Pyrate Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1 (4.0)

by David Conyers

  How I found the house Harold was at, I’ll never know, but finally I saw it, though only one light was on, and I thought to myself that it certainly didn’t look like there was no party going on. I walked up to the place, but I never got to the door. I looked in the window when I went by, and there was Harold, all alone, except for another stud. I didn’t see the gal that left with him, nor nobody else. But that cat in the house Was something else; the kind you don’t see around these parts. He was decked out all strange, wearing a long red robelike thing and had a big gold chain hanging round his neck. His head was all covered in something like an Arab would wear. But it was his face that put the chills on me. I don’t know how to talk about it. It was mean and it was old, hit, I don’t know, kind of young, too, at the same time. All that while he stood there, his eyes was burning and mad-looking, like he wanted to kill somebody. And he just stood. That’s all I saw; never said a word, never moved. He was set there, loose and tough, like a cat. Harold, he was in front of him, fingering something in his hand, talking real excited-like, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. His guitar was standing in a comer and everything else was empty.

  I weren’t sure about going in, but I had just about made up my mind, when a screech, real scary and evil, come from the other side of the creek there. It come again, long and louder. I turned and headed down toward the creek, figuring there was somebody in trouble, but when I was near there, another noise started up, at first a kind of mumbling, then sort of like a song. It was a singing, you know. And there was this whistling, like is played on swamp reeds hereabouts. That whistling noise went for a while, then would stop. I pulled back right there. My head was spinning round from all the drink I had, and with the sky so black and the wind pulling all round, I felt the fear come into me. I fixed to head back to the cabin and get Harold, but when I looked round, the light was gone. Just then, words begun to come, though they sounded farther away, sounded, too, like they was being said in some kind of foreign language; strange words like “Shubby Niggrath, Shubby Niggrath.” That’s all I can remember. That was enough. It sounded like voodoo talk to me, even though I’d never given much belief to those notions.

  Well, anyway, I turned back, all messed up, trying to decide where to go. The house was all dark, and that singing and chanting, or whatever, was getting even louder. Some drums somewhere began to pound, and the reed pipes was fair screaming.

  Just then, the wind blew harder than a thousand and the clouds must’ve scattered away, for the moonlight come bright. Down by the creek there was a splashing and I seen some big horse kind of thing going around, coming toward me. I guess you could say it was a horse, though it looked to have a set of goatlike horns on it. But then I’d drunk pretty much, like I say. And I seen lights too, little lights that looked to be clouds, blinking all round in the air.

  Well, I turned and run through the woods, tearing myself all to pieces, falling and running. I guess I was just plain scared of the hoodoo. I run all the way back to Blarney’s place, where I was staying, and beat on the door. Blainey finally got me calm and told me I’d drunk too much. At last I got myself to sleep, and man, did I sleep like the dead through the day! When I got myself up everything was dearer and all that stuff in the woods down at Bachelar, I figured, was only drunk-dreaming.

  After that crazy night, I looked some for Harold, but couldn’t find him. I heard that the girl that was with him was gone too. But I figured that her and Harold must have headed off together. A little later, somebody, I forgot who, told me that Harold had gone off to Jackson to look round for some work. Well, that was quite natural in those days, since times wasn’t easy for many. I figured, too, that maybe Harold was marrying himself to that little gal.

  Maybe a couple of months after that, I was back down at Moore’s, at the store, one night. I heard this tune playing in the back. The voice was pitched high and the guitar was Whining out, sad and broke. It sounded like an old man crying in his throat. I asked who made that song and Willy Bukha asked if I didn’t know a friend when I heard one. Well, it was good, that record, but if I listened real hard, I could hear some of that young kid in the back of it, scratching, fit to cry. That was Harold Robinson’s first record, Lost Highway Blues. Later, Harold told me he’d recorded it at the old Blue Star Company, in Jackson. I couldn’t get over how a boy could come along so far, in so little time. He was all over that record, playing runs, plunging in, real hard and mean. Harold made a couple more after that one, before I saw him again. One, I remember, was called Hudson Blues, and another, I think, was Old Devil at my Door.

