Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01

by What Dreams May Come (v1. 1)

  "The Dream Rock," said Thunstone.

  "Yes. And at the end of the ten thousand years he would wake up to new deeds. New powers. The world would be his world again."

  "Which means now”

  "Yes, now. Tomorrow, in the first moments of morning after midnight, when the Dream Rock is turned.”

  "And you believe all this?” said Thunstone.

  "I believe. Don't you?”

  "What will the world change into?”

  "Wouldn't some sort of change be good?” Ensley flung back.

  "Change back to ten thousand years ago?” Thunstone challenged.

  "Might that not be a good change?” said Ensley. "Something other than this modern civilized world, this desperate, insane world, that teeters on the edge of destroying itself? The world of Gram and his people again, that survived and improved and prevailed.”

  Thunstone made no reply to that. Ensley chuckled, then went on: "When the Dream Rock is turned over there,” he said, "Gram will waken and rise from where he sleeps. Rise and find you two here, you and Gonda.”

  "What have I done to you?” Gonda whimpered. "Why do you trick me in here and shut me up?”

  "I've explained that, Gonda,” said Ensley, with an air of gentle patience. "Gram will want you both when he wakens. Thunstone for food, logically. You—maybe for love.”

  She began to cry.

  "Ensley,” said Thunstone, "you'll wind up paying with your life for this.”

  "Many will wind up paying for this with their lives,” said Ensley. "The world has changed so greatly since Gram went to sleep. Think how it will change when he rises up.”

  "How?” growled Thunstone.

  "Wait and see.”

  Thunstone's hand quested to the lock. It was of massive iron, set solidly into the barred door, with a keyhole big enough to admit his forefinger. Thunstone dragged at the lock. It did not even budge in its place.

  "You're a very strong man, but you’ll never force that,” said Ensley. "Hob and I saw to it and the hinges too, not long ago. You can't get out without this.” He held up the key triumphantly. “You’ll be there when Gram wakes.”

  He began to back away along the corridor, with Hob Sayle.

  “I’ll get out, all right,” promised Thunstone grimly.

  “Hob will be on guard hereabouts at all times,” returned Ensley. “Later in the evening, he’ll bring you something to eat and drink. But don’t try to grapple him through the bars. He won’t have the key, won’t be able to open the door.”

  The two backed away farther.

  “You have hours as yet,” Ensley called. “Why not tell each other the stories of your lives?”

  The lantern looked dim by then.

  “Quick, let’s light the candle,” said Thunstone to Gonda. “Where did I drop those matches?”

  Stooping, he groped along the rocky floor and found the box. He struck a match and held it to the wick of a candle as thick as his wrist, stuck in its own wax to a projection of the wall. The flame rose, clear and lean and lemon yellow, like the petal of a flower. It gave them a soft radiance.

  Gonda had sat down on a lower shelf of rock against the wall. She seemed to crouch there, to cower. She lifted her face. It looked ghostly.

  “And now what?” she asked in a dead voice. “How are we to get out of here?”

  “We’ll see,” said Thunstone. “Someone or other said that if you get into a place, you can get out. We’ll see.”

  He turned this way and that, making a study of their prison in the gentle light.

  At the rear of it, opposite the barred door, was a hollowed niche and within that the dark boulder. That stone seemed to be a dozen feet long and six feet high, and it almost filled the recess. Coming closer to see his best, Thunstone saw that on top of it lay a separate slab of rock, like a lid. He put both hands to that, and heaved. It seemed to stir. He took his hands away and put his ear to the lower mass.

  He could hear something. Something slow and regular, like deep breathing. He faced around toward Gonda.

  “I don't think we'd better lift that upper rock just now," he said. ‘‘Ensley spoke this much truth. Something's asleep inside."

  “Horrible," moaned Gonda. “Horrible, horrible."

  She still cowered where she sat. Thunstone made note of other things. Chief among these, more candles stuck here and there, in cracks or niches of the rock.

  “We’ll be glad we have these," he said, gathering them up.

