The last rock had clattered to rest. I was clinging to an exposed root of the pine tree. My failure to seize Irene had kept me from falling down that deadly slope. It was easy enough to pull myself back over the shoulder.
Dawn was already graying. I was sick and shaking, and barely got to the running board of the old Model A. Bit by bit the thinning of the shadows revealed Hap and the pistol he had dropped. His head was as bad as Grant’s; I was glad, but I did not like the spectacle.
The growing light revealed forgotten contours of the little shelf which supported the cabin. It was almost inevitable that Irene and Hap would creep along the dangerous edge to sneak up on me. And, but for my insane counterattack, they would have finished me.
I finally nerved myself to go in and look at the gory room. Then I remembered that they had gone out to dump him into the prospect hole, and put a cross over him. Not far down the gentler part of the slope I saw a cross.
Grass grew about its base! The wind and the biting Arizona sun had weathered the crudely painted name and date: Jefferson L. Grant, June 12 1897—Oct. 8, 1938. And this was mid-April of the following year.
The whole thing took me minutes to digest. I went into the cabin, and by dim daylight saw its forlorn dustiness; the feminine garments that still hung in a curtained corner; the spatters of dry blood that dotted the blankets of the bunk opposite the one on which Grant had been murdered.
Finally I picked Ramacharaka’s book from the table where I had laid it. The final hundred-odd pages were glued together at the edges, and two were stuck face to face with long-dried blood. Somehow what I had seen in the cabin had been—No, not a dream. Something unreal in any physical sense, yet more than a dream. I now understood my strange paralysis, the eerie light, Grant’s immobility as he lay there, reading. This apparition had told me how he had died; it had also warned me against—
I glanced out and saw Hap’s body huddled on the ground. That was not illusion. I shuddered, thinking how narrowly I had missed death.
Later I found the money Grant had set aside for me; not nuggets, but in hundred-dollar bills slipped between the pages of books. The treacherous wife and her lover had looked for gold and missed their mark. And when I made my report to the sheriff I learned more.
My letter to Mr. Jefferson L. Grant had been forwarded to Irene. That had worried her and Hap. Worried them so much that “something” moved them to try to waylay me. In view of Hap’s pistol, the sheriff called my counterattack self-defense. He assured me that I’d not be indicted on Irene’s account. Opening Grant’s grave clinched my story. A hatchet had split his skull.
“You done right, killing her with Hap. Hell, the coroner’ll call it accidental. He’d better.”
But I didn’t kill Irene. I know now what met me at the road fork, a thousand feet below; I know what Grant meant by saying he was “going to get Irene.” He was hammering, in some strange way, on the wedge that my letter had driven into Irene’s security. In a way that Ramacharaka perhaps could explain, Grant had called the astral bodies of his wife and her lover to re-enact the murder.
Fatigue, as I said, had opened a strange gateway so that I could look over the border, so that at times I crossed it. I don’t know how it would have worked out had I not seen Grant. In the end, I am sure, it would have been the same. Perhaps my coming opened a gateway for Grant. For I don’t think he was as much moved by vengeance as by the urge to tell me enough to help me when I needed a lift.
There are plenty of answers. Psychologists will offer one set; occultists another. Reasons, finally, don’t count for a great deal. All I can say is, even if I knew how, I’d not deliberately open a strange gateway. Once was enough—
SPOTTED SATAN
(written with Otis Adelbert Kline)
Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1940.
Harrison Steele’s broad shoulders and rugged features usually got two glances from women: the first being one of approval, the second a query. They could never quite decide whether his tanned face was handsome, or merely interesting. But the Eurasian telephone operator in the outer office of the Irrawaddy Teak Company upset the routine. Her black and faintly slanted eyes were saying, “Too bad!”
Then she caught Steele’s pleasant gray glance, shook her sleek head, and brightened. He might have a chance in the jungle, after all, though none of the others had survived.
“Mr. Powell will see you at once,” she said.
A Chinese clerk in white led the way down the hall and to Eldon Powell’s spacious office. The room was paneled in teak, and the broad desk was made of that noble wood, dark, heavy, enduring. The big Englishman liked the solidity of the teak taken from the company’s forests, but for the moment, Powell did not like Burma. Steele could see that at a glance.
