Burn, Witch, Burn!

by Abraham Merritt

  He said quietly: "I am going to stay right here in the study, wide-awake, until McCann comes or dawn comes. If I hear any sounds in your room, I'm coming in. Whenever I want to take a look at you to see whether you are all right, I'm coming in. Don't lock your door, because if you do I'll break it down. Is that all quite clear?"

  I grew angrier still. He said:

  "I mean it."

  I said: "All right. Do as you damned please."

  I went into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. But I did not lock it.

  I was tired, there was no doubt about that. Even an hour's sleep would be something. I decided not to bother with the bath, and began to undress. I was removing my shirt when I noticed a tiny pin upon its left side over my heart. I opened the shirt and looked at the under side. Fastened there was one of the knotted cords!

  I took a step toward the door, mouth open to call Braile. Then I stopped short. I would not show it to Braile. That would mean endless questioning. And I wanted to sleep.

  God! But I wanted to sleep!

  Better to burn the cord. I searched for a match to touch fire to it—I heard Braile's step at the door and thrust it hastily in my trousers' pocket.

  "What do you want?" I called.

  "Just want to see you get into bed all right."

  He opened the door a trifle. What he wanted to discover, of course, was whether I had locked it. I said nothing, and went on undressing.

  My bedroom is a large, high-ceilinged room on the second floor of my home. It is at the back of the house, adjoining my study. There are two windows which look out on the little garden. They are framed by the creeper. The room has a chandelier, a massive, old-fashioned thing covered with prisms—lusters I think they are called, long pendants of cut-glass in six circles from which rise the candle-holders. It is a small replica of one of the lovely Colonial chandeliers in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, and when I bought the house I would not allow it to be taken down, nor even be wired for electric bulbs. My bed is at the end of the room, and when I turn upon my left side I can see the windows outlined by faint reflections. The same reflections are caught by the prisms so that the chandelier becomes a nebulously glimmering tiny cloud. It is restful, sleep-inducing. There is an ancient pear tree in the garden, the last survivor of an orchard which in spring, in New York's halcyon days, lifted to the sun its flowered arms. The chandelier is just beyond the foot of the bed. The switch which controls my lights is at the head of my bed. At the side of the room is an old fireplace, its sides of carved marble and with a wide mantel at the top. To visualize fully what follows, it is necessary to keep this arrangement in mind.

  By the time I had undressed, Braile, evidently assured of my docility, had closed the door and gone back into the study. I took the knotted cord, the witch's ladder, and threw it contemptuously on the table. I suppose there was something of bravado in the action; perhaps, if I had not felt so sure of McCann, I would have pursued my original intention of burning it. I mixed myself a sedative, turned off the lights and lay down to sleep. The sedative took quick effect.

  I sank deep and deeper into a sea of sleep deeper… and deeper…

  I awoke.

  I looked around me… how had I come to this strange place? I was standing within a shallow circular pit, grass lined. The rim of the pit came only to my knees. The pit was in the center of a circular, level meadow, perhaps a quarter of a mile in diameter. This, too, was covered with grass; strange grass, purple flowered. Around the grassy circle drooped unfamiliar trees… trees scaled with emeralds green and scarlet… trees with pendulous branches covered with fernlike leaves and threaded with slender vines that were like serpents. The trees circled the meadow, watchful, alert… watching me… waiting for me to move…

  No, it was not the trees that were watching! There were things hidden among the trees, lurking… malignant things… evil things… and it was they who were watching me, waiting for me to move!

  But how had I gotten here? I looked down at my legs, stretched my arms… I was clad in the blue pajamas in which I had gone to bed… gone to my bed in my New York house… in my house in New York… how had I come here? I did not seem to be dreaming…

  Now I saw that three paths led out of the shallow pit. They passed over the edge, and stretched, each in a different direction, toward the woods. And suddenly I knew that I must take one of these paths, and that it was vitally important that I pick the right one… that only one could be traversed safely… that the other two would lead me into the power of those lurking things.