  “Once Ensley brought me almost here," said Gonda. “He wanted to do a sort of worship by those lights. Four, five, he lighted them. The way he acted frightened me. 1 ran back upstairs, and later he came up and laughed and said I didn't understand."

  “I'm beginning to understand," said Thunstone. “I'm convinced. I wouldn't be if I hadn't seen back across his ten thousand years."

  He went again to the barred doorway. Carefully he studied it, in the beam of his pocket flashlight. It was strongly hinged into the rock, with bolts sunk deeply into the stone of the wall. The lock, as he had seen, as Ensley had said, was of iron too sturdy for him to budge. He turned away from the examination of the door to face Gonda.

  “We’ll have to see what happens," he said. “May I smoke my pipe?"

  “Please," she said. “Please do. I'll have a cigarette; I brought some."

  He filled the pipe and held the end of the burnt match to the candle flame to light her cigarette, then the pipe. Her face was a taut, pallid mask in the glow of the match. She sat down on a fragment of rock close to the wall. Thunstone leaned near the niche where the boulder and its lid lay. Both of them smoked in silence. Then:

  “Tell each other the stories of our lives, he said," remembered Gonda. “I'm not afraid to tell mine."

  “And I'm not afraid to listen, and tell mine in turn," said Thunstone.

  “It always begins, a life story, by telling where the teller was bom, and when. My birthplace was a small town on the coast of Norway, Fredrikshal, but then we moved to Oslo, where my mother brought me up to win contests.”

  Her mother, it seemed, early recognized that Gonda had several talents. Gonda was given piano lessons, and competed for prizes. Gonda was taught to paint, and entered her canvases in various exhibitions. And Gonda had power to read the pasts and futures of visitors and neighbors, and became a spiritistic medium and earned money at that, money which her mother was glad to appropriate.

  She did not mention a father, though she must have had one. Thunstone wondered, but did not ask, if she might be illegitimate. She went on to say that she grew to womanhood and refused to let her mother keep the money that she, Gonda, earned. She traveled to Paris, to Vienna, to exhibit her mediumistic gifts. She attracted some attention, at theaters and at homes of rich enthusiasts. Men admired her. She hinted that she had had lovers, though she did not name them, did not go into detail. At last, a year or so ago, she had met Gram Ensley.

  "And he was charming,” she said. "You have seen that he can be plausible, persuasive. He told me of a field of psychical research to study here. He offered me money to come. No, he never made love to me. But almost at once, he found that I could see back into the long- ago times. He found that we could go there together/*

  "Then you*ve both traveled back ten thousand years.”

  "We have. I can do it by turning out all lights. If we blew out that candle—it*s almost out now—“

  Thunstone went to the candle. It was burned almost to its end; her story had taken more time than he thought. He rummaged, found another stump and lighted its wick from the first, and stuck it to the rock. Returning to Gonda, he studied her pale face, her pale hair. "Tell the rest,** he urged her.

  "Not much to tell. He brought me down to look at those paintings you saw. He was happy when I tried some studies from them. And he has liked my playing on his piano. He promised to introduce me to someone of great fascination.** Her slant eyes studied him. "Did he mean you, did he foresee you would come to Claines?”


  “Or did he mean Gram, lying there, due to waken?” suggested Thunstone.

  She shuddered. Even in the dim blur of light, she looked fine- figured in her black dress. The coal of a fresh cigarette glowed to reflect from her eyes.

  “Your turn now,” she said. “Your story. Turnabout is fair play.”

  Thunstone sat down on the rough floor, his back against a rise of the rock. He felt a chill in the air, as though from some deep chasm somewhere. Might that chasm be found, might it spell freedom? He looked at Gonda in the flicker of the candle’s beam, and told what he felt like telling of his life story.

  It was a story that started in fairly simple terms. His had been a modest country upbringing, an early growth to size and strength that found him working between school terms at a lumberyard, a slaughterhouse, a sawmill; a chance to go to college because his tuition would be paid, his expenses most modestly met, if he would play football; graduate work after that, then his fortunate meeting with Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, their friendship and partnership in strange activities; his adventures against creatures that called themselves the Shonokins, that claimed to have owned America before the first Indian comers, whose claims at times seemed valid, whose efforts took a considerable lot of defeating. He told Gonda that he liked small comforts in life, good food and drink, pleasant, sensible talk with pleasant, sensible people, and that he hoped eventually for peace and quiet.

