Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05

by The Voice of the Mountain (v1. 1)

  “So far as I know, the boy’s story runs out there,” I said.

  “No, it doesn’t. He was at some frontier fort, and he deserted and joined an Indian tribe, like his father before him. Like his father before him, he learned Indian wisdom, Indian medicine, Indian magic. Finally he went to New Orleans, called himself Joseph Harpe there. He married, he had children of his own. He taught them what he knew, what his parents had known.”

  “Indian magic, you said.”

  “All kinds of magic,” he said. “There are all kinds, as you’re well aware. You know several kinds yourself, as I’ve heard.”

  I made myself as easy as I could in my chair. “How come you to know things about me?” I wondered out loud.

  “We’ll take that up later Just now, I’m telling you about my ancestors. Well, the Harpe family went on. On and on and on.” Again, he sounded almost dreamy. “And each generation studied all those kinds of magic, sometimes used them. And finally I was bom, and took up the studies, and did extremely well at them.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you, John, really? I think you do see. Now we’re down to my part of the story, my autobiography if you want to call it that. I hope I don’t bore you, talking about myself.”

  “I don’t reckon that’s likely,” I said. “So far, it’s been right interesting.”

  “A cool one, aren’t you, John?”

  “I have to be cool, now and then.”

  “I’ll go on,” he said. “I’m not sure where I was bom, it must have been about fifty years back. I think it was in New York. But by the time I was three, my parents had taken me to Chattanooga, and that’s when they took me to join a coven.” “I see,” I said again. “Witches want new members as young as they can get them.”

  “Very true, and very sensible. I got older and went to school —one way and another, I had a good education, I even got a master’s degree at Vanderbilt. I studied a number of foreign languages and literatures. I also picked up a good grounding in occult matters. I was able to study important books. Over on the shelf there you’ll find Barrett, you’ll find the Grand Albert, you’ll find a copy of a very rare and informative manuscript called The Book of Abramelin. Here, I’ll fetch it.”

  He got up and crossed to the shelf and wagged back a book bound in old dark leather, A-sitting down again, he opened it. I saw writing in both red and black, pen-and-ink writing.

  “This is a copy of the original, in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal at Paris. There's been an English translation, but not a complete one—I think the translator thought there were certain passages better left out. This is the entire work. Do you read French, John?"

  “Not right well. I learned me some French when I was a soldier, that's all."

  He laughed. “I know about that soldier French, you learn it from girls for the most part. It's like Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories. All you can say is that you love only them, and will come back when your military service is over, right?"

  “More or less," I admitted, and he laughed again. He thumbed through the book, a-looking at a page here and there.

  “Abramelin’s wisdom was noted down by a scholar of the occult named Abraham," he allowed. “Abraham started to travel in search of secret wisdom about the end of the fourteenth century. He went to Germany and Greece and Constantinople, finally to Egypt, where he studied with a magician named Abramelin." He closed the book and looked at me. “This is all new to you, of course."

  “Not quite," I said back. “There's something about that book in The Mysteries and Secrets of Magic, by a fellow named Thompson."

  “I continue to admire the way you've instructed yourself."

  “Lots of what I read is against the belief of a heap of educated folks," I had to admit. “They accept other things."

  “Paul Valery once said, 'That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false,' " he smiled at me.

  “Who was Paul Valery?" 1 asked him.

  “Ah, at last we come to someone you haven't read. Valery was a fine poet and a penetrating essayist, and he reads much better in the original French than in translation. But to go on: Like Abraham, I’ve traveled here and abroad in search of wisdom. I’ve conferred with distinguished scholars and practitioners of the black arts. I winnowed out some clumsy imposters, and profited by genuine wielders of great powers. Along the way, I met Scylla, and she became my”—he broke off, just a moment—“my associate, my partner. I brought her here.”

  “To Cry Mountain.”

  “But I was here first. I’d heard rumors about Cry Mountain, how people stayed away from it, didn’t talk about it. I came alone, and exerted my methods to make a safe, habitable place here.”

  “You set it up?” I said. “You all alone, the stockade and all?”

