Night Creatures

by Seabury Quinn

  Nor had he long to wait. Moving swiftly as the shadows of a scudding cloud he saw the monstrous beast approaching, leaping lightly over hedgerow and stone fence, eating up the distance with a long-limbed, tireless lope. Now he saw the gleam of its great eyes, the flashing of its monstrous fangs, the lolling of its pink tongue dripping slaver. He heard its panting, quick-drawn breath, and steadied himself for its attack, for it was less than fifty feet away, and traveling faster than a wind-blown leaf.

  But it passed him as if he had not been there, and rushed straight for the shelter of the oak tree. The beast was straining against time, as if it ran a race with the fast-spreading brightness in the east.

  Friar Hilderbrandt was schooled in demonology. Imps, werewolves, ghosts, and goblins, all things of evil and the darkness were bounden by the shades of night, he knew. The werewolf hastened to its lair or place of metamorphosis before the cock crowed greeting to the rising day-star, else it must remain in lupine form until the next sunrise. He knew the werewolf’s habit. By day it was not recognizable, forasmuch as it might be a man of favored looks, or a fair and smiling woman, who with the onset of the night became a foul, misshapen beast with blood-bedabbled jaws. . . . Who in the neighborhood would this night-prowler be? Mayhap some member of his very congregation. . . .

  The racing wolf had reached the shadow of the oak tree, paused a moment, sunk down on the verdure. Now it seemed to writhe and twist in a death-agony; now it rose upon its knees, stood upright—‘Conjuro te, abire ad tuum locum, in nomine——’ Friar Hilderbrandt stopped the words of exorcism half intoned, for he recognized the slight, straight form in the blue linen gown.

  ‘Gertruda—thou?’ he exclaimed as he saw the long, unplaited hair, the pale sweet face, and the glowing blue eyes of the girl for whose redemption he prayed nightly.

  ‘I,’ she answered with a little wanton laugh. ‘Even I, good Father. Behold the thing I am become. Outcast from Heaven, yet not meriting eternal punishment, I am doomed to roam the earth by night, a thing undead, yet not alive until release comes through——’

  The shrilling of a cock’s crow split the morning silence, and her words ceased as a candle’s flicker ceases when the snuffers close on it. Where the lissome blue-gowned form had stood there were only the blue shadows of the early morning; where the deep-toned voice had spoken there was only the sigh of the dawning-wind among the branches.

  Twice more Friar Hilderbrandt had seen the werewolf racing for the shelter of the crossroads grave, but always the cock’s crow had come ere he could question further. ‘I am doomed to roam the earth by night until release comes,’ she had said. Ergo, release was possible. But how? Would ashen stake and sexton’s spade suffice? These were potent weapons against vampires, but Gertruda was no vampire. She had sucked no blood from living man, threatened none with the infection of her earthbound state. True, she had battened on the flocks when she assumed wolfshead, but sheep were bred for slaughter.

  Graf Otho—was it she who mauled the porter at the castle gate, then forced herself into the Countess’ bower to hurl him to his death in the ravine where she had died herself? It took no schoolman’s casuistry to construe that killing—if she did it—as an execution rather than a murder. She had spared the forester in the Schwarzwald—time enough to resort to the stake and spade when she showed signs of menacing men’s souls and bodies.

  Tonight he had come early to the grave. He would accost her, force her to reveal the means of her deliverance. . . . The moon sailed high across the cloud-surf of the sky, the night was coolly pleasant, and he was very tired. He had dined with noble amplitude, and washed his dinner down with many a frothing tankard of the strong brown home-brewed ale. The grass grew lush and soft; here was a little hillock thick-beset with buttercups for pillow. . . .

  The sound of voices startled him. Wolfgang’s voice—and Gertruda’s. Hers: ‘I am vulnerable to thy steel here . . . wilt thou come to me and become as I am?’ His: ‘I will be as thou art!’

  Softly Friar Hilderbrandt rose from his grassy couch. More quietly than pussy steals on an unwary mouse he stepped across the turf and paused behind the two who clung and kissed and, mouth to mouth, swore their two destinies should be as one, whether bliss or torment everlasting.

  He snatched Wolfgang’s long sword from its scabbard, drew the gleaming blade back, and with the full weight of his great bulk drove the keen steel home. ‘In God his name, my children. Better that the body perish than the soul!’

