by Robert Bloch
Here memory is temporarily blurred. I went into a club lounge for scotch and soda, then continued on my way. Where my feet led me I cannot say. I seemed to float along effortlessly, but my mind was crystal-clear.
I was not thinking of mundane things. Through some quirk I recalled work again, and I contemplated ancient Egypt. Through crumbled centuries I moved, in visions of secret splendor.
I lurched down a dim, deserted street.
I walked through templed Thebes, while sphinxes stared.
I turned into a lighted thoroughfare where revellers danced.
I mingled with the white-clad acolytes adoring sacred Apis.
The carousing mob blew paper trumpets, strewed confetti.
To the shrill litany of lutes the temple virgins showered me with roses red as the blood of betrayed Osiris.
Thus I passed through streets of saturnalia, my thoughts still wine-wafted and far away. It was all very much like a dream when at last I entered that obscure thoroughfare in the heart of the Creole district. Tall houses reared deserted on either side; darkened, dingy domiciles deserted by their owners, who mingled with the merrymakers amidst more pleasant surroundings. The buildings were old; in the fashion of ancient days they stood narrowly together, row on row.
They are like untenanted mummy-cases in some forgotten tomb; they stand deserted by the maggot and the worm.
From the steeply gabled roofs little black windows yawned.
They are empty, like the eyeless sockets of a skull, and like a skull they too hide secrets.
Secrets.
Secret Egypt.
It was then that I saw the man. Threading my way down that black and twisted street, I noticed a figure in the shadows before me. It stood silent, as though awaiting my approach. I endeavored to hurry past, but there was something about the motionless man which arrested my attention. He was dressed—unnaturally.
Suddenly, shockingly, my drunken dreams were fused with stark reality. This waiting man was dressed like a priest of ancient Egypt!
Was it hallucination, or did he wear the triple-crowned insignia of Osiris? That long white robe was unmistakable, and in his lean hands was the sceptered diadem of Set, the Serpent.
Overcome with bewilderment, I stood stock-still and stared. He stared back, his thin, tanned face bland and expressionless. With a quick gesture, his right hand darted under his robe. I shrank back, as he withdrew it once more and pulled out—a cigarette.
“Got a match, stranger?” asked the priest of Egypt.
Then I laughed, remembered, and understood. Mardi Gras! What a scare he had given me, though! Smiling, my head suddenly clear once more, I extended my lighter. He used it, and as the flame flared upward, peered curiously into my countenance.
He started, gray eyes evincing sudden recognition. To my astonishment, he spoke my name in interrogation. I nodded my head.
“What a surprise!” he chuckled. “You’re the writer, aren’t you? I’ve read some of your recent stuff, but I had no idea that you were here in New Orleans.”
I mumbled a few words of explanation. He genially interrupted.
“That’s great luck. My name is Vanning—Henricus Vanning. I’m interested in the occult myself; we should have a lot in common.”
We stood chatting for several minutes; or rather, he chatted and I listened. I learned that Mr. Vanning was a gentleman of means and leisure. He touched a bit glibly and flippantly on his studies in primitive mythology, but expressed a patently genuine interest in Egyptian lore. There was mention of a social group whose mutual and private researches in metaphysics might interest me.
As if seized with sudden inspiration, he clapped me heartily on the back.
“What are your plans for the evening?” he said.
I confessed my predicament. He smiled.
“Splendid! Just had dinner, myself. I’m on the way back to the house now to play host. Our little group—I told you about them—is holding a costume ball there. Like to come along? Interesting.”
“But I’m not in costume,” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter. I think you’d particularly appreciate this affair. Most unusual. Come on.”
He beckoned me to follow and started off down the street. I shrugged, but acquiesced. After all, I had nothing to lose, and my curiosity was aroused.
As we walked, the garrulous Mr. Vanning carried on a smooth and intriguing conversation. He spoke in greater detail of his little “circle” of esoteric friends. I gathered that they rather ostentatiously referred to themselves as The Coffin Club, and spent much of their time in pursuit of exotic and macabre phases in art, literature or music.
