The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith

by Clark Ashton Smith

  Emily sat down on the damp rock, and caught her knees with her clasped hands. She’d given me the lantern; she said, “Sit down, and blow it out.” So I joined her, on the steps; they were so narrow I had to wedge close against her. This was once that getting a dame alone in the dark was no treat.

  This place was so old I could taste the age. Emily’s people, the old people, the Druids that used to offer up human sacrifices at Easter, and burn prisoners in wicker cages, had built this. Emily was at home here.

  I lifted the shade and blew the light out.

  “We may have to wait,” she whispered, and leaned close; I could feel her breath in my ear, and her hair against my cheek. “That shaft reaches down to where the monoceros lived, and died, a thousand years ago. When the Treganneths were Cornish lords, pirates, raiders.”

  “So it’s dead.”

  “It died, but it is coming to life.”

  The smell of iodine, of concentrated sea became stronger; the pit was breathing. A white mist was rising out of the blackness, it was twisting and writhing.

  It took a shape the thickness of a hogshead, and Lord knows how long. The head was a dragon’s, a dragon with a yard-long spike growing out of its forehead. This was the monoceros engraved on Treganneth’s stationery, and on his carnelian ring of old, soft gold.

  Up—up—up—reaching out of the pit. Two men were kicking and clawing in its coils. One looked like Treganneth. Emily yeeped and caught me with both arms. She poured herself over me. I sprawled back against the stairs. I tangled up with her bare legs, and then I made a dive for the treads. She went limp, and I caught her.

  In the scramble, I got a look back. The thing was pulling back into the pit, and thinning out to a haze, ribbon-thin. Then it was gone. I was sweating, shaking till my teeth clicked. I grabbed Emily and headed up those stairs, and I didn’t stop for the lantern. I reached the head of the stairs long before I had any hope of getting there, and I took a header. Lucky for Emily I twisted as I flopped, or I’d have smashed her flat. As it was, the crash nearly laid me out. And she came to. She moaned, “It’s getting worse, it’s reaching further each time, it’s calling for its prey—get me out of here—”

  I fairly dragged her. It’s funny, but I headed for my room, as if that were any safer than anywhere else. When I slammed the bolt, I turned around and saw Emily sag at the knees. She keeled over and flopped in the old lounge.

  I stumbled after her. “If Treganneth thinks I am hunting that thing, he is nuts! It sounded like some kind of murder racket when he wrote me, someone giving him the run-around to get him out of his castle. But that—what’s he think I am?”

  “He still thinks something human is tricking villagers into the caves under the castle, and killing them. He doesn’t know of this place. Promise me you won’t tell him, he’s so worried now, a shock would drive him mad.”

  A fellow can’t believe everything he sees. Look at that Hindu rope trick. And the little green men a friend of mine used to see in his room. He threw things at them, only they just weren’t there. Neither was that monster.

  “Okay, I won’t tell him. But how did you find that awful place?”

  “My late husband, Mr. Polgate, was steward. He used to tell me things. About sub-cellars of this castle. Then he and the present earl’s brother vanished, and no one ever found their bodies. Seven years passed, they were declared legally dead, and I became a legal widow. Jasper—the present earl—came from Australia to take his heritage. And then things happened. Villagers disappeared. People whispered about the monoceros, and brought up that old legend of how the Treganneths traced their descent from it.”

  What she meant was, it was a sort of totem, like the Indians have wolves, bears, and the like for clan ancestors. She went on, “The ancient Treganneths sacrificed captives to the monster, to keep their luck in war. It lived in that pit, it came in from the sea for its offerings. Then an earthquake blocked the passage, and the thing starved when the Treganneths could not find enough victims.”

  “And now the ghost of the monoceros is eating?”

  Now that I’d quieted down a bit, I began to think. “That was malarkey. I didn’t see it, it was hypnotism. Decaying sea stuff, phosphorescent vapors, and me thinking about the monoceros ever since I got the earl’s cockeyed letter.”

  I turned to Emily. “Why don’t you check out?”

  “I belong to the place.”