  Well, things went OK for me and I continued on pretty much the same. A little while after I had heard Harold’s record, I went up to Greenville and recorded a couple of songs. That’s when I made Lonesome Piney and ABC Blues.

  I guess you might remember them. After that, I got to playing round more and was a little famous. Things was going good.

  *

  One night, about three years after I first heard them records of Harold’s, I was down at Collierville with Pa Simms and Elias Parker, who was calling himself Mobile Red at the time, and we was playing a club. I can’t remember the name. We was laying on our stuff heavy and sounding good. During the break, somebody said, “Hey, man, it’s me.” I turned round and there was Harold, but it wasn’t like old times. I didn’t know him at first, though it wasn’t like he was so different either. But man, he had changed. He was nothing like a kid no more. He was smoothed and slick, dressed to knock the gals out; looked bad.

  Well, this time, the first time ever with me, he asked to sit in. I said sure, and he did play that night, ripping right in, talking. There wasn’t none of us as good as him and none of us would probably ever be that good. Pa Simms and I just stared at one another. Good, man—he was better than those records, his hand sliding up and down with that bottleneck shining bright. I can’t tell you really how he played or what it sounded like, ’cause his music did so many things. It just seemed to take hold of him and stretch out real tight, like it was going to break. At the same time, it scratched and clawed and cried. It wailed and it said, “Come here to me, ease my mind.” There was never nothing else like it.

  Harold played that night, and none of us broke in. The place was his and I was happy to watch. One song after another come out. Some of them I’d heard before, old stuff from Hubie White and Panama Mac, and plenty of stuff of his own invention that I’d never heard before, crazy stuff about the devil and the hoodoo and such like.

  About halfway through, somebody give Harold a pint of whiskey and he began to drinking while he played on. Pretty soon he got loose and the sound come even better. He then started to talk out to the people on the floor, you know, between songs. And the women, they took to it, like Harold had some kind of magic in him. He looked back at them, up and down, and I was worrying some, ’cause I didn’t know these parts well and didn’t want no trouble. At first, it was the regular stuff, like about being lucky and the seventh son and having a mojo, all that kind of nonsense that you will usually hear from the younger cats. But, like I say, the gals really took it as being something special, nonetheless. After a while, they was all crowding the platform. And Harold, he was into it, and his talk got fiercer. He went on about how he was the devil’s son-in-law and a natural-born gypsy lover. When he played, the music got faster, ripping and sliding and moaning on. That guitar of his was doing things that it didn’t know how. Somehow, the room was fair screaming, not only with the music, but everything: Harold, the guitar, the women, even the air was fired up.

  Then he quits, right in the middle of a song. Just quits, and everything gets quiet. Harold’s eyes are red and strange. He then pulls open his shirt and there’s this green kind of charm thing hanging about his neck. I ain’t ever seen nothing like it, though that don’t mean much, ’cause I never went far from here, nowhere. Anyway, Harold pulls this thing from round his neck and yells out something like “Shubby Niggrath, Shubby Niggrath. Bullshit, man. Don’t
need it. I’m going to say it’s in me, nowhere else. I’m Harold Robinson and this music, it’s me, too. Don’t need no fool bad sign.”

  He threw that thing from round his neck, way back, into a corner. Nobody, ’course, could make no sense of the whole business, except that I begun to think about what I thought I seen that night, down on Bachelar Creek. Everybody else didn’t give it too much mind, but they did quiet down and stare some. But mostly, they just figured he was young and wild and had drunk too much. Harold, himself, he just stood there a minute, looking mad and, maybe, a little mixed-up. Then he picked up his box, real slow-like. He started to play again, but this time the music was only crying and soft, real sad. And Harold’s voice, it was trembly and up high, sounding like it was stretching out for some help. Harold didn’t play much more, just a few songs. Then he put down the box, real gentle, and headed out the door, silent as a snake. Pa Simms and I and Elias finished up, hut for some reason, we was flat and that last of Harold’s music made us feel real low.

