In panic, Peter bent down and examined the body of his father. It was limp, old, and lifeless. Sir Ronald was dead!
Unbidden, Peter remembered the parchment’s cryptic warnings:
“Those who do not believe shall die. Pass Lord Anubis though they may, still he shall know and not permit of their return unto the world of men. For the eidolon of Anubis is strange indeed, and holds a secret soul.”
A secret soul! Peter, terror throbbing in his temples, raised the lantern aloft and looked once more into the god’s face. Again he saw that the stony, snarling mask of Anubis held living eyes!
They glittered bestially, knowingly, evilly. And Peter, seeing them, went beserk. He did not—could not—think; all he knew was that his father was dead, and this statue had somehow killed him and come alive.
So Peter Barton suddenly rushed forward, screaming hoarsely, and began to beat upon the stone idol with futile fists. His bleeding, lacerated knuckles clawed at the cold legs, but Anubis did not stir. Yet his eyes still held their awful life.
The man cursed in sheer delirium, babbling in a tortured voice as he started to climb up to that mocking face. He must know what lay behind that gaze, see the thing and destroy its unnatural life. As he climbed, he sobbed his father’s name in agony.
How long it took him to reach the top, he never knew, the last minutes were merely a red blur of nightmare frenzy. When he recovered his senses, he was clinging precariously to the statue’s neck, his feet braced on the belly of the image. And he was still staring into those dreadful living eyes.
But even as he gazed, the whole face was twisting into a sudden ghastly life; the lips drew back into a cavern of crackling mirth, and the fangs of Anubis were bared in terrible, avid lust.
The arms of the god crushed him in a stone embrace; the claw-like fingers tightened about his quivering, constricted throat; the gaping muzzle ravened as stone teeth sank jackal-like into his neck. Thus he met his doom—but it was a welcome doom after that final moment of revelation.
The natives found Peter’s bloodless body lying crushed and crumpled at the idol’s feet; lying before the statue of Anubis like a sacrifice of olden days. His father was beside him, and he, too, was dead.
They did not linger there in the forbidden, forgotten fastness of that ancient crypt, nor attempt to enter into the tomb behind. Instead, they reclosed the doors and returned home. There they said that the old and young effendi had killed themselves; and that is not surprising. There were really no other indications for them to go by. The statue of Anubis stood once more serene in the shadows; still grimly guarding the secret vaults beyond, and there was no longer any hint of life in its eyes.
And so there is none who knows what Peter Barton knew just before he died; none to know that as Peter went down into death he stared upward and beheld the revelation which made that death a welcome deliverance.
For Peter learned what animated the body of the god;
knew what lived within it in a dreadful, distorted way; knew what was being forced to kill him. Because as he died he gazed at last into the living stone face of Anubis—the living stone face that held his father’s tortured eyes.
Night Gaunts
Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, homed, and slender, with membranous wings,
And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell.
They come in legions on the north wind’s swell
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shaggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But oh! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!
—H. P. Lovecraft
IN AMUNDSEN’S TENT
John Martin Leahy
Inside the tent, in a little bag, I left a letter, addressed to H. M. the King, giving information of what he (sic) had accomplished… . Besides this letter, I wrote a short epistle to Captain Scott, who, I assumed, would be the first to find the tent.”
Captain Amundsen: The South Pole. “We have just arrived at this tent, 2 miles from our camp, therefore about 1½ miles from the pole. In the tent we find a record of five Norwegians having been here, as follows:
Roald Amundsen
Olav Olavson Bjaaland
Hilmer Hanssen
Sverre H. Hassel
Oscar Wisting
16 Dec. 1911.
*****
“Left a note to say I had visited the tent with companions.”
Captain Scott: his last journal.
“Travelers,” says Richard A. Proctor, “are sometimes said to tell marvelous stories; but it is a noteworthy fact that, in nine cases out of ten, the marvelous stories of travelers have been confirmed.”
Certainly no traveler ever set down a more marvelous story than that of Robert Drumgold. This record I am at last giving to the world, with my humble apologies to the spirit of the hapless explorer for withholding it so long. But the truth is that Eastman, Dahlstrom and I thought it the work of a mind deranged; little wonder, forsooth, if his mind had given way, what with the fearful sufferings which he had gone through and the horror of that fate which was closing in upon him.
What was it, that thing (if thing it was) which came to him, the sole survivor of the party which had reached the Southern Pole, thrust itself into the tent and issuing, left but the severed head of Drumgold there?
Our explanation at the time, and until recently, was that Drumgold had been set upon by his dogs and devoured. Why, though, the flesh had not been stripped from the head was to us an utter mystery. But that was only one of the many things that were utter mysteries.
But now we know—or feel certain—that this explanation was as far from the truth as that desolate, ice-mantled spot where he met his end is from the smiling, flower-spangled regions of the tropics.
