The Occult Detective Megapack: 29 Classic Stories

by Fitz-James O'Brien

Through the long winter night, Flaxman Low watched beside him. He felt he dared not leave him for one moment. The room was almost dark, for Yarkindale could not sleep otherwise. The flickering firelight died down, until nothing was left of the last layer of glowing wood ashes. The night lamp in a distant corner threw long shadows across the empty floor, that wavered now and then as if a wind touched the flame.

  Outside the night was still and black; not a sound disturbed the silence except those strange unaccountable creakings and groanings which seem like inarticulate voices in an old house.

  Yarkindale was sleeping heavily, and as the night deepened Low got up and walked about the room in circles, always keeping his face towards the sleeper. The air had grown very cold, and when he sat down again he drew a rug about him, and lit a cigar. The change in the atmosphere was sudden and peculiar, and he softly pulled his couch close to Yarkindale’s and waited.

  Creakings and groanings floated up and down the gaunt old corridors, the mystery and loneliness of night became oppressive. The shadow from the night lamp swayed and fluttered as if a door had been opened. Mr. Low glanced at both doors. He had locked both, and both were closed, yet the flame bent and flickered until Low put his hand across his companion’s chest, so that he might detect any waking movement, for the light had now become too dim to see by.

  To his intense surprise he found his hand at once in the chill of a cold draught blowing on it from above. But Flaxman Low had no time to think about it, for a terrible feeling of cold and numbness was stealing upwards through his feet, and a sense of weighty and deadly chill seemed pressing in upon his shoulders and back. The back of his neck ached, his outstretched hand began to stiffen.

  Yarkindale still slept heavily.

  New sensations were borne in slowly upon Low. The chill around him was the repulsive clammy chill of a thing long dead. Desperate desires awoke in his mind; something that could almost be felt was beating down his will.

  Then Yarkindale moved slightly in his sleep.

  Low was conscious of a supreme struggle, whether of mind or body he does not know, but to him it appeared to extend to the ultimate effort a man can make. A hideous temptation rushed wildly across his thoughts to murder Yarkindale! A dreadful longing to feel the man’s strong throat yielding and crushing under his own sinewy strangling fingers, was forced into his mind.

  Suddenly, Low became aware that, although the couch and part of Yarkindale’s figure were visible, his head and the upper part of his body were blotted out as if by some black intervening object. But there was no outline of the interposed form, nothing but a vague thick blackness.

  He sprang to his feet as he heard an ominous choking gasp from Yarkindale, and with his swift hands he felt over the body through the darkness. Yarkindale lay tense and stiff.

  “Yarkindale!” shouted Low, as his fingers felt the angle of an elbow, then hands upon Yarkindale’s throat, hands that clutched savagely with fingers of iron.

  “Wake man!” shouted Low again, trying to loosen the desperate clutch. Then he knew that the hands were Yarkindale’s hands, and that the man was apparently strangling himself.

  The ghastly struggle, that in the darkness, seemed half a dream and half reality, ceased abruptly when Yarkindale moved and his hands fell limp and slack into Low’s as the darkness between them cleared away.

  “Are you awake?” Low called again.

  “Yes. What is it? I feel as if I had been fighting for my life. Or have I been very ill?”

  “Both, in a sense. You have passed the crisis, and you are still living. Hold on, the lamp’s gone out.”

  But, as he spoke, the light resumed its steady glimmer, and, when a couple of candles added their brightness, the room was shown bare and empty, and as securely closed as ever. The only change to be noted was that the temperature had risen.

  A frosty sun was shining into the library windows next morning when Flaxman Low talked out the matter of the haunting presence which had exerted so sinister an influence upon generations of the Yarkindale family.

  “Before you say anything, I wish to admit, Mr. Low, that I, and no doubt those who have gone before me, have certainly suffered from a transient touch of suicidal mania,” began Yarkindale gloomily.

  “And I am very sure you make a mistake,” replied Low. “In suicidal mania the idea is not transient, but persistent, often extending over months, during which time the patient watches for an opportunity to make away with himself. In your case, when I woke you last night, you were aware of a desire to strangle yourself, but directly you became thoroughly awake, the idea left you?”

