E were alone then, that creature of hell and myself. I looked at her provocative, voluptuous body in that blue gown which did not hide it from my gaze. Many a man would have given his soul to possess her, but my hatred of her made her repulsive in my eyes.
I went to her, saying: “You promise we shall be released—after?”
“I promise,” she said, moving into my embrace.
I had to restrain myself to laugh the lie back into her face. I brought my mouth down to her red lips, and she was vibrant against me. For a moment she stepped away from me; the blue gown fluttered to the floor. I swung her nude body up in my arms and bore her to the bed while she moaned words of passion into my ear. I fondled her golden flesh, my hands moving up her body. She lay purring with ecstasy. My angers reached her throat, caressing—then tightened.
She made the mistake of believing that threats of torturing my wife could any longer affect me. Threats can be effective only if there is a choice. Whatever I did or did not do, Helen and I would die. Perhaps we could expect a quicker or more merciful death from her monstrous servants than from her.
She writhed under me and her fingers clawed up at my face. Grimly I held on until her struggles ceased. But I did not quite kill her. A ray of hope flickered across my mind—a plan.
When she was unconscious I ripped a bed sheet into strips and tied her hands and feet and crammed a gag into her mouth.
Silently I moved to the door. There was no lock. Listening against the panel, I could not hear Emil. I ventured to open the door several inches and peered down the hall. No sight of anybody.
A woman cried out hoarsely. Not downstairs in the torture chamber, but in one of the rooms along the hall. And then I knew. Four naked women down there, guarded by four monsters! Without Tala Mag there to hold them back, the result was inevitable. That was why Emil had for once disobeyed her orders.
I shut the door and returned to the bed. As I thought of Helen in the embrace of one of those hideous servants, I went frantic with impatience. But I had to take my time if I wanted to save Helen and the others at all.
In my pocket I found a couple of matchbooks and a package of crumpled cigarettes. I lit a cigarette, then went into the adjoining bathroom and got water and revived Tala Mag. She glared up at me with all the fury of hell.
I sat down on the bed. “Listen,” I said. “Somewhere in this house there must be weapons. Perhaps also an extra key to the chains downstairs. You will tell me where they are.”
Her eyes were contemptuous.
I puffed on the cigaret and then crushed the lighted tip against her abdomen. Her torso arched and fell back on the bed. I lit another cigaret and kept the match alive, letting the tiny flame trail between her heaving breasts. And when that match died, I lit others, and I also kept a cigaret constantly glowing.
I had not thought that I could so calmly torture any woman, no matter how evil she may be; but she had made me into a creature akin to herself, and Helen’s life, and more than her life, was at stake.
The contempt in her face gave way to fear—and pain. She squirmed and thrashed on the bed, but could not escape the steady torment of the matches and cigaret tips. And at last she indicated that she was ready to talk.
I kept one hand about her throat while with the other I removed the gag. Even then she thought to betray me, as I had expected, but my ready fingers choked off her shriek before it could get started.
“Don’t raise your voice,” I said. “Now start talking.”
“The third door to the right down the hall,” she gasped. “There are guns in the desk drawer, and the key.”
I shoved the gag back between her teeth. Noiselessly I let myself out into the hall and stood there. She was lying, of course; her first attempt would be to lead me into a trap. I heard sounds come from down the hall which froze my blood, No doubt the third room on the right was where the monsters had taken the women.
When I returned to the bedroom, Tala Mag’s eyes widened with surprise. She had imagined that by now I would have walked into the monster’s den.
I dropped down on the bed and struck a match. Her head wagged frantically, signaling that this time she would tell the truth. I ignored her; I could not afford to take another risk. I let the flame lick the bare soles of her feet. Her body tied up in a knot and whimpers dribbled through the gag.
Present I said: “If you fool me once again, I will return and set fire to the mattress.”
I pulled out the gag. She had to clear her throat several times before words would come through. “In that dresser—a bunch of keys. One for the chains—another unlocks the room—across the way—a gunroom. It’s the truth. Please, don’t—don’t torture me again.”
“So you can’t take it yourself!” I said, replacing the gag.