  As he finished, the second candle guttered almost into darkness. Quickly Thunstone searched here and there, found yet another big stump, and lighted it. He looked at his watch in its radiance.

  “Seven o’clock, or nearly,” he said. “Over yonder I see one more piece of candle. Maybe we’ll have candlelight enough to see until midnight.”

  “Why are there candles here?” asked Gonda.

  “You’ve answered that. Ensley conducted religious rites, here around this tomb, or couch, call it what you like.”

  He went close to the great mass of rock. He leaned his ear against it and heard a blurred rush of sound, a pause, another rush. It was as though something inside breathed rhythmically.

  “What do you hear?” Gonda whispered.

  “Nothing much,” he lied, coming away from the boulder.

  She clenched her fists. “Oh,” she said taudy, “I could scream, scream at the top of my lungs.”

  “I hope you don’t,” said Thunstone. “You might wake up what- ever’s nesting yonder, wake it up before midnight.”

  She relaxed a trifle, but only a trifle. She rose to her feet.

  “One thing I did not hear in your life story,” she said. “Mention of women.”

  “I’ve known various women,” he told her, “but I didn’t feel like dragging them into my story.”

  She looked at him, slant-eyed, pallid-faced. Her mouth was held so tighdy he could barely see her lips.

  “Did you hear Gram Ensley when he left us here?” she said. “He spoke of death, he spoke of love. He himself never made love to me— but I’ve said that, haven’t I? I wonder, did he mean that you and I should make love?”

  She came closer at that. She breathed deeply. She fixed her eyes on him.

  “If he meant that,” said Thunstone, “I’d certainly never make love at Ensley’s command.”

  “Do you know what love is?” she half-cried at him. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “I'm in love at this moment,” said Thunstone. “I’ve gone away from her in America because I don’t want to involve her in the things I do—things like what I’m doing here. If I can be glad of anything here and now, I’m glad she’s not in this place with us, waiting for whatever will happen.”

  Gonda looked out through the bars. “Somebody’s coming,” she said.

  A light bobbed in the tunnel-like hall of rock. Thunstone moved close to the bars. A figure came toward him. It was Hob Sayle, with his electric lantern slung on an elbow. In both hands he bore a heaped tray.

  “Mr. Ensley told me to fetch you supper,” he said. “I'm coming close, to give things in, but it’s no use your trying to lay hold on me. Even if I wanted to unlock for you, I haven't the key.”

  He slid a bottle between the bars to Thunstone. “That's hock,” he said. “I’ve taken the cork out, so that it can breathe.”

  “Hold this,” said Thunstone to Gonda, putting the bottle in her hands.

  “And here, beef sandwiches,” said Sayle, handing in napkin- wrapped rectangles. “Cut from the joint we had at dinner.”

  “Do me a favor,” said Thunstone, and passed a sandwich back. “Eat this.”

  Hob Sayle squinted in the lantern light, and smiled wispily. “Oh, to be sure,” he said. “I see what you mean—drugs or poison. It will be a pleasure, sir.”

  He unwrapped the sandwich and took a big bite.

  “Tell me,” said Thunstone, “how do you hope to get away with this? Keeping us prisoner here?”

  “I do what Mr. Ensley bids me,” said Sayle, eating. “I've done that since I was just a lad here. I’m a good soldier.”

  “You believe in him, and in Gram?” asked Thunstone.

  “I do, sir.”

  He finished the sandwich.

  “And now,” said Thunstone, taking the bottle back from Gonda, “drink some of this.”

  “A pleasure, sir,” said Sayle again. He turned up the bottle and Thunstone heard it gurgle. “First-rate,” said Sayle, giving the bottle back.

  “Thanks, and I had to try you,” said Thunstone. “Now we'll eat and drink without suspicion.”

