Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  ‘The next thing I was directly conscious of was a hand falling on my left shoulder. I relaxed, let down my sword, and heard the voice of the official in charge of the gladiators telling me that I was reprieved. I stumbled along beside him around the edge of the arena under a continuous shower of felt hats and gold and silver coin until I felt the grateful shade of that low-ceiling stone passage-way on my almost melting back, and a minute later, my armor off at last, I was being strigilled from head to foot after the buckets of cold water which had been dashed over me by one of the arena slaves, and quite my own man again.

  ‘It was perhaps twenty minutes later when the chief of the officials in charge of the gladiators came into the small stone-flagged room where I was at the moment tying the thongs of my sandals. In the interim the gigantic Black who officiated at the stone slab had thoroughly kneaded all my muscles with oil, the usual process before and after a fight. I had been washed down again with hot water, strigilled and given a drying rub, and had just finished putting on my ordinary clothes.

  ‘ “The people demand your presence in the arena,” announced the official from just inside the doorway. I rose and bowed in his direction. A public gladiator in Ludekta had the status of a slave. He was anything but a free man, like his modern equivalent the American professional ball player, or a matador. Then the official announced: “You have been chosen to fight Godbor as the day’s concluding event – come!”

  ‘Another fight! A sudden sense of hatred for those blood-lusting beasts out there surged over me. But I had no choice. The official turned on his heel and I followed him out towards the arena along the same passageway which I had traversed three quarters of an hour before.

  ‘Half way along it the official stopped and turned abruptly towards me. He had dropped the rough tone of his official pronouncement. He smiled at me and grasped my hand. “It was a splendid fight – that against the animal!” Then, to my infinite surprise, he thrust an arm around behind my back, drew me close against him, and whispered with earnestness and vehemence directly into my ear. And when he had finished I was a new man! Gone now were all the feelings of rebellious hatred which his announcement at the rubbing-room door had raised up in me. He turned and led the way out into the arena. And I followed him now, gladly, eagerly, my head up and my heart beating high.

  ‘A thunderous roar greeted our emergence, and the massed thousands rose in their seats like one man. A black slave stepping towards us from the barrier handed a bulging leather sack to the official. He took it and spoke to me over his shoulder. “These are your coins that were thrown into the ring. I will keep them safely for you.”

  ‘In the midst of that unanimous and sustained demonstration from what nowadays we would call the fans, we proceeded to a point directly before the great canopied enclosure of the nobles. Here, after saluting these gentry with my arms and hands straight up above my head and not giving their spokesman an opportunity to address me, I put into immediate effect what my unsuspected friend, the official, had whispered in my ear.

  ‘ “I will fight Godbor to the death,” I announced.

  ‘A simply deafening howl went up from the multitude, back of me to a man. I had been the commander of one of the Lemurian war-galleys and I was accustomed to making my commands heard on my ship! The entire amphitheatre had got my announcement. I waited quietly until the tumult died, and then as soon as I could be heard once more I addressed the nobles.

  ‘ “My Lords, I have proclaimed my willingness to please you despite the Ludektan Law which requires no man to fight twice in the arena on the same day. I beseech your nobility therefore, in return for this my good will to meet your desire, that you accord me my liberty, if I survive.”

  ‘There was a deathly silence about the arena, the people being agog with interest at this unusual speech of mine, and to hear the answer. As the group within the nobles’ enclosure consulted together swiftly, an intense thin hum began to rise from every side of the amphitheatre, and, as I stood there, rigid, waiting for this decision which meant far more than life or death to me, I could see the right arms of the members of that vast concourse being raised in the Ludektan voting gesture of approval.

  ‘Then as the Senator Bothon, who had been generalissimo of all the Ludektan armies, rose in his place to give me my answer, that sharp humming sound stilled and died and twenty thousand men and women leaned forward on their benches to hear the decision. The Senator Bothon was both terse and explicit.

  ‘ “The petition is granted,” he announced in a voice no less carrying than my own sea-trained tones. Then, before the delighted mob could interrupt him, he added, “And a purse of gold.”