The bunch of keys were in the dresser drawer all right. I had to take the chance that they were the right ones. I stood over her and pointed to each key in turn. She nodded when I indicated the one for the chains and the one for the gunroom.
This time she hadn’t dared to lie. No sound came through the door of the room across the hall. The key worked and I found myself in a cozily furnished den. Stuffed animals and fish were on the walls and on a rack were a dozen hunting rifles and shotguns. I selected five rifles, found cartridges to fit, and, burdened with the guns, went downstairs.
All the servants were occupied with the women. In the torture chamber I found the four men still in their chains and the horrible corpse of Inez Spaulding dangling from the ceiling. The men, knowing what was happening to their wives upstairs, seemed more dead than alive.
For a while they refused to believe the testimony of their eyes. But when I at last had them all free and was distributing the rifles, their expressions changed from hopeless to relentless thirst for vengeance.
“God, I want just one shot at them!” Victor Rooney exclaimed, stating what all of us felt. “Hurry!” Frank Bord urged. “Our poor wives up there!”
We had to leave Rob Spaulding behind, because he would be no use to us. He crawled over to the dangling corpse of his wife and jabbered up at it. He was utterly mad.
I led the way to the upstairs room and kicked in the door. The other three crowded behind me, and momentarily we froze with horror.
* * * *
The four huge creatures were on the floor, each with one of our wives. In order to whet their bestial appetites they were toying with them, slobbering over their quivering bodies. And the women were still going through the futile motions of struggling, so that I knew, with a lifting of my heart, that we had not arrived too late.
Emil was with my wife, and it was he who first became aware of our presence. Bellowing, he rose to his feet and charged at me like an enraged bull. I was ready and put a bullet in his massive chest before he was halfway across the room. And still he came on!
We had prepared our strategy while coming up the stairs. I slid away from the doorway and Cuyler took my place. His bullet dropped Emil. Then Rooney was in the doorway, his gun ready.
The servants were unarmed, and as they plunged toward the door one of us was always there to meet him with a bullet. By the time four bullets had been fired, it was again my turn at the door. In the interim I had reloaded my rifle. Two were dead and one wounded. The fourth, Wick, was crouching behind Lillian Bord, using her as a shield.
Our tactic had been calculated to keep our wives out of the line of our bullets. I dropped the wounded servant, then we advanced into the room. Wick screeched as we moved around his living shield. Then he reared up and got his mighty hands on Bord. He would have snapped Bord’s head like a twig if Rooney hadn’t jabbed the bore of his rifle up under Wick’s chin and blasted away. The discharge almost lifted the monster’s head off.
Each of us went hysterical then, snatching up his wife and crushing her to him. Suddenly Frank Bord cried out.
Naked, Tala Mag stood in the doorway. She had managed to free herself. In her hands was a double-barreled shotgun. Her face was co
ntorted with hate.
We had dropped our rifles. Both barrels of that shotgun could do frightful damage in the confines of the room. The final triumph, was, after all, Tala Mag’s.
Her lips curled back over pointed white teeth. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
We did not notice the shape that loomed up behind her. We saw only an arm whip about her neck and yank her backwards. The gun thundered; the discharge tore into the ceiling. And then Tala Mag was on the floor, thrashing in the grip of Bob Spaulding.
He had come up after all, and now he was repaying, to some measure, for the horrible death of his wife. We did not interfere. I doubt if all of us could have torn away the hands of the madman from Tala Mag’s throat.
Her face turned blue. The thrashing of her body ceased. And still Bob Spaulding held on.
In the end we had to pull him away from the dead woman. He struggled with us, raving that he wanted to tear Tala Mag’s body apart, but at last we quieted him and led him downstairs.
Our wives waited out on the terrace while we went for the last time into the torture chamber and took down Inez Spaulding’s body and gathered up the clothing. While the women dressed we found the switches which controlled the ponderous gates. Then silently we got into our cars and drove away in the night from that living hell.
THE SHRIEKING POOL, by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
Staring at the crooked cross of a sign that marked the fork in the road, an unaccountable shudder rippled along Corrin’s spine. It was a very unprepossessing sign, all mottled where old white paint had peeled off. One arm of the cross pointed out that three miles to the east lay Ottville. The other arm; pointing in the opposite direction, carried the words, “To Black Pool.”