Yes, we thought that the mind of poor Robert Drumgold had given way, that the horror in Amundsen’s tent and that thing which came to Drumgold there in his own—we thought all was madness only. Hence our suppression of this part of the Drumgold manuscript. We feared that the publication of so extraordinary a record might cast a cloud of doubt upon the real achievements of the Sutherland expedition.
But of late our ideas and beliefs have undergone a change that is nothing less than a metamorphosis. This metamorphosis, it is scarcely necessary to say, was due to the startling discoveries made in the region of the Southern Pole by the late Captain Stanley Livingstone, as confirmed and extended by the expedition conducted by Darwin Frontenac. Captain Livingstone, we now learn, kept his real discovery, what with the doubts and derision which met him on his return to the world, a secret from every living soul but two—Darwin Frontenac and Bond McQuestion. It is but now, on the return of Frontenac, that we learn how truly wonderful and amazing were those discoveries made by the ill-starred captain. And yet, despite the success of the Frontenac expedition, it must be admitted that the mystery down there in the Antarctic is enhanced rather than dissipated. Darwin Frontenac and his companions saw much; but we know that there are things and beings down there that they did not see. The Antarctic—or, rather, part of it—has thus suddenly become the most interesting and certainly the most fearful area on this globe of ours.
So another marvelous story told—or, rather, only partly told—by a traveler has been confirmed. And here are Eastman and I preparing to go once more to the Antarctic to confirm, as we hope, another story—one eery and fearful as any ever conceived by any romanticist.
And to think that it was ourselves, Eastman, Dahlstrom and I, who made the discovery! Yes, it was we who entered the tent, found there the head of
Robert Drumgold and the pages whereon he had scrawled his story of mystery and horror. To think that we stood there, in the very spot where it had been, and thought the story but as the baseless fabric of some madman’s vision!
How vividly it all rises before me again—the white expanse, glaring, blinding in the untempered light of the Antarctic sun; the dogs straining in the harness, the cases on the sleds, long and black like coffins; our sudden halt as Eastman fetched up in his tracks, pointed and said, “Hello, what’s that?”
A half-mile or so off to the left, some object broke the blinding white of the plains.
“Nunatak, I suppose,” was my answer.
“Looks to me like a cairn or a tent,” Dahlstrom said.
“How on earth,” I queried, “could a tent have got down here in 87° 30’ south? We are far from the route of either Amundsen or Scott.”
“H’m,” said Eastman, shoving his amber-colored glasses up onto his forehead that he might get a better look, “I wonder. Jupiter Ammon, Nels,” he added, glancing at Dahlstrom, “I believe that you are right.”
“It certainly,” Dahlstrom nodded, “looks like a cairn or a tent to me. I don’t think it’s a nunatak.”
“Well,” said I, “it would not be difficult to put it to the proof.”
“And that, my hearties,” exclaimed Eastman, “is just what we’ll do! We’ll soon see what it is—whether it is a cairn, a tent, or only a nunatak.”
The next moment we were in motion, heading straight for the mysterious object there in the midst of the eternal desolation of snow and ice.
“Look there!” Eastman, who was leading the way, suddenly shouted. “See that? It is a tent!”
A few moments, and I saw that it was indeed so. But who had pitched it there? What were we to find within it?
I could never describe those thoughts and feelings which were ours as we approached that spot. The snow lay piled a-bout the tent to a depth of four feet or more. Near by, a splintered ski protruded from the surface—and that was all.
And the stillness! The air, at the moment, was without the slightest movement. No sounds but those made by our movements, and those of the dogs, and our own breathing, broke that awful silence of death.
“Poor devils!” said Eastman at last. “One thing, they certainly pitched their tent well.”
The tent was supported by a single pole, set in the middle. To this pole three guy-lines were fastened, one of them as taut as the day its stake had been driven into the surface. But this was not all: a half-dozen lines, or more, were attached to the sides of the tent. There it had stood for we knew not how long, bidding defiance to the fierce winds of that terrible region.
Dahlstrom and I each got a spade and began to remove the snow. The entrance we found unfastened but completely blocked by a couple of provision-cases (empty) and a piece of canvas. “How on earth,” I exclaimed, “did those things get into that position?”
“The wind,” said Dahlstrom. “And, if the entrance had not been blocked, there wouldn’t have been any tent here now; the wind would have split and destroyed it long ago.” “H’m,” mused Eastman. “The wind did it, Nels—blocked the place like that? I wonder.”
The next moment we had cleared the entrance. I thrust my head through the opening. Strangely enough, very little snow had drifted in. The tent was dark green, a circumstance which rendered the light within somewhat weird and ghastly—or perhaps my imagination contributed not a little to that effect.