  ‘Then, remembering clearly all that the arena official had told me, I waited once more until I could be heard, and when that instant arrived I saluted the nobles and said: “I would gladly slay the traitorous dog Godbor without a reward, O illustrious, for not even yourselves, who deprived him of his Ludektan citizenship and condemned him to the arena, are better aware of his infamy than we of Lemuria who refused to profit by his treachery. I petition you that the rules which are to govern our combat be stated here, in his presence and mine, that there be no treachery but a fair fight.”

  ‘At this, which had been listened to in a dead silence that was almost painful, the mob on the benches broke out again. Watching the nobles’ enclosure I saw the Senator Bothon turning his eyes from face to face of those about him. When he had gathered their unanimous acquiescence he turned to me and made the sign of approval. At that moment he could not have heard himself speak!

  ‘Back in the preparation rooms with the chief official himself overlooking every detail, I got myself ready for my last fight in the arena. I was very well aware that I was now confronted with the most serious ordeal of my life. Not only had I spent some irrecoverable vitality in that short and intensive conflict with the wild beast, but also I was about to encounter in the traitor Godbor one of the most skillful and tricky hand-to-hand fighters that the Ludektan army had ever produced. He would be fresh, too, not having fought that day.

  ‘I will pass over the details of that preparation – the testing out, by the chief official himself, of the double-edged sword which he selected for me, the complicated muscular treatment on the slab to which I once again submitted, the precise adjustment of the light armor. All this occupied at least half an hour.

  ‘Then, at high noon, Godbor, who had been similarly prepared in another room, walking beside me in the usual formal procession, we proceeded out through the passageway and into that blinding glare and were shortly standing side by side listening to the Senator Bothon as in a pregnant silence he announced and then repeated the rules of the combat.

  ‘And then on a great square of freshly pressed and dampened sand we two stood facing each other tensed for a conflict from which one or the other would never walk back again through the cool passage-way. I had decided to be the aggressor throughout. At the single blast from the herald’s horn I leaped at my enemy. He had started forward at the same instant himself. I caught his descending blade squarely on the knop of my bronze buckler relaxing my left arm to lessen the shock of the blow, at the same time delivering a somewhat unusual thrust, above rather than below Godbor’s buckler. My initial strategy proved to be sound. The fresh-ground razor-like point of my sword struck his left pectoral muscle near its upper or shoulder attachment, severing the tendon and rendering his left arm virtually useless. I made a lightning-like recovery, landing firmly on my feet, and the equally swift forward leap of Godbor brought him breast to breast with me. He had, with his extraordinary dexterity, managed to shift his sword in those split-seconds into the reverse or dagger-like position, and I was barely in time to divert the stabbing stroke which he aimed for the soft flesh under the ribs of my left side. Disentangling myself, I proceeded to the maneuver of running around him; but he whirled with me and faced me all the way.

  ‘We backed away from each other at this point according to the stated rules of the com
bat, our initial attack-and-defense being completed. Then I lowered my sword – I had been a Lemurian officer – as I saw, watching Godbor, a look of sudden agony on his face, observed him drooping forward, his knees sagging under him, his eyes closing. I had not anticipated that the merely disabling wound I had inflicted would have such an effect upon so redoubtable a fighting-man as Godbor. And, I was still less suspecting that this incarnate demon, thus early in our fight, and utterly disregarding the twice-repeated rules, would resort to that same treachery which had lost him his coveted Ludektan citizenship. As I stood there, waiting for him to recover himself somewhat instead of closing in quickly and disposing of him at once, he suddenly dropped off the buckler from his left arm, and, launching himself forward, drove in a mighty impact the great bronze helmet which he wore against my chest, with the full momentum of his unexpected leap at me. Yes, those sagging knees which had moved my pity and a gentleman’s sense of courtesy, had been bent under him in preparation for this foul attack.

  ‘As I went down, crashing, under that terrific blow of the helmet against my chest, I could hear very clearly, rising above everything, the howl of rage which rose from the spectators on every side.