When he had asked the old wattle-necked farmer, who ran the roadside filling station, the way to Black Pool, the soul had dropped out of the old man’s eyes. Nor would a ten dollar bill buy the desired information. “Ef you get there, young feller,” he had said, “you get there because the Devil hisself guided you. I ain’t hankerin’ for to have your blood on my hands by tellin’ you how to get there!”
And Larry remembered the incoherent note that Dean Wile, owner of Black Pool Lodge, had sent him:
Black Pool has fallen into ill repute. It is thought to have an insatiable appetite for human flesh. But if you’re willing to gamble on getting a story for your paper, we’d be glad to have you join us for the week-end. Frankly, we need your help. I can’t tell you anything more without giving you the impression that I am a little unbalanced.
And the trip along the Ottville road had been anything but pleasant. A pall of black sky had draped the dying sun; night was born too soon. Pale lightning reveled thunderously around the horizon. Little breezes that wandered above the waste land, stirred the frail, plumose pines, brought exotic, unpleasant perfumes from the moldering swamp that lay hidden in the shadows.
There was a vague, unfamiliar quality in the gathering darkness that no searchlight could dispel.
Then the forks in the Ottville road came in the most unexpected places. The last one had resulted in the bogging of his car. He had proceeded on foot, stumbled across the wreck of a sign that pointed out his destination. But instead of that sense of relief that normally follows the completion of a tiresome journey, Larry Corrin felt an inexplicable dread. Black Pool! An insatiable appetite for human flesh!
To the west, the road mounted slowly to higher and consequently drier ground; the trees became more vigorous, hedging in the road until it was scarcely more than a path. Parting a veritable curtain of vines, Larry came suddenly upon Black Pool. Instantly he recalled how Dean Wile had described it: “A jewel in the hand of a Titan.” He understood now. The five little knolls that surrounded the onyx-like surface of the water were like five stubby fingers. Larry was standing on what he imagined to be the thumb of the giant hand. He could look across the pond at the lights gleaming cheerfully from the lodge.
Floating out over the water came soft music. A woman was singing a haunting, minor melody. Her voice had a strange, fascinating quality, yet its huskiness was not altogether pleasant. Larry listened. There was another sound, that of heavy feet plodding through sticky mud. Tall grasses waved. A splash, and again the night belonged to a woman’s singing.
The black surface of the pool tippled gently in the wake of a punt moving slowly twenty feet from the shore. In the prow stood a long, thin man, poling. In the stern, wrapped in white, was the lovely form of the singing woman—Dean Wile’s young wife, perhaps.
The singing stopped. “You know, Frank,” the woman said, “you may well wonder how I put up with him day after day. I don’t love him. I never could love a man whose mind is completely wrapped up in his work.”
The man in the stern of the punt dropped his pole, crouched in the bottom of the drifting boat, and crawled toward the woman. “Bernice!” The name barely audible from his lips throbbed with passion.
It was the last word he ever spoke. Directly behind the little boat, something marred the black surface. From where Larry stood, it looked like a little watersnake, swimming with head erect. It was rapidly overhauling the craft. Suddenly, the water behind the boat was cleaved by a great, round, reptilian head. A black, three-taloned member fully twelve inches across slashed up through the water, fastened to the edge of the boat, and gave it a sudden lurch.
The man in the boat uttered a strange, terrorful cry and pitched over the side. For a moment, Larry saw his face raised in frantic appeal. Then huge talons struck down in a blow of tremendous power that caught the man full in the face, obliterating his features, turning his face into a gory pulp that uttered shriek after shriek until it was dragged burbling beneath the water.
Larry Corrin shook himself from a paroxysm of horror that had rooted him to the spot. The woman—what had become of her? He raced down the hill, plowed through long grasses and plunged into the water. The woman was swimming toward him, her breath coming in tortured gasps. Larry’s flashlight sought her face. She was very beautiful. His arm went beneath her bare, wet arm, encircled her back. He lifted her bodily and carried her to the shore.
She clung closely to him, murmuring over and over, “Frank…Frank” in her dreamy, caressing voice.
