The Craghold Legacy

by Michael Avallone

Anne Fenner, with the sun behind her, looked up. And up and up. It was difficult to restrain another gasp. One of surprise and amazement—and of dismay.

  Towering up to the sky, perhaps a hundred feet above where they stood, lay a massive formation of stone and rock and granite—a veritable quarry of dull grey, blackened, somehow evil-looking growth that lay like a sleeping behemoth on the horizon.

  The Caves of Hex.

  Guy Warmsby’s goal.

  At last.

  Whatever that truly might be.

  “Oh,” Anne Fenner murmured. “It’s like something out of the Bible. It’s so—big—so—”

  “Ugly?” Katharine Cowles snapped a trifle harshly. “Guy, do you realize we’ll have to climb up all that to get in?”

  “Sorry. There’s no elevators this time. Only a stone path with regular steps along the left side of the face of the place. Come on. The exercize will be good for all of us.”

  “Get him,” Peter Cowles muttered in disgust. “You have to be part mountain goat to tackle that baby, Guy.”

  “Even so,” he said, unslinging his shoulder pack. “Maybe we ought to crack these box lunches first. Unless you’d all rather have your first meal in The Caves of Hex.”

  “That sounds good,” Anne Fenner said. “I’m not really hungry just yet. Whatever you say, Guy, is all right with me.”

  Katharine Cowles smiled archly, her dark eyes narrowing. Her brother was shrugging, as if he was leaving the vote to the women, as if he didn’t care at all. But you could never really tell about Peter Cowles. His sister laughed, a trifle unsteadily, Anne thought.

  “Yes, Guy. Whatever you say,” Katharine Cowles agreed.

  Above them, The Caves of Hex loomed like an enormous stone city whose inhabitants, if there were any, might be made of rock, too.

  It was Stone with a vengeance. A personality. A purpose. A soul.

  A purpose and a soul—and somehow, a spirit of life.

  A life-sized reality.

  Anne Fenner found she could hardly bear to look up at the place.

  It was simply ominous.

  There was just no other word for it.

  Such size and immensity of any one thing was downright ungodly, unearthly—she got hold of herself, shaking free from the clutches of the unreasoning fears that had dogged her throughout the trip.

  Peter Cowles had already slumped to the hard earth, putting his back to a boulder and ripping open his carton of lunch. He pawed the cellophane from a sandwich, looked at it, and made a face, shaking his head. Guy Warmsby looked down at him, frowning.

  “What’s the matter now, Peter?”

  The younger man’s face had crumpled in disgust. He held up the sandwich for all to see. His high voice rose plaintively.

  “Wouldn’t you just know it? Deviled ham!”

  Nobody laughed.

  Least of all, Anne Fenner.

  And Peter Cowles obviously wanted to eat first.

  Then climb.

  Stops To Suffer

  The climb was a Gethsemane of angled rock, stone slabbing and tortuous trailway. Guy Warmsby led the way, gaining easy footholds and fluid progress. The others lagged along behind, following his confident lead. He seemed to know the path very well for one who had never been this way before. But there was no time for conjecture. It became more difficult to breathe the higher one climbed, the greater distance from the ground below that one attained. There was a dizzying sense of height and almost rarified air similar to what Anne Fenner had once experienced climbing a high hill back in Boston when she was in her teens. But this was a far cry from Boston and high hills. This was a stone fortress, molded out of Time itself—a jagged, prominent rock face carved from some Leviathan shelf of rock which perhaps had once been on the floor of the oceans, when the world was young and there was no such animal as the human one. It was easy to believe that. Anne felt as though the higher they went upward, the more they were leaving Civilization behind. The rock path was man-made, however. That was very obvious. Though it had clearly been made maybe a hundred years ago or more, Nature could not have fashioned such a trail for the passage of generations of feet. For one thing, the stone slabs that passed for steps were of a comparative size; for another, their placement and gradual arc toward the summit of The Caves of Hex was regular and even, a careful design. Even as she climbed and panted for breath, she could see the last stone above her come to a final halt before a dark recess in the face of the mountain, a man-high entrance with a stone arch shaped in the lineal features of a ram’s head. The symbolism puzzled her, but before she could ask Guy Warmsby about it, he had reached a flat level of stone above the end of the path, a base from which to rest and mop at his handsome brow, which now showed a fine sheen of perspiration. Anne knew how he must be feeling. Despite the nip and tang of the late October air, her clothes seemed to be clinging to her dampened flesh. The climb had been a torment—nothing easy about it at all. Just behind her, she could hear Peter Cowles gulping for oxygen like a spent long-distance runner. Turning, she could see Katharine Cowles huffing and puffing like a woman very much older than thirty or so.

