The Macabre Reader

by Donald A. Wollheim

  Then the thing was only a mass of jelly, still clinging like some loathsome, colorless leech to Hilda’s back and shoulders. My body shrinking, I crawled over it and through it, seized Hilda’s arms, and pulled her off the bed onto the floor.

  And then I screamed again, for of Hilda there was left only a half a body; her spine lay bare, her ribs curved nakedly, her skull gaped, her entrails drooped across the dingy carpet; it was like a slaughterhouse in hell.

  Suddenly the light streaming through the doorway dimmed, and I saw Hans standing there, the gun in his hand. I saw the spurting, red flames, and heard the crash of firing. I saw the pulpy mass on the bed jerk and shiver as each slug tore through it. Then there was silence, yet through the haze of smoke I saw the mess of protoplasmic slime drip slowly off the bed and slide across the floor toward the horrible ruin that had once been a woman. And on my hands and knees I tried to push it back, scooping at it as, unconcernedly, the thing flowed across the floor, between my fingers, and again fastened upon Hilda.

  Hans was kneeling beside me. But we couldn’t keep the thing away from the dead woman—it wasn’t possible.

  Then, abruptly, Hans stood up. His face was ghastly white, like the face of a dead man. Without a backward glance he left the corpse with that awful thing still crawling over it, and went out of the room into the kitchen. And there I saw him take a pat of wax from the woodbox, heat it over the stove, and methodically seal the crevices in the kitchen door, leading out onto the porch.

  When he had finished he nodded grimly at me, made a wide gesture that included kitchen and bedroom.

  “A coffin, Doctor Kurt,” he said slowly. “I have made a coffin of these rooms, and sealed the thing in it. When it is slime it cannot escape. And when it is in the shape of a human being we can fight it, so that it cannot unlock the door.”

  Then he went back into the bedroom. And, slowly, I followed.

  We had been in the kitchen only a few minutes, but in those minutes the horror had finished its ghastly work. Nothing remained of Hilda; only a bag of clothes lay there, limply. And, nestling in them, glistened a great mound of watery, jelly-like stuff, faintly quivering, alertly alive.

  Then I saw that Hans had brought matches and strips of newspaper. As I watched, he twisted the paper into spills, fit one, and plunged the flaming mass against the globule of colorless life on the floor.

  The mound of stuff quivered and writhed, and slid swiftly across the floor. As it sought to escape, Hans, his eyes intent, his stubbled jaws grim, followed it about the room, always keeping the blazing paper torches pressed against the shrinking, unholy thing. The air was becoming thick with rancid smoke, and the odor of burning flesh filled the room.

  Stumbling, sobbing, together we attacked the horror. Here and there on the floor and carpet showed brown, charred smears. The thing’s silent, sliding attempts to escape were, somehow, more terrible than if it had cried out in agony. The smoke in the room had become a thick haze.

  And then the thing seemed to gather purpose. It rolled swiftly across the bedroom floor, stopped upon the disheveled pile of clothes that Hilda had worn and, as we paused to light fresh spills, it changed.

  It reared erect as a fountain might gush up. It put forth arms, developed breasts, overspread itself with color. In the time that it might take to draw a long breath the thing had vanished and a something that we knew to be that same ghastly entity, but that looked as Hilda had looked in life, stood naked there amid the jumbled clothes. Swiftly the entity—for I cannot call it by Hilda’s name—stooped and drew about itself the skirt and blouse. Then, barefooted and stockingless, it walked into the kitchen.

  Like a man awakening from drugged slumber, Hans leaped before the door, held up a blazing spill.

  The thing spoke, and the voice was the voice of Hilda. “I want to go out, Hans.” It moved forward slightly.

  Hans, his features racked, almost unrecognizable, thrust the blazing paper before him menacingly. “You’ll never leave this house. We’re going to bum you!”

  The thing that looked and spoke like Hilda shook its head, and I gasped to see the wavy, fine blond tresses undulate and shimmer with the gesture. And it smiled.

  “You’ll never bum me, Hans. I’m a prisoner, Hans. You want to destroy the thing that holds me, but you don’t want to bum me to death, Hans. For as yet I haven’t suffered, except from your fire. I’m Hilda, Hans!”