Larry stood the woman somewhat roughly upon her feet. Her wide blue eyes sought his face inquiringly. “You saw it? You saw the monster. You’ll believe?”
Larry scowled. “I—I don’t know what to believe, Mrs. Wile.”
Perhaps she read a second meaning into his words. A frown of displeasure flitted across her face. “You—you’re Larry Corrin?”
He nodded.
“Bernice! Bernice!” A man’s voice was shouting from the other side of the pool. A yellow lantern bobbed along the shore. “Bernice, are you all right?”
“Call out to him. Tell him you’re all right,” Larry commanded.
The girl raised her quivering voice and called back. Then holding to Larry’s arm she ran toward the man with the light.
The man who met them was short, sturdily built, and bearded. He gave the woman’s arm a quick pinch as if to assure himself that she was flesh and blood, then extended his hand to Larry.
“Remember me, Corrin? You’ve arrived a day ahead of schedule, haven’t you?”
* * * *
Larry Corrin clasped Ivan Stern’s hand. He remembered Stern, one of the oldest of Dean Wile’s associates in the Jordan Scientific Institute Larry said, “If I had come tomorrow, I would have been too late then, too.”
“Too?” Ivan echoed. Then his keen, questioning eyes searched the woman’s face. His voice dropped to an apprehensive whisper. “Where’s Frank Mayer?”
Bernice clutched Larry Corrin’s arm. “Tell him,” she implored.
“They were in a boat together, Mayer and—this is Mrs. Wile, I presume?”
Stern nodded. “I heard a shriek coming from the pool. I ran here. And Frank…?”
“Any conjecture you can draw will be as good as mine,” said Larry
.
“Then—then the pool sucked him under?” Stem persisted.
“Not the pool. Something else. But we can’t stand here imagining things! Mrs. Wile is wet, and—and nervous.” He remembered the brief scrap of conversation he had heard between Frank Mayer and Bernice Wile. Bernice did not love her husband. Perhaps she had loved Frank Mayer.
He shrugged away the thought and half supporting Bernice Wile hurried along the shore toward the house. Behind them came Ivan Stern growling in his beard. “Why did you go out on that damned pond after all the warnings you’ve had?” Ivan asked.
“Frank wanted to go,” Bernice panted. “He said it was all nonsense, fearing a little body of water because it was black and too treacherous for bathing.”
Stern drew a long, deep breath. “I don’t suppose Dean told you in his letter about Jimmy Droon, one of the members of the group, did he, Corrin?”
The reporter shook his head. “What’s the matter with Jimmy? Nice chap as I remember him.”
“He’s dead. Today is the eighth day!”
Fifteen minutes later, Larry Corrin was seated on the comfortable veranda of Black Pool Lodge. Sitting about him, eagerly waiting for his story of Frank Mayer’s death, were all that remained of perhaps the greatest single group of men devoted to scientific learning. Dean Wile, holding the pale hand of his wife who reclined in a deck chair, leaned forward. His high dome of a head was bald as an egg. His black brows, contrasting with the white of his skin, beetled over piercing, black-bean eyes. “My brother Perry saw the monster,” he said, addressing Larry, “or rather he saw the fore-feet of the thing. That was when Jim Droon said he was going to break the jinx of Black Pool and go for a swim. That was eight days ago. Does that mean anything to you, Larry?”
Corrin reflectively examined the tip of his cigarette. “You mean that if Jim Droon had been drowned, he would have risen to the surface today.”
“Of course he was drowned.” The speaker was Mathew Ince, a fiery haired little man, the only one in the group who was not a scientist. Mathew Ince was the manager of the huge estate that Dr. Jordan had left to the institute bearing his name. A keen business man was Ince, careful and calculating. “I’m inclined to think we’re all a bunch of marbleheads. We got ourselves all worked up because some drunken ass around here said he saw a dragon or something in Black Pool. Nothing would do but what the whole crowd must sneak up here and watch for the damned beast. And have we seen it? Science be damned. Dinosaurs are dead! None of us but Perry have seen it, and we’ve no proof that he wasn’t drunk, too.”
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 8