  “That is so. Still—”

  “You know that often when dreaming one imagines oneself to do many things which in the waking state would be entirely impossible, yet one continues subject to the idea for a moment or so during the intermittent stage between waking and sleeping. If one has a nightmare, one continues to feel a beating of the heart and a sensation of fright even for some interval after waking. Yours was an analogous condition.”

  “But look here, Mr. Low. How do you account for it that I, who at this moment have not the slightest desire to make away with myself, should, at the moment of awaking from sleep, be driven to doing that which I detest and wish to avoid?”

  “In every particular,” said Flaxman Low, “your brothers’ cases were similar. Each of them attempted his life in that transient moment while the will and reason were still passive, and action was still subject to an abnormally vivid idea which had evidently been impressed upon the consciousness during sleep. We have clear proof of this, I say, in the struggles of each to save himself when actually in extremis. Contemporary psychology has arrived at the conclusion that every man possesses a subconscious as well as a conscious self,” added Low, after a pause. “This second or submerged self appears to be infinitely more susceptible of spiritual influences than the conscious personality. Such influences work most strongly when the normal self is in abeyance during sleep, dreaming, or the hypnotic condition. In your own family you have an excellent example of the idea of self-destruction being suggested during sleep, and carried into action during the first confused, unmastered moments of waking.”

  “But how do you account for the following footsteps? Whose wishes or suggestions do we obey?”

  “I believe them to be different manifestations of the same evil intelligence. Ghosts sometimes, as possibly you are aware, pursue a purpose, and your family has been held in subjection by a malicious spirit that has goaded them on to destroy themselves. I could bring forward a number of other examples; there is the Black Friar of the Sinclairs and the Fox of the Oxenholms. To come back to your own case—do you remember of what you dreamed before I woke you?”

  Yarkindale looked troubled.

  “I have a dim recollection, but it eludes me. I cannot fix it.” He glanced round the room, as if searching for a reminder. Suddenly he sprang up and approached a picture on the wall—“Here it is!” he shouted. “I remember now. A dark figure stood over me; I saw the long face and the sinister eyes—Jules Cevaine!”

  “You have not spoken of Cevaine before. Who was he?”

  “He was the last of the old Cevaines. You know this house is called Sevens Hall—a popular corruption of the Norman name Cevaine. We Yarkindales were distant cousins, and inherited this place after the death of Jules Cevain, about a hundred years ago. He was said to have taken a prominent part—under another name—in the Reign of Terror. However that may be—he resented our inheriting the Hall.”

  “He died here?” asked Flaxman Low.

  “Yes.”

  “His purpose in haunting you,” said Low, “was doubtless the extermination of your family. His spirit lingers about this spot where the final intense passion of terror, pain, and hatred was felt. And you yourselves have unknowingly fostered his power by dwelling upon and dreading his influence, thus opening the way to spirit communication, until from time to time his disembodied will has superimposed itself upon your wills
during the bewildered moment of waking, and the several successive tragedies of which you told me have been the result.”

  “Then how can we ever escape?”

  “You have already won one and your most important victory; for the rest, think of him as seldom as may be. Destroy this painting and any other articles that may have belonged to him; and if you take my advice you will travel for a while.”

  In pursuance of Mr. Flaxman Low’s advice, Yarkindale went for the cold weather to India. He has had no recurrence of the old trouble, but he loathes Sevens Hall, and he is only waiting for his son to be old enough to break the entail, when the property will be placed on the market.

  ABOUT STEVE HARRISON

  Robert E. Howard’s character Steve Harrison appeared in a series of 10 stories, the first 4 of which appear here. (The last six—one of which is only an unfinished fragment—appeared between 1976 and 1984 and are not included due to copyright issues.)

