Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01

by What Dreams May Come (v1. 1)

  Thunstone took up his blade again and poised its point above the shaggy mass. He could only make a sort of guess as to where to drive it. Down he thrust, powerfully. He felt the point pierce a softness. He put his other palm to the crooked handle and resolutely pushed down, down.

  A whining sigh rose, as of escaping air. Thunstone almost choked with the odor that rose around him. He saw the shaggy bulk of the thing fall, collapse, as though it had been deflated. He cleared his blade—it came away easily—and he stepped away. Reaching up with his left hand, he caught the edge of the lid like slab and dragged at it. The thing fell back into place with a loud clap.

  Quickly he, too, walked out through the open door. He fished out a handkerchief and wiped his silver blade and dropped the handkerchief. Then he set the blade back into its sheathing shank. Out in the corridor waited Constance Bailey and Gonda. Both of them trembled in the gleam of the flashlight.

  “Wh-what was that?” stammered Gonda.

  “That was Gram,” Thunstone said. “I tried to finish him, but I can't be sure. Maybe the finish must come outside. Show us to the stairs, Constance.”

  She scurried ahead. Gonda seemed unsteady on her feet and Thunstone took her elbow to help her. She leaned against him.

  “Safe?” she whispered. “Are we safe now?”

  “I doubt if anyone's safe as yet. Here, these are the stairs.”

  Up they went, close behind Constance Bailey. The door was open at the top, and they found themselves in the hall. Hob Sayle was there, sitting limply in a corner. He held both hands to his head. Thunstone stopped and leaned above him.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Not good,” mumbled Sayle. “Not good at all. How did you get out, sir? You must go back there.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Thunstone.

  “You must,” insisted Sayle, rocking his body as he sat. “I'll be done for if you don't.”

  “I’ll be done for if I do,” Thunstone snapped. “Sorry, but I have to think of myself. Good night, Sayle.”

  He went to where Gonda and Constance Bailey stood by the suit of armor. He caught up the heavy mallet that leaned there.

  “This might come in handy,” he said. “Here, Constance, would you like my cane to carry? You've seen the silver blade in it, you've seen it do wonders.”

  “It's magic,” said Constance Bailey, taking the cane. “Good magic —white magic.”

  “And now I'll head for the church and the Dream Rock,” said Thunstone. “You ladies don't need to come if you don't want to.”

  “I'm coming,” said Constance Bailey.

  “I wouldn't dare stay by myself,” whimpered Gonda.

  “All right.”

  Thunstone dragged open the front door. Outside, the air was dusky with twilight. Here and there a window glowed, streetlights winked. Constance Bailey went out with Thunstone, her flashlight in hand.

  “That’s right, keep your beam on,” said Thunstone. "Neither you nor I want to slip back out of the twentieth century just now.” The three of them crossed the lawn and then Trail Street and turned toward St. Jude’s. They heard a hubbub of voices; they saw a dark blotch of people close together.

  Quickening his pace, Thunstone moved ahead of the two women and toward the outskirts of the weaving, chattering crowd. He estimated as many as ninety people there, a larger gathering than had gone to church, indeed a considerable part of the population of Claines. He almost ran into Ensley, who stood a trifle apart from the main press.

  "Hello,” said Thunstone, and Ensley turned and stared.

  "You got out somehow,” he said, "but you’re too late now. We’ll turn the rock, and Gram will rise and rule.”

  "I wonder,” said Thunstone. "Go back to your caves under your house and see if he will rise.”

  "He will rise,” promised Ensley.

  Thunstone shoved on toward the center of things, the heavy mallet in his hands. Roughly dressed men crowded close around the Dream Rock, but Gates stood strongly astride the prone pillar. His coat was off, he was in clerical collar and vest. He had turned up the sleeves of his white shirt. He was the biggest man of the assembly, except for Porrask. Porrask towered among companions. In his hand he carried an ax. The beams of the rising moon touched the ax’s brown rustiness.

  "I forbid you to touch it,” Gates was fairly thundering. "I’ll keep you from touching it!”

  "Ruddy great chance of that, I don’t think!” Porrask yelled back at him. "It’ll be done, whether you forbid or not!”

