Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02

by After Dark (v1. 1)

  "You can still square accounts with us, and profit,” he said. "Get Ben Gray to give it up. Otherwise, you won't last out the night. We’re concentrating attention on you. That's a promise, John, a promise I’ll be able to keep.”

  He talked out yonder in the night. A night thing, that's what you might could call Brooke Altic. I recollected tales about other night things, how they left their graves at sundown and drank the blood of sleeping folks. The Shonokins had ways just that bad, if they could fetch them off.

  "I mean every word I say,” he told us, and fell quiet. The creaking and rocking of the cabin started in again.

  I looked toward the table where Warren had put down the alexandrite. It made a little crumb of fire there, stronger than just the lamplight on it. I braced myself on that rocking floor.

  "What's a-happening there?" I inquired Warren.

  "I'm not quite sure. All I know is, there's power in this jewel. I wonder—wonder—”

  He leaned his rifle to a chair back. "Where's a knife?'' he called.

  14

  "Knife?” Callie repeated as she came in from the back room where she'd been on watch.

  "A knife, and quick,” he said, the sharpest I could imagine him a-talking to her.

  "Here,” she said, and ran to the sink and fetched back a carving knife. I could see its whetted edge shine out. He took it, and I wondered what he was up to as he turned it over and over.

  "It's been blessed already, coming from your hand to me,” he said to Callie, "but I must do even more, with what words I remember.”

  He clutched the knife against him with both hands and ducked his head down. The house creaked as he did that. I reckoned that he said some kind of prayer.

  "All right now!” he halfway shouted all of a sudden.

  With the point of the knife he shoved the alexandrite to the dead center of the table. "Clear these things off here, Callie,” he said, like an order. "I'm going to need all the room there possibly is.”

  She and Hazel Techeray quick whisked away some bowls and cups and spoons. The house made its rattle all round us, though this time I didn't hear that wind. Warren took the knife and began to gouge a long, straight line in the wood of the table top. He cut another line, and then another, then two more. He made them into the shape of a five-pointed star there, with the alexandrite at the middle of it, a-shining more like a fire coal than ever.

  “What in the world are you a-doing?” I wondered him, but he said nair word back. He shifted the knife in his hand and dragged the point strong to dig a circle all round outside the five points of his star.

  “I know,” chattered Hazel Techeray, a-watching. “I know what that there thing is. Ain’t nair seen one before, but I’ve heard tell of them. I’ve heard them called—” “It’s called a pentacle,” said Warren, a-straightening himself up and a-dropping the knife. “Now, where’s that pencil John used with the plate?”

  He took it, and the house shook all round us as he wrote big letters inside each point of the star.

  “Mr. Warren, you dead certain sure of what you’re a-doing?” Hazel Techeray squeaked to him. “Them’s the names of the Five Kings of the North!”

  “That’s right,” he said. “A pentacle can defend both the body and the soul, if they deserve to be defended.” Outside, the wind made its howl again, and the thunder gave a roll like a barrel of stones a-running downhill.

  “All right now,” said Warren. “Come here, everybody. I need you.”

  “Who’s a-going to stay on watch?” asked Mr. Ben.

  “I need you,” said Warren again. “Here’s our pentacle, and the alexandrite is its center of help to us. Somebody must stand at each of the five points. Come here, John. You stand beside me.”

  I came there. Callie drew up on his other side. In front of me, a word was written in the nearest point of the star. HALANTA, I thought it said. The word in the point toward Warren looked to be ZITRAEL, and in the one toward Callie, THANAOR. Mr. Ben came and stood at a point marked TALOUK. Next to him was Hazel Techeray, and her point had the name ZITRAMI. That's the best I recollect. Just now, I'm not sure in my mind I want to know if those names are spelled right or not. We all kept hold of our guns, all but Hazel Techeray, who hadn't been given one, and Jackson Warren, who'd leaned his away.

  "We're all a-going to get ourselves destroyed with this," said Hazel Techeray, a-shaking where she'd stood herself at ZITRAMI.

  "We'll hope not," said Warren, a-motioning to make us all stand just at the star points.