“What do you see, Bill?” asked Eastman. “What’s inside?” My answer was a cry, and the next instant I had sprung back from the entrance.
“What is it, Bill?” Eastman exclaimed. “Great heaven, what is it, man?”
“A head!” I told him.
“A head?”
“A human head!”
He and Dahlstrom stooped and peered in. “What is the meaning of this?” Eastman cried. “A severed human head!” Dahlstrom dashed a mittened hand across his eyes.
“Are we dreaming?” he exclaimed.
“ Tis no dream, Nels,” returned our leader. “I wish to heaven it was. A head! A human head!”
“Is there nothing more?” I asked.
“Nothing. No body, not even stripped bone—only that severed head. Could the. dogs—”
“Yes?” queried Dahlstrom.
“Could the dogs have done this?”
“Dogs!” Dahlstrom said. “This is not the work of dogs.” We entered and stood looking down upon the grisly remnant of mortality.
“It wasn’t dogs,” said Dahlstrom.
“Not dogs?” Eastman queried. “What other explanation is there—except cannibalism?”
Cannibalism! A shudder went through my heart. I may as well say at once, however, that our discovery of a good supply of pemmican and biscuit on the sled, at that moment completely hidden by the snow, was to show us that that fearful explanation was not the true one. The dogs! That was it, that was the explanation—even though what the victim himself had set down told us a very different story. Yes, the explorer had been set upon by his dogs and devoured. But there were things that militated against that theory. Why had the animals left that head—in the frozen eyes (they were blue eyes) and upon the frozen features of which was a look of horror that sends a shudder through my very soul even now? Why, the head did not have even the mark of a single fang, though it appeared to have been chewed from the trunk. Dahlstrom, however, was of the opinion that it had been hacked off.”
And there, in the man’s story, in the story of Robert Drumgold, we found another mystery—a mystery as insoluble (if it was true) as the presence here of his severed head. There the story was, scrawled in lead-pencil across the pages of his journal. But what were we to make of a record—the concluding pages of it, that is—so strange and so dreadful?
But enough of this, of what we thought and of what we wondered. The journal itself lies before me, and I now proceed to set down the story of Robert Drumgold in his own words. Not a word, not a comma shall be deleted, inserted or changed.
Let it begin with his entry for January the 3rd, at the end of which day the little party was only fifteen miles (geographical) from the Pole.
Here it is.
Jan. 3.—Lat. of our camp 89° 45′ 10″. Only fifteen miles more, and the Pole is ours—unless Amundsen or Scott has beaten us to it, or both. But it will be ours just the same, even though the glory of discovery is found to be another’s. What shall we find there?
All are in fine spirits. Even the dogs seem to know that this is the consummation of some great achievement. And a thing that is a mystery to us is the interest they have shown this day in the region before us. Did we halt, there they were gazing and gazing straight south and sometimes sniffing and sniffing. What does it mean?
Yes, in fine spirits all—dogs as well as we three men. Everything is auspicious. The weather for the last three days has been simply glorious. Not once, in this time, has the temperature been below minus 5. As I write this, the thermometer shows one degree above. The blue of the sky is like that of which painters dream, and, in that blue, tower cloud formations, violet-tinged in the shadows, that are beautiful beyond all description. If it were possible to forget the fact that nothing stands between ourselves and a horrible death save the meager supply of food on the sleds, once could think he was in some fairyland—a glorious fairyland of white and blue and violet.
A fairyland? Why has that thought so often occurred to me? Why have I so often likened this desolate, terrible region to fairyland? Terrible? Yes, to human beings it is terrible—frightful beyond all words. But, though so unutterly terrible to men, it may not be so in reality. After all, are all things, even of this earth of ours, to say nothing of the universe, made for man—this being (a god-like spirit in the body of a quasi-ape) who, set in the midst of wonders, leers and slavers in madness and hate and wallows in the muck of a thousand lusts? May there not be other beings—yes, even on this very earth of ours—more wonderful—yes, and
more terrible too—than he?
Heaven knows, more than once, in this desolation of snow and ice, I have seemed to feel their presence in the air a-bout us—nameless entities, disembodied, watching things.
Little wonder, forsooth, that I have again and again thought of these strange words of one of America’s greatest scientists, Alexander Winchell:
“Nor is incorporated rational existence conditioned on warm blood, nor on any temperature which does not change the forms of matter of which the organism may be composed. There may be intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving the processes of ingestion, assimilation and reproduction. Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. They might be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the tempests of an arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and yet retain consciousness and thought.”
All this Winchell tells us is conceivable, and he adds: “Bodies are merely the local fitting of intelligence to particular modifications of universal matter and force.”
And these entities, nameless things whose presence I seem to feel at times—are they benignant beings or things more fearful than even the madness of the human brain ever has fashioned?
The Macabre Reader Page 5
