by Don Wilcox
Abruptly they rose and floated to the next bodies—a pair of skeletons, their bones intertwined. Then to the next, and the next.
We waited breathless, our weapons ready. As they finished their round of skeletons they circled about the cavern, throwing their ghastly lavender glow over the walls.
They swept down toward us, hesitated momentarily as if to light; then, as we drew our paddles, they yapped away again.
“God’s sakes,” Monty grunted, “I never saw anything like that before.”
“The strangest sight I ever saw,” Lucia breathed, as the purple host began another tour of the skeletons.
“Bird, beast, or fish?” I asked.
“A rare variety of locust, I think,” Lucia answered. “My brother will be amazed.” She was holding a small movie camera, catching some slow-motion shots. “Strange about these skeletons,” she added, growing more perplexed. “The yappers don’t seem at all inclined to attack us.”
We stepped over the jagged pathway to the out-of-doors again, shouted for Meriwether, but got no response.
“He must have taken off his wooden leg for a rest,” Monty cracked. “I wish to gosh he’d get here. I’m anxious to plow into these purple demons with a torch and see what happens.”
It was hard to be patient, especially after Meriwether had been so disagreeable, but I argued that we had just as well wait an hour or so, for the night was yet young. We loitered back along the footpath a hundred yards to a protected spot of ground under a cliff, and scraped together enough dry wood to build a fire.
We ate, and toasted our feet, dried our clothes, and warmed our spirits. It was curious, the change that had come over us. As if the dreaded menace of the cavern had already been conquered. As if these weird, yelping creatures were no longer anything to be afraid of. We pondered the matter. Their very attractive beauty, it seemed, had softened our feelings toward them. Lucia and I had no more desire to destroy them than one has to crush a lovely flower. And yet it was plain, from their rounds of the skeletons, that they had been guilty of feasting on human flesh.
Our fire burned low. The restless slapping of waves grew fainter. The storm rumbled away. Our talk ran out. Still Meriwether did not come.
“Musta gone back to the Mad Hermit’s,” Monty said carelessly.
Lucia nestled closer in my arms, and I knew her memory of the yellow eyes must have caused the momentary tremble that passed over her body.
“I don’t see how that creature exists,” she said with a shudder. “There wasn’t a thing in his cave, no food, no fishing nets, no weapons—nothing except that big rusty knife.”
“I didn’t see it,” I said.
“Neither did I,” said Monty.
Silence fell again. It was a restless silence. The recollection of the mad man somewhere on the other side of this hill was disturbing, especially to this lovely, sensitive person huddled close beside me.
At length our impatience for Meriwether reached a limit. It was nearly midnight.
“One of us better go back and look for him,” I said.
“I’ll go,” said Monty, grand little fellow. He picked up his beanshooter. “I figure you folks can take care of yourselves without me.”
“I think so,” I laughed.
“We’ll be at the cavern,” Lucia said. “I might as well get my specimens.”
So Monty whistled his way back toward the point of the cape and we kicked out the fire and strolled in the other direction. Again the cavern yawned before us, black and silent.
CHAPTER V
Meriwether’s Wooden Leg
We donned our cellophane hoods and went in.
There was very little yapping now. The chorus of “yeeple, yeep, yeep” had lost all its sharpness; it was no more than a low, contented, musical murmuring—strangely charming.
The glowing purple spots had ceased their agitation and were settled in a complacent mass over what we assumed to be one of the skeletons. Cunning, attractive little things. Gradually they began to stream upward toward the crevice in the wall from which they had originally appeared. But not all at once. The great host of them continued to hover over the object on the floor, from which a thin stream was constantly rising toward the crevice, and another thin stream constantly descending.
It was a beautiful sight. Lucia said it looked like a two-way water fall into a pool of magic light; and it was hard for us to remember that each of these pairs of purple spots flowing through the blackness was a deadly enemy of man.
I took the glass jar which Lucia had brought, and picking my steps to the illuminated wall, I had no trouble in capturing a few of the specimens as they emerged from the crevice.
We settled back in a secluded nook near the cavern entrance to await the arrival of Monty and Meriwether. Nothing more to do until they came. What could be keeping them?
Lucia was very happy. She had her specimens and her motion pictures, the two goals of her coming. She rested contentedly. I think she even forgot her fear of the Mad Hermit as she yielded to my eager embrace.
“What a strange night,” she murmured.
What a strange night! A few hours earlier I could not have dreamed that such an entrancing moment as this was drawing near. The soft rippling of the waves sounded from the misty rocks below us. The fresh, rain washed air wafted through our corner of the cavern. The masses of white along the floor were only dull blurs in the velvety blackness. The only light that played over the lovely feminine features beneath my gaze came from that magic pool of purple across the cavern floor.
The spell of beauty was upon us, but it was more than that. It was the first blush of new-found love, and our awakened passions knew no bounds. While the little purple killers murmured contentedly a few feet away, we dared to forget them for the moment. I had shed my own cellophane hood; now I removed Lucia’s gently, and my lips sought hers.