  "Then names looks heathen to me," said Mr. Ben.

  "Heathen or not, I'll call on them. Quiet, now."

  He flung up his arms high and spoke:

  "You Five Kings," he said, "assist me, who have the boldness to name you, whom no man should name and invoke save when in great danger."

  Thunder sort of moaned outside. Lightning flashed its glow in at the log spaces. I thought Hazel Techeray would fall over.

  "We are in great peril of soul and body," Warren spaced his words out slow. "Pardon me if I have sinned in any manner, for I trust in your protection."

  I stood there where he'd put me to stand. I made no move, said no word. They'd chosen me the captain to defend that cabin, but here I had to give over to Warren. He knew what he was a-doing. Or anyway, I hoped he did.

  There came another big, whanging rattle of thunder and lightning.

  "They're a-fetching more storm on us," whined Hazel Techeray.

  "I think that happens to be our own storm," said Warren, and as he spoke there rose up a wild wail all round the place: The Shonokins, and not a laugh this time. Something pestered them.

  "Stop in there, stop, stop!” yelled Brooke Altic to us.

  "We've penned up the jewel,” said Warren, so softly he was hard to hear talk, even when I stood next to him. "They were focused on it. Now they know they can't reach it.”

  Thunder, thunder, and lightning, lightning.

  "You can't do that!” Brooke Altic was a-yammering.

  Nothing back from Warren, nair reply to Brooke Altic. Warren lifted his two hands again and spoke more slowspaced words:

  "Preserve us from evil spirits,” he halfway sang. "Help us to bind and destroy the evil spirits, and reconcile the good ones to us. Be our sins forgiven, be they washed whiter than snow.”

  I looked at the name in my star point. HALANTA. I wondered myself who Halanta was. I wondered who those others were, called by Hazel Techeray the Five Kings of the North. I asked in my soul about what a pentacle might could do, where it came from, who first knew the way to draw one. I got no answer. But the tempest storm made its voice heard over our cabin roof. And, midmost of the star, that alexandrite stared like a shining red eye at me. I had the notion that smoke began to curl around it

  I cut a look at Jackson Warren. His face was tenched up like as if it had been pulled tight all round and pegged down at the edges like a banjo head. His skin shown white and gleamy. I thought his hair stood up stiff as a brush. He was all the way into what he was a-trying to do.

  "I call, I call,” he was a-saying. "I call, you Five Kings, and judge if I and my cause are worthy. I commit unto you these enemies; I call on you to judge them truly.”

  I felt that if I looked round, there'd be something close behind me. Something I'd be purely scared to see. But I didn't look round. I set my eyes back on the flame-shining alexandrite.

  Outside, the wailing cry again, all round and round the house. It sounded like pain, bad pain.

  "They're in trouble, I vow,” growled out Mr. Ben, beside his TALOUK point of the star.

  "Yes,” said Warren, tight as a fiddle string. "Yes, because it's our storm now, not theirs. The Five Kings answer us.”

  They answered us, sure enough, right then. You should ought to have heard the drum roll of that thunder.

  Warren hiked his hands higher toward the rafters over him, and he turned his face up, too.

  "Five,” he rolled out. "You are five, and the points of the
pentacle are five, and the number five has great force in holy things. There are the five fingers on a hand, the five toes on a foot. There are the five senses—tasting, smelling, hearing, seeing, touching. Five is a number that will send away bad spirits, expel deadly poisons.” He drew his breath in, hard. "It is a number full of majesty, a vehicle of human life.”

  "Human life,” I echoed him to myself, while I recollected that the Shonokins took their pride in being something other than human.

  I looked back at the alexandrite. It burned, sure enough. It scorched its place into the wood of the table top, made the wood black.

  "You can't!” screamed a voice at us from outside, and this time I nair thought it was Brooke Altic.

  "We can,” said Warren, loud and clear as a man a-making a speech. "We can do what we do. We do it against the force and will of evil.”