  It was all so laughable, somehow, in spite of all her fears.

  Why had the four of them come way out here to mountain-climb in the wilderness, to explore some hideous caves? A pile of ancient rocks, morbid niches and recesses in the face of a stone temple of some sort. Something quite like an Aztec mound of ceremonial worship. Was it worth it?

  “Well,” Guy Warmsby murmured in a funny voice, his eyes curiously alert, as though he had a fever of some kind. “This is it.” He looked around, sniffing the thin air.

  “Do tell?” Peter Cowles snapped waspishly. His own eyes were sweeping around the yawning dark niche in the face of the rock behind Guy. “Looks like the sort of place where Tom Sawyer and Becky got lost. With Indian Joe snooping around for some excitement. I thought you said caves—plural. This is a cave—singular.”

  Guy Warmsby did not take offense. He grinned at Anne Fenner, nodding in deep satisfaction to himself even though he answered Peter Cowles directly. His grin was wide.

  “This is the main entrance. Inside, about fifty feet into the heart of the cavern, there’s a circular area which is like the hub of a wheel. Each spoke is another path leading to another cave. You’ll see.”

  “Thought you were never here before, Guy,” Katharine Cowles asked, coming up to his level, still panting. “That sounds like an eyewitness account. I-was-there and all that.”

  “Not at all. I simply read all the accounts and histories of the caves. It’s in all the proper books, if you know where to look. Got your wind back, Anne?”

  “I think so.” His concern for her was always pleasing.

  “Good. Come on, now. All of you. This really should prove to be something. A story for your grandchildren someday.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Peter Cowles said drily. “Since I never intend to commit the crime of holy matrimony.”

  “Or make me an aunt,” Katharine Cowles sighed. “Never mind. Let’s see what our boy wonder has picked out for us this time, my pet. Coming, Anne?”

  “Yes, of course—”

  Guy Warmsby produced a flashlight from the depths of his shoulder pack, winked at Anne Fenner, and struck out for the mouth of the cave. Its gloomy recess, from a distance looking as dark as the night, proved to be merely gloom as all of them drew nearer. For a long moment, Guy stopped to inspect the frontal aspect of the opening, then he nodded to himself and walked on in. Anne Fenner hurried along behind him, with the Cowles bringing up the rear. In an instant, the change was startling and magical—like stepping from one world into another, like leaving the present for the past.

  Guy flicked the flashlight on.

  The beam stabbed out, roved and exposed the inner face of The Caves of Hex. He followed after it, directing the beam as the little group moved deeper into the core of the cavern, deeper into a complex where Time had stood still—for all eternity.

 
It was uncanny, mind-shattering, and just a little terrifying, for all the obvious lack of any tangible threat to their safety. The sudden lack of fresh air, the heavy, almost thick layers of dusty age and dryness and decay, was like a solid blow to the senses. As Guy’s torch beam splayed out, picking up an object here, an article there, Anne Fenner grew suddenly aware of the ageless morbidity that filled their surroundings. As Guy walked deeper into the interior of the main cave, he knew his prophecy for them all had been already partially fulfilled. Not any of them could have laid claim to having witnessed any natural phenomenon like The Caves of Hex. Peter Cowles was making whistling noises through his teeth, Katharine Cowles was strangely subdued, and Guy Warmsby was very nearly reverential as his beamlight explored the walls about them. The high, vaulted ceiling, obsidian and diamond-hard, shone down. Stalactites, gruesome daggers of stone, dangled from overhead. At floor level, jagged stalagmites thrust upward. There was no moss, no lichen, no fungi apparent anywhere. It was as if nothing could grow in there—nothing but a dawning, rapidly expanding aura of timelessness, decay, and fear.

  Anne Fenner’s eyes had to accept the spectacle before her.