Tonight, according to my host, the group were celebrating the Mardi Gras in their own unique fashion. Defying the conventional masquerade, all members and invited friends planned to come attired in supernatural garb; instead of the usual clowns, pirates, and Colonial gentlemen, they would represent the more outlandish creatures of fancy and myth. I would mingle with werewolves, vampires, gods, goddesses, priests and black magicians.
I must confess that this news did not wholly please me. I never could stomach the pseudo-occultist or the quack devotee and metaphysicist. I dislike a bogus interest and a sham knowledge of legendry in others. Petty dabblings in spiritualism, astrology, and “psychic” charlatanry have always been repellent to my tastes.
I feel that it is not good for fools to mock the old faiths and the secret ways of vanished races. If this was to be one of the usual groups of middle-aged neurotics and pallid-purple dilettantes, then I would spend a boring evening.
But Henricus Vanning himself seemed to have more than a surface smattering of erudition. His cultured allusions to various myth-sagas in my stories seemed to hint at deep knowledge and sincere research that peered beyond the blacker veils of human thought. He spoke quite fluently of his delvings into Manichaeism and primal cult-ceremonials.
I became so absorbed in his words that I failed to heed the direction in which he led me, though I know we walked for some time. When we drew up at last, it was to turn into a long, shrubbery-bordered walk which led to the doors of a well-lighted and imposing mansion.
In simple truth, I must admit to being so seduced by Vanning’s picturesque statements, that I cannot remember a single concrete detail of the house’s exterior appearance or the environs in which it stood.
Still bemused, I followed Vanning through the opened door and walked into—nightmare.
When I stated that the house was brilliantly lighted, I meant just that. It was lighted—in flaming red.
We stood in a hallway; a hallway of hell. Scarlet scimitars of light scintillated from the surface of mirrored walls. Vermilion drapes cloaked inner entrances, and the crimson ceiling seemed to smolder with the crystalline carmine fires of ruby gas-torches that hung in blood-imbrued braziers. A Luciferean butler took my hat, handed me a goblet of cherry brandy.
Alone in the red room, Vanning faced me, glass in hand.
“Like it?” he inquired. “Gay setting to put my guests in the mood. Little touch I borrowed from Poe.”
I thought of the splendid Masque of the Red Death, and winced inwardly at this crude and vulgar desecration.
Still, this evidence of the man’s eccentricity did intrigue me. He was trying for something. I was almost moved when I lifted my glass to the pseudo-priest of Egypt there in that eerie anteroom.
The brandy burned.
“Now—on to our guests.” He pushed a tapestry aside, and we entered the cavernous chamber to the right.
Green and black were the velvet backgrounds of these walls; silver the candles that lighted the niches. The furniture, however, was modern and conventional enough; but when I first surveyed the throng of guests I felt for a moment as if I were again in dreams.
“Werewolves, gods, and black magicians,” Vanning had said. There was more of understatement than exaggeration in that cryptic remark. The occupants of that room constituted a pantheon from all the hells.
The orchestra at the corner of the room were dressed as skeletons, and some diabolically clever lighting arrangements made the fantasy uncomfortably real from a distance. The merrymakers circled the floor against the sinister background of ebon and emerald velvet.
I saw an obscene Pan dancing with a withered night-hag; a mad Freya embracing a voodoo priest; a Bacchante clinging lecherously to a wild-eyed dervish from Irem. There were arch-druids, dwarfs, nixies and kobolds; lamas, shamans, priestesses, fauns, ogres, magi, ghouls. It was a sabbat—a resurrection of ancient sin.
Then, as I mingled with the throng and was introduced, the momentary illusion faded. Pan was merely a stout, rather puffy-eyed, middle-aged gentleman with an obvious paunch which no goat-skin girdle could obliterate. Freya was a desperately-bright debutante, with the predatory slut-eyes of a common harlot. The voodoo priest was just a nice young man in burnt cork, with a slightly incongruous English lisp.