  ‘And then, like a human avalanche, the huge bulk of Godbor was upon me, and mercilessly, deliberately, his evil face a distorted mask of bitter hatred, and while I, for that instant, lay stunned and helpless, the traitor Godbor thrust his sword down into the soft flesh between my right-hand hip bone and the lower and unprotected edge of my ribs, and drew the sword savagely across to the very edge of the left-hand ribs.

  ‘A sudden, dull-red cloud descended upon me, obscuring my vision and crushing out my consciousness. My fast-dimming eyes caught the edge of the strange spectacle of the people of the benches leaping down on the sand in their dozens and scores and hundreds, pouring over the barriers into the arena like cascades.

  ‘And, with the dull and dimming chorus of their massed roars of hate in my ears, I let go of life.’

  Joe Smith ceased speaking, rose, walked over to the centre table. I noticed that his hands trembled as he poured himself out the second drink he had taken since he had been in my house. Deep lines, too, that had not shown before dinner, were in his clean-shaven face. It was evident that the telling of his strange tale had taken it out of him. He was settled in his chair again before either Pelletier or I offered any comment.

  ‘I imagine Godbor didn’t survive you very long,’ said I. ‘That mob probably took him apart.’

  Smith nodded. ‘He was very unpopular – execrated, in fact – there in Ludekta to begin with,’ said he.

  Pelletier’s comments were in an entirely different vein.

  ‘Don’t, I beg of you, misunderstand me, Smith,’ he began, ‘but, most people would say: “That fellow is a damned good raconteur!” and let it go at that. It’s a wonderful yarn, as a yarn, whatever else anyone might say or think! Atlantis, Zimbabwe, that cave-boy stuff! That scar of yours for a point of departure; well-known facts, open to any reader, about the ancestral memory theory; and all of ’em worked up into a yarn that is, I grant you, a corncracker! Exactly right, you see, for a couple of fellows like Canevin and me, known to be interested in out-of-the-ordinary matters. That, I say, is what the majority of people would say. I’m not insulting you by putting it that way myself. I merely call attention to the fact that there isn’t a thing in it, my dear man, that couldn’t have been put together by a clever storyteller.’

  Smith, catching Pelletier’s ‘scientific’ note in this somewhat caustic comment, merely nodded in agreement.

  ‘Precisely as you put it,’ said he, slowly, and a trifle wearily I thought. ‘Precisely, except for this.’

  And he rose from his chair, once again loosened his belt, and exposed that frightful scar.

  Pelletier, the surgeon uppermost at once, got up, came over to Smith, and peered closely at the dreadful thing.

  ‘Hm,’ he remarked, ‘the real mystery isn’t in that yarn, Smith. It’s in how you ever survived this. That lays over everything you have been telling us, even the Atlantis part of it that first interested Canevin so much. That breadth of this scar shows that the wound must have been several inches deep. It cut straight through the intestines and just about bisected the spleen. Such a cut would exsanguinate any man, kill him in a few minutes.’

  ‘It did, as I told you,’ said Smith, a little crisply.

  ‘My dear man!’ protestingly, from Pelletier.

  But Joe Smith remained entirely unruffled.

  ‘You know, of course, what scar-tissue feels like to the touch,’ said he. ‘Run your hand over this, Doctor. Then tell us if you ever felt any other scar-tissue like it. It looks like any other scar, of course.’

  Pelletier did as requested, his attitude plainly doubtful, skeptical. He was acting in the obvious spirit of a person so open-minded as to try anything that will test the truth, to ‘try anything once!’

  But he straightened up from this tactile examination with a very different look on his face.

  ‘Good God!’ he exploded. ‘There’s nothing to feel! This thing only looks like scar-tissue! What – ?’

  Smith carefully tucked in his shirt.

  ‘It’s precisely, literally, the way I told it to you,’ said he, quietly. ‘I was born without any appearance of a scar, although it falls within the classification of “birth-marks”, so-called, or the stigmata. It did not begin to appear until I was twenty-seven. That was my age when I died there in the arena, from that wound in the same place, just as I told you, God knows how many thousands of years ago.’

  Pelletier looked at Joe Smith who had sat down again and lighted a cigarette. Then, after a couple of minutes’ blank silence, Pelletier asked, ‘Did you have it on you during those two other “memory-experiences” you spoke of, as a cave-boy, or there in Africa in the Fifteenth Century?’