  Then Hans asked hoarsely, and I saw that the fire was burning his fingers, “How can I know?”

  The thing smiled. “You can’t know, Hans. But if you destroy me, Hilda suffers. Let me gol”

  Then Hans shook his head. “No. We will stay here until you starve, until you rot into nothingness.”

  Came the inexorable reply, “As I suffer, Hilda suffers. As I starve, she starves.”

  Hans looked at me, and I could see that he was nerving himself toward an incredibility. “Then, by heaven, Doctor Kurt, I will try the other way!”

  He looked at the entity, at the thing that looked like Hilda.

  “Come, Hilda,” he said simply. “If you are a prisoner in that thing before me, hear me. I want to join you. I want to join you, and Bertha, and Nan, and God only knows what other unfortunate creatures with souls who have been overcome. But I do not surrender, and I cannot be beaten by guile. Let the thing come and attempt to subdue me. And help me, Hilda and Bertha and all the rest, help me.”

  He stood there before the door, his arms extended, his body rigid. And then the horror that looked like Hilda slowly moved forward, a smile its lis, came closer and closer to him, touched him, was enfolded in his arms, lips touching lips. And Hans’ strong arms flexed, and in turn it embraced him, a smile on its sweetly beautiful face. And as they stood there, the man and being whose very nature remains an unanswerable question, I prayed that the good overcome the evil… .

  For minutes that seemed hours they stood there, motionless. Treading softly, I moved a step forward, and I caught a glimpse of the thing’s eyes. And I was comforted, for I seemed to read in them something of humanity that could not have come to them through guile; I sensed that in truth those others who had been engulfed were fighting on the side of the man.

  And, as I watched, the horror seemed to become frailer and weaker, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, as, before my eyes, the semblance of Hilda faded into nothingness and only Hans remained, holding tightly clasped in his arms a crumpled skirt and blouse. And even yet for long minutes Hans did not move, and I sensed that still some metamorphosis went on, some change invisible to human eyes.

  But at last Hans moved, and, looking at the bundle of clothes in his arms as might an awakened sleeper, he stroked them tenderly and put them gently down on the table.

  At last he spoke to me, and his voice was the voice of the man I had known, but immeasurably more beautiful, immeasurably more strong.

  “We worked together, he fought together, Hilda and Bertha and those unfortunate boys and Nan—and you, Doctor Kurt, too. And we have won.”

  He walked across the floor to the center of the room, and I watched the stout boards give beneath his weight. “And yet I can feel the thing inside me, like a devilish flame that would eat me if it could. It is in me, and I think that it cannot escape I pray that it never overcome me and escape.”

  Then he looked at me thoughtfully. “In the eyes of the town, Doctor Kurt, there is a mystery here. Hiida is gone, and Bertha Brandt, and the Peterson boy. So you must go to your home, and you must say that you have been visiting me, and that I am insane. As for me, I will leave a note and go away. And the people will believe that I am a murderer, and that I have run away.”

  I bowed my head silently. He spoke the truth. He must go away. And the world would believe him a butchering maniac.

  For a long time he did not speak, but stood there silently, his head sunk upon his breast, as he thought. Then, “I will walk to your car with you. I thank you—we all thank you —for what you have done. Probably I shall
never see you again.”

  He led me from the house. Then I was sitting in the car, the motor running softly, while Hans stood there before me in the damp snow. He extended his hand.

  “Good-bye!”

  “Good-bye,” I said inanely.

  And, while yet he stood there in the snow beside the house I drove away.

  Thus it is that our village believes that Hans murdered with bloodthirsty abandon and then, fearing detection, mysteriously escaped.

  I alone know the truth, and the truth weighs heavily upon me. And so I have begun to prepare a record of the true happenings in the Brubaker case, and presently I shall see that this record is brought before the proper authorities.

  “Meanwhile I wonder: where and what is Hans?

