The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Hassan whispered, and the wind instruments and kemenjahs subsided, to a weird soft wailing. Madeline’s eyes were animated, and she greeted the assembly:

  “O True Believers, you saw me dead, and you saw the Lord Hassan draw me from the arms of Death. And who can die a second time? I have unending life. Whoever passes the Gateway will rise as I have risen, and I will smile at him in the garden, the beloved of all who serve the Lord Hassan.”

  Hassan turned to the conclave. He said not a word. He had proved his power. Then he tossed the dripping khanjar Madeline’s fingers had plucked from her own flesh. It tinkled to the mosaic floor at the edge of Farley’s rug.

  A eunuch flung a robe about Madeline and led her toward a doorway. Farley picked up the khanjar and stared at its silver chasing. It was his beyond any doubt. Hassan had descended from the dais and now stood before him. The shadow of a smile lurked at the corners of his grim mouth.

  “And now you believe,” he stated. “But follow me and be the first to enter the Garden and greet Al Asfarani who is no longer dead. Let her white arms and her red lips prove what Shaykh Saoud said.”

  Farley was past denying any suggestion. But Madeline’s words rang in his ears, awakening horrible echoes. Some thus far shaken brain cell was crying for his attention and understanding. Some lingering shred of sanity told him that if he had witnessed truth and not illusion, it was worse than any trickery could be. That revived corpse would be the toy of those fanatics, their plaything in some unmentionable garden of hideous delights…

  “Who is the Lord Hassan?” Farley whispered to Saoud as they followed the master of the show.

  “Some call him Shaykh el Djibai. The Grand Master of the Ismailians. And having seen his power, you will serve him. He has saved you from the Feringhi law, and he has restored Al Asfarani.”

  “Serve him?” Chills raced down Farley’s spine. Shaykh el Djibai was the title of that terrible old man who during the Crusades had spread a network of murder over all the east, setting up a hidden empire that ruled through its power over sultans and prime ministers and army commanders. Extortion, and obedience compelled by fear of sudden death at the hands of fanatic assassins had made the original Shaykh el Djibai the terror of Egypt and Syria.

  “Yes. You are a scholar learned in Moslem ways. You will return to your own country to get us followers and money. Then we will kill the Kings of Transjordania and Iraq, traitors who have sold true believers into the hands of the infidel, and drive out the foreigners. And serve us well, lest the police of Damascus wonder what became of Al Asfarani…”

  Saoud bowed and vanished into a cross passage. Farley knew that he was to convert faddists in the United States to the Ismailian cult of murder and black magic. Neurotic old women of both sexes would contribute as they did to the greasy Mahatmas who preached the lewd cults of Hindustan.

  Hassan halted at a massive doorway guarded by brawny negroes whose inarticulate mouthings revealed their lack of tongues. One of them took from a wall niche a flagon and filled a goblet.

  “Drink! It will open the Gateway. Once you die this Little Death, you can never again perish.”

  He drank. The wine reeked of bhang and Farley had scarcely drained the glass when his senses swam in a purple confusion. His legs became limber as ribbons, and he felt strong hands catch him as blackness closed in.

  When Farley finally shook off his stupor, he was lying in a garden roofed with a dome. A warm, shimmering glow pervaded it, strangely like daylight. He was dizzy and his mouth was powder dry. Birds were warbling, and from beyond a cluster of shrubbery came the purr of drums and the wail of muted music.

  A dusky, black-haired girl approached and offered him a flagon. He found himself peculiarly susceptible to her sensuous, dark-skinned curves…to her swaying breasts, conical and dark tipped. He drained the cold, sour draft and was refreshed; but he was still dazed from the horrors he had witnessed and his mind was not his own. There were strange blanks in his memory, and he was uncertain of his identity. It was as though someone had stolen most of his brain; and sometimes it seemed that alien and evil morsels had replaced some of the vacancies.

  He moved about the garden, directed by some outer will—seeking Madeline as she had sought him. Some yet untainted corner of his mind vainly tried to tell him the answer to the monstrous riddle.

