush of lead or steel I feared as we emerged into the moonlit clearing that housed the cabins of Goshen.

  The double line of log cabins faced each other across the dusty street. One line backed against the bank of Tularoosa Creek. The back stoops almost overhung the black waters. Nothing moved in the moonlight. No lights showed, no smoke oozed up from the stick-and-mud chimneys. It might have been a dead town, deserted and forgotten.

  “It’s a trap!” hissed Braxton, his eyes blazing slits. He bent forward like a skulking panther, a gun in each hand. “They’re layin’ for us in them huts!”

  Then he cursed, but followed me as I strode down the street. I did not hail the silent huts. I knew Goshen was deserted. I felt its emptiness. Yet there was a contradictory sensation as of spying eyes fixed upon us. I did not try to reconcile these opposite convictions.

  “They’re gone,” muttered Braxton, nervously. “I can’t smell ’em. I can always smell niggers, if they’re a lot of ’em, or if they’re right close. You reckon they’ve gone to raid Grimesville?”

  “No,” I muttered. “They’re in the House of Damballah.”

  He shot a quick glance at me.

  “That’s a neck of land in the Tularoosa about three miles west of here. My grandpap used to talk about it. The niggers held their heathen palavers there back in slave times. You ain’t—Kirby—you—”

  “Listen!” I wiped the icy sweat from my face. “Listen!”

  Through the black woodlands the faint throb of a drum whispered on the wind that glided up the shadowy reaches of the Tularoosa.

  Braxton shivered. “It’s them, all right. But for God’s sake, Kirby—look out!”

  With an oath he sprang toward the houses on the bank of the creek. I was after him just in time to glimpse a dark clumsy object scrambling or tumbling down the sloping bank into the water. Braxton threw up his long pistol, then lowered it, with a baffled curse. A faint splash marked the disappearance of the creature. The shiny black surface crinkled with spreading ripples.

  “What was it?” I demanded.

  “A nigger on his all-fours!” swore Braxton. His face was strangely pallid in the moonlight. “He was crouched between them cabins there, watchin’ us!”

  “It must have been an alligator.” What a mystery is the human mind! I was arguing for sanity and logic, I, the blind victim of a compulsion beyond sanity and logic. “A nigger would have to come up for air.”

  “He swum under the water and come up in the shadder of the bresh where we couldn’t see him,” maintained Braxton. “Now he’ll go warn Saul Stark.”

  “Never mind!” The pulse was thrumming in my temples again, the roar of foaming waters rising irresistibly in my brain. “I’m going—straight through the swamp. For the last time, go back!”

  “No! Sane or mad, I’m goin’ with you!”

  The pulse of the drum was fitful, growing more distinct as we advanced. We struggled through jungle-thick growth; tangled vines tripped us; our boots sank in scummy mire. We were entering the fringe of the swamp which grew deeper and denser until it culminated in the uninhabitable morass where the Tularoosa flowed into Black River, miles farther to the west.

  The moon had not yet set, but the shadows were black under the interlacing branches with their mossy beards. We plunged into the first creek we must cross, one of the many muddy streams flowing into the Tularoosa. The water was only thigh-deep, the moss-clogged bottom fairly firm. My foot felt the edge of a sheer drop, and I warned Braxton: “Look out for a deep hole; keep right behind me.”

  His answer was unintelligible. He was breathing heavily, crowding close behind me. Just as I reached the sloping bank and pulled myself up by the slimy, projecting roots, the water was violently agitated behind me. Braxton cried out incoherently, and hurled himsel
f up the bank, almost upsetting me. I wheeled, gun in hand, but saw only the black water seething and whirling after his thrashing rush through it.

  “What the devil, Jim?”

  “Somethin’ grabbed me!” he panted. “Somethin’ out of the deep hole. I tore loose and busted up the bank. I tell you, Kirby, something’s follerin’ us! Somethin’ that swims under the water.”

  “Maybe it was that nigger you saw. These swamp people swim like fish. Maybe he swam up under the water to try to drown you.”

  He shook his head, staring at the black water, gun in hand.

  “It smelt like a nigger, and the little I saw of it looked like a nigger. But it didn’t feel like any kind of a human.”

  “Well, it was an alligator then,” I muttered absently as I turned away. As always when I halted, even for a moment, the roar of peremptory and imperious rivers shook the foundations of my reason.