“You lost little time packing. Awfully good of you to take it all so seriously. I rather feared you’d not be interested in anything as common as leopards.”
“Why not?” Steele’s smile became an amiable grin, and his face no longer seemed to have been hewn from knotty oak. He optimistically dragged his chair into what he thought was the spot where the lazily swaying punkahs (fans) stirred the humid air. “When a leopard gets you worried, that’s news. But it was a lot cooler in Penang!”
“Beastly climate,” Powell deplored. He did not waste any effort in mopping his ruddy face. Rangoon was steaming. “Now, this business of a reward for shooting the brute. I know jolly well you’re not interested in that. We’ve offered the native shikaris a thousand rupees, and no takers. Er…not any more, I mean. They used to flock in, but—”
“Got the wind up, eh?”
Powell nodded. “Can’t say that I blame them. So the directors authorized me to offer you five times that much.” He made an apologetic gesture. “No offense, old man. But the only way to make a thing look important to you American chaps is to—ah—put a cash appraisal on it, so to speak.”
Steele smiled wryly. “Now, what’s the catch? Leopard’s aren’t sport, ordinarily. But with the cash appraisal you British chaps put on everything, I knew this must be a two-fisted beast or you’d not be so extravagant.”
Powell threw up his hands. “I say, now. You’re ribbing me, eh?”
“I guess we’re even,” Steele chuckled.
“What’s the score?”
Powell stroked his straw-colored mustache. “None of the white hunters who went after the leopard had much luck. Two disappeared entirely. Another—really a promising chap—all we found of him was a belt buckle and a few other inedible bits. Quite too bad. I had to get in touch with poor Henderson’s relatives and explain just why we couldn’t ship the remains home.”
“That would be awkward, telling them there just wasn’t anything to ship,” Steele agreed. “But I won’t embarrass you. First, I may drill the brute, and second, I have no relatives—though there’s an oversized Afghan who follows me around like a nurse-maid. Achmet will be a good gun-bearer.”
During all this exchange of grim pleasantries, Steele was thinking of the pretty Eurasian girl’s obvious concern and sympathy. He would have paid little attention to Powell, who was always inclined to pessimism. A servant brought in whisky and soda. Steele selected a cheroot, and watched Powell spend a few moments at indoor mustache chewing.
Finally the big Englishman squirmed in his chair, coughed, and looked very uncomfortable. “Ah—er—I say, Steele, I’ve not told you all of it. It makes me no end of an ass, but I simply must tell you. The natives at our teak camp in the Chin Hills insist the leopard isn’t a leopard except at night. During the day he’s supposed to be a man or a demon or a nat.”
“Huh?” Steele straightened. “What’s that?”
“Now, see here, old chap. I don’t believe that blasted rot. But if you don’t kill the beggar pretty soon, our coolies will desert to the last man, and we won’t get any logs down to the creek beds in time for th
e freshets. That’s why there’s a reward, you know. Important hunter gunning for thousands of rupees. Good for the native morale. Then you get him, and everything is peaceful and happy.”
“And dear old Irrawady Teak pays dividends—provided I hunt down the spotted Satan?”
“Exactly. And you’ll go, of course?” Powell leaned forward in his chair. “I’d appreciate it, no end. As a personal favor.”
“The devil wears spots by night.” Steele frowned. Asia has her share of the inexplicable, but men sometimes pull the strings. “I’ve heard of such things. But I’ve also heard of jugglery by unscrupulous competitors. Tricks to demoralize laborers.”
Powell had considered that angle. “I said as much to Kirby—he’s our camp superintendent—but he assures me it’s not that simple.”
“Kirby—” Steele slowly pronounced the name. It suggested something unpleasant, but he did not quite know how to justify this feeling. “He’s reliable, of course? Old employee, I mean?”
“Not old, no, but well recommended. A bit odd, but what teak-logger isn’t! He’s all broken up by the furor.”