  But as he picked his way he knew why those tawny-skinned girls were in the garden. A bearded Arab tottered drunkenly from beside a tinkling fountain, dashed aside his reviving flagon, and carried a dark-haired, scantily-clad Gurjestani girl toward an arbor of roses. He was in a Moslem paradise of wine and lovely women who wore only jewels and amorously enticing smiles. He heard their murmured endearments blending with those of swarthy lovers…

  And Madeline was one of those girls who awaited the embraces of those who had been revived from the Little Death of the drugged flagon.

  Then he found her, lying on cushions heaped in a cubicle with an arched entrance. She now wore a jeweled girdle about her waist, and chased silver domes supported her small, perfectly-formed breasts.

  He saw recognition in her eyes. She smilingly welcomed him and extended embracing arms. He advanced a pace. Then he saw the pink scar on her breast, and horror flooded his veins. Her beauty lured him, but his skin crawled at the recollection of that cold flesh he had touched in the moment of awakening, ages ago, just outside of Damascus.

  Her arms closed about him before he could withdraw. For a moment he shuddered at the contact; and then the embrace of the living dead held him like perfumed serpents, and her red lips sought his dry mouth. He felt the quiver of full-blown passion ripple along her shapely form, and her tongue insidiously kissed his inner lip.

  Then he drew her to him. The fire of her blood inflamed him beyond any qualms, and if this was a horribly reanimated corpse, so be it… They sank into the cushioned shadows of the cubicle, and between kisses she told him how the assassin’s knife had found her at his side.

  Finally there was tapping at the jamb of the archway. A black eunuch knelt to present a tray and a flagon brimming with wine. He waved Madeline aside and gestured to Farley, who seized the drink. But some lurking remnant of sanity checked him. He must not again partake of the Little Death, or he would everlastingly be enslaved.

  Despite the testimony of Madeline’s body, there was some trick behind this mesh of perfumed, sensuous horror, this lustful embracing of the dead.

  He lifted the flagon, gurgled noisily—and as the drugged wine drooled down over his white kaftan, he whipped his sluggish brain to action. Then he saw the silver khanjar, which Hassan for ultimate proof had tossed him.

  His hand moved out, and when it flashed up, there was a blur of silver. The negro dropped, his throat slashed from ear to ear. Farley choked his horrid gurgling with a cushion. And Madeline with wide eyes looked on as might a bewildered child. The flood of gore had no meaning for her.

  But Farley knew that his life depended on his wits. He rolled the African into a corner and hid his twitching body beneath rugs and cushions. Then, flagon in hand, he tottered drunkenly out of the cubicle. Someone would be waiting to pick him up and take him from the garden of evil; and thenceforth, he would be the slave of Hassan and the resurrected dead.

  He saw a gaunt, raw-boned Kurd come reeling from another cubicle, flagon in hand. Farley watched him, and timed his own movements accordingly. His mind now seemed more his own; he had worn off the effects of the ritual food and the Little Death.

  He lurched into a clump of shrubbery. A black slave shouldered the Kurd and carried him toward the massive door. Farley’s peril was momentarily increasing; and then he saw that his strategy was futile.

  Saoud had entered the garden. He was undrugged and his step was firm. Here was one privileged to enter paradise without partaking of the Little Death. He was heading straight for Madeline’s cubicle, eager for the embraces of the latest bride
of the garden.

  Farley reached for his khanjar. He had left it behind him. But he seized the heavy flagon and bounded after Saoud. He saw the Arab gather the girl in his arms, saw his brown fingers pawing her white flesh, his bearded lips seek her mouth. She was trying to break away. Her choked cry whipped Farley to reckless wrath. He bounded forward.

  The flagon drove home. Flesh and bone crunched under the deadly impact. He belabored the unconscious Arab, forgetting that he was the friend who had arranged for the resurrection of Madeline.

  He flung Saoud’s battered body aside, caught Madeline in his arms. There was no use asking her the way out. But before he could clear the cubicle, he heard a low wrathful voice. Hassan was at his side.

  “Is this how you repay my favor?”