  He splashed after me without comment. Scummy puddles rose about our ankles, and we stumbled over moss-grown cypress knees. Ahead of us there loomed another, wider creek, and Braxton caught my arm.

  “Don’t do it, Kirby!” he gasped. “If we go into that water, it’ll git us sure!”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever it was that flopped down that bank back there in Goshen. The same thing that grabbed me in that creek back yonder. Kirby, let’s go back.”

  “Go back?” I laughed in bitter agony. “I wish to God I could! I’ve got to go on. Either Saul Stark or I must die before dawn.”

  He licked dry lips and whispered. “Go on, then; I’m with you, come heaven or Hell.” He thrust his pistol back into its scabbard, and drew a long keen knife from his boot. “Go ahead!”

  I climbed down the sloping bank and splashed into the water that rose to my hips. The cypress branches bent a gloomy, moss-trailing arch over the creek. The water was black as midnight. Braxton was a blur, toiling behind me. I gained the first shelf of the opposite bank and paused, in water knee-deep, to turn and look back at him.

  Everything happened at once, then. I saw Braxton halt short, staring at something on the bank behind me. He cried out, whipped out a gun and fired, just as I turned. In the flash of the gun I glimpsed a supple form reeling backward, a brown face fiendishly contorted. Then in the momentary blindness that followed the flash, I heard Jim Braxton scream.

  Sight and brain cleared in time to show me a sudden swirl of the murky water, a round, black object breaking the surface behind Jim — and then Braxton gave a strangled cry and went under with a frantic thrashing and splashing. With an incoherent yell I sprang into the creek, stumbled and went to my knees, almost submerging myself. As I struggled up I saw Braxton’s head, now streaming blood, break the surface for an instant, and I lunged toward it. It went under and another head appeared in its place, a shadowy black head. I stabbed at it ferociously, and my knife cut only the blank water as the thing dipped out of sight.

  I staggered from the wasted force of the blow, and when I righted myself, the water lay unbroken about me. I called Jim’s name, but there was no answer. Then panic laid a cold hand on me, and I splashed to the bank, sweating and trembling. With the water no higher than my knees I halted and waited, for I knew not what. But presently, down the creek a short distance, I made out a vague object lying in the shallow water near the shore.

  I waded to it, through the clinging mud and crawling vines. It was Jim Braxton, and he was dead. It was not the wound in his head which had killed him. Probably he had struck a submerged rock when he was dragged under. But the marks of strangling fingers showed black on his throat. At the sight a nameless horror oozed out of that black swamp water and coiled itself clammily about my soul; for no human fingers ever left such marks as those.

  I had seen a head rise in the water, a head that looked like that of a Negro, though the features had been indistinct in the darkness. But no man, white or black, ever possessed the fingers that had crushed the life out of Jim Braxton. The distant drum grunted as if in mockery.

  I dragged the body up on the bank and left it. I could not linger longer, for the madness was foaming in my brain again, driving me with white-hot spurs. But as I climbed the bank, I found blood on the bushes, and was shaken by the implication.

  I remembered the figure I had seen staggering in the flash of Braxton’s gun. She had been there, waiting for me on the bank, then — not a spectral illusion, but the woman herself, in flesh and blood! Braxton had fired at her, and wounded her. But the wound could not have been mortal; for no corpse lay among the bushes, and the grim hypnosis that dragged me onward was unweakened. Dizzily I wondered if she could be killed by mortal weapons.

  The moon had set. The starlight scarcely penetrated the interwoven branches. No more creeks barred my way, only shallow streams, through which I splashed with sweating haste. Yet I did not expect to be attacked. Twice the dweller in the depths had passed me by to attack my companion. In icy despair I knew I was being saved for a grimmer fate. Each stream I crossed might be hiding the monster that killed Jim Braxton. Those creeks were all connected in a network of winding waterways. It could follow me easily. But my horror of it was less than the horror of the jungle-born magnetism that lucked in a witch-woman’s eyes.

  And as I stumbled through the tangled vegetation, I heard the drum rumbling ahead of me, louder and louder, in demoniacal mockery. Then a human voice mingled with its mutter, in a long-drawn cry of horror and agony that set every fiber of me quivering with sympathy. Sweat coursed down my clammy flesh; soon my own voice might be lifted like that, under unnamable torture. But on I went, my feet moving like automatons, apart from my body, motivated by a will not my own.