  THE OPENER OF THE WAY

  Robert Bloch

  The statute (sic) of Anubis brooded over the darkness. Its blind eyes had basked in the blackness for unnumbered centuries, and the dust of ages had settled upon its stony brow. The damp air of the pit had caused its canine features to crumble, but the stone lips of the image still were curled in a snarling grin of cryptic mirth. It was almost as if the idol were alive; as if it had seen the shadowed centuries slip by, and with them the glory of Egypt and the old gods. Then indeed would it have reason to grin, at the thought of ancient pomps and vain and vanished splendor. But the statue of Anubis, Opener of the Way, jackal-headed god of Kameter, was not alive, and those that had bowed in worship were long dead. Death was everywhere; it haunted the shadowy tunnel where the idol stood, hidden away in the mummy cases and biding amidst the very dust of the stone floor. Death, and darkness—darkness undispelled by light these three thousand years.

  Today, however, light came. It was heralded by a grating clang, as the iron door at the further end of the passageway swung open on its rusted hinges; swung open for the first time in thirty centuries. Through the opening came the strange illumination of a torch, and the sudden sound of voices.

  There was something indescribably eerie about the event. For three thousand years no light had shone in these black and buried vaults; for three thousand years no feet had disturbed the dusty carpet of their floors; for three thousand years no voice had sent its sound through the ancient air. The last light had come from a sacred torch in the hand of a priest of Bast; the last feet to violate the dust had been encased in Egyptian sandals; the last voice had spoken a prayer in the language of the Upper Nile.

  And now, an electric torch flooded the scene with sudden light; booted feet stamped noisily across the floor, and an English voice gave vent to fervent profanity.

  In the torchlight the bearer of the illumination was revealed. He was a tall, thin man, with a face as wrinkled as the papyrus parchment he clutched nervously in his- left hand. His white hair, sunken eyes and yellowed skin gave him the aspect of an old man, but the smile upon his thin lips was full of the triumph of youth. Close behind him crowded another, a younger replica of the first. It was he who had sworn.

  “For the love of God, Father—weve made it!”

  “Yes, my boy, so we have.”

  “Look! There’s the statue, just as the map showed it!”

  The two men stepped softly in the dust-strewn passage and halted directly in front of the idol. Sir Ronald Barton, the bearer of the light, held it aloft to inspect the figure of the god more closely. Peter Barton stood at his side, eyes following his father’s gaze.

  For a long moment the invaders scrutinized the guardian of the tomb they had violated. It was a strange moment, there in the underground burrow, a moment that spanned eternity as the old confronted the new.

  The two men gazed up at the eidolon in astonishment and awe. The colossal figure of the jackal-god dominated the dim passage, and its weathered form still held vestiges of imposing grandeur and inexplicable menace. The sudden influx of outer air from the opened door had swept the idol’s body free of dust, and the intruders scrutinized its gleaming form with a certain vague unease. Twelve feet tall was Anubis, a man-like figure with the dog face of a jackal upon massive shoulders. The arms of the statue were held forth in an attitude of warning, as if endeavoring to repel the passage of outsiders. This was peculiar, for to all intents and purposes the guardian figure had nothing behind it but a narrow niche in the wall.

  There was an air of evil suggestion about the god, however; a hint of bestial humanity in its body which seemed to hide a secret, sentient life. The knowing smile on the carven countenance seemed cynically alive; the eyes, though stony, held a strange and disturbing awareness. It was as though the statue were alive; or, rather, as though it were merely a stone cloak that harbored life.

  The two explorers sensed this without speaking, and for a long minute they contemplated the Opener of the Way uneasily. Then, with a sudden start, the older man resumed his customary briskness of manner.

  “Well, son, let’s not stand here gawking at this thing all day! We have plenty to do yet—the biggest task remains. Have you looked at the map?”

  “Yes, Father.” The younger man’s voice was not nearly as loud or as firm as Sir Ronald’s. He did not like the mephitic air of the stone passageway; he did not care for the stench that seemed to spawn in the shadows of the comers. He was acutely aware of the fact that he and his father were in a hidden tomb, seven hundred feet below the desert sands; a secret tomb that had lain unopened for thirty creeping centuries. And he could not help but remember the curse.

  For there was a curse on the place; indeed, it was that which had led to its discovery.