  Madeline recoiled from the blazing glance of the Master. Her eyes became blank as her face. Farley felt the impact of that commanding will, but wrath whipped him to resistance. He snatched the silver khanjar from the floor, and before Hassan could draw a weapon, they were locked in a murderous combat.

  Straining, wrestling, rolling and kicking, the Arab shouting for help as he tried to evade the curved blade that sought his life; but Farley outweighed him, and rage doubled his strength.

  A strangled yell, a gurgling and a wheezing—the khanjar flashed home, rose dripping red, and sank again. Madeline’s shrill scream drowned his dying gasps. The garden was now alive with pounding feet, the shrieks of the girls, the drunken outcries of the Brethren. Farley turned to draw Madeline from her cubicle.

  There was no chance of escape; but he could go down with a knife in his hand, and perhaps take her with him. For during that instant of Hassan’s dissolution, Farley had seen a startling change flash over Madeline’s face. Surprise—terror—dismay—and recognition, all in succession. Instead of being a creature commanded by the will of another, she was now reacting like a normal woman.

  Something incredible had happened; but this was no time to ponder. Farley hounded forward to meet the Brethren who had broken in on the heels of the two tongueless guardians of the door. He hurled the flagon, ducked a sweeping blade, lashed out with his own khanjar. And in a split second he was in the center of a milling whirlpool of bodies and limbs and darting steel.

  As he broke clear he saw Madeline’s hand flash out with a flagon, dashing it against a turbaned head. “Get out!” he roared above the confusion. And then he was submerged by the enemy. Though raked, slashed, stabbed in a dozen places, in the thickness of the tangle they had not yet driven home the finishing thrust.

  He gained a yard. The world had become a roaring redness. He heard Madeline’s despairing cry—and then he heard a crashing and a splintering of wood, the crackle of pistols, and the tramp of heavily-shod feet.

  A file of men in uniform poured into the garden of evil. French soldiers, a non-com with blazing pistol, a squad of privates with rifle butts crunching home, crashing turbaned heads, battering swarthy faces…

  “Simple,” explained the French officer who had led the raid. “There have for some time been atrocities attributed to a nest of Ismailians hidden up here in the mountains. Miss Larkin’s sister complained of having been followed—”

  “I remember now,” interposed Madeline. “Shaykh Saoud showed us a number of little courtesies. But there’s still a blank—and where’s Irma—my sister?”

  “It would be better if some things remained a blank,” was Lieutenant Duval’s grave reply. “We watched you and your sister, wondering at the attentions you were receiving from Shaykh Saoud. We followed you to Mr. Farley’s house. We saw him leaving with Saoud, who carried a burden that aroused our suspicions. Trailing him across the desert was simple enough.”

  “But my sister?” reiterated Madeline.

  “Is dead. A knife wound.”

  And in the cross fire of explanations Farley learned the truth. It had been Irma’s body he had seen by the light of a match. She had been murdered as part of the gruesome deception and the corpse had taken Madeline’s place at Farley’s side while both were dulled with drugged wine.

  The resurrection ritual was a simple matter of stage setting and jugglery. Madeline, doctored with ganjeh and other oriental drugs, had been moving in response to the commands impressed on her mind by Hassan and his accomplice, Saoud, who had planned thus to enmesh Farley to get a strange hold on his twenty thousand a year.

  “Which makes everything apparent,” concluded Lieutenant Duval. “The death of Hassan broke the control he exercised over you.” Then, catching the glance that passed between Madeline and Farley, he added, “But if you will permit a final word, mademoiselle, I would say that you have not long retained your liberty!”

  “Glenn will help me forget,” she countered. “Lots of things—particularly the garden of evil.”

  “But not,” interposed Farley as he helped her into the Packard, “what happened in Salahiyeh!”

  THE WALKING DEAD

  Originally published in Spicy Mystery Stories, November 1935.

  When Walt Connell heard the diffident tapping at the back door, he assumed an expression of judicial sternness. Plato Jones, who spaded Connell’s garden, must be returning with a fantastic story to account for a week’s absence and the six dollars which Connell had given him to buy some orange wine. But it was Plato’s wife who tapped at the door, a plump, comely negress with a small parcel under her arm.