  It was near about like a wink of the eye that alexandrite made. A darkening and a brightening, hot and trembly. I had the feeling of a grip on me, not like that tingly grip out on the Shonokin track. I told myself to be glad of that grip. It was from something on my side, the human side of things.

  Outside, there beat up voices. "No! No!M A whole bunch of them a-saying that, and up over them all, Brooke Altic: “You seal your doom, you seal your doom—”

  But in the room with us, a whispery sound in the air, friendly.

  “You are welcome here, you noble Five Kings,” rang out Warren. “We have called you here by the great name to which every knee is bowed, in this world and in the next.”

  He pointed his finger to the alexandrite. It sort of puffed and smoked there, and the light in it died down, and it laid like a cinder.

  There came a scratching on the logs of the cabin outside, all the way round, front and back, like hands a-picking at the walls. The wailing voices made their sad, awful sound out yonder. Brooke Altic's voice screamed:

  “What are you trying to do? What are you going to do?”

  Not one of us replied him that, but we knew that something was a-being done. The jewel he'd wanted from us, the jewel he would have tied his power to, would have used to rule us, was no jewel now. It crumbled where it lay on the scorched table, like an ash dropped off a cigar. I saw a black burnt place on the wood.

  A whole beating storm of hands then, loud as the hail had been.

  “Let's stand them off,” said Mr. Ben under his breath.

  “Stay where you are,” Warren bade him, and raised his voice again.

  “In triumph we finish here,” he said. “In triumph we finish here. The teeth of the snake are drawn.”

  The heavy press of air fell off round us. It was like as if people had been there in the room with us, and had gone. But just then the front door swung itself open, and there stood Brooke Altic.

  He wore the fancy clothes he'd worn last time Fd seen him. But they were mussed up, muddy, like as if he'd been a-crawling round like a snake. His shirt collar was all tom open at his throat, and his hair, so combed out before, strung thisaway and that round his face. His eyes stuck out at us, his mouth was open, and his sharp teeth gnashed themselves at us.

  "You'll pay for all this,” he gurgled out. "I'll say just one word, one strong word—”

  Hazel Techeray had swung off from the table, had left her point of the star. She grabbed up the rifle Warren had leaned to the chair. She shoved it almost into Altic's wide eye and pulled trigger.

  Bangl

  I saw the blood jump out all over his white face in the lamplight. And over he slammed down on his back, like as if he'd been snatched there by a rope, right down he went across the threshold of the open door.

  Outside then, there sounded a cry fit to pop your ears. It must have been all the Shonokins a-yelling at once.

  That same moment, the churning sound of feet on the dead run, on the run out of the yard, on the run away from where Brooke Altic had been killed dead.

  15

  And after the running, no sound. You heard the silence.

  I can't say for certain today what hour of the night Brooke Altic was shot down and his people run off to leave him there. All I do know is that the five of us waited in that cabin, the five of us with him flung out where he'd fallen across the sill of the door and the door open so he was half in and half out. We waited there till the stars paled out with the early, early dawn.

  And, gentlemen, it was a devil of a long time to wait. We didn't do much talking, I recollect. I felt some surprised at Hazel Techeray, who, from when first she came in the house, had trembled and shaken and shed tears. Now she was the steadiest of us all, the way I look back on it. One thing she did was to heat up what coffee we had left in the pot. It had gone as cold as well water, and the second heating made it stout and bitter. But I was right glad to take a cupful and work at it.

  As for Mr. Ben, after while he picked up that rifle Hazel Techeray had used on Brooke Altic and carried it to a chair with his gun-cleaning gear. He worked the bolt lever to shake the shells out of it, and put them in a little heap on another chair. Then he cleaned the gun, and not in my life have I seen as many guns cleaned so clean. Finally he loaded it up again and snapped the safety catch on and took it to his cupboard and racked it up there.

  Warren and Callie sat together next to the hearth where no fire burned, and they talked about what I reckon was their own business and nobody else’s.

  But, the way I say, dawn was a-coming at last. Mr. Ben finished the coffee he was a-drinking and got up on his feet.

  "John," he said, "and you, Jackson, come along, give me a hand with what’s got to be done."