  So, we finished up about one, and got together our stuff. I was still thinking about Harold and his music and that Shubby Niggrath stuff. You know, I was wondering about it all. Couldn’t make much sense of the whole deal. It was good to get out of that club, though, and feel the coolness. Pa Simms and I was going over to his cousin’s, where we was staying, and Elias took off for the night with some gal. The road over to Albert’s—that was Pa’s cousin—was about two mile long and we walked along there without talking too much. We was a way up the road, when I seen Harold coming down toward us, weaving around, drunk-like.

  When he got up close, I was pretty sure that it wasn’t booze that was bothering him. He was shaky-scared and lost looking. All the smoothness and hard-cut was gone from him. He come up and kind of stuttered out about if he could come and stay with us the night. Pa, he says, sure, and we all started out along together. At first, Harold didn’t say nothing; just trailed along, head down.

  I was wondering about what had got hold of him, but I didn’t ask straight out. Instead, I went on about where he’d been, since I seen him last; stuff like that. Well, he answered OK, but sounded quiet, even then. He said he’d been up to Jackson for a while and then over to Memphis and St. Louis; said he’d been in Texas, too. I told him about the records of his I’d heard and how good they’d been. He said those records wasn’t all, but that he’d cut more in Memphis and St. Louis and that maybe I’d hear them all someday. Those were the ones, you know, that got real famous later on, like Black Widow Blues and Satan Closing Down on Me and She Devil Moan.

  We talked about such things till we got to Albert’s place. Harold was still acting funny, but I didn’t ask no more, figuring all would come out in due time. We talked awhile with Albert, though Harold stayed on being still. Then we bedded down. I don’t know when it was, maybe a couple of hours later, or less, when Harold come over and got me up to talk. We went out back and set on the old wagon there. It was then that I noticed how scared Harold had got; I mean, even more than he was.

  He looked at me, all shaky, and says straight off, just like that, “Hansom, I ain’t going to make it out of this night. Man, you’re looking at the dead.” At first, I laughed and told him that he just had got hisself up too high during the evening; though, course, I was still wondering some, myself. He wouldn’t have none of that and he kept right on talking about how he had a curse on him, and how the devil-woman thing was going to come and get him. He said he knew that the she-devil was coming tonight, before the sun got up. He told me Shubby Niggrath was on his trail, hunting him down. Well, ’course, he didn’t know I’d ever made it down to Bachelar Creek that night and I didn’t let on I was there. I just asked who this Shubby Niggrath fellow was. Then he told me the whole thing.

  It seems he’d been up around Dumphy for a year before I saw him that night, learning his licks and so on. Then this circus-like thing come to town—you know, wagons and potions and music and magic tricks. Well, the head of this circus, he called hisself something like Nya-lee-hotop, the Egyptian Cobra King. He claimed he knew secrets that went far back in time and that he’d been around when kings lived. But Harold, he was interested in something else about the cat. That was that he could play the guitar like steel lightning. Harold begun to go over to where that circus was camped out and the Cobra King would play. Harold said his own playing was nothing, compared to that man’s.

  Anyway, the Cobra King took to liking Harold and said he’d show him how to play and how to make the songs Harold wanted to play come out He told about how he had a black cat bone and a mojo hand to help him, but, you know, such talk is common in these parts. He went on, telling Harold about having traveled around and having been in Boston or Philadelphia, or one of those places, and about how there they knew the same secrets he knew, secrets he’d learned as a king back in Egypt. I guess that king stuff was all nonsense, though it’s hard to tell, seeing as what happened. Anyway, the King he pledged Harold that with help from him he would play like sixty. And Harold, he went right along with him.

