Collected Stories and Poems

by Joseph Payne Brennan

  All at once he stopped and listened. From the darkness immediately ahead, he detected an odd sound, as if a large bulk were being dragged over the cattails.

  He hesitated, unable to see anything, stoutly resisting an idiotic impulse to flee. The black darkness and the slimy stench of stagnant pools here in the thickets seemed to be suffocating him.

  His heart began to pound as the slithering noise came closer. Every instinct told him to turn and run, but a kind of desperate stubbornness held him rooted to the spot.

  The sound grew louder, and suddenly he was positive that something deadly and formidable was rushing towards him through the thickets with accelerated speed.

  Throwing up his rifle, he pointed at the direction of the sound and fired.

  In the brief flash of the rifle he saw something black and enormous and glistening, like a great flapping hood, break through the find thicket. It seemed to be rolling towards him, and it was moving with nightmare swiftness.

  He wanted to scream and run, but even as the horror rushed forward, he understood that flight at this point would be futile. Even though the blood seemed to have congealed in his veins, he held the rifle pointed up and kept on firing.

  The shots had no more visible effect than so many pebbles launched from a slingshot. At the last instant his nerve broke and he tried to escape, but the monstrous hood lunged upon him, flapped over him, and squeezed, and his attempt at a scream turned into a tiny gurgle in his throat.

  Old Man Gowse got up early, after another uneasy night, and walked out to inspect the barnyard area. Nothing further seemed amiss, but there was still no sign of Sarey. And that detestable odour arose from the direction of Wharton’s Swamp when the wind was right.

  After breakfast, Gowe set out for Rupert Barnaby’s place, a mile or so distant along the road. He wasn’t sure himself what he expected to find.

  When he reached Barnaby’s small but neat frame house, all was quiet. Too quiet. Usually Barnaby was up and about soon after sunrise.

  On a sudden impulse, Gowse walked up the path and rapped on the front door. He waited and there was no reply. He knocked again, and after another pause, stepped off the porch.

  Jibbe, Barnaby’s hound, slunk around the side of the house. Ordinarily he would bound about and bark. But today he stood motionless - or nearly so - he was trembling - and stared at Gowse. The dog had a cowed, frightened, guilty air which was entirely alien to him.

  ‘Where’s Rup?’ Gowse called to him. ‘Go get Rup!’

  Instead of starting off, the dog threw back his head and emitted an eerie, long-drawn howl.

  Gowse shivered. With a backward glance at the silent house, he started off down the road.

  Now maybe they’d listen to him, he thought grimly. The day before they had laughed about the disappearance of Sarey. Maybe they wouldn’t laugh so easily when he told them that Rupert Barnaby had gone into Wharton’s Swamp with his dog - and that the dog had come back alone!

  ***

  When Police Chief Miles Underbeck saw Old Man Gowse come into headquarters in Clinton Center, he sat back and sighed heavily. He was busy this morning and undoubtedly Old Man Gowse was coming in to inquire about the infernal cow of his that had wandered off.

  The old eccentric had a new and startling report, however. He claimed that Rupert Barnaby was missing. He’d gone into the swamp the night before, Gowse insisted, and had not returned.

  When Chief Underbeck questioned him closely, Gowse admitted that he wasn’t positive Barnaby hadn’t returned. It was barely possible that he had returned home very early in the morning and then left again before Gowse arrived.

  But Gowse fixed his flashing eyes on the Chief and shook his head. ‘He never came out, I tell ye! That dog of his knows! Howled, he did, like a dog howls for the dead! Whatever come took Sarey - got Barnaby in the swamp last night!’

  Chief Underbeck was not an excitable man. Gowse’s burst of melodrama irritated him and left him unimpressed.

  Somewhat gruffly he promised to look into the matter if Barnaby had not turned up by evening. Barnaby, he pointed out, knew the swamp better than anyone else in the county. And he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Probably, the Chief suggested, he had sent the dog home and gone elsewhere after finishing his hunt the evening before. The chances were he’d be back by supper time.

  Old Man Gowse shook his head with a kind of fatalistic scepticism. Vouching that events would soon prove his fears well founded, he shambled grouchily out of the station.