  Gates swung his head to glare at Porrask. "You want to try it? I’ll fight you—you tried to fight a couple of nights ago; you got beaten.” "Not time yet to turn it,” called Ensley from back in the crowd. "A couple of hours yet till midnight. Then—”

  His voice was drowned in a ragged chorus of cheers. Thunstone shoved a man out of his way and came to where Gates stood.

  "I told you I'd help you," he said to Gates.

  “Thanks," said Gates between his teeth. Then, again to Porrask: “Want to fight, do you, my man? Fighting's something I was good at in my time. Or would you rather try it on with Thunstone again, and wind up as you did before?"

  “Face up to him, Al," called someone in the crowd.

  “Time ain't yet," said Porrask, clutching the ax. “But I say to all witnesses, if I'm attacked I’ll use that, and it’ll be self-defense, that’s the word."

  “Exactly," said the voice of Ensley. “You’re entitled to defend yourself, Porrask. But after tonight, you won’t need me to stand with you."

  Gates and Porrask faced each other balefully. Porrask’s beard bristled; his eyes were wide and fierce.

  “Put that thing down," commanded Gates.

  “Make me," threw back Porrask, and lifted the ax.

  Gates sprang over the Dream Rock and at Porrask. Both his own hands clutched the helve of the ax. Porrask cursed chokingly as the two of them whirled and strove at each other. They slammed into a man in the crowd, bounced off. Then Porrask cursed again as Gates sprang clear of him, the ax in his hands.

  Yells went up all around. Gates yelled loudly enough to dominate the others.

  “Now!" he roared. “I’ve taken your ax away, Porrask!"

  “And you’ll use it on him?" challenged Ensley, coming close among the others. “Strike him with an ax, and call yourself a man of God!"

  “I won’t use it on him!"

  Gates whirled the ax aloft and brought it down on the Dream Rock, with a sound like splitting wood. The blade drove deeply into a vein of the image, sank almost to its eye. That had been a powerful blow. Silence all around for a moment, while Gates dragged on the ax to free it, and could not.

  Again people talked, jeered, all through the gathering:

  “Ow, old Dream Rock's got your ruddy ax now!"

  “Can’t fetch it away, can you?”

  Again Gates strove to wrench the ax free. It hung in its lodgment as though rooted there.

  “Now then,” blustered Porrask. “You truly want to try it with me, just fists?”

  “Gladly,” said Gates, and let go of the ax helve. He straightened up and fixed his eyes on Porrask, as though looking for a place to plant a blow.

  Everybody watched them, everybody but Thunstone. He stepped close to the Dream Rock. He planted his feet, tightened his hands on the haft of the mallet, whipped it high above him, and with all his strength he slammed it down on the flat back of the ax’s head.

  The sound of the impact crashed out like a great clap of thunder, and something like a gale of wind hurled Thunstone back from where he stood. He staggered half a dozen paces, barely keeping his feet. And he was aware of a swift, brief surge of light, as though fire had sprung up for a moment in the dusk, there where the Dream Rock was—

  Where the Dream Rock had been. It had shivered into fragments.

  That same instant, a woman’s voice cried out shrilly.

  “Look at Mr. Ensley! Oh, help!”

  The crowd stirred.
Everyone pulled away from where Ensley had fallen, where he lay limp and motionless and somehow smaller than he had been a moment ago, in life.

  “He’s struck dead!” screamed someone. “And up there—look!”

  On Sweepside, where the gathering gloom should have cloaked Old Thunder, flames danced upward. Thunstone stared at them. They had blue in their red. Once he had seen flames like that, where a gas well had caught fire. Old Thunder burned, as the Dream Rock had burned just a moment ago, before the light there had winked out.

  “Judgment of heaven!” Gates called loudly. “Judgment of heaven upon false gods!”

  Thunstone dropped his mallet. He went to where Ensley lay, with all others drawn back from him. Kneeling, he drew back an eyelid with his thumb.

  “Yes,” said Thunstone, rising and wiping his thumb on the skirt of his jacket. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead!” screamed a woman, staring. It was Mrs. Sayle. She swung close to Thunstone. “You killed him!”

  “Yes—” gobbled Porrask, making a move toward Thunstone.

  “Don’t anybody touch him!” warned Constance Bailey, at Thun- stone’s side. She held the silver blade from the cane, threatened with its keen point.