  We knew what he meant. The three of us went to where Brooke* Altic lay through the door, and stooped down to pick him up. His eyes stared up at us, dull and empty, with the pupil like just an up-and-down slit. His body was as limp as a wet sock, not stiffed out like a man’s body. We wagged him down off the porch, and out along the path to where that track was.

  "Here," said Mr. Ben, and we laid him down, and Mr. Ben went to his shed and fetched back a couple of spades and a grubbing hoe.

  We got at our work and digging. All of us had strong arms and backs. We hollowed out that grave—six feet long and two feet wide and nearabout four deep—in about an hour in the early sun. Nair one of us said a word while we dug. We didn’t even look in one another’s faces. Finally we picked Altic up again and laid him in the hole. He was so small he didn’t crowd it.

  I pulled his hands across his chest. His beautiful ring shone on one. They felt cold, with the third finger the longest and those claws on them for nails, as I laid them one on top of the other. Mr. Ben fished out a red handkerchief from his pants pocket and spread it on the fishy-pale face. We stood up round the grave.

  "One of youins want to say a word for him?" Mr. Ben asked. "Might could you do it, John?"

  I wondered what could be said. I recollected something of the old burial service I’d heard again and again, and tried with that:

  “In the midst of life, we are in death. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  No more than that. I thought some about a prayer, but what prayer of mine would Brooke Altic welcome to be said for him?

  We picked up the spades and covered him in. We patted the dirt down solid all over the top.

  “That’ll grow up with grass right away,” allowed Mr. Ben. “And he guarantees us that no more Shonokins will come a-using round from this on.”

  He carried the tools back to their shed. When we came to the porch again, Hazel Techeray was a-scrubbing out some blood stains with handfuls of gritty soil. We all went in and washed up. I don’t think we felt hungry, but we had more of that hot, stout coffee and some cold corn bread and butter.

  “I’m a-going to go to the Shonokin settlement,” I said then.

  “Me, I’ll come with you,” said Mr. Ben. “And I’ll take me along a gun, and you’d best do the same.”

  “This time I sure will,” I agreed him.

  Out on the way, I felt no jangle, no hum in me.
That Shonokin power had gone from their track. The thing they’d started to do, it was all finished. All that spell of Warren’s, and the death of Altic, it had plumb silenced and ended their work.

  We passed along to where the balanced rock was. It was balanced no more. The top piece was fallen off from where it had teetered. I walked up to it and all round. Its power was gone off. Gone to what place it had come from, and I couldn’t guess that place.

  At last the settlement. But different now.

  It was tumbledown. That gardinel at its edge looked all fallen in, like a rotten pumpkin in a field. The roofs of the shelters sagged, the windows were as blank as the eyes of dead Brooke Altic. In those circle-shaped lots, the finger- bushes and other plants looked all limped over and withered away.

  "I swear,” said Mr. Ben, a-leaning on his gun, "this here place looks to have been left out of, fifty years ago.”

  It was true. It was deserted. The Shonokins were gone, after their power was driven out of them. Where? Some other place was all I could say. Wherever it was, whatever they’d do now, it wouldn’t be round here.

  Mr. Ben turned heavy on his heel and we started back down the way that had lost its jangle and buzz forever. I recollect how I looked at the trees that yesterday had seemed to bunch up and stare at me. Now they were just common trees. I heard a grasshopper make its chirp. It sounded as pretty to me as the sweetest song of air bird I could call for.

  Still we didn’t talk much. It was better than halfway back that we saw two folks a-coming along toward us—little Callie and Jackson Warren, a-walking hand in hand. We came up to them, and I told them how the Shonokins had left out of their settlement.

  "Where’s Miss Hazel?” Mr. Ben wanted to know.

  "She went back home,” said Callie. "She said, her kind regards.”

  "Hmmm,” said Mr. Ben. "Maybe I’ll go over there some time, go over and see her. Be neighbors to her.”

  "Callie and I have something to tell you,” said Warren. He smiled, the first smile air one of us had tried on for who could say how long. "Mr. Ben, I want to marry Callie.”