“Why?”
“You have your stories of men who have been haunted. Sometimes by demons. In my world—I have been haunted.”
Carnevan licked his lips. “By this thing?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
Azazel’s shoulders seemed to hunch together. “I do not know. Except that it is very horrible, and it pursues me.” Carnevan lifted his hands and pushed hard at his eyes. “No. No. It’s too crazy. Something haunting a demon. Where did it come from?”
“I know of my universe and yours. That is all. This thing came from outside both our time sectors, I think.” With a sudden flash of insight, Carnevan said, “That was why you offered to serve me.”
Azazel’s face did not change. “Yes. The thing was getting closer and closer to me. I thought if I entered your universe, I might escape it. But it followed.”
“And you couldn’t enter this world without my help. All that talk about my soul was so much guff.”
“Yes. The thing followed me. I fled back to my universe, and it did not pursue. Perhaps it could not. It may be able to move in only one direction—from its world to mine, and then to yours, but not the other way. It remained here, I know.”
“It remained,” Carnevan said, very white, “to haunt me.”
“You feel the same horror toward it? I wondered. We are so unlike physically—”
“I never see it directly. It has—features?”
Azazel did not answer. Silence hung in the room.
AT LAST Carnevan bent forward in his chair. “The thing haunts you—unless you go back to your own world. Then it haunts me. Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s alien to me, Carnevan.”
“But you’re a demon! You have supernatural powers—”
“Supernatural to you. There are powers supernatural to demons.”
Carnevan poured himself a drink. His eyes were narrowed.
“Very well. I have enough power over you to keep you in this world, or you wouldn’t have returned when I summoned you. So it’s a deadlock. As long as you stay here, that thing will haunt you. I won’t let you go to your world, for then it would haunt me—as it has been doing. Though it seems to be gone now.”
“It has not gone,” Azazel said tonelessly.
Carnevan’s body shook uncontrollably. “Mentally I can tell myself not to be frightened. Physically the thing is . . . is—”
“It is horrible even to me,” Azazel said. “Remember, I have seen it directly. Eventually it will destroy me, if you keep me in this world of yours.”
“Humans have exorcised demons,” Carnevan pointed out. “Isn’t there any way you can exorcise that thing?”
“No.”
“A blood sacrifice?” Carnevan suggested nervously. “Holy water? Bell, book and candle?” He sensed the foolishness of the proposals as he made them.
But Azazel looked thoughtful. “None of those. But perhaps—life force.” The dark cloak quivered.
Carnevan said, “Elementals have been exorcised, according to folklore, But first it’s necessary to make them visible and tangible. Giving them ectoplasm—blood—I don’t know.”
The demon nodded slowly. “In other words, translating the equation to its lowest common denominator. Humans cannot fight a disembodied spirit. But if that spirit is drawn into a vessel of flesh, it is subject to earthly physical laws. I think that is the way, Carnevan.”
“You mean—”
“The thing that-pursues me is entirely alien. But if I can reduce it to its lowest common denominator, I can destroy it. As I could destroy you, had I not promised to serve you. And, of course, if your destruction would help me. Suppose I give that thing a sacrifice. It must, for a time, partake of the nature of the thing it assimilates. Human life force should do.”
Carnevan listened eagerly. “Will it work?”
“I think it will. I will give the thing a human sacrifice. It will become, briefly and partially, human, and a demon can easily destroy a human being.”
“A sacrifice—”
“Diana. It will be easiest, since I already have weakened the fortress of her consciousness. I must break down all the barriers of her brain—a psychical substitute for the sacrificial knife of pagan religions.”
Carnevan gulped the last of his drink. “Then you can destroy the thing?”
Azazel nodded. “That is my belief. But what will be left of Diana will be in no way human. You will be asked questions by the authorities. However, I shall try to protect you.”
And with that he vanished before Carnevan could raise an objection. The apartment was deadly still. Carnevan looked around, half expecting to see the black spindle flashing away as he glanced toward it. But there was no trace of anything supernatural.
He was still sitting in the chair, half an hour later, when the telephone rang. Carnevan answered it.