  The series consists of:

  “Fangs of Gold”

  “The Tomb’s Secret” (also known as “Teeth of Doom”)

  “Names in the Black Book”

  “Graveyard Rats”

  “The House of Suspicion”

  “Lord of the Dead”

  “The Mystery of Tannernoe Lodge” (only a story fragment)

  “The Black Moon”

  “The Silver Heel”

  “The Voice of Death”

  FANGS OF GOLD, by Robert E. Howard

  “This is the only trail into the swamp, mister.” Steve Harrison’s guide pointed a long finger down the narrow path which wound in and out among the live-oaks and cypresses. Harrison shrugged his massive shoulders. The surroundings were not inviting, with the long shadows of the late afternoon sun reaching dusky fingers into the dim recesses among the moss-hung trees.

  “You ought to wait till mornin’,” opined the guide, a tall lanky man in cowhide boots and sagging overall. “It’s gittin’ late, and we don’t want to git catched in the swamp after night.”

  “I can’t wait, Rogers,” answered the detective. “The man I’m after might get clean away by morning.”

  “He’ll have to come out by this path,” answered Rogers as they swung along. “Ain’t no other way in or out. If he tries to push through to high ground on the other side, he’ll shore fall into a bottomless bog, or git et by a gator. There’s lots of them. I reckon he ain’t much used to swamps?”

  “I don’t suppose he ever saw one before. He’s city-bred.”

  “Then he won’t das’t leave the beaten path,” confidently predicted Rogers.

  “On the other hand, he might, not realizing the danger,” grunted Harrison.

  “What’d you say he done?” pursued Rogers, directing a jet of tobacco juice at a beetle crawling through the dark loam.

  “Knocked an old Chinaman in the head with a meat-cleaver and stole his life-time savings—ten thousand dollars, in bills of a thousand each. The old man left a little granddaughter who’ll be penniless if this money isn’t recovered. That’s one reason I want to get this rat before he loses himself in a bog. I want to recover that money, for the kid.”

  “And you figure the Chinaman seen goin’ down this path a few days ago was him?”

  “Couldn’t be anybody else,” snapped Harrison. “We’ve hounded him half way across the continent, cut him off from the borders and the ports. We were closing in on him when he slipped through, somehow. This was about the only place left for him to hide. I’ve chased him too far to delay now. If he drowns in the swamp, we’ll probably never find him, and the money will be lost, too. The man he murdered was a fine, honest old Chinaman. This fellow, Woon Shang, is bad all the way through.”

  “He’ll run into some bad folks down here,” ruminated Rogers. “Nothin’ but blacks live in these swamplands. They ain’t regular blacks like them that live outside. These came here fifty or sixty years back—refugees from Haiti, or somewhere. You know we ain’t far from the coast. They’re yeller-skinned, and don’t hardly ever come out of the swamp. They keep to theirselves, and they don’t like strangers. What’s that?”

  They were just rounding a bend in the path, and something lay on the ground ahead of them—something black, and dabbled with red, that groaned and moved feebly.

  “It’s a man!” exclaimed Rogers. “He’s been knifed.”

  It took no expert to deduce that. They bent over him and Rogers voiced profane recognition. “Why, I know this feller! He ain’t no swamp rat. He’s Joe Corley, that razored up another black at a dance last month and lit out. Bet he’s been hidin’ in the swamp ever since. Joe! Joe Corley!”

  The wounded man groaned and rolled up his glassy eyes; his skin was ashy with the nearness of approaching death.

  “Who stabbed you, Joe?” demanded Rogers.

  “De Swamp Cat!” The gasp was scarcely audible. Rogers swore and looked fearfully about him, as if expecting something to spring on them from the trees.

  “I wuz tryin’ to git outside,” muttered the Negro.

  “What for?” demanded Rogers. “Didn’t you know you’d git jailed if they catched you?”

  “Ruther go to de jail-house dan git mixed up—in de devilment—dey’s cookin’ up—in de swamp.” The voice sank lower as speech grew more difficult.

  “What you mean, Joe?” uneasily demanded Rogers.

  “Voodoo,” muttered Corley disjointedly. “Took dat Chinaman ’stead uh me—didn’t want me to git away, though—then John Bartholomew—uuuugh!”

  A trickle of blood started from the corner of his thick lips, he stiffened in brief convulsion and then lay still.