  “I don’t. I’m a detective. I brought embezzlers from Algiers. From Honduras. But a monoceros is something else, you can keep it.”

  As a matter of fact, I was getting sore at myself for having gone hog wild down there, but I was giving Emily a line to see what she’d do. There was a trick somewhere.

  Emily jumped up, and before I could get a lamplight view of this and that, she had me with both arms. She squeezed close, and not just with her arms, either. “You must stay—you’ve got to—for my sake!”

  I was getting high blood from that armful of woman, but I could still add things up. Emily’s gown had store folds in it. I noticed that when the robe fell from one shoulder. A brand new gown like that cost a couple guineas; a damn funny expenditure when the earl drove his own fifteen-year-old bus. And she’d lied when she said she and the earl were alone here. How about the blonde gal in the tower?

  I played the sap on purpose. I nudged her toward the door. “You’re too scared to know what you’re talking about. Come back when the monoceros business is settled, and see if I head you for the door.”

  The smile over her shoulder was one of those promises only a chump expects a dame to keep.

  The more I thought about the monoceros, as I sat there by the grate, the more I said, “Hell, you do it with mirrors.”

  An hour passed. Then another. I dug up my flashlight and I put on some felt slippers. It was dark as a squaw’s pocket, out in that hall. The wind made dirty sounds and ghastly sounds, and then it laughed whenever I jerked back, figuring something was prowling around in the dark. But I got to the stairs that reached up into the hell-blackness of that turret.

  By the time I had convinced myself that the monoceros was something I had eaten, I was up as far as the second narrow slot in the two-foot-thick masonry. The moon was full. The crags were shining from spray, and spray jumped up from the roaring sea. If anything was creeping over those hills, it was belly flat.

  Then I looked toward the sea again. Something was moving, something white against the dark crags. I knew it was a woman before I could see the curves that made everything certain except her face.

  If she wore anything, it wasn’t enough to register at night. She was white and shining, and her golden hair rippled in the wind. A man was stumbling over the rocks, waving his arms.

  He was gaining. Then she danced ahead, and won a length. Then they both were blotted out by a black tongue.

  To think that I could dash down stairs, and over wet rocks in time to keep the guy from overtaking the girl was crazy, but I was on the way. There is something about a scenario like that that makes a fellow want to keep the other fellow from getting familiar with the girl in question, even if she is a stranger.

  When I got there, I saw neither girl nor man. Just wet rocks. Cornwall was where King Arthur got his start, where Merlin did his stuff, where the Lady of the Lake used to hang out. The whole Cornish coast is wacky. The only way to keep from going nuts is not to believe anything you see. But even so, I went back to the turret to find out if there really was a blonde there.

  I got my kit of lock picks to work. I’d become handy that way because it simplifies the business of snooping on embezzlers. The door opened easy.

  The girl wasn’t asleep. She was so scared when the door opened that she couldn’t yeep. Moonlight reached into the turret and picked out her beautiful legs, the fine curve of throat and cheek.

  I said, “It’s all right. If you’re a prisoner, maybe I can help you.”

  “Why didn’t you knock, warn me—who are you—?”

  I co
uld see her knees shaking, where they peeped out from the grey woolen blanket she clutched to her breast. “I’m Jim Dale, monoceros hunter, and I saw you through the window this afternoon, looking out.”

  She gasped.

  “With glasses. What is the idea, no clothes?”

  The flashlight made it clear she didn’t have a stitch in the whole turret; just the cot, and the blankets.

  “I’m Jasper Treganneth’s secretary—I mean, I was, when he was in Perth. I followed him when he came to the title. Just imagine, came to this ruin. I was stranded. When my funds were gone, I came to the castle.”

  “After you’d sold your shoes and clothing, for subsistence while job hunting,” I cracked, “you came to hide in Treganneth Castle. What was the name, please?”

  She flared. “I’m Diane Rolley!”

  Then she doubled up and began crying. I sat down on the cot beside her and slipped an arm about her. “Buck up, Diane. I’m a detective, trying to settle this monoceros business. How did you get up here?”