“Yes . . . Who? . . . What? Murdered? . . . No, I . . . I’ll be right over.”
He replaced the receiver and straightened, eyes aglow. Diana was dead. Murdered, quite horribly, and there were certain factors that puzzled the police. Well, he was safe. Suspicion might point at him, but nothing could ever be proved. He had not gone near Diana all that day.
“Congratulations, Azazel,” Carnevan said softly. He crushed out his cigarette and turned to get his topcoat from the closet.
The black spindle had been waiting behind him. This time it did not flash away as he looked at it.
It did not flash away. Carnevan saw it. He saw it distinctly. He saw every feature of what he had mistakenly imagined to be a spindle of black fog.
The worst part of it was that Carnevan didn’t go mad.
THE END.
TROPIC HELL
Dawson was sure that something was wrong on the island. It was none of his business, but he remembered how nice Loretta had been to him. The thought of her at the mercy of the giant Storm was not pleasant. . . .
SOMETHING was moving on the water of the lagoon. It was a small outrigger, and it kept away from the moonlight as much as possible, all the while working its way toward the tramp steamer Quest, riding at anchor outside the barrier reef that guarded Marava Island. Second Mate Joe Dawson, leaning on the rail, chewed the bit of his pipe and tried to fight down his mounting excitement.
Was Loretta Kent returning? Had she finally discovered the truth of Dawson’s words—that a South Pacific island was no place for a raw kid fresh out of Frisco? The second mate hunched his big shoulders, remembering uncomfortably how the girl’s eyes had blazed at him.
“I know my way around, Mr. Dawson,” she had cried. “And I can take care of myself. Please let go of my arm!”
Which Dawson had done, flushing under his deep tan as he watched the girl go overside, slim and lovely in her white dress, to leap lightly into the motor-boat that waited to take her to Marava.
Well, he couldn’t blame her, knowing her story as he did. She was alone in the world, except for her brother, Tim Kent, who owned a plantation in lonely little Marava. She hadn’t seen him for years. And now, just out of college, she’d hopped a boat to Tahiti and made connections with the Queen.
At dawn the tramp freighter would lift anchor and head for Papeete. So. Maybe it was the blood-tingling power of the tropics, but Dawson couldn’t get the picture of Loretta out of his mind—the way her auburn hair tossed in the wind, the provocative thrusts of her tilted young breasts, the excitingly lithe movements of her legs and hips under thin cotton cloth—and the brief flash of her tapering thighs as she had swung down to the motor-boat.
Nor could he forget the way Rudy Storm, Kent’s overseer, had looked at the girl. But—what the hell! Ka—it was finished.
It was finished unless the outrigger now grating against the hull held Loretta.
TWO slim figures swiftly mounted the ladder then, hung overside. Native girls. Disappointment lanced through Dawson. They were very frightened, he guessed by the glances they cast back at the shore. He went to meet them.
“Aloha! What’s up?” he greeted.
The foremost vahine was pretty, in a childlike way. But her body wasn’t childlike. Under her gay pareu the flowing, graceful curves were—interesting. There was a hau-blossom in her dark hair, and her full lower lip was quivering. She said, “Take me to your captain. Quickly!”
Dawson shook his head. “He’s asleep—and he doesn’t like to be waked up. You can talk to me.”
The girl hesitated, exchanged looks with her companion. “Oh—I see. Take us to a cabin, then, please. We—we can’t talk here. We might be seen.”
Might he seen . . . what was wrong? Dawson said, “Ka,” and led the way to a cabin. Not till the door was shut did the girl relax at all. Then she went swiftly to a table and gestured to her companion, who took a cloth bag from her red pareu. She emptied it; pearls spilled on the table-top. Dawson’s eyes went wide.
“I thought there weren’t any pearls on Marava!”
“I am Utota—a princess of our tribe. And there are pearls here. They are all yours—all of these—if you will take me away from this terrible island.”
Lamplight made blue shadows on her young, frightened face.
Dawson’s jaw tightened. “Wait a minute. Have you stolen these from the malihini—Tim Kent?”
“Aie, no! You do not know—” She broke off, whirling toward the door as it was flung open.