  “He’s dead!” whispered Rogers, staring down the swamp path with dilated eyes.

  “He spoke of a Chinaman,” said Harrison. “That clinches it that we’re on the right trail. Have to leave him here for the time being. Nothing we can do for him now. Let’s get going.”

  “You aim to go on, after this?” exclaimed Rogers.

  “Why not?”

  “Mr. Harrison,” said Rogers solemnly, “you offered me a good wage to guide you into this here swamp. But I’m tellin’ you fair there ain’t enough money to make me go in there now, with night comin’ on.”

  “But why?” protested Harrison. “Just because this man got into a fight with one of his own kind—”

  “It’s more ’n just that,” declared Rogers decisively. “This man was tryin’ to git out of the swamp when they got him. He knowed he’d git jailed on the outside, but he was goin’ anyway; that means somethin’ had scared the livin’ daylights out of him. You heard him say it was the Swamp Cat that got him?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, the Swamp Cat is a crazy black man that lives in the swamp. It’s been so long since any white folks claimed they seen him, I’d begun to believe he was just a myth the ‘outside’ blacks told to scare people away from the swamp. But this shows he ain’t. He killed Joe Corley. He’ll kill us if he catches us in the dark. Why, by golly, he may be watchin’ us right now!” This thought so disturbed Rogers that he drew a big six-shooter with an enormous length of barrel, and peered about, masticating his quid with a rapidity that showed his mental perturbation.

  “Who’s the other follow he named, John Bartholomew?” inquired Harrison.

  “Don’t know. Never heard of him. Come on, let’s shove out of here. We’ll git some boys and come back after Joe’s body.”

  “I’m going on,” growled Harrison, rising and dusting his hands.

  Rogers stared. “Man, you’re plumb crazy! You’ll git lost—”

  “Not if I keep to the path.”

  “Well, then, the Swamp Cat’ll git you, or them gators will—

  “I’ll take my chance,” answered Harrison brusquely. “Woon Shang’s somewhere in this swamp. If he manages to get out before I get my hands on him, he may get clean away. I’m going after him.”

  “But if you’ll wait we’ll raise a posse and go after him first thing in the mornin’
,” urged Rogers.

  Harrison did not attempt to explain to the man his almost obsessional preference for working alone. With no further comment he turned and strode off down the narrow path. Rogers yelled after him: “You’re crazy as Hell! If you git as far as Celia Pompoloi’s hut, you better stay there tonight! She’s the big boss of them blacks. It’s the first cabin you come to. I’m goin’ back to town and git a posse, and tomorrow mornin’ we’ll—”

  The words became unintelligible among the dense growth as Harrison rounded a turn that shut off the sight of the other man.

  As the detective strode along he saw that blood was smeared on the rotting leaves, and there were marks as if something heavy had been dragged over the trail. Joe Corley had obviously crawled for some distance after being attacked. Harrison visualized him dragging himself along on his belly like a crippled snake. The man must have had intense vitality to have gotten so far with a mortal wound in his back. And his fear must have been desperate to so drive him.

  Harrison could no longer see the sun, but he knew it was hanging low. The shadows were gathering, and he was plunging deeper and deeper into the swamp. He began to glimpse patches of scummy ooze among the trees, and the path grew more tortuous as it wound to avoid these slimy puddles. Harrison plunged on without pausing. The dense growth might lend concealment to a desperate fugitive, but it was not in the woods, but among the scattered cabins of the swamp dwellers that he expected to find the man he hunted. The city-bred Chinaman, fearful of solitude and unable to fend for himself, would seek the company of men, even of black men.

  The detective wheeled suddenly. About him, in the dusk, the swamp was waking. Insects lifted strident voices, wings of bats or owls beat the air, and bullfrogs boomed from the lily pads. But he had heard a sound that was not of these things. It was a stealthy movement among the trees that marched in solid ranks beside the trail. Harrison drew his .45 and waited. Nothing happened. But in primitive solitudes a man’s instincts are whetted. The detective felt that he was being watched by unseen eyes; he could almost sense the intensity of their glare. Was it the Chinaman, after all?