  “Jasper locked me up.”

  “What for?”

  She’d let the blanket slip a bit, and for all her trying to cover up with a jerk, I saw enough to prove Treganneth was crazy. Diane said, “This gossip, these disappearances, it was driving me mad. When I decided to go, he wouldn’t let me.”

  “Huh?”

  “He was afraid I’d never come back, that I’d spread wild stories about the place, perhaps have him declared insane. He said that if I stayed until things were cleared up, he’d marry me, even though he did have a title and I was a former employee.”

  That made sense, but not this business of taking her clothes. When I asked about that, she said, “Just suppose someone did break in and find me, he and that woman could say that I got violent, tore my clothes to shreds. That they kept me here because he didn’t want to send me to a madhouse.”

  Having an audience, even a stranger, made Diane crack. She hung herself around my neck and sobbed, “Get me out of here, get a closed car. Take me out by night. The villagers would stone me, throw me into the sea, tear me to pieces. They blame me for these deaths, they’ll storm the castle if this keeps up.”

  After what I’d seen of a blonde girl being chased along the cliffs, I could understand why people might pick on Diane.

  Well, Diane did persuade me to stick around and plan for her escape, though I insisted on finishing the monoceros business first. But I didn’t wait until sunrise. Having cried out her worries, she curled up and went to sleep. The way it was, if I made an immediate get-away, I’d never learn about that ghost monster; the more I saw of this, the more I was sure they did it with mirrors, and I was sore, being played for a chump.

  But before I tiptoed out, I did things to the lock. They passed Diane’s grub through a wicket, so it was a ten-to-one shot no one would notice the lock was gummed up.

  Early in the morning, Emily brought me a pitcher of hot water; the castle didn’t have running water, believe it or not. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Lonesome, but otherwise okay. How’s the earl, sobered up?”

  Treganneth was red-eyed. “Didn’t want to talk at night. Man’s too credulous at night.”

  We tied into a kidney pie and some bloaters and some porridge. I listened to his yarn about the monoceros. It checked with Emily’s account. He made no mention of vaults under the castle except to say, “Blasted nonsense, reptile cult of my ancestors. But the villagers are getting nasty. I want you to explain the disappearances.”

  “Suppose I inquired around the village?”

  “My good man, I disclaim any liability if you get your skull cracked. After what happened yesterday, I have no intention of returning to Pengyl.”

  “Let me drive your car. How about the keys?”

  Treganneth said, “Emily will drive to market. Go with her.”

  He rose, and headed for the study. I was thoroughly dismissed.

  Going to market in Pengyl wasn’t fun. Someone heaved a cobble stone at the car and an old hag screeched, “Where’s that golden-haired witch, bring her out!”

  Emily leaned out. The men who had rocks dropped them. The old woman stopped cursing and muttering. The men said, “We chucked ’em before we saw it was you. But you better not go back.”

  Emily pulled up. A crowd gathered. An ugly crowd of gnarled old people. There weren’t more than half a dozen young men, and girls were even scarcer. A beak-nosed fellow said, “Ye better not go back. Lon Wellman hasn’t come home, and we know he ain’t coming back, they never come back. Before God, we’re going to tear that place stone from stone, Mis’ Polgate, and you’re one of us. We don’t want you hurt, but there’s no saying what people do when they go mad.”

  That wasn’t all. There was that man chasing that blonde girl. Out of the chatter, I got it: a golden-haired witch luring young men to the monoceros. Some of these folks had a funny way of saying witch, I guess it was the Cornwall accent or something. It would be bad if they got hold of Diane.

  We went to the market. On the way back, I asked Emily, “What’s this golden-haired…uh, witch business? The earl held out on me, and so did you.”

  “That would have distracted you from the monoceros. These young men are mortally afraid, but each one brags about a blonde girl from London or somewhere, spending a weekend at the sea, and being impressed by him, and coming back to meet him. Women—young and attractive women—are scarce—” She sighed. “As scarce as young and attractive men—oh, what a God forsaken edge of nowhere this is!”