  Harold then told me that the night I had seen him at Dumphy was the night he went to see Nya-lee-hotop to learn the secret of the pledge from him. He said they met one another at the campground and some of the folks from the King’s circus was decked out all flashy in long robes, while some others of them had nothing on at all. They was all chanting and singing in some funny language. That was the first time Harold heard of Shubby Niggrath. The Cobra King, he explained some, telling Harold that Shubby Niggrath was a goat-woman with a thousand kids and that she was older than old, going way back in time to before there was no world. He said she was strong and might give a man the power to do all: to play music, to love women, to make hisself king. He told that she was from the earth and her power flowed upon a man through his bones, right out of the ground. He then made Harold say all kinds of words he didn’t understand and to walk around in a strange way, like in squares and angles. After that, they went across the creek together, up to the house where I seen them, v Harold talked about the same noises I’d heard, but said he didn’t know what caused them, though he figured that it was the King’s people getting whipped up. In the cabin, the King give Harold a charm-thing, made from some green, slippery rock, and Harold thought maybe it was a picture of the goat-lady, but in all the time he wore it, he never made up his mind. And then the King made Harold swear that if he wore the thing, he’d never take it from round his neck, and said that Shubby Niggrath was always watching and waiting. Harold, he promised outright, saying that he didn’t care, as long as the thing would help the music come out. Then the King made Harold get onto his knees, and he put the thing round his neck. Everything went dark, and Harold felt that charm fair burning his skin. He said that the room got terrible hot and that he couldn’t get no breath. Then he felt like there was some huge thing in there with him and he smelled animal smells coming down fierce. That’s all he remembered, and next thing he knew, he was laying on the road, right out- side Dumphy, coming back to his senses.

  Nothing seemed to have changed, to Harold. He wondered if maybe he’d dreamed it all about the King. But when he next lay hands on a guitar, everything was different. The music just jumped from his fingers, like fire, and songs came to him that he never knew was in his head.

  Well, Harold stopped there, in the story, real long and looked out at the trees. I waited, ’cause I knew there was more to tell. Finally, he says, “Hey, man, you know why I went up to Jackson? Remember that gal I was with at that night at Dumphy? Well, I gave her to them, the King and his people. After that night, I knew she’d never come back.”

  After that, we both just sat for maybe a half-hour, neither of us saying nothing, though I felt tight inside. Then Harold turned to me, sudden-like, his eyes smoking, like he was mad. He says, “Baby, when I threw that goat-stone away, I didn’t know what I was up against. I was never sorry for that deal I made with the King, even with whatever happened to that gal. Man, I threw that thing away, ’caus
e I thought I had it. I mean, I thought that music was mine. Now I know I was wrong. The whole thing looks different. I’m waiting and it’s going to get me, soon.”

  Harold didn’t say much more; just told me he was going to wait, ’cause there weren’t no escape. Then he pushed me to get back in the house and not to butt in, no matter what; said he almost brung me down before, when he didn’t know what it all meant, meaning Bachelar Creek, I guess. I begged like a father to a son, but he’d have none of it; and so I went back inside and lay there, all awake, waiting with him.

  It happened soon after that, and real fast, so fast I hardly can recall. I was laying there, listening to the wind, all hushed and soft, when of a sudden it turned to a storm, blowing hell. The wind was like that night at Bachelar Creek, whaling at the trees and crying. And then there was light in the sky, like a glow, getting brighter and brighter, but still kind of dark, not like the sun.

  Then, like a knife, Harold’s scream come through the might, wailing, almost like one of his songs, pitched high and tumbling down to nothing. It only come once, but I’ll remember it always. Pa and Albert jumped up and was almost at the door, but I didn’t need to stop them, for the fear hit them quick. They stood still, shaking like me. Then the smell come in strong and my stomach almost leaped out my mouth. It was like poison, and I swear, man, I could fair feel it on my skin, pressing hard, and hot. Then it went, all of it: the smell, the light, the wind. Everything was dead still a minute, but real quick, far off in the woods, I heard them swamp reeds playing wild, and voices singing. Again I heard them singing to Shubby Niggrath, just like before. Them voices went on till the sun came up, and Pa Simms and I and Albert just sat, too scared to move.

  Finally, the sun got up and the birds begun to sing, but we still sat there, for a long time. By noon it was hot and the chanting was long gone. It was then that we finally got the nerve to walk out and look around.