  “As to that, I was able to bring in help,” he smiled at me. “Help by magic that would be hard to believe. That may seem difficult to explain, but I could do it.” He touched the thing on his neck he called an amulet. “To make it simple, you know how Aladdin was able to do wonders with his slave of the lamp. When this haven was built, I assembled guardians for it.”

  “Your swarm of bees,” I suggested.

  “And other things you’ve sensed. Then, out in the world again, I met Scylla and brought her here to help me. Outside the stockade there are various menaces, but inside it’s safe, unless I have a notion to change that. This is home, John.” He sort of stretched where he sat. “And it’s going to be your home.”

  “What do you want to do up here?” I prodded at him. “What?”

  “I have a certain ambition. Shall I tell you? Well then, once I was in India. I was in a city they called Nellore, and I made friends there. I can make friends.”

  I could see that he could make friends, though so far he hadn’t made a friend of me. I waited for him to go on. He went on:

  “They took me along a river called Penner, to a town they said was Jonnawada. And at Jonnawada was a great temple called Kamakshi Devalayam.”

  All those foreign names he rolled out like as if he loved them. He went on:

  “They did impressive things there. People came by the thousands, and priests and sorcerers helped them. Cured their diseases, settled their dilemmas, defeated their enemies, won love and riches and happiness for them.”

  “For a price, I’ll wager you,” I put in.

  “Yes, the temple had stores of wealth—money, jewels, all that. But what I want is my own temple, with thousands coming for help up Cry Mountain.”

  “Coming for help,” I said after him, “and a-paying you out money.”

  “As to that,” he smiled, “I don’t really need money. I want people to come for help and go away believing in me.”

  “Disciples?”

  “Call them that. Just now, I’m in want of one book—as rare a book as there is on earth—to complete methods. Since you’re here, I think you’ll be a help in getting it. But even without it, I can get things just by wanting them.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Let me show you,” he said. “What might you want, from anywhere on earth?”

  I studied him. “I don’t need aught, not very much. Maybe I’d like to see today’s paper. I haven’t seen a paper for quite a spell.”

  “What paper? Perhaps the New York Times?”

  “Just the Asheville paper would suit me.”

  He got up and walked across the room to the far corner where the rope hung. I saw how strong, how quiet, was the way his big body moved. He caught the rope and dragged down on it, like as if he was a-ringing a bell. Then he turned and came back, and in his hand was a folded-up newspaper. “Here you are,” he said, and gave it to me.

  It was the Asheville paper, sure enough, the paper for that day. A big-lettered headline about something Congress was a-doing, another headline farther down about a big hotel a-get- ting ready to be sold.

  “All you had to do was pull the rope and there it was,” I said
to Harpe. “The same sort of pull to get you maybe a pound of butter or a ham of meat.”

  “Or clothes or shoes or anything. Good blockade whiskey, for instance. That’s how I got the whiskey we’ve been drinking.”

  I recollected what I’d heard along the way from Tombs’s cabin to Larrowby and back, about how things got lost or stolen, but I said naught about that. I listened while he talked ahead:

  “If I want anything, I need only to think strongly about it and exactly where it is, then pull the rope. Scylla had the rope and installed it here. That sort of thing was being used more than three hundred years ago, by witches in Europe. I don’t have to stir to have my wishes fulfilled.”

  “How do you know where things are outside?” I asked him. “How did you know about me?”

  “You’ve asked that before. Let me show you. See the window over there?”

  I looked at the window. “It’s plumb dark,” I said, “and no wonder, down here under the ground.”

  “Keep your eye on it, and tell me where you’d like to see things.”

  “Well,” I said, “how about in the settlement called Larrowby?”

  “Keep looking.”

  His hand held the amulet on his neck. He spoke five words like names, five words I’d hear again and again, and have in my memory. He rolled them out:

  “Fetegan . . . Gaghagan . . . Beigan . . . Deigan . . . Usagan ...”

  The window quit a-being dark. It was a roily glow, like smoke. Then it cleared, and it showed me the little main street of Larrowby, the cabins, the church house yonder one way, the store with its sign the other.

  “You see it,” said Harpe. He’d come to stand beside me, still a-holding his amulet. “We move now. Move to the store.”