I met perhaps a dozen guests, and quickly forgot their names. I was a trifle surprised by Vanning’s seeming superciliousness; he almost snubbed several of the more talkative.
“Enjoy yourselves,” he called over his shoulder as he dragged me across the floor. “These are the fools,” he confided in a lower voice. “But there are a few I want you to meet.”
Over in the corner sat a little group of four men. All wore priestly raiment similar to Vanning’s own, in that religion dominated.
“Doctor Delvin.” An old man, in Babylonian, almost biblical robes.
“Etienne de Marigny.” Dark, handsome priest of Adonis.
“Professor Weildan.” A bearded gnome in a kalender’s turban.
“Richard Royce.” A young, bespectacled scholar, monkishly cowled.
The foursome bowed courteously. Upon my being introduced, however, there was an immediate slackening of their reserve. They crowded about Vanning and me in a rather confidential way, while our host spoke softly in my ear.
“These are the real members of the group I spoke about. I saw the way you looked at the others here, and I quite understand and agree with you. Those people are silly fools. We, here, are the initiates. Perhaps, then, you wonder at the reason for their presence. Let me explain. Attack is the best defense.”
“Attack is the best defense?” I echoed, puzzled.
“Yes. Suppose, now, that I and my friends here are really deep students of black magic.”
There was a subtle suggestion in the way he breathed “suppose”.
“Suppose that is true. Don’t you think that our society friends would object, gossip, investigate?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Of course. That’s why we formulated our attack. By publicly proclaiming an eccentric interest in occultism, and showing it by giving these stupid parties, we are left quite unmolested to carry out our serious work by ourselves. Clever, eh?”
I smiled in agreement. Vanning was no fool.
“It might interest you to know that Doctor Delvin, here, is one of this country’s foremost ethnologists. De Marigny is a well-known occultist—you may remember his connection with the Randolph Carter case several years ago. Royce is my personal aide, and Professor Weildan is the Weildan, Egyptologist.”
Funny, how Egypt kept recurring in the course of the evening!
“I promised you something interesting, my friend, and you shall have it. First, though, we must endure these cattle for another half-hour or so. Then we’ll go up to my room for a real session. I trust you will be patient.”
The four men bowed to me as Vanning again led me into the center of the room. The dancing had stopped now, and the floor was covered by little groups of idle chatterers. Demons drank mint-juleps, and virgin sacrifices to the Magna Mater artfully applied their lipstick. Neptune passed me, with a cigar in his mouth. The gaiety was shrill.
Masque of the Red Death, I thought. Then I saw—him.
It was all Poe, his entrance. The black and green curtains at the end of the room parted, and he glided in as though emerging from the hidden depths of the hangings rather than the door behind them.
Silver candle-light silhouetted his figure, and as he walked a grisly nimbus seemed to cloak each movement. I had the momentary impression of gazing at him through a prism, since the queer lighting made him appear indistinct and sharply-etched in turn.
He was the soul of Egypt.
The long white robe concealed a body whose contours were elusively problematical. Taloned hands hung from swirling sleeves, and the jeweled fingers clasped a rod of gold, set with the seal of the Eye of Horus.
The top of the robe terminated in a cape-collar of black; it stood, a stiffly hooded background for a head of horror.
The head of a crocodile. The body of an Egyptian priest.
That head was—awful. A slanted, saurian skull, all green and scaly on top; hairless, slimy, slick and nauseous. Great bony ridges socketed the embered eyes, staring from behind a sickening sweep of long, reptilian snout. A rugose muzzle, with great champing jaws half opened to reveal a lolling pinkish tongue and scummy teeth of stiletto-like sharpness. The saber fangs seemed to move, but it was only a trick of the light.
What a mask!
I have always prided myself on a certain sensitivity. I can feel quite strongly. Now, gazing at that triumph of morbid mummery, I received a sensory shock. I felt that this masquer was real—more real than his less grotesque fellows. The very outlandishness of his costume seemed to carry added conviction when contrasted with the pitiful makeshift pretenses of those through which he walked.