  The dav passed and there was no sign of Rupert Barnaby. At six o’clock, Old Man Gowse grimly marched into the Crown, Clinton Center’s second-rung hotel, and registered for a room. At seven o’clock Chief Underbeck dispatched a prowl car to Barnaby’s place. He waited impatiently for its return, drumming on the desk, disinterestedly shuffling through a sheaf of reports which had accumulated during the day.

  The prowl car returned shortly before eight. Sergeant Grimes made his report. ‘Nobody there, sir. Place locked up tight. Searched the grounds. All we saw was Barnaby’s dog. Howled and ran off as if the devil were on his tail!’

  Chief Underbeck was troubled. If Barnaby was missing, a search should be started at once. But it was already getting dark, and portions of Wharton’s Swamp were very nearly impassable even during the day. Besides, there was no proof that Barnaby had not gone off for a visit, perhaps to nearby Stantonville, for instance, to call on a crony and stay overnight.

  By nine o’clock he had decided to postpone any action till morning. A search now would probably be futile in any case. The swamp offered too many obstacles. If Barnaby had not turned up by morning, and there was no report that he had been seen elsewhere, a systematic search of the marsh could begin.

  Not long after he had arrived at this decision, and as he was somewhat wearily preparing to leave Headquarters and go home, a new and genuinely alarming interruption took place.

  Shortly before nine-thirty, a car braked to a sudden stop outside Headquarters. An elderly man hurried in, supporting by the arm a sobbing, hysterical young girl. Her skirt and stockings were torn and there were a number of scratches on her face.

  After assisting her to a chair, the man turned to Chief Underbeck and the other officers who gathered around.

  ‘Picked her up on the highway out near Wharton’s Swamp. Screaming at the top of her lungs!’ He wiped his forehead. ‘She ran right in front of my car. Missed her by a miracle. She was so crazy with fear I couldn’t make sense out of what she said. Seems like something grabbed her boy friend in the bushes out there. Anyway, I got her in the car without much trouble and I guess I broke a speed law getting here.’

  Chief Underbeck surveyed the man keenly. He was obviously shaken himself, and since he did not appear to be concealing anything, the Chief turned to the girl.

  He spoke soothingly, doing his best to reassure her, and at length she composed herself sufficiently to tell her story.

  Her name was Dolores Rell and she lived in nearby Stantonville. Earlier in the evening she had gone riding with her fiance, Jason Bukmeist of Clinton Center. As Jason was driving along the highway adjacent to Wharton’s Swamp, she had remarked that the early evening moonlight looked very romantic over the marsh. Jason had stopped the car, and after they had surveyed the scene for some minutes, he suggested that, since the evening was warm, a brief ‘stroll in the moonlight’ might be fun.

  Dolores had been reluctant to leave the car, but at length had been persuaded to take a short walk along the edge of the marsh where the terrain was relatively firm.

  As the couple were walking along under the trees, perhaps twenty yards or so from the car, Dolores became aware of an unpleasant odour and wanted to turn back. Jason, however, told her she only imagined it and insisted on going farther. As the trees grew closer together, they walked Indian file, Jason taking the lead.

  Suddenly, she said, they both heard something swishing through the brush towards them. Jason told her not to be frig
htened, that it was probably someone’s cow. As it came closer, however, it seemed to be moving with incredible speed. And it didn’t seem to be making the kind of noise a cow would make.

  At the last second Jason whirled with a cry of fear and told her to run. Before she could move, she saw a monstrous something rushing under the trees in the dim moonlight. For an instant she stood rooted with horror; then she turned and ran. She thought she heard Jason running behind her. She couldn’t be sure. But immediately after she heard him scream.

  In spite of her terror, she turned and looked behind her.

  At this point in her story she became hysterical again, and several minutes passed before she could go on.

  She could not describe exactly what she had seen as she looked over her shoulder. The thing which she had glimpsed rushing under the trees had caught up with Jason. It almost completely covered him. All she could see of him was his agonized face and part of one arm, low near the ground, as if the thing were squatting astride him. She could not say what it was. It was black, formless, bestial and yet not bestial. It was the dark gliding kind of indescribable horror which she had shuddered at when she was a little girl alone in the nursery at night.

  She shuddered now and covered her eyes as she tried to picture what she had seen. ‘O God - the darkness came alive! The darkness came alive!'