A tall, big-boned giant, with flaming red hair and icy gray eyes, stood on the threshold. He wore stained tropical whites, and his hairy, freckled hand was very close to the revolver at his belt. It was Rudy Storm, Kent’s overseer.
He stepped forward; native policemen crowded after him into the low-ceilinged cabin. The two girls cried out, but made no move. Dawson saw hopeless desperation in their faces.
Utota whispered, “Don’t let him take me back!”
The mate’s lips thinned. He said, “What do you want, Storm?”
The giant was deftly scooping up the pearls and restoring them to their bag. “These are stolen,” he explained. “From Mr. Kent. These girls are thieves.”
“He is lying,” Utota said, and flinched at the cold, deadly glance Storm gave her from his icy eyes.
“They will come back with me, Mr. Dawson, and be suitably punished.” He turned to his natives. “Arrest them.”
Abruptly Utota moved, lithe as a tigress. From her pareu a knife lifted, glittering icily in the lamplight. She sprang at Storm, the blade driving toward his barrel chest, her eyes ablaze.
The giant grunted with surprise. He swung his big torso aside with unexpected agility, and seized the girl’s wrist as it flashed past. The knife dropped clattering to the floor.
Utota fought like a wild thing, as though for her very life. The pareu ripped and tore. Bronze, smooth skin gleamed through the rents; the satin of her breasts rippled as she clawed and struck vainly at Storm. Then his huge hand smashed down viciously against the girl’s head, and, with a choked little cry, she went down.
The other vahine crouched in a corner, sobbing with hopeless fear. Abruptly she moved to seek protection behind Dawson, whose lips were thinned and white at what he had seen. Yet, he realized, Utota had attacked Storm—tried to kill him.
He heard the vahine’s soft voice whispering.
“Kent is dead—”
STORM snapped an order. The natives moved swiftly, seizing both girls and dragging them on deck. But as the red-haired giant turned to follow, Dawson stopped him.
“Wait a bit, mister.”
“Yeah?” The ice-gray eyes bored coldly into the other.
“Did you hear what that vahine said?”
“I heard nothing,” Storm clipped, and waited.
“She said Kent was dead.”
“Well, she lied.”
Dawson nodded. “Maybe. But why didn’t Kent come out to meet his sister?”
“I told you,” the giant grunted. “He’s sick. Touch of fever. A native chopped him up a bit—went amok—and he’s in no condition to go traveling.”
Storm went out. Dawson heard his voice on deck shouting orders. Presently there came the splash of paddles.
Now what? There was something wrong—plenty wrong. The second mate sensed it. Yet what could he do? Dekker, the first mate, was drunk below decks, as usual, and the old man thought of nothing but picking up cargoes and selling them for as much as he could get. No use to talk to them. Loretta Kent had paid her passage to Marava—that was all they cared about.
But, one moonlit night not long out of Tahiti, Dawson had found Loretta standing by the rail—and her lips had been sweet. It was only tropic glamor affecting a raw kid, he knew. Afterward she had ignored that hour. But Dawson had not forgotten, and now the thought of Loretta perhaps at the mercy of the huge Storm was not pleasant. He remembered how the giant had looked at her. . . .
Kent dead? Scarcely logical. Unless he had died within the last week or two. His letters had been regular, according to Loretta.
On an impulse, Dawson called the bos’n, a husky Lascar boy. “I’m going ashore,” he said. “Be back in an hour or so.”
Betel-stained teeth flashed. “Ae ae.”
The second mate made sure his revolver was loaded, stowed it under his shirt, and dropped into the ship’s dinghy, floating astern. He cast off the rope and, with muffled oars, began to row as silently as possible. Foam flashed silver under the moon. The lagoon lay still and flat, like a facet of an immense diamond. Palm-fronds waved gently against the purple sky. The Southern Cross hung low on the horizon.
Well, this wouldn’t take long,
Dawson thought. He’d just cheek up, and be back aboard the Quest before anyone but the bos’n knew he was gone.