  The Caves of Hex were another, separate corner of Hades, a place where awesome happenings, grisly occurrences and multiple tragedies had once been played out. It was all too obvious from the nature of the artifacts and sights that Guy Warmsby’s flashlight was picking up in its powerful beam.

  A low shelf of rock running along the left side of the hollow cavern was cluttered with bleached, yellowing bones and rotted, blackened objects that had to be skeletal. Skeletons of what? It was hard to say. There was nothing that looked like a skull. But the aspect of the bones were somehow damningly familiar—a thigh bone; a jagged corset of rib cage; a jumbled, slender configuration of smaller, fragile pieces that looked for all the world like the human hand. There were also strange symbols and carvings along the wall. The ram’s head at the front of the cave had been duplicated in dim outline in more than one section of the cave. The once-red lines had long since browned and blackened, so that the ancient drawings were just barely visible to the naked eye. The stranger symbols, characters and ideographs in a language that Anne Fenner could not recognize, crazily crawled laterally along the wall, as if put there by some crazed devotee of Evil in the long ago. It was enough to make anyone shudder. Anne felt her flesh crawl; her instincts to turn around and leave this place were almost overwhelming. Her nostrils were clogged with the smell of the cemetery, of half-opened graves. And yet it just couldn’t be so! Whatever had died here had died ages ago, not yesterday or last week. She shook her head, trying to think properly. But Guy Warmsby was pushing further along, his intellectual excitement now obvious in every quick jab and splay of the flashlight. She could hear his breathing. It was low, intense, and somehow fanatical—like that of some scientist who had truly reached the Promised Land of all his research and all his life.

  “Guy—” Anne heard her own voice sounding faint and meek, as a child’s might be. “Those ram’s heads—what do they mean?”

  His reply was immediate. Enthusiastic and gleeful.

  “Romulus. The Ram. Sign of the ancient societies and cults dedicated to devil worship. Goes all the way back to Baal, the Golden Calf of the Bible. Remember? The ram is a sign of fertility, growth. Lord, what a fascinating spot this is. Look at it—all of you! These caves are a throwback to the times when people lived in holes in the ground and in the hearts of mountains and painted their faces blue—”

  “Nonsense!” Peter Cowles’ caustic voice was like a whip lash in the deathly stillness. “You’re talking rot, Guy. Just because a bunch of dumb Dutchmen made themselves a club here to practice their silly superstitions and unholy games, don’t go off half-cocked.”

  “You think it silly, do you?” Guy Warmsby had turned. In the refracted glow of the flashlight in his hands, his lean face was indescribably shadowed. And different. Anne Fenner stepped backwards, in spite of herself. “Then go write a poem or something. I won’t bore you any further with my lunacy. Anne and I can go on alone. You idiot!”

  “Guy!” The sheer injury of being excluded from his thinking rang like a bell in Katharine Cowles’ blurt of protest. Peter Cowles snarled, his glaring eyes no longer showing self-control. His sneer was for Anne Fenner as much as it was for his friend.

  “Very well. Come on, Sis. Let’s leave these lovebirds to their fun and games—”

  “Stop it,” Anne Fenner suddenly hissed. “Stop it, all of you. This is nothing to quarrel over. I won’t be part of it, either. We all go on or we don’t go on at all. Guy, please be reasonable—”

  “Yes,” Katharine Cowles said very quietly, breaking in. “Do we have to endure this slaughterhouse from the past? All the research in the world isn’t worth it.”

  “I came here to see The Caves of Hex,” Guy Warmsby said in a cold, determined voice. “I intend to see them.”

  “Oh, Guy—” Anne stammered, caught between two fires.

  “You go on with him, Anne,” Katharine Cowles said, charitably. “I understand—perfectly, now. It’s high time the battle lines were drawn more clearly, anyhow. I was wondering when Mr. Warmsby was going to come right out and say it. He already has. Coming, Peter?”

  “I’m with you, Kathy,” her brother agreed heartily.

  “I know you are, sweetie. Which is why I’ll always love you in spite of your bad poetry.”