I was inflamed. I was finding life anew, a world of rapture I had scarcely dared to dream of, and I thanked the strange stars that had brought Lucia to me.
Then, as we clung in close embrace, breathing together, my thoughts reverted to the legend. What a fantastic thing that was, and yet—!
No, I swore to myself. It could never have touched us! Even if it had been true, even though the deadly yappers had chosen to feast upon evil, Lucia and I could never have been harmed in such a moment as this! Our love was the real, the beautiful, the truest and strongest passion of life!
And then I wondered how many of these skeletons about us had been lovers who had believed that same thing about themselves—who knew the legend and believed it, but were too sure that their own rapturous moments could not be evil.
“Lucia,” I whispered, “you don’t believe in the legend, do you?”
“No, dear,” she answered, and again her lips lifted to mine.
It must have been two hours or more past midnight when Monty at last returned to us. He was alone and I sensed that he was troubled. The complacent, chirping yappers were not disturbed by his entrance. They were still streaming to and from the crevice in the wall. I had ceased to wonder at their strange, industrious behavior.
“Did you find Meriwether?” I asked.
“No,” said Monty. “I guess he’s gone.”
There was an ominous tone in his voice. I questioned him. He had trailed the footpath back to the Mad Hermit’s, calling all the way without an answer. Now he breathed excitedly as he related his encounter with the Mad Hermit.
“There was just enough light that I could see his shadowy form coming down toward me. I was scared. I asked him if he had seen Meriwether—”
“Yes, go on.”
“At first he didn’t answer, except, to give a hideous laugh. He kept coming closer and I kept backing up, asking him the same question. Then he told me he had seen two men come along in a boat and pretty soon three men went back, so he knew one of us had hailed a boat ride back home.”
We breathed with relief. “All right,” I said, “if that’s the case�
��”
“But I don’t think it is,” Monty was still breathing hard. “I think he was lying.”
“Why?”
“Because of the funny way he acted. He kept coming upon me, closer and closer and—you’re right, lady,” the boy blurted, “he does have a knife!”
“Oh!” Lucia gasped.
“And it was bloody!”
“What?” I snapped.
“I saw it—in the lightning—as plain as I’m seeing those yappers this minute. It was hanging right above me in his long bony hand. Believe me, I made tracks. I spilled over some rocks, and here he was, coming toward me again. I let fly with my bean shooter. He let out an awful yowl. By that time I was on my feet again and I had a club in my hand. Just in case I couldn’t outrun him.”
“But you did!”
“Yeah, it was easy, once I got back on the path. But the club—that’s what I started to tell you about.” He hesitated.
“Well, what about it?” I demanded. “I brought it back with me. Thought you might want to see it.”
I snapped the flashlight on. The object he was holding out to us was Meriwether’s wooden leg!
“Does that mean anything to you? That, and Meriwether gone, and the Mad Hermit running wild with a bloody knife?” The boy’s lips were white. No doubt we were all three as pallid as those skeletons surrounding us, as these terrifying thoughts struck home. For a moment we were silent.
“What do you think he’s done with the body, Monty?” Lucia’s voice trembled finally.
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself all the way back,” said Monty through tight lips. “I can’t figure it out. It doesn’t make sense. The Mad Hermit’s got nothing to gain by murdering people, so far as I can see. It’s got me going.”
He was no more exasperated than we. A heavy silence fell again. There were no sounds from the sea. Nothing but the contented yeeple, yeeple, yeeple from across the big open room—as if these busy little purple beauties were sending out their soft music to distract us from the awful reality we were facing. But we would not be lulled. The facts were coming out into the open at last.
“Did either of you notice that map Meriwether had?” I asked.
“What about it?” said Monty.
“It showed this cavern to be right over the ridge from the Mad Hermit’s—at the narrowest width of the cape. These two caves run in toward each other. Why couldn’t there be a connecting passage?”
Monty grunted an oath. “I get it.”
“Then the yappers didn’t kill these people!” Lucia exclaimed, “but simply fed on them after the Mad Hermit put them here!”
“That sounds like a safe hunch to me,” I said, “if we can, prove this grave yard is connected with his cave.” There was a tense silence as I shot the flashlight along the rear walls of the cavern. We were wearing our cellophane hoods now, so we didn’t mind disturbing the traffic of the yappers. It was curious to see them turn invisible under the beam of light as it shot past the crevice.
None of the black shadowed corners appeared to be openings on casual examination.
“Let’s take a look at the skeletons,” Monty suggested. “If they’re really the Hermit’s, the bones should show some scars from his knife.”
It was gruesome business, surveying these bleak human relics one by one under the sickly yellow glow of the flashlight. The three of us stalked along past them, one after another, catching a hint of knife scars here and there, trying not to notice their grotesque positions or their occasional signs of freshness. Finally we came to the object over which the deadly yappers had been hovering for the past two or three hours.
Lucia uttered a little outcry before my light turned on this object. Realization was a moment ahead of the senses.
Under the dim glow the pool of yappers went transparent, and our eyes beheld the form of a naked man, his features partially obliterated, his flesh partly consumed. But one thing was unmistakable—his right leg ended at the knee.