  The pit began to contract. I felt its bottom lifting beneath my feet. The pit was thrusting me out! I leaped upon the path at my right, and began to walk slowly along it. Then involuntarily I began to run, faster and faster along it, toward the woods. As I drew nearer I saw that the path pierced the woods straight as an arrow flight, and that it was about three feet wide and bordered closely by the trees, and that it vanished in the dim green distance. Faster and faster I ran. Now I had entered the woods, and the unseen things were gathering among the trees that bordered the path, thronging the borders, rushing silently from all the wood. What those things were, what they would do to me if they caught me I did not know… I only knew that nothing that I could imagine of agony could equal what I would experience if they did catch me.

  On and on I raced through the wood, each step a nightmare. I felt hands stretching out to clutch me… heard shrill whisperings… Sweating, trembling, I broke out of the wood and raced over a vast plain that stretched, treeless, to the distant horizon. The plain was trackless, pathless, and covered with brown and withered grass. It was like, it came to me, the blasted heath of Macbeth's three witches. No matter… it was better than the haunted wood. I paused and looked back at the trees. I felt from them the gaze of myriads of the evil eyes.

  I turned my back, and began to walk over the withered plain. I looked up at the sky. The sky was misty green. High up in it two cloudy orbs began to glow… black suns… no, they were not suns… they were eyes… The eyes of the doll-maker! They stared down at me from the misty green sky… Over the horizon of that strange world two gigantic hands began to lift… began to creep toward me… to catch me and hurl me back into the wood… white hands with long fingers… and each of the long white fingers a living thing. The hands of the doll-maker!

  Closer came the eyes, and closer writhed the hands. From the sky came peal upon peal of laughter… The laughter of the doll-maker!

  That laughter still ringing in my ears, I awakened—or seemed to awaken. I was in my room sitting bolt upright in my bed. I was dripping with sweat, and my heart was pumping with a pulse that shook my body. I could see the chandelier glimmering in the light from the windows like a small nebulous cloud. I could see the windows faintly outlined. It was very still…

  There was a movement at one of the windows. I would get up from the bed and see what it was—I could not move!

  A faint greenish glow began within the room. At first it was like the flickering phosphorescence one sees upon a decaying log. It waxed and waned, waxed and waned, but grew ever stronger. My room became plain. The chandelier gleamed like a decaying emerald—

  There was a little face at the window! A doll's face! My heart leaped, then curdled with despair. I thought: "McCann has failed! It is the end!"

  The doll looked at me, grinning. Its face was smooth shaven, that of a man about forty. The nose was long, the mouth wide and thin-lipped. The eyes were close-set under bushy brows. They glittered, red as rubies.

  The doll crept over the sill. It slid, head-first, into the room. It stood for a moment on its head, legs waving. It somersaulted twice. It came to its feet, one little hand at its lips, red eyes upon mine—waiting. As though expecting applause! It was dressed in the tights and jacket of a circus acrobat. It bowed to me. Then with a flourish, it pointed to the window.

  Another little face was peering there. It was austere, cold, the face of a man of sixty. It had small side whiskers. It
stared at me with the expression I supposed a banker might wear when someone he hates applies to him for a loan—I found the thought oddly amusing. Then abruptly I ceased to feel amused.

  A banker-doll! An acrobat-doll!

  The dolls of two of those who had suffered the unknown death!

  The banker-doll stepped with dignity down from the window. It was in full evening dress, swallowtails, stiff shirt—all perfect. It turned and with the same dignity raised a hand to the windowsill. Another doll stood there—the doll of a woman about the same age as the banker-doll, and garbed like it in correct evening dress.

  The spinster!

  Mincingly, the spinster-doll took the proffered hand. She jumped lightly to the floor.

  Through the window came a fourth doll, all in spangled tights from neck to feet. It took a flying leap, landing beside the acrobat-doll. It looked up at me with grinning face, then bowed.

  The four dolls began to march toward me, the acrobats leading, and behind them with slow and stately step, the spinster-doll and banker-doll-arm in arm.