The dinghy grated on yellow sand. Dawson sprang out, dragged the boat up a bit, and headed for the village. There were no natives about. A heavy, strangely ominous silence seemed to hang low over Marava. Once a parrakeet fluttered up under his feet, croaking sleepily, but that was all. The scent of hibiscus was sickeningly strong.
AT THE edge of the village clearing, Dawson hesitated, staring around. In the bright moonlight he could see several dozen huts, crudely built of bamboo and pandanus leaves. Some distance away there were lights in the window of a big godown . . . a white man’s house.
Stealthily Dawson made his way to it.
He moved from window to window till he found the one he sought. He looked into a dimly-lit room where a heavily-bandaged figure lay on a cot, silent and motionless. Kent?
Fair enough. Like a shadow he slipped on. In the godown’s big room he saw Storm and Loretta seated on rattan chairs, sipping drinks and sweating despite the breeze from the punkah that swung slowly overhead. Their voices came to him.
“. . . a doctor?” That was Loretta. She had changed her dress, and wore a light linen frock that clung closely to her in the oppressive heat. Her breasts swayed a little as she leaned forward, and Dawson saw the direction of Storm’s gaze.
“He doesn’t need it. He’ll be okay in a day or so.”
“But—he’s bandaged like a mummy! He could hardly talk—”
Dawson caught his breath in a little gasp. He turned hurriedly back to the first window. The still figure was still lying there. It hadn’t moved. Yet—was it Kent?
Silently the second mate got in through the window. The “invalid” didn’t hear his approach till it was too late. Then one hard hand was about a soft throat, squeezing purposefully, while Dawson plucked off bandages
The brown, frightened face of a native stared up at him, eyes wide and bulging. “Auwe!” the boy gasped—and was silent as Dawson’s fingers tightened.
“Where’s Kent?”
“Auwe! I—”
The grip did not relax. “Talk!”
“Dead! Dead! Do not kill me! Do not—”
Dawson nodded, satisfied. With desperate speed he bound and gagged the native. It didn’t take long, and the sound of voices came faintly from the next room, undisturbed.
Dawson pushed open the door a
nd went in. His gun snouted forward, menacing and deadly.
“Don’t move, Storm,” he said. “Keep your hands on the table.”
There was a soft little cry from Loretta. She sat staring at the second mate, her red lips parted. Storm’s face twitched once; then he obeyed, placing his palms flat on the table-top before him.
His eyes were gray ice.
“Loretta,” Dawson said, not looking at her, “your brother’s dead. I mean—Storm killed him.”
She didn’t understand. “But—no!”
“Stop me if I’m wrong, Storm,” Dawson said. “You killed Kent quite a while ago and took over his plantation here. You’re the only white man on Marava, so it wasn’t hard to do. You forged his name, wrote letters to his sister—and cleaned up. Right?”
Storm didn’t answer. His red hair flamed in the lamplight.
“You didn’t expect his sister to come on, but you were ready for her. You had a native bandaged up so Loretta would think he was her brother. Just for a while—till the Quest pulled anchor. Then you were going to kill her, too, weren’t you?”
Loretta glanced from one man to the other.
Dawson said, “Go in and take a look, if you don’t believe me.”
She got up hesitantly, slipped around behind Dawson, and vanished into the dimness of the next room. Storm sat motionless, his hands flat on the table, cold murder blazing in his gray eyes.
Then Loretta screamed.
INVOLUNTARILY Dawson turned. From the corner of his eye he caught the flashing movement Storm made, and sprang aside, but too late. The giant’s gun came out blasting. A shock of agony tingled through Dawson’s hand, and his pistol went flying up toward the punkah.
He dived aside, whirled, saw Storm rising from the table, grinning triumphantly.
Again the gun blasted.
Dawson wasn’t there. He went into the adjoining room in a hurry. A bullet clipped hair from his scalp. He heard a table go over, and Storm’s heavy feet thumping forward.
Two figures were struggling in the dimness—Loretta and the native. Moonlight made a patch on the floor, and glistened on the girl’s auburn hair, and on trailing bandages. The native boy had been stronger than Dawson thought. Strong enough to free himself from the bonds. . . .
Collected Fiction Page 236