  They fell together, still locked in each other’s arms, and after he had said the prayers ordained for those who die, the old man bent and kissed them both upon the brow.

  Weeping, but with exultation in his heart, he left them, trudging down the dusty road that led to the village and the little hut that served him for a rectory.

  Gertruda was now truly dead, no more an earthbound thing of menace. She had thanked him ere she breathed her last. Wolfgang had escaped her fate. They were with each other; they were safe. How beautiful they looked as they lay on the cool, green turf . . . wedded. Aye, wedded twice, once with a golden ring, once with a sword’s sharp steel.

  ‘Absolvo te, Gertruda; te absolve, Wolfgang,’ he repeated between sobs.

  The Emperor’s masked justicer did the sentence of the law upon him, for he confessed the murder freely. Indeed, he had confessed a double murder, but when they went to the crossroads they found only Wolfgang, with the wound of a great sword agape in back and breast. Of the body of Gertruda there was neither sign nor trace, and when they dug into her grave they found nothing but a few bones and some shreds of rotting linen.

  When they brought him out to die he smiled upon the headsman and his varlets and put the heading cup of strong, sweet Moselle wine up to his mouth as if it were a tankard to be drained in joy, and smacked his lips with hearty relish as he tossed it away empty. Then he laid his neck upon the block and murmured: ‘Wolfgang, Gertruda, my dear children, comes now one who loved you very dearly. I am an old man and a weary. Stretch forth thy hands, lend me of thy strength of youth to pass this darksome valley.’

  There were those who wept to see his head fall at the ax-stroke, for he had ever been a kindly man, and a godly one, according to his lights; but certainly no saint.

  The Thing in the Fog

  ‘TIENS, ON SUCH A NIGHT as this the Devil must congratulate himself!’ Jules de Grandin forced his chin still deeper in the upturned collar of his trench-coat, and bent his head against the whorls of chilling mist which eddied upward from the bay in token that autumn was dead and winter come at last.

  ‘Congratulate himself?’ I asked in amusement as I felt before me for the curbstone with the ferrule of my stick. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Pardieu, because he sits at ease beside the cozy fires of hell, and does not have to feel his way through this eternally-to-be-execrated fog! If we had but the sense——’

  ‘Pardon, Monsieur, one of us is very clumsy, and I do not think that it is I!’ he broke off sharply as a big young man evidently carrying a heavier cargo of ardent spirits than he could safely manage, lurched against him in the smothering mist, then caromed off at an unsteady angle to lose himself once more in the enshrouding fog.

  ‘Dolt!’ the little Frenchman muttered peevishly. ‘If he can not carry liquor he should abstain from it. Me, I have no patience with these—grand Dieu, what is that?’

  Somewhere behind us, hidden in the curtains of the thick, gray vapor, there came a muffled exclamation, half of fright, half of anger, the sound of something fighting threshingly with something else, and a growling, snarling noise, as though a savage dog had leapt upon its prey, and, having fleshed its teeth, was worrying it, then: ‘Help!’ The cry was muffled, strangled, but laden with a weight of helpless terror.

  ‘Hold fast, my friend, we come!’ de Grandin cried, and, guided by the sounds of struggle, breasted through the fog as if it had been water, brandishing his silver-headed sword-stick before him as a guide and a defense.

  A
score of quick steps brought us to the conflict. Dim and indistinct as shadows on a moonless night, two forms were struggling on the sidewalk, a large one lying underneath, while over it, snarling savagely, was a thing I took for a police dog which snapped and champed and worried at the other’s throat.

  ‘Help!’ called the man again, straining futilely to hold the snarling beast away and turning on his side the better to protect his menaced face and neck.

  ‘Cordieu, a war-dog!’ exclaimed the Frenchman. ‘Stand aside, Friend Trowbridge, he is savage, this one; mad, perhaps, as well.’ With a quick, whipping motion he ripped the chilled-steel blade from the barrel of his stick and, point advanced, circled round the struggling man and beast, approaching with a cautious, cat-like step as he sought an opportunity to drive home the sword.