  Grotesque, fantastic, these they were—but not humorous, God—no! Or if there were anything of humor about them, it was that at which only devils laugh.

  I thought, desperately: "Braile is just on the other side of the door! If I could only make some sound!"

  The four dolls halted and seemed to consult. The acrobats pirouetted, and reached to their backs. They drew from the hidden sheaths their dagger-pins. In the hands of banker-doll and spinster-doll appeared similar weapons. They presented the points toward me, like swords.

  The four resumed their march to my bed…

  The red eyes of the second acrobat-doll—the trapeze performer, I knew him now to be—had rested on the chandelier. He paused, studying it. He pointed to it, thrust the dagger-pin back into its sheath, and bent his knees, hands cupped in front of them. The first doll nodded, then stood, plainly measuring the height of the chandelier from the floor and considering the best approach to it. The second doll pointed to the mantel, and the pair of them swarmed up its sides to the broad ledge. The elderly pair watched them, seemingly much interested. They did not sheath their dagger-pins.

  The acrobat-doll bent, and the trapeze-doll put a little foot in its cupped hands. The first doll straightened, and the second flew across the gap between mantel and chandelier, caught one of the prismed circles, and swung. Immediately the other doll leaped outward, caught the chandelier and swung beside its spangled mate.

  I saw the heavy old fixture tremble and sway. Down upon the floor came crashing a dozen of the prisms. In the dead stillness, it was like an explosion.

  I heard Braile running to the door. He threw it open. He stood on the threshold. I could see him plainly in the green glow, but I knew that he could not see—that to him the room was in darkness. He cried:

  "Lowell! Are you all right? Turn on the lights!"

  I tried to call out. To warn him. Useless! He groped forward, around the foot of the bed, to the switch. I think that then he saw the dolls. He stopped short, directly beneath the chandelier, looking up.

  And as he did so the doll above him swung by one hand, drew its dagger-pin from its sheath and dropped upon Braile's shoulders, stabbing viciously at his throat!

  Braile shrieked—once. The shriek changed into a dreadful bubbling sigh…

  And then I saw the chandelier sway and lurch. It broke from its ancient fastenings. It fell with a crash that shook the house, down upon Braile and the doll-devil ripping at his throat.

  Abruptly the green glow disappeared. There was a scurrying in the room like the running of great rats.

  The paralysis dropped from me. I threw my hand round to the switch and turned on the lights; leaped from the bed.

  Little figures were scrambling up and out of the window. There were four muffled reports like popguns. I saw Ricori at the door, on each side of him a guard with silenced automatic, shooting at the window.

  I bent over Braile. He was quite dead. The falling chandelier had dropped upon his head, crushing the skull. But Braile had been dying before the chandelier had fallen… his throat ripped… the carotid artery severed.

  The doll that had murdered him was gone!

  Chapter 15 - The Witch Girl

  I stood up. I said bitterly:

  "You were right, Ricori—her servants are better than yours."

  He did not answer, looking down at Braile with pity-filled face.

  I said: "If all your men fulfill their promises like McCann, that you are still alive I count as one of the major miracles."

  "As for McCann," he turned his gaze to me somberly, "he is both intelligent and loyal. I will not condemn him unheard. And I say to you, Dr. Lowell, that if you had shown more frankness to me this night—Dr. Braile would not be dead."

  I winced at that—there was too much truth in it. I was racked by regret and grief and helpless rage. If I had not let my cursed pride control me, if I had told them all that I could of my encounter with the doll-maker, explained why there were details I was unable to tell, given myself over to Braile for a cleansing counter-hypnotization—no, if I had but accepted Ricori's offer of protection, or Braile's to watch over me while asleep—then this could not have happened.

  I looked into the study and saw there Ricori's nurse. I could hear whispering outside the study doors—servants, and others from the Annex who had been attracted by the noise of the falling chandelier. I said to the nurse, quite calmly:

  "The chandelier fell while Dr. Braile was standing at the foot of my bed talking to me. It has killed him. But do not tell the others that. Only say that the chandelier fell, injuring Dr. Braile. Send them back to their beds—say that we are taking Dr. Braile to the hospital. Then return with Porter and clean up what you can of the blood. Leave the chandelier as it is."