  Somehow, she went on presently, she had stumbled through the trees into the road. She was so terrified she hardly noticed the approaching car. There could be no doubt that Dolores Rell was in the grip of genuine terror. Chief Underbeck acted with alacrity. After the white-faced girl had been driven to a nearby hospital for treatment of her scratches and the administration of a sedative, Underbeck rounded up all available men on the force, equipped them with shotguns, rifles, and flashlights, hurried them into four prowl cars, and started off for Wharton’s Swamp.

  Jason Bukmeist’s car was found where he had parked it. It had not been disturbed. A search of the nearby swamp area, conducted in the glare of flashlights, proved fruitless. Whatever had attacked Bukmeist had apparently carried him off into the farthest recesses of the sprawling swamp.

  After two futile hours of brush breaking and marsh sloshing, Chief Underbeck wearily rounded up his men and called off the hunt until morning.

  As the first faint streaks of dawn appeared in the sky over Wharton’s Swamp, the search began again. Reinforcements, including civilian volunteers from Clinton Center, had arrived, and a systematic combing of the entire swamp commenced.

  By noon, the search had proved fruitless - or nearly so. One of the searchers brought in a battered hat and a rye whisky bottle which he had discovered on the edge of the marsh under a sweet-gum tree. The shapeless felt hat was old and worn, but it was dry. It had, therefore, apparently been disgarded in the swamp since the storm of a few days ago. The whiskey bottle looked new; in fact, a few drops of rye remained in it. The searcher reported that the remains of a small campfire were also found under the sweet-gum.

  In the hope that this evidence might have some bearing on the disappearance of Jason Bukmeist, Chief Underbeck ordered a canvass of every liquor store in Clinton Center in an attempt to learn the names of everyone who had recently purchased a bottle of the particular brand of rye found under the tree.

  The search went on, and mid-afternoon brought another, more ominous discovery. A diligent searcher, investigating a trampled area in a large growth of cattails, picked a rifle out of the mud.

  After the slime and dirt had been wiped away, two of the searchers vouched that it belonged to Rupert Barnaby. One of them had hunted with him and remembered a bit of scrollwork on the rifle stock.

  While Chief Underbeck was weighing this unpalatable bit of evidence, a report of the liquor store canvass in Clinton Center arrived. Every recent purchaser of a quart bottle of the particular brand in question had been investigated. Only one could not be located - a tramp who had hung around the town for several days and had been ordered out.

  By evening most of the exhausted searching party were convinced that the tramp, probably in a state of homicidal viciousness brought on by drink, had murdered both Rupert Barnaby and Jason and secreted their bodies in one of the deep pools of the swamp. The chances were the murderer was still sleeping off the effects of drink somewhere in the tangled thickets of the marsh.

  Most of the searchers regarded Dolores Rell’s melodramatic story with a great deal of scepticism. In the dim moonlight, they pointed out, a frenzied, wild-eyed tramp bent on imminent murder might very well have resembled some kind of monster. And the girl’s hysteria had probably magnified what she had seen.

  As night closed over the dismal morass, Chief Underbeck reluctantly suspended the hunt. In view of the fact that the murderer probably still lurked in the woods, however, he decided to establish a system of night-long patrols along the highway which paralleled the swamp. If the quarry lay hidden in the treacherous tangle of trees and brush, he would not be able to escape on to the highway without running into one of the patrols. The only other means of egress from the swamp lay miles across the mire where the open sea washed against a reedy beach. And it was quite unlikely that the fugitive would even attempt escape in that direction.

  The patrols were established in three-hour shifts, two men to a patrol, both heavily armed, and both equipped with powerful searchlights. They were ordered to investigate every sound or movement which they detected in the brush bordering the highway. After a single command to halt, they were to shoot to kill. Any curious motorists who stopped to inquire about the hunt were to be swiftly waved on their way, after being warned not to give rides to anyone and to report all hitchhikers.

  Fred Storr and Luke Matson, on the midnight to three o’clock patrol, passed an uneventful two hours on their particular stretch of the highway. Matson finally sat down on a fallen tree stump a few yards from the edge of the road.

  ‘Legs givin’ out,’ he commented wryly, resting his rifle on the stump. ‘Might as well sit a few minutes.’

  Fred Storr lingered nearby. ‘Guess so, Luke. Don’t look like —’. Suddenly he scowled into the black fringes of the swamp. ‘You hear something, Luke?’