  Sir Ronald had found it in the excavation of the Ninth Pyramid, the moldering papyrus parchment which held the key to a secret way. How he had smuggled it past the heads of the expedition nobody can say, but he had managed the task somehow.

  After all, he was not wholly to be blamed, though the theft of expeditionary trophies is a serious offense. But for twenty years Sir Ronald Barton had combed the deserts, uncovered sacred relics, deciphered hierogyphics, and disinterred mummies, statues, ancient furniture, or precious stones. He had unearthed untold wealth and incredibly valuable manuscripts for his government; yet he was stiff a poor man, and had never been rewarded by becoming head of an expedition of his own. Who can blame him if he took that one misstep which he knew would lead him to fame and fortune at last?

  Besides, he was getting old, and after a score of yea^ in Egypt all archaeologists are a little mad. There is some-( thing about the sullen sun overhead that paralyzes the brains of men as they ferret in the sand, digging in unhallowed ruins; something about the damp, dark stiffness underground in temple vaults that chills the soul. It is not good to look upon the old gods in the places where they still rule; for cat-headed Bubastis, serpented Set, and evil Amon-Ra frown down as sullen guardians in the purple pylons before the pyramids. Over all is an air of forbidden things long dead, and it creeps into the blood. Sir Ronald had dabbled in sorcery a bit; so perhaps it affected him more strongly than the rest. At any rate, he stole the parchment.

  It had been penned by a priest of ancient Egypt, but the priest had not been a holy man. No man could write as he had written without violating his vows. It was a dreadful thing, that manuscript, steeped in sorcery and hideous with half-hinted horrors.

  The enchanter who had written it alluded to gods far older that those he worshiped. There was mention of the “Demon Messenger” and the “Black Temple,” coupled with the secret myth and legend-cycles of pre-Adamite days. For just as the Christian religion has its Black Mass, just as every sect has its hidden devil-worship, the Egyptians knew their own darker gods.

  The names of these accursed ones were set forth, together with the orisons necessary for their innvocation. Shocking and blasphemous statements abounded in the text; threats against the reigning religion, and terrible curses upon the people who upheld it. Perhaps that is way Sir Ronald found it buried with the mummy of the priest—its discoverers had not dared to destroy it, because of the doom which might befall them. They had their way of v
engeance, though, because the mummy of the priest was found without arms, legs, or eyes, and these were not lost through decay.

  Sir Ronald, though he found the above-mentioned portions of the parchment intensely interesting, was much more impressed by the last page. It was here that the sacrilegious one told of the tomb of his master, who ruled the dark cult of the day. There were a map, a chart, and certain directions. These had not been written in Egyptian, but in the cuneiform chirography of Chaldea. Doubtless, that is why the old avenging priests had not sought out the spot themselves and destroyed it. They were probably unfamiliar with the language; unless they were kept away by fear of the curse.

  Peter Barton still remembered that night in Cairo when he and his father had first read it in translation. He recalled the avid gleam in Sir Ronald’s glittering eyes, the tremulous depth in his guttural voice.

  “And as the maps direct, there you shall find the tomb of the Master, who lies with his acolytes and all his treasure.”

  Sir Ronald’s voice nearly broke with excitement as he pronounced this last word.

  “And at the entrance, upon the night that the Dog-Star is ascendant, you must give up three jackals upon an altar in sacrifice, and with the blood bestrew the sands about the opening. Then the bats shall descend, that they may have feasting, and carry their glad tidings of blood to Father Set in the Underworld.”

  “Superstitious rigmarole!” young Peter had exclaimed. “Don’t scoff, son,” Sir Ronald advised. “I could give you reasons for what it says above, and make you understand. But I am afraid that the truth would disturb you unnecessarily.”

  Peter had stayed silent while his father read on:

  “Upon descending into the outer passage you will find the door, set with the symbol of the Master who waits within. Grasp the symbol by the seventh tongue in the seventh head, and with a knife remove it. Then shall the barrier give way, and the gate to the tomb be yours. Thirty and three are the steps along the inner passage, and there stands the statue of Anubis, Opener of the Way.”