  When she had gone I turned to Ricori's gunmen.

  "What did you see when you shot?"

  One answered: "They looked like monkeys to me."

  The other said: "Or midgets."

  I looked at Ricori, and read in his face what he had seen. I stripped the light blanket from the bed.

  "Ricori," I said, "let your men lift Braile and wrap him in this. Then have them carry him into the small room next to the study and place him on the cot."

  He nodded to them, and they lifted Braile from the debris of shattered glass and bent metal. His face and neck had been cut by the broken prisms and by some chance one of these wounds was close to the spot where the dagger-pin of the doll had been thrust. It was deep, and had probably caused a second severance of the carotid artery. I followed with Ricori into the small room. They placed the body on the cot and Ricori ordered them to go back to the bedroom and watch while the nurses were there. He closed the door of the small room behind them, then turned to me.

  "What are you going to do, Dr. Lowell?"

  What I felt like doing was weeping, but I answered: "It is a coroner's case, of course. I must notify the police at once."

  "What are you going to tell them?"

  "What did you see at the window, Ricori?"

  "I saw the dolls!"

  "And I. Can I tell the police what did kill Braile before the chandelier fell? You know I cannot. No, I shall tell them that we were talking when, without warning, the fixture dropped upon him. Splintered glass from the pendants pierced his throat. What else can I say? And they will believe that readily enough when they would not believe the truth—"

  I hesitated, then my reserve broke; for the first time in many years, I wept.

  "Ricori—you were right. Not McCann but I am to blame for this—the vanity of an old man—had I spoken freely, fully—he would be alive… but I did not… I did not… I am his murderer."

  He comforted me—gently as a woman…

  "It was not your fault. You could not have done otherwise… being what you are… thinking as you have so long thought. If in your unbelief, your entirely natural unbelief, the witch found her opportunity… still, it
was not your fault. But now she shall find no more opportunities. Her cup is full and overflowing… "

  He put his hands on my shoulders.

  "Do not notify the police for a time—not until we hear from McCann. It is now close to twelve and he will telephone even if he does not come. I will go to my room and dress. For when I have heard from McCann I must leave you."

  "What do you mean to do, Ricori?"

  "Kill the witch," he answered quietly. "Kill her and the girl. Before the day comes. I have waited too long. I will wait no longer. She shall kill no more."

  I felt a wave of weakness. I dropped into a chair. My sight dimmed. Ricori gave me water, and I drank thirstily. Through the roaring in my ears I heard a knocking at the door and the voice of one of Ricori's men:

  "McCann is here."

  Ricori said: "Tell him to come in."

  The door opened. McCann strode into the room.

  "I got her—"

  He stopped short, staring at us. His eyes fell upon the covered body upon the cot and his face grew grim:

  "What's happened?"

  Ricori answered: "The dolls killed Dr. Braile. You captured the girl too late, McCann. Why?"

  "Killed Braile? The dolls! God!" McCann's voice was as though a hand had gripped his throat.

  Ricori asked: "Where is the girl, McCann?"

  He answered, dully: "Down in the car, gagged and tied."

  Ricori asked: "When did you get her? And where?"

  Looking at McCann, I suddenly felt a great pity and sympathy for him. It sprang from my own remorse and shame. I said:

  "Sit down, McCann. I am far more to blame for what has happened than you can possibly be."

  Ricori said, coldly: "Leave me to be judge of that. McCann, did you place cars at each end of the street, as Dr. Lowell instructed?"

  "Yes."

  "Then begin your story at that point."

  McCann said: "She comes into the street. It's close to eleven. I'm at the east end an' Paul at the west. I say to Tony: 'We got the wench pocketed!' She carries two suitcases. She looks around an' trots where we located her car. She opens the door. When she comes out she rides west where Paul is. I've told Paul what the Doc tells me, not to grab her too close to the doll-shop. I see Paul tail her. I shoot down the street an' tail Paul.