  “So they sneak out to meet the blonde baby, making a careful sneak so none of the other boys cut in, and—one more lad fades?”

  Emily nodded. “The fourth. Or fifth. A witch tempting them into the den of the monoceros. You know how such a story spreads.”

  When we got back to the castle, Treganneth called me into his study. It was an old, dark room, all lined with old, leather-bound books in oak cases. He had some of them spread out on the big table; and there was a square of parchment written in jet-black ink.

  His hand shook when he pointed, and so did his voice: “Dale, I’ve been finding old records. The way to get to the foundations of this place. There is a crypt. There was a monster, centuries ago, and it did live on human sacrifices the heathen Treganneths offered, long before King Arthur’s time. It’s utter rubbish, but there is something strange—there was a golden-haired witch who lured victims to the monoceros, once the Treganneths turned against the Druids and became Christians.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know what I believe.”

  “Another man vanished, last night.”

  Treganneth groaned, passed one hand before his eyes. “Again!”

  I prodded him. He straightened up.

  “You’re holding out. I want the straight of it, or you can chase yourself.”

  He got haughty and tough. “What do you mean?”

  “Emily Polgate has a hold on you.”

  He wouldn’t say yes, and he wouldn’t say no; he just glared. I took another crack at him: “When we stopped on the ridge, and I took out my binoculars, I got a good look at the girl in the turret. Who is the girl, and why?”

  Treganneth jumped up, sweating. “Why—you insolent puppy!”

  “Take it easy. The first thing you know, the yokels are going to take this place to pieces by hand and then take Blondie to pieces and Emily, and you too. What kind of a game is this, you having a dame trapping yokels? Monster, my eye, the chumps fall over the cliff, the waves pound them to pulp.”

  Treganneth was white now, and his heavy jaw twitched. “The girl in the tower—she’s there for her own good. She’s quite mad.”

  “How about you and Emily Polgate?”

  “I prefer not to discuss that.”

  “Emily has loyally held down the fort, then hell pops, all the servants check out, men disappear. All of them young men.”

  “For God’s sake, shut up! Let’s look into this crypt. Show it i
s empty. Throw the place open to the villagers.”

  Treganneth took the chart and a flashlight. In a few minutes, we were in that dark tangle of vaults and passages. He hunted a few minutes in the blind alley, and then he saw the trap with the ring.

  The smell of iodine, of sea-decay came swooping up. We went down the narrow stairs. Treganneth was a lord, all right. He led the way. That made me feel better. I didn’t want him in back of me.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he saw the lantern, and pulled up sharp. “By Jove! Someone’s been here before us.” He turned around, flashed his light into my face. “You?”

  “How would I know about this when you just found out?”

  He swung the flash back toward the pit. I struck a match to light a smoke. He jumped like he’d been stung. His flashlight went about. Then he made a choking sound and pointed.

  I looked. A pink rosette was lying at the foot of the steps. It was one of the frills from Emily’s flossy nightgown. It had torn off while we were pawing each other in panic. I cracked off, “All right, your girlfriend is running this show.”

  “You—damn it—how do you know—?”

  The man went wild. He swung at me with the flash, and howled, “Damn you, you’re part of a conspiracy to keep me from Diane! You and that—”

  He had missed braining me, but the flash smashed on my shoulder. Then he piled in with fists, there in the stinking dark. The smell was awful now; not sea stench, but corpse odor. The dead were crying in the only way they could.

  He slugged me a honey. Lucky he couldn’t see what he was doing. I popped him one, heard him grunt.

  “You damn fool, I’m not in cahoots with Emily, she’s tricking them down into this den!”

  But he wouldn’t listen. He was off his chump. He growled, and came back at me. I smashed against the wall. I’m not sure I could have swapped punches with him by daylight, but here it was impossible.

  He was yelling like crazy now, and the echoes made it worse. Every lunge, he promised to kill me. I was sure now that Emily had tried to make him get rid of Diane; he figured that if I knew so much about the dame’s nightgown, we had teamed up against him.