  “Evenin’, Mistah Walt,” she began. “Mah man Plato ain’t come back yet.”

  Tears were streaming down her face. Connell was saddled with a problem. Being adopted by a negro entails responsibilities: the colored man brings tribute of game, fish, and vegetables; the white patron reciprocates with old clothes and by bailing the negro out of jail at reasonable intervals.

  “That no good man of yours probably drank my orange wine and now is afraid to come back,” Connell accused.

  “No suh, no suh!” Amelia protested. “Plato don’t drink nuthin’!”

  “Well, maybe I can help,” Connell temporized.

  “Yass, suh, Mistah Walt!” Amelia beamed through her tears. “Ah knew you’d take care of yo’ah cullud folks.”

  She thrust into his hands a paper-wrapped parcel.

  “Ah don’ baked yo’all a chocolate cake for yo’ lunch when you go to get dat no good niggah! And ah fixed up some salted cashew nuts, too.”

  African guile had caught him totally off guard. He had accepted the present. Nothing to do but resign himself to a sixty-mile drive down the Mississippi Delta where the Cajuns convert undersized oranges into fragrant, blasting wine; a no-man’s land, where a century or more ago, Lafitte’s pirates found refuge.

  * * * *

  The next morning Connell thrust Amelia’s gift of chocolate cake and cashew nuts into the parcel compartment and headed down the west bank. He spent the forenoon searching small town jails as he worked his way down the Delta, but no news of Plato. His last chance was Venice, at the end of the highway.

  Venice was half a dozen shacks plus a general store not much larger than a piano box. The girl behind the counter was uncommonly attractive. One of those substantial Cajun women, with luxurious curves, and plump, firm breasts as inviting as her amiable smile. Connell, however, managed to shift his glance to her dark eyes and began his oft repeated query concerning Plato and his red flivver.

  Marie shook her head. Her eyes suddenly became somber as she said, “You’re too late.”

  “What do you mean?” Connell, catching her by the wrist, felt her tremble.

  “I didn’t have any orange wine,” she began, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. “So he went back.”

  Something was distinctly salty.

  “You’d better tell me,” he said in a quiet voice that impelled her attention.

  Marie was wavering, but she was afraid. Finally she compromised, “We can talk better in back here.”
/>
  Connell followed her to the rear of the tiny store. The crude, primitive room contained an oil stove, a small wooden table. In the further corner was a bed.

  “You won’t never see your nigger again,” began Marie, drawing up a chair for Connell. “Not with walking dead men like they got at Ducoin’s plantation.”

  “Walking dead men!” he echoed, leaping to his feet. “Who’s Ducoin? What—”

  But Connell’s query was cut short. The Cajun girl’s hand closed about his arm, drawing him to her side.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she whispered. Her dark, smouldering eyes were still haunted, but her lips suggested reasons for delay.

  Under other circumstances, Connell would have welcomed the hint, but something about her furtive glance and unnatural eagerness combined with her sinister remarks to repel him. But Connell made little progress. As he drew away, her arm slipped about his neck and her ripe, voluptuous curves pressed him closely as she pleaded, “Don’t go…I’m terribly scared…”

  She was. But Connell wasn’t. And that warm, plump body was as inflaming as orange wine. He drew her to him, stroked her black hair, caressed firm flesh that trembled at his touch, and tried to entice her further remarks about walking dead men.

  However, it did not work as he intended. His presence did reassure her, but the contact made his pulse pound like like a rivetting hammer, and the sudden rise and fall of her breasts showed that it was becoming mutual.…

  Marie’s dark eyes were no longer haunted by anything but a desire to get closer. Presently she forgot to brush away an exploring hand, and yielded her eager lips.

  And then Connell learned that the Delta offers more than orange wine.…

  * * * *

  It was close to sunset before he remembered Plato and renewed his queries.

  “Honest, I couldn’t help it,” Marie protested. “I didn’t have any wine left and just as the nigger was going to leave, in comes Ducoin with a load. And he tells the nigger to come along, he’d fix him up. And I didn’t dare warn him.”