He seemed to be alone, nor did anyone attempt to converse with him in passing. I reached forward and tapped Vanning on the shoulder. I wanted to meet this man.
Vanning, however, swung ahead to the platform, where he turned and spoke to the orchestra men. I glanced back, half intending to approach the crocodile-man myself.
He was gone.
I searched the crowd with eager eyes. No use. He had vanished.
Vanished? Had he existed? I saw him—or thought I did—only for a moment. And I was still a little befuddled. Egypt on the brain. Perhaps I had been over-imaginative. But why the queer flooding feeling of reality?
These questions were never answered, for my attention was distracted by the performance on the platform. Vanning had started his half-hour of entertainment for the “guests”. He had told me it was a mere sop to conceal his real interests, but I found it more impressive than I expected.
The lights turned blue—haggard, graveyard-misty blue. The shadows darkened to indigo blurs as the celebrants found seats. An organ rose from beneath the orchestra platform, and music throbbed.
It was my favorite number—the superb and sonorously sepulchral Number One scene from The Swan Lake, by Tchaikowsky. It droned, mocked, shrilled, blared. It whispered, roared, threatened, frightened. It even impressed and quieted the milling geese about me.
There was a Devil Dance following; a magician, and a final Black Mass ritual with a really terrifying illusion of sacrifice. All very weird, very morbid, and very false. When the lights went up at last and the band resumed their places, I found Vanning, and we hastened across the room. The four fellow-researchers were waiting.
Vanning motioned me to follow them through the curtains near the platform. We made our exits unobtrusively, and I found myself walking down a long, darkened hallway. Vanning halted before an oak-paneled door. A key flashed, grated, turned. We were in a library.
Chairs, cigars, brandy—indicated in turn by our smiling host. The brandy—a fine cognac—momentarily sent my thoughts astray once more. Everything was unreal; Vanning, his friends, this house, the entire evening. Everything but the man in the crocodile mask. I must ask Vanning . . .
Abruptly, a voice summoned me back to the present. Vanning was speaking, addressing me. His voice was solemn, and held an unusual timbre. It was almost as though I was hearing him speak for the first time; as if this were the real man, and the other genia
l inhabitant of an open house merely a sham as insubstantial as the Mardi Gras costumes of the guests.
As he spoke, I found myself the focus of five pairs of eyes; Delvin’s Celtic blue, de Marigny’s penetrating Gallic brown, Royce’s bespectacled gray, Weildan’s deep umber, and the gun-metal pin-points of Vanning himself. Each seemed to ask a question:
“Do you dare?”
But what Vanning said was much more prosaic.
“I promised you an unusual time. Well, that’s what you’re here for. But I must admit that my motives are not altruistic alone. I—I need you. I’ve read your tales. I think you are a sincere student, and I want both knowledge and advice. That is why we five are admitting a comparative stranger to our secret. We trust you—we must trust you.”
“You can,” I said, quietly. For the first time I realized that Vanning was not only earnest; he was nervous. The hand holding the cigar shook; perspiration gathered beneath the Egyptian hood. Royce, the scholarly student, was twisting the belt of his monkish costume. The other three men still watched me, and their silence was more disturbing than the unnatural earnestness in Vanning’s voice.
What was all this? Was I drugged, dreaming? Blue lights, and crocodile masks, and a melodramatic secret. Yet I believed.
I believed, when Vanning pressed the lever in the great library table so that the false drawers beneath swung outward and revealed the gaping space within. I believed when I saw him hoist out the mummy-case, with de Marigny’s aid.
I became interested even before I noted the peculiarities of the case itself. For Vanning went over to a shelf and came back with an armful of books. These he handed to me silently. They were his credentials; they confirmed all that he had told me.
Nobody but a recognized occultist and adept could possess these strange tomes. Thin strips of glass protected the crumbling covers of the ill-famed Book of Eibon, the original editions of Cultes des Goules, and the almost fabulous De Vermis Mysteriis.
Vanning managed a smile when he saw the light of recognition in my face.
“We’ve gone in pretty deep these past few years,” he said. “You know what lies in these books.”