* * * *
The following morning, Steel and his Afghan servant set out by rail for Mandalay, and thence for Monywa. There they boarded a wheezing stern-wheeler, the Shillong, and headed up the river. At Hlai-bin-doung they disembarked. The remainder of the trip would be a day’s march through jungle trails.
The headman of Hlai-bin-doung escorted Steele and Achmet to the dâk bungalow (inn) which the Government maintained for travelers. It stood on stilts which raised it from the steaming ground; a weather-beaten and uninviting house with a corrugated iron roof and a veranda canopied with similar material.
The long shadows of ruined pagodas marched across the compound which enclosed the bungalow. A Buddhist monk in the near-by monastery was beating a wooden bell; the hollow notes were mournful, and they blotted out the chatter of the village, which was a few hundred yards away. Other monks intoned a ritual in Pali, the sacred language. Someone, centuries ago, had acquired merit by endowing this monastery, and thus men with shaven heads and yellow robes praised the Buddha Gautama, quite as though the jungle had not remorselessly engulfed what once had been cleared ground.
Steele could not understand the chanting, but it made him shiver. Where slayers lurked in every thicket, where villages were surrounded by thorny hedges to keep out murderous dacoits, these monks praised the Buddha who had forsaken a throne to bring peace to all living things. All slaying was evil, and hunters were the most accursed of men: and this thought lived in a land where each ate until he was eaten.
The voices and the bells shook Steele. If monks could stay here and sing of peace to all living things, then anything was possible. Incredible Burma began speaking to him, and he was uneasy. This was not quite like sitting in Eldon Powell’s office and saying that a leopard was a leopard; in the jungle, a man might become a spotted Satan…
When the sun dipped over the jungle and reddened the tops of crumbling pagodas, Achmet combed his hennaed beard and faced toward Mekka for evening prayer. “El hamdulilah i rab’ il alameen!” the big Afghan rumbled. “Malik i yaum id-deen!”
It was good to hear a man’s deep voice call on One God, where every tree was guarded by a demon, and where many gods haunted every mountain. “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Two Worlds! King of the Day of Judgment…”
The sound was aggressive, deep-chested, confident: it fought the insidious cry of wooden bells. Gaudily dressed natives gathered at the open gate of Steele’s compound. Averaging but a few inches over five feet, they marveled at the Afghan’s height and his hooked nose and fierce eyes; though his henna-dyed beard was the greatest wonder.
They could no more understand his guttural speech than he could their sing-song Burmese; but Steele caught enough of their chatter to know that the news of his mission had preceded him. The natives were certain that in spite of the size of master and man, the leopard demon would dispose of them as readily as he had the other shikaris (native hunters).
Achmet’s prayers were scarcely completed when the crowd parted to admit Panbyu, the headman’s daughter. Balanced on her head was a wicker tray which contained half a dozen bowls of food. There was rice, chicken, curry, and small dried fish whose high fragrance convinced Steele that the Burmese must be immune to ptomaine poisoning.
She wore a scarlet jacket with purple sleeves. Her pink skirt was slit up the side so that despite her mincing, pigeon-toed gait, her legs were exposed well past the knee. “Billahi,” said Achmet, eyeing the smiling girl, “these chattering apes have pretty women.”
Neither could understand the other, but Steele caught the exchange, and Panbyu’s smile and the flash of her oblique eyes. He was certain that Achmet would not need an interpreter.
The tall Afghan wolfed his rice. He grinned broadly when he heard the sounds from the village. Musicians were tuning up their instruments. Panbyu said that a festival was about to start, and that the honored visitors were welcome.
“Sahib,” Achmet began, when Steele translated the girl’s remark, “it would be well if I mingled with the villagers. By Allah, I might learn some secrets about the Satan-leopard. With your honor’s permission—”
The girl smiled, and came nearer, to get the empty dishes. Steele said to his servant, “Go ahead, but don’t get into any fights.”
That Achmet could not understand a word of Burmese did not for a moment make his request seem illogical to him. He was a master at devising reasons for following his stubborn fancies.
The villagers had little confidence in the hunters. Thus there was ample reason for music and dancing and the impromptu clowning of a pwè (celebration). The festival was not in honor of Steele; his arrival had been merely an excuse for celebrating. Had he not been there, the full moon would have been ample reason.