  On that note, Katharine Cowles turned on her heel and stalked back toward the entrance of the cave. It seemed only seconds before her tall, lithe figure was swallowed up in the gloom beyond the flashlight’s glare. Peter Cowles shrugged stoically, his lower lip curled in disgust, the cleft in his chin deepening. Then he too turned and took the route his sister had taken. The sound of his boots clattered heavily along the stone and earthern floor of the cave. Anne Fenner looked at Guy Warmsby within the circle of the glowing torch that separated them. She didn’t like the almost cruel cast of the handsome face before her—the face of man she had come to love.

  “Oh, Guy, this is wrong. To fight with your best friends. Over this cave—”

  “Forget about them. That wasn’t the nature of the argument, anyway. You saw. You heard. Kathy is jealous and Peter is being his usual sarcastic self. Denying the evidence of his eyes when deep in his soul he knows all this is valid. And historic. And important.”

  “I’m going back, Guy. Kathy is my friend, too. I’ve hurt her enough.”

  “Suit yourself. It’s your loss.”

  “Guy!”

  His tone had been curt, dismissive. Like a petulant professor.

  “Go if you want to,” he snapped. “I won’t keep you. This is too important to me. Not even you can make me give it up for a feminine whim. Kathy’s feelings don’t mean a damn to me, compared to this.”

  Anne Fenner drew herself erect. Within her, her heart slowly died, but within her mind—where she had the grit and pluck that had enabled her live through the deaths of two beloved parents—resolution and determination built into a slow, raging fire of purpose.

  “Very well, Mr. Warmsby. I shall.”

  “Anne—” he began. “You don’t understand—none of you seem to. If I can find out anything about these caves—”

  But she wasn’t listening anymore.

  She had whirled, putting her back to him, and staggered in the deep gloom toward the cave mouth where pale daylight still showed. She didn’t want him to see the sudden tears in her eyes or watch the disintegration of her face. Her heart was beating as if it would suddenly break, suddenly erupt with a burst of noise.

  Behind her, Guy Warmsby cursed.

  An oath of mixed anger, despair and confusion.

  But he too did not turn from his resolve.

  Had Anne Fenner lingered, she might have seen the circle of the powerful flashlight pick up, shoot ahead, and then move with gradual but firm slowness deeper into the depths of The Caves of Hex.

  Any archaeologist worth his
salt would have done as Guy Warmsby was doing—going on, pushing ahead. Searching, looking, examining; seeking the answers to all the ancient questions and enigmas.

  Anne Fenner had to push ahead too.

  Out of the gloomy cavern into the broad daylight and the fresh air. Out into the real world—the cold, grey Kragmoor one.

  Yet even as she did, she walked into nightmare.

  And the shocking reality of an icy, terrible new truth.

  Quietly, swiftly and terrifyingly, as she was adjusting her eyes to the daylight, looking for the Cowles, strong arms wrapped around her, one anchoring her waist, the other pressing downward over her mouth to prevent an outcry. Peter Cowles loomed before her, his back to the yawning space of the sky and the earth far below. Dizzily, she was aware of the aroma of Katharine Cowles’ perfume in her nostrils. Through dazed eyes, she could identify the slim but powerful fingers clamped across her mouth. She could hear the low, hurried tones of Kathy in her ear as the lithe, stunning woman easily held her fast in her arms. “Sorry, baby. It has to be this way. It can’t be any other way—”

  Peter Cowles towered before her, limned against the grey backdrop of sky and space. The dark barrel of the gun in his right hand, incredibly, was pointed directly at her. It was as if she could see right into the black bore of the thing. Her mind was chaotic, reeling. Was this happening to her? Was this really happening, or was she having another of her amazing, terrifying Craghold House visions? Mirages of near-insanity. Utter impossibility!

  But no—

  Katharine Cowles held her in a vise of power, so that she couldn’t move. She couldn’t cry out, either. She could squirm no more.

  Peter Cowles stood there—right in front of her, gun and all, and his Cupid’s face was a contorted mask of sheer malice and fury. The lights in his blue eyes were dancing erratically.

  “We have to kill you, Anne Fenner,” he rasped in a low voice which held all the ugliness of a striking snake. “There’s no other way out for us. You take Guy away from us and we’re lost.”

  “Stop talking,” Katharine Cowles whimpered, her coolness and poise a barely-remembered thing. “Do it—now!”