CHAPTER VI
The Hermit at Dawn
Before I had the presence of mind to swing the light away from this terrifying scene, Monty bent down to the object and put the wooden leg back in place.
Whether he did it out of a sense of returning lost property, a sense of reverence, or a morbid sense of humor, or whether he was so shocked by the spectacle that he did not know what he was doing, I do not know.
At any rate I flashed off the light at once, and the three of us at once slunk back toward the out-of-doors, speechless with horror. Now, looking back at the pool of purple dots, and the chains of purple dots floating up and down between the pool and the crevice, we were mortified to recall that this same sight had entranced us with its magic beauty only a few minutes ago.
Without a word we moved down the bank to the water’s edge, breathing deeply of the fresh air, trying to rid ourselves of the sickening image that burned upon our eyes.
Stars were visible, now. Mists hung over the water. The next hour would bring the gray of approaching dawn. We talked again, in low tones.
“So, while we toasted our toes waiting for Meriwether, the Mad Hermit was placing him in the museum,” I said. “He evidently murders for sport, and hides his crimes by dragging the bodies to the cave of the yappers. How—I don’t know. But it’s plain that’s what he’s done with Meriwether. As soon as we get back to town we’ll send a boat out.”
In this much, the three of us agreed. But as to our immediate course of action, we were thinking in three different directions.
I was in favor of finding the Mad Hermit without further delay, before he found us—
Monty’s one purpose was to exterminate the yappers. He remembered Meriwether’s words about a reward.
Lucia saw reason in both of these plans, but she pointed out that there was still a baffling puzzle here that her scientist brother would wish her to solve.
“Before we exterminate the yappers, shouldn’t we learn what it is they are doing? Why are they consuming that body so ravenously? Where are they storing their food when they pass through the crevice in the wall? If we can first answer that question, then
I’m ready to see them destroyed.”
Monty and I gallantly acceded to her wishes. None of us, of course, anticipated that we were bargaining for an even more gruesome climax to our night’s discoveries. But once we had agreed to strike out for the answer to this scientific mystery, we shut the horror of Meriwether out of our minds and went to work.
In the cavern I held Monty up on my shoulders and he put the dying flashlight to the crevice in the wall, but he could see nothing. The darkened room told us the yappers were working as industriously as ever.
“We’ve got to get to the other side,” I declared. “There’s a chance we’ll find their depository if we do.”
We surveyed the remote corners of the cavern again without results.
“Then it’s over the top we go,” said Monty.
“And keep eyes sharp for the Hermit,” I warned. I patted my pockets to be sure the essentials were there in case of an emergency—my revolver and some light rope.
Half an hour later the three of us had crossed the rocky backbone of the promontory and were making our way down on the other side—the Mad Hermit’s side of the cape. It was slow travelling, picking our way through the dark over this precipitous mountain ridge. Suddenly a gasp from Lucia froze us in our tracks.
“The yappers!” she uttered.
There they were in a brilliant purple heap not twenty feet below us, their illumination casting a soft glow on the waters a few feet farther down, on the hermit’s side of the promontory.
We crept a little closer. Now, we could see the double stream that led to this purple mound—yappers going and coming. The slight buzz near my ear told me that Lucia was catching pictures of this end of the procession.
“What are they doing?” I asked. “Depositing their food right out in the open?”
“I don’t understand it,” said Lu
cia, “unless—”
“Unless what?” I asked.
“Unless it might be a very peculiar instance of symbiosis.”
I turned the word over in my mind and was as puzzled as ever. I had a hazy idea of balanced aquariums in which one form of life helped to support another form, to the mutual benefit of both—or certain kinds of trees that support clinging vines which in turn give them life. But I couldn’t see how these ideas helped to explain why purple yappers should carry their food through a tunnel of rock to deposit it by the seashore on the other side.
Monty emitted an exclamation. “Look! That mound of yappers is in the shape of a man!”
Lucia answered coolly. “It is a man. It’s the Mad Hermit.”
Monty was beside himself with excitement. “But why—?”
“They’re feeding him. That’s the way he lives,” Lucia replied.
“You mean—?”
“On the transfusions of nourishment the yappers bring him.” Her words were authoritative. The ghastly evidence was before us. Still, the very thought took us a staggering blow. A thousand questions leaped into our minds. Curiously we found some of the answers already there—the barren cave with no signs of food or fishing nets or hunting weapons—the blotched, pock-marked skin that covered the hermit’s hideous body—the steady stream of yappers passing back and forth—and, in my own experience, Libinger’s mysterious statement that the Mad Hermit was fat as a drum!
We whispered some of our questions to Lucia and stood amazed as she told us some of the fantastic-sounding cases of symbiosis that are a matter of scientific record.
Monty brought us back once more to the task at hand—to exterminate.
“Do you think a torch would attract them or repel them?” I asked.
Once more, Lucia’s scientific knowledge came to the rescue. In her opinion, insects of this type were probably as combustible as so many capsules of explosive gas. Monty was eager to start back to the other side.