  ‘No,’ replied Smith. ‘At least I have no conscious recollection of them as including an abdominal scar. I suppose the reason is that I was not yet twenty-seven years of age in either of those two experiences.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take your word for it all, Smith,’ said Pelletier. ‘It’s been mighty interesting. Nothing personal, you know. But I’m not credulous!’

  And the two of them bowed to each other, Pelletier smiling whimsically, Joe Smith’s tired, lined face inscrutable.

  ‘ “Handsomely spoken, my man!” ’ quoted Smith, dryly, and we all laughed. Just after this Pelletier took his departure, very cordially.

  Half an hour later – it must have been about eleven – Smith rapped on the door of my bedroom. He was in pajamas and bathrobe, and wearing a pair of my spare slippers.

  ‘Would you like to hear the rest of it?’ said Smith, from the open doorway.

  ‘Until thirty-two o’clock p.m.!’ said I, ‘if it’s anything like the rest of what Pelletier called your “yarn”.’

  Smith came in and took a chair. He placed something he had been carrying beside him on the wide chair’s cushion.

  ‘There isn’t much more of it,’ he remarked, ‘but I’d rather like you to hear it all together, so to speak.’

  ‘Fire away,’ I invited, and settled myself to listen.

  ‘That “birth-mark” of mine,’ he began, ‘isn’t the only thing I could have shown you two fellows this evening. I had this around my waist, too!’

  Smith reached down beside him and picked up and unrolled the thing he had brought into my room. It was a pigskin money-belt.

  ‘There’s between seven and eight hundred pounds in this,’ he remarked, laying it on the table beside him, ‘in Bank of England notes. I thought you might put it in your safe until tomorrow, and then I’ll put it in the bank I noticed down there by the market where you first ran into me. And now, here’s the rest of the “yarn”.

  ‘I have only one “polite accomplishment”. I paint. I was in Spain making sketches for future working out, up to the end of the summer. I was in Valencia first, and then I made a long jump u
p north-side, to Santander where there is a peculiar, hard, clear light afternoons that makes everything stand out rather remarkably.

  ‘I stayed on in Santander for more than three weeks altogether, and I had nine or ten rather satisfactory “block-ins” done. I stayed at a small waterfront inn all the time I was there; not any too respectable, I imagine, but exactly convenient for me. I was making waterfront sketches, you see, and my material was right there handy.

  ‘I’m going to make this short, Canevin – merely state the facts. It doesn’t need any narrative skill, or whatever it was our friend Pelletier called it – my telling of the first part of it, I mean. These are the bare facts, and they’ll speak for themselves.

  ‘I’d been on board the Bilbao nearly two months when we struck this port of St Thomas to coal. It was, to be precise, the fourteenth of August when I went on board her, there in Santander. Three days before that, while I was sitting eating my dinner (the Spanish are the worst of the world’s cooks, you know – haven’t learned anything about preparing food since Cervantes’ day!), a great big fellow came in and took a table across the room from me. I didn’t particularly take note of him except that he was big. I was gnawing away at a chicken – one of Noah’s – and when I happened to glance over in the big man’s direction, I noticed that he was glowering at me. His extremely ugly face seemed vaguely familiar, which, of course, fitting in with his really personal expression of dislike, made me wonder who he could be.

  ‘Canevin, I said I’d make it short. I mulled over that not very interesting problem of the man’s identity until, quite suddenly, it broke upon me. I had, I knew, seen him somewhere, and there was something quite definitely unpleasant connected with that face and that huge bulk.

  ‘It was “Godbor”, Canevin – Godbor to the life.

  ‘That was where I “remembered” him, facing me with those drooping knees and false face full of pretended pain, there in the arena in Ludekta. The whole thing – just as I told it to you and Pelletier this evening – came back to me. I felt sick. I could not eat any more. I sat there, with the queerest feelings imaginable. I can’t really put it into words. It was, well, as though an inescapable fate had dropped down on me out of a clear sky – something inevitable, predestined, inescapable.