  Luke listened, twisting around on the stump. ‘Well, maybe,’ he said finally, ‘kind of a little scratchy sound like.’

  He got up, retrieving his rifle.

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ Fred suggested in a low voice. He stepped over the stump and Luke followed him towards the tangle of brush which marked the border of the swamp jungle.

  Several yards farther along, they stopped again. The sound became more audible. It was a kind of slithering, scraping sound, such as might be produced by a heavy body dragging itself over uneven ground.

  ‘Sounds like - a snake,’ Luke ventured. ‘A damn big snake!

  ‘We’ll get a little closer,’ Fred whispered. ‘You be ready with that gun when I switch on my light!’

  They moved ahead a few more yards. Then a powerful yellow ray stabbed into the thickets ahead as Fred switched on his flashlight. The ray searched the darkness, probing in one direction and then another.

  Luke lowered his rifle a little, frowning. ‘Don’t see a thing,’ he said. ‘Nothing but a big pool of black scum up ahead there.’ Before Fred had time to reply, the pool of black scum reared up into horrible life. In one hideous second it hunched itself into an unspeakable glistening hood and rolled forward with fearful speed.

  Luke Matson screamed and fired simultaneously as the monstrous scarf of slime shot forward. A moment later it swayed above him. He fired again and the thing fell upon him.

  In avoiding the initial rush of the horror, Fred Storr lost his footing. He fell headlong - and turned just in time to witness a sight which slowed the blood in his veins.

  The monster had pounced upon Luke Matson. Now, as Fred watched, literally paralysed with horror, it spread itself over and around the form of Luke until he was completely enveloped. The faint writhing of his limbs could still be seen. Then the thin
g squeezed, swelling into a hood and flattening itself again, and the writhing ceased.

  As soon as the thing lifted and swung forward in his direction, Fred Storr, goaded by frantic fear, overcame the paralysis of horror which had frozen him.

  Grabbing the rifle which had fallen beside him, he aimed it at the shape of living slime and started firing. Pure terror possessed him as he saw that the shots were having no effect. The thing lunged towards him, to all visible appearances entirely oblivious to the rifle slugs tearing into its loathsome viscid mass.

  Acting out of some instinct which he himself could not have named, Fred Storr dropped the rifle and seized his flashlight, playing its powerful beam directly upon the onrushing horror.

  The thing stopped, scant feet away, and appeared to hesitate. It slid quickly aside at an angle, but he followed it immediately with the cone of light. It backed up finally and flattened out, as if trying by that means to avoid the light, but he trained the beam on it steadily, sensing with every primitive fibre which he possessed that the yellow shaft of light was the one thing which held off hideous death.

  Now there were shouts in the nearby darkness and other lights began stabbing the shadows. Members of the adjacent patrols, alarmed by the sound of rifle fire, had come running to investigate.

  Suddenly the nameless horror squirmed quickly out of the flashlight’s beam and rushed away in the darkness.

  ***

  In the leaden light of early dawn Chief Underbeck climbed into a police car waiting on the highway near Wharton’s Swamp and headed back for Clinton Center. He had made a decision and he was grimly determined to act on it at once.

  When he reached Headquarters, he made two telephone calls in quick succession, one to the governor of the state and the other to the commander of the nearby Camp Evans Military Reservation.

  The horror in Wharton’s Swamp - he had decided - could not be coped with by the limited men and resources at his command.

  Rupert Barnaby, Jason Bukmeist, and Luke Matson had without any doubt perished in the swamp. The anonymous tramp, it now began to appear, far from being the murderer, had been only one more victim. And Fred Storr - well, he hadn’t disappeared. But the other patrol members had found him sitting on the ground near the edge of the swamp in the clutches of a mind-warping fear which had, temporarily at least, reduced him to near idiocy. Hours after he had been taken home and put to bed, he had refused to loosen his grip on a flashlight which he squeezed in one hand. When they switched the flashlight off, he screamed, and they had to switch it on again. His story was so wildly melodramatic it could scarcely be accepted by rational minds. And yet - they had said as much about Dolores Rell’s hysterical account. And Fred Storr was no excitable young girl; he had a reputation for level-headedness, stolidity, and verbal honesty which was touched with understatement rather than exaggeration. As Chief Underbeck arose and walked out to his car in order to start back to Wharton’s Swamp, he noticed Old Man Gowse coming down the block.