  “You’ve five hours to midnight, or nearly.”

  Sayle plodded away, taking his light with him.

  Thunstone and Gonda ate their sandwiches and drank from the bottle by turns. They talked. Gonda spoke of love, Thunstone spoke of escape.

  “If we're to escape, why don't you find out how?” Gonda prodded him.

  “I’ve looked at everything. The fastenings of the gate, the rocks of the walls. I’ve looked everywhere but in that hollow rock back in the niche/'

  He moved toward it.

  “Don't open it up," Gonda quavered.

  “No. It's supposed to open by itself at midnight."

  “When they turn the Dream Rock over," said Gonda tonelessly. “And Gram, the god Gram, wakens up here."

  They took turns at the bottle, a sip at a time. When they had finished it, the burning candle was burned down to a fraction of an inch. Thunstone found the last stub. He lighted it with one of his matches, and with the same match kindled a cigarette for Gonda, then his pipe. He did not comment on the old nervousness attending three lights from a match. He bent to study his watch.

  “It's just past nine o'clock," he reported.

  “Which gives us less than three hours," she scolded. “Why don't you do something? What are you staring at?"

  “Somebody's coming," he replied. “Not Hob Sayle this time. At least, it's not his light."

  The glow in the corridor slid here and there. “Hello?" called a voice that Thunstone knew.

  “Constance Bailey!" he shouted back.

  She came at a scuttling run, dressed in her rumpled brown, flourishing a huge electric flashlight the size of a policeman's truncheon.

  CHAPTER 16

  Breathlessly, Constance Bailey threw herself against the heavy grid of bars.

  "I had to find you,” she gasped out. "Mrs. Fothergill was worried— proper prone, she was—you hadn’t come to supper, you must be in some kind of trouble.”

  "I was,” said Thunstone.

  "And she carried on so, when it got to be nine, I said I'd go look, and I came here. Nobody at the door, but when I came in that Hob Sayle man came in my way and said, 'No, you can’t go down there,’ and I just hit him a good hard knock with this.” She held up the big flashlight. "I’d brought it because the dark was coming, and—”

  "You knocked him cold?” put in Thunstone. "Good girl, brave girl.”

  "We can’t get out,” Gonda was babbling. "No key—”
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br />   "Constance,” said Thunstone. "I left my walking cane in the hall upstairs. I leant it against the suit of armor. Go bring it down. If Hob Sayle is trying to come to, hit him another lick.”

  She was away on twinkling, racing feet. Gonda gave a low moan, as though despairing of any help. Thunstone waited. Back bustled Constance Bailey with the cane. She pushed it between the bars.

  "Old Hob hadn’t even stirred in his sleep,” she reported. "Thanks,” said Thunstone, and drew the blade from the shank. "Hold your light close so that I can see the lock.”

  She did so. He inserted the silver point, quested inside the lock with it. He felt it grate, felt something yield. The lock moaned, something like Gonda. The door swung open. At once Thunstone pushed it wide.

  “How did you do that?” Gonda asked him.

  “This blade is holy; it’s freed me from danger before,” he said. “Now, out with you. I'll be along in a moment.”

  Gonda’s black-clad figure slid out of the enclosed cave like a fleeting shadow. Thunstone, silver blade in hand, walked back to Gram’s tomb like resting place.

  He pushed at the lid like slab. It was heavy, so heavy that he had to lean his blade against the rock and lift with all the strength of both hands. The slab seemed to grate, to complain as though long centuries had made it adhere to its place. Thunstone exerted all the power of his arms and shoulder muscles, heaved it up to stand on its side like an open lid to a trunk.

  Darkness inside, like a pool of ink, and a smell like ancient decay. He looked in, but could see nothing. From his breast pocket he took the small flashlight and directed its beam into the space.

  It seemed nearly full of hair, that space. The hair stirred, stirred again, it was dark hair, coarse hair. Whatever the ancient hollow contained, it breathed. Thunstone bent above it, directed his beam here and there. He saw horns. They were pale, branched horns, the color of old ivory. They quivered, just a trifle. They showed where some sort of head must be.