  By some uncanny sense the snarling brute divined his purpose, raised its muzzle from its victim’s throat, and backed away a step or two, regarding de Grandin with a stare of utter hatred. For a moment I caught the smoldering glare of a pair of fire-red eyes, burning through the fog-folds as incandescent charcoal might burn through a cloth, and:

  ‘A dog? Non, pardieu, it is——’ began the little Frenchman, then checked himself abruptly as he lunged out swiftly with his blade, straight for the glaring, fiery eyes which glowered at him through the mist.

  The great beast backed away with no apparent haste, yet quickly enough to avoid the needle-point of Jules de Grandin’s blade, and for an instant I beheld a row of gleaming teeth bared savagely beneath the red eyes’ glare; then, with a snarling growl which held more defiance than surrender in its throaty rumble, the brute turned lithely, dodged, and made off through the fog, disappearing from sight before the clicking of its nails against the pavement had been lost to hearing.

  ‘Look to him, Friend Trowbridge,’ de Grandin ordered, casting a final glance about us in the mist before he put his sword back in its sheath. ‘Does he survive, or is he killed to death?’

  ‘He’s alive, all right,’ I answered as I sank to my knees beside the supine man, ‘but he’s been considerably chewed up. Bleeding badly. We’d best get him to the office and patch him up before——’

  ‘Wha— what was it?’ our mangled patient asked abruptly, rising on his elbow and staring wildly round him. ‘Did you kill it—did it get away? D’ye think it had hydrophobia?’

  ‘Easy on, son,’ I soothed, locking my hands beneath his arms and helping him to rise. ‘It bit you several times, but you’ll be all right as soon as we can stop the bleeding. Here’—I snatched a handkerchief from the breast pocket of my dinner coat and pressed it into his hand—‘hold this against the wound while we’re walking. No use trying to get a taxi tonight, the driver’d never find his way about. I live only a little way from here and we’ll make it nicely if you’ll lean on me. So! That’s it!’

  The young man leant heavily upon my shoulder and almost bore me down, for he weighed a good fourteen stone, as we made our way along the vapor-shrouded street.

  ‘I say, I’m sorry I bumped into you, sir,’ the youngster apologized as de Grandin took his other arm and eased me somewhat of my burden. ‘Fact is, I’d taken a trifle too much and was walkin’ on a side hill when I passed you.’ He pressed the already-reddened handkerchief closer to his lacerated neck as he continued with a chuckle: ‘Maybe it’s a good thing I did, at that, for you were within hearing when I called because you’d stopped to cuss me out.’

  ‘You may have right, my friend,’ de Grandin answered with a laugh. ‘A little drunkenness is not to be deplored, and I doubt not you had reason for your drinking—not that one needs a reason, but——’

  A sudden shrill, sharp cry for help cut through his words, followed by another call which stopped half uttered on a strangled, agonizing note: then, in a moment, the muffled echo of a shot, another, and, immediately afterward, the shrilling signal of a police whistle.

  ‘Tête bleu, this night is full of action as a pepper-pot is full of spice!’ exclaimed de Grandin, turning toward the summons of the whistle. ‘Can you manage him, Friend Trowbridge? If so I——’

  Pounding of heavy boots on the sidewalk straight ahead told us that the officer approached, and a moment later his form, bulking gigantically in the fog, hove into view. ‘Did anny o’ yez see——’ he started, then raised his hand in half-formal salute to the vizor of his cap as he recognized de Grandin.

  ‘I don’t suppose ye saw a dar-rg come runnin’ by this way, sor?’ he asked. ‘I wuz walkin’ up th’ street a moment since, getting’ ready to report at th’ box, when I heard a felly callin’ for help, an’ what should I see next but th’ biggest, ugliest baste of a dar-rg ye iver clapped yer eyes upon, a-worryin’ at th’ pore lad’s throat. I wus close to it as I’m standin’ to you, sor, pretty near, an’ I shot at it twict, but I’m damned if I didn’t miss both times, slick as a whistle—an’ me holdin’ a pistol expert’s medal from th’ department, too!’

  ‘U’m?’ de Grandin murmured. ‘And the unfortunate man beset by this great beast your bullets failed to hit, what of him?’