  The drum grew loud, and a fire glowed among the black trees. Presently, crouching among the bushes, I stared across the stretch of black water that separated me from a nightmare scene. My halting there was as compulsory as the rest of my actions had been. Vaguely I knew the stage for horror had been set, but the time for my entry upon it was not yet. When the time had come, I would receive my summons.

  A low, wooded island split the black creek, connected with the shore opposite me by a narrow neck of land. At its lower end the creek split into a network of channels threading their way among hummocks and rotting logs and moss-grown, vine-tangled clumps of trees. Directly across from my refuge the shore of the island was deeply indented by an arm of open, deep black water. Bearded trees walled a small clearing, and partly hid a hut. Between the hut and the shore burned a fire that sent up weird twisting snake-tongues of green flames. Scores of black people squatted under the shadows of the overhanging branches. When the green fire lit their faces it lent them the appearance of drowned corpses.

  In the midst of the glade stood a giant Negro, an awesome statue in black marble. He was clad in ragged trousers, but on his head was a band of beaten gold set with a huge red jewel, and on his feet were barbaric sandals. His features reflected titanic vitality no less than his huge body. But he was all Negro — flaring nostrils, thick lips, ebony skin. I knew I looked upon Saul Stark, the conjure man.

  He was regarding something that lay in the sand before him, something dark and bulky that moaned feebly. Presently, lifting his head, he rolled out a sonorous invocation across the black waters. From the blacks huddled under the trees came a shuddering response, like a wind wailing through midnight branches. Both invocation and response were framed in an unknown tongue — a guttural, primitive language.

  Again he called out, this time a curious high-pitched wail. A shuddering sigh swept the black people. All eyes were fixed on the dusky water. And presently an object rose slowly from the depths. A sudden trembling shook me. It looked like the head of a Negro. One after another it was followed by similar objects until five heads reared above the black, cypress-shadowed water. They might have been five Negroes submerged except for their head — but I knew this was not so. There was something diabolical here. Their silence, motionlessness, their whole aspect was unnatural. From the trees
came the hysterical sobbing of women, and someone whimpered a man’s name.

  Then Saul Stark lifted his hands, and the five heads silently sank out of sight. Like a ghostly whisper I seemed to hear the voice of the African witch: “He puts them in the swamp!”

  Stark’s deep voice rolled out across the narrow water: “And now the Dance of the Skull, to make the conjer sure!”

  What had the witch said? “Hidden among the trees you shall watch the Dance of the Skull!”

  The drum struck up again, growling and rumbling. The blacks swayed on their haunches, lifting a wordless chant. Saul Stark paced measuredly about the figure on the sand, his arms weaving cryptic patterns. Then he wheeled and faced toward the other end of the glade. By some sleight of hand he now grasped a grinning human skull, and this he cast upon the wet sand beyond the body. “Bride of Damballah!” he thundered. “The sacrifice awaits!”

  There was an expectant pause; the chanting sank. All eyes were glued on the farther end of the glade. Stark stood waiting, and I saw him scowl as if puzzled. Then as he opened his mouth to repeat the call, a barbaric figure moved out of the shadows.

  At the sight of her a chill shuddering shook me. For a moment she stood motionless, the firelight glinting on her gold ornaments, her head hanging on her breast. A tense silence reigned and I saw Saul Stark staring at her sharply. She seemed to be detached, somehow, standing aloof and withdrawn, head bent strangely.

  Then, as if rousing herself, she began to sway with a jerky rhythm, and presently whirled into the mazes of a dance that was ancient when the ocean drowned the black kings of Atlantis. I cannot describe it. It was bestiality and diabolism set to motion, framed in a writhing, spinning whirl of posturing and gesturing that would have appalled a dancer of the Pharaohs. And that cursed skull danced with her; rattling and clashing on the sand, it bounded and spun like a live thing in time with her leaps and prancings.

  But there was something amiss. I sensed it. Her arms hung limp, her drooping head swayed. Her legs bent and faltered, making her lurch drunkenly and out of time. A murmur rose from the people, and bewilderment etched Saul Stark’s black countenance. For the domination of a conjer man is a thing hinged on a hair-trigger. Any trifling dislocation of formula or ritual may disrupt the whole web of his enchantment.