And knowing that Burmese peculiarity, Steele lit a cheroot, and watched Achmet crossing the compound, to follow Panbyu.
And then night invaded the clearing. The chilly breeze stirred the bamboos to ghostly, inarticulate speech. A jackal howled from afar, and owls hooted from the jungle over which towered the spires of long-ruined pagodas. Laughter and strangely syncopated music filtered from the toddy palms and tamarinds and mangoes that half concealed the village. The dâk bungalow had become a dark island in a deceptive sea of moonlight. It was incredibly isolated. Some trick of the wind, perhaps, made the festive cacophony of the pwè seem as though it came from another world.
Steele was no longer conscious of the soporific drumbeats and xylophone notes; nevertheless he felt the incessant impact, and began to feel the concentration of the disturbing, vague whispers that had centered on him ever since he had entered Eldon Powell’s office in Rangoon.
Steele kicked the dying fire, shivered in the penetrating chill, and told himself that he had listened to too many whispers concerning Thagya Min, King of Tawadeintha—the land of demons, nats who haunted every stream, every grove and forest, lurking by night to slip up on unwary Burmese. From afar he heard the excruciating creak-creak of a cart-wheel. The ungreased axle did not betoken laziness on the part of the driver; it was a studied effort to frighten away night-roving nats that contribute to terror of darkness.
He began to sense that the pwè itself was more than festivity: it was to discourage with light and noise and a concentration of humans the nats who must have followed Steele to the village.
The demon subjects of Thagya Min would have a hearty interest in anyone setting out to kill the ghost leopard of Kokogon.
“To hell with this!” he finally muttered, shaking off oppressive, errant fancies. Instead of heaping more fuel on the fire, Steele sought the warmth of his blankets. The wind, sifting up between the cracks in the floor, was peculiarly penetrating—as penetrating as the insidious, scarcely heard rhythm that filtered from the zariba (thorn-bush fence) that surrounded the village. A di
zzying procession of Burmese girls statuesquely postured before Steele’s closed eyes. They were now pacing and gesturing to demon music from the court of Thagya Min, and the hollow notes of cunningly tuned pieces of hardwood, vibrant under dancing mallets, whispered to the ears of sleep.
A touch of fever…too many of those dried, reeking fish that no white man should eat…or trying to keep pace with Achmet’s demolition of a heap of curry as tall as a pagoda…but finally the trenchant chill ceased lancing the blankets, and it no longer seemed cold in the dâk bungalow….
It was now very warm and pleasant. Yet, though Steele was asleep, he was nevertheless aware of the moon-flooded clearing, and the gable-roofed monastery in the eastern wing of which sat the Buddha Gautama. Oddly enough, the walls of the bungalow did not keep Steele from perceiving the three-roofed pyathat beneath which the Buddha sat in the posture he had prescribed for meditation.
One acquires merit through meditation. But it was much more spectacular to acquire merit by building pagodas. The ruined pagodas at the jungle’s edge were the ghosts of merit forgotten save by the lords of Karma.
The clearing was dominated by the shadow of pious work, and the Buddha Gautama could scarcely help being pleased. His face was still obscured, although Steele could now perceive the gilded bulk that loomed in the darkness of the hpaya kyaung. It no longer seemed odd to Steele that he could be aware of so many things at once.
And then a jarring thought intruded: something was urging him to open his eyes, which was absurd, since with his present clarity of vision the position of his eyelids was immaterial. Steele became intensely annoyed. It was Achmet who was urging him to open his eyes. Achmet, full of intoxicating kaungye, would be boisterous as well as bawdy…
It was Steele’s instinct that saved him: an indefinable shred of perception that had not been submerged by the glamour of the nat-infested night. Even before he opened his eyes or ceased to resent the disturbing summons, he flung himself clear of blankets and cot. In the darkness he saw a flashing streak of frosty silver, and a blotch of shadow that moved with it. He felt the rake of steel, the passing contact of a wiry body, heard the roaring voice of Achmet, and the Afghan’s feet pounding from the veranda to Steele’s room.
The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction Page 16