  ‘Glory be to God; I plumb forgot ’im!’ the policeman confessed. ‘Ye see, sor, I wuz that overcome wid shame, as th’ felly says, whin I realized I’d missed th’ baste that I run afther it, hopin’ I’d find it agin an’ maybe put a slug into it this time, so——’

  ‘Quite so, one understands,’ de Grandin interrupted, ‘but let us give attention to the man; the beast can wait until we find him, and—mon Dieu! It is as well you did not stay to give him the first aid, my friend, your efforts would have been without avail. His case demands the coroner’s attention.’

  He did not understate the facts. Stretched on his back, hands clenched to fists, legs slightly spread, one doubled partly under him, a man lay on the sidewalk; across the white expanse of evening shirt his opened coat displayed there spread a ruddy stickiness, while his starched white-linen collar was already sopping with the blood which oozed from his torn and mangled throat. Both external and anterior jugulars had been ripped away by the savagery which had torn the integument of the neck to shreds, and so deeply had the ragged wound gone that a portion of the hyoid bone had been exposed. A spate of blood had driveled from the mouth, staining lips and chin, and the eyes, forced out between the lids, were globular and fixed and staring, though the film of death had hardly yet had time to set upon them.

  ‘Howly Mither!’ cried the officer in horror as he looked upon the body. ‘Sure, it were a hound from th’ Divil’s own kennels done this, sor!’

  ‘I think that you have right,’ de Grandin nodded grimly. ‘Call the department, if you will be so good. I will stand by the body.’ He took a kerchief from his pocket and opened it, preparatory to veiling the poor, mangled face which stared appealingly up at the fog-bound night, but:

  ‘My God, it’s Suffrige!’ the young man at my side exclaimed. ‘I left him just before I blundered into you, and—oh, what could have done it?’

  ‘The same thing which almost did as much for you, Monsieur,’ the Frenchman answered in a level, toneless voice. ‘You had a very narrow escape from being even as your friend, I do assure you.’

  ‘You mean that dog——’ he stopped, incredulous, eyes fairly starting from his face as he stared in fascination at his friend’s remains.

  ‘The dog, yes, let us call it that,’ de Grandin answered.

  ‘But—but——’ the other stammered, then, with an incoherent exclamation which was half sigh, half groaning hiccup, slumped heavily against my shoulder and slid unconscious to the ground.

  De Grandin shrugged in irritation. ‘Now we have two of them to watch,’ he complained. ‘Do you recover him as quickly as you can, my friend, while I——’ he turned his back to me, dropped his handkerchief upon the dead man’s face, and bent to make a closer examination of the wounds in the throat.

  I took the handkerchief from my overcoat pocket, ran it lightly over the trunk of a leafless tree which stood beside the curb, and wrung the mo
isture from it on the unconscious man’s face and forehead. Slowly he recovered, gasped feebly, then, with my assistance, got upon his feet, keeping his back resolutely turned to the grisly thing upon the sidewalk. ‘Can—you—help—me—to—your—office?’ he asked slowly, breathing heavily between the words.

  I nodded, and we started toward my house, but twice we had to stop; for once he became sick, and I had to hold him while he retched with nausea, and once he nearly fainted again, leaning heavily against the iron balustrade before a house while he drew great gulps of chilly, fog-soaked air into his lungs.

  At last we reached my office, and helping him up to the examination table I set to work. His wounds were more extensive than I had at first supposed. A deep cut, more like the raking of some heavy, blunt-pointed claw than a bite, ran down his face from the right temple almost to the angle of the jaw, and two deep parallel scores showed on his throat above the collar. A little deeper, a little more to one side, and they would have nicked the anterior jugular. About his hands were several tears, as though they had suffered more from the beast’s teeth than had his face and throat, and as I helped him with his jacket I saw his shirt-front had been slit and a long, raking cut scored down his chest, the animal’s claws having ripped through the stiff, starched linen as easily as though it had been muslin.

  The problem of treatment puzzled me. I could not cauterize the wounds with silver nitrate, and iodine would be without efficiency if the dog were rabid. Finally I compromised by dressing the chest and facial wounds with potassium permanganate solution and using an electric hot-point on the hands, applying laudanum immediately as an anodyne.

  ‘And now, young fellow,’ I announced as I completed my work, ‘I think you could do nicely with a tot of brandy. You were drunk enough when you ran into us, heaven knows, but you’re cold sober now, and your nerves have been badly jangled, so——’