  “Now then, what’s all this?” demanded the authoritative voice of Dymock, as he strode into the center of things. “Easy does it, Connie. What’s going on here?”

  A dozen voices clamored, trying to tell him.

  “Mr. Ensley fell dead,” Thunstone almost shouted to make Dymock hear. “He was up to something—”

  “Something uncanny,” chimed in Gates. “When the Dream Rock shattered, why, down he fell.”

  People quieted again. Dymock stooped above Ensley’s motionless body. His hands quested expertly. He straightened again.

  “Shattered,” he reported. “His bones are shattered, all through. Somebody bring something to cover him. He must lie there until we get help from Gerrinsford.”

  “I’ll bring a spread from my study,” volunteered Gates.

  “And will you telephone police headquarters at Gerrinsford?” asked Dymock. “Tell them to bring along a doctor to make an examination. I must stay here.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” said Constance Bailey.

  She held out Thunstone’s cane, the blade sheathed again, and he took it. He saw Dymock put his arm around Constance Bailey, as though it belonged there.

  “Where can I go?” Gonda babbled to Thunstone. “Not back to Chimney Pots, never.”

  “We’ll both wait here for an inspector or somebody from Gerrinsford,” Thunstone said. “They’ll have questions to ask us. After that, I’d hope that Mrs. Fothergill can give you a bed tonight.”

  And it was noon on Monday, bright, English July. Thunstone sat with Spayte and Vickery in the Moonraven, eating sliced ham and drinking beer. Thunstone’s friends had checked in at Mrs. Fother- gill’s, where Gonda had gone to bed the night before and had not come out of her room since.

  “Capital ham, this,” said Spayte. “Thunstone, all you say is good to hear, since you seem to have escaped from something highly interesting. Now, as you say, the police are busy at that place called Chimney Pots. Even CID men, is that so? What have they found in that cave?”

  “In the place where Gram was supposed to sleep his ten thousand years, they found ashes,” said Thunstone. “Ashes and pieces of bone. The doctor they brought says the bone isn’t human bone; he can’t say what it is. They’ve sent for experts to decide.”

  “And Gram Ensley?” asked Spayte.

  “He’s just as Constable Dymock described him,” replied Thunstone. “Seems to be smashed, as if he’d been hit by a truck.” “Then that image in the chalk up on the hillside,” said Vickery. “It’s gone—burnt out—fire, you said. What’s left to research?” “The scraps and splinters of the Dream Rock,” said Thunstone. “Gates, the curate at St. Jude’s, has gathered them carefully together. Maybe they can be fitted back into shape.”

  “I wonder if they should be,” said Vickery. “Here, miss, bring me another mug of what this is. Thunstone, when you broke that rock up, you seem to have headed off whatever might have happened.” “Whatever might have happened,” Spayte echoed him. “I wonder if we’ll ever know. What could that Gonda woman tell us?” “We’ll have to wait until she talks,” said Thunstone. “This morning, she told Constance Bailey she couldn’t manage to come down to breakfast, but to bring her up two soft-boiled eggs and some toast and coffee and stewed fruit. I’ve been to her room at Chimney Pots and brought back two big suitcases of her things and put them in the hall for her, whenever she can come downstairs.”

  “And Chimney Pots is full of police,” said Spayte. “Just what are they up to?”

  “Ensley’s servants, Mr. and Mrs. Sayle, are being questioned,” said

  Thunstone. "They're completely unstrung, aren't much help. They only say that they've always obeyed Ensley's orders, that they were used to doing that without really understanding, and that they were pretty much afraid of him."

  "Small blame to them," said Spayte. "Have you finished your lunch? I have, and I'm eager to go to that house and see those Stone Age murals Thunstone's been talking about. Why not go?"

  "Why not?" said Thunstone.

  They all rose and walked out into Trail Street.

  Manly Wade Wellman has been writing award-winning tales of fantasy, horror, and science fiction since 1931. His many novels include The Hanging Stones, The Lost and the Lurking, After Dark, and The Old Gods Waken. In addition to his novels featuring adventurer John Thunstone, he is also the author of the highly acclaimed series of tales, told in the Southern idiom, of the wandering balladeer Silver John. Wellman has won the Gandalf Award for Lifetime Achievement from the World Fantasy Convention. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.