  It was like a moving picture, we sort of swam toward the porch. The door was open before us, and then we were inside. Folks a-shopping, a-talking. I saw Mr. Larrowby at the post office desk, a-selling stamps to somebody. Behind the counter was Myrrh, as pretty as the prettiest of pictures as she put things in a paper poke for a customer and asked him how his folks were.

  “All right, I’ve seen it,” I said, and Harpe mumbled those names again and the picture died out and the window went dark.

  “Are you convinced?” Harpe inquired me.

  “I’ve kindly got to be,” I said. “There was the place and the store, and pretty Myrrh herself, a-talking.”

  “Pretty Myrrh,” he echoed me. “You think she’s truly pretty.”

  “She’s pretty enough to be the prettiest girl in another sight bigger place than little bitty Larrowby,” I said. “A man could walk a whole long summer day and not meet up with a prettier girl than she is.”

  "I see,” Harpe said, and grinned so that his swept-out mustache wiggled on his face. I wondered myself what it was he thought he saw, but again I decided I wouldn't ask.

  He patted his leather-covered book on the table. “There are many spells in here. Spells of great potency. Not quite everything I need, but still I can, for instance, go anywhere in the world simply by willing myself there.”

  “Is that a fact?” I said. “Sure enough?”

  “Watch.”

  His left hand grabbed his amulet. He put his right hand on top of his head, so that it squashed his hair down. He mumbled something, too low for me to hear. Then I was just a-looking at his empty chair, where he didn't sit any more. He’d vanished away, like a busted soap bubble.

  There wasn’t aught I could do but sit and wonder myself how he’d done it. I reckon I sat for likely half a minute. Then he was back again, as sudden quick as he’d gone. He showed his teeth in a smile.

  “I’ve been to New York, on Times Square,” he said. “To prove it, I’ve brought you the New York Times. ”

  He held me out a folded newspaper. I opened it, and sure enough it was the New York Times, for that very day. The ink of it was so fresh printed that I could smell it. On the front page it said that some senator was a-scolding the President about one thing another.

  “Convinced?” Harpe prodded at me.

  “I reckon I am,” I had to admit. “Now then, are you a-going to tell me that you can see the past and the future?”

  “As to the past,” he said, “I can’t see back there clearly, but I can call up ghosts from the past. Shall I do that for you?” “Not right this minute,” I shook my head to him, for I didn’t want too much to happen too quick.

  “As to the future,” he went on, as cheerful as a chickadee, “nobody can see that except in blurs and spots, because the future has yet to become the present. But I can heal diseases. Or turn men into animals. Or raise monsters all around, the way I’ve done here.”

  “Outside the stockade, you mean.”

  “You’ve seen the swarm of bees. You’ve sensed other things. You know what the Behinder is.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. Nobody’s supposed to see the Behinder, but I’d seen one once, on that other mountain named Yandro, and each day since I’d wished I hadn’t seen it.

  “And the Bammat and the Flat and the Skim,” he went through a sort of catalogue. “Plus others. I’ve mustered them all out there, just outside our stockade. That’s why you’d better not try to get out there among them.”

  He said it in the quietest voice you could call for.

  “But wait,” he said. “You’ve met Scylla. Let me introduce you to another pair of ladies.”

  7

  He slapped his big hands together three times, the way he'd done before. Scylla poked her cotton-topped head out past the green curtain of the door.

  “Will you please ask Alka and Tarrah to come out here?" Harpe said to her. “I’ve been informing John about a few basic matters, and now it’s time for a conference of all of us.”

  Scylla bobbed out of sight again. Harpe offered me the blockade jug, and I trickled me about a thimbleful into my clay cup. He poured himself a right good jolt. He seemed to be able to handle good jolts.

  The curtain moved again and in walked Scylla, and behind her two other women. I got up on my feet. Harpe didn’t stir an inch out of his chair. He might just as well have been a judge a-holding court.

  “Ladies,” he said, “permit me to introduce to you our guest and new companion, John. John—no more of a name than that, no less. You will remember times that we’ve watched him, heard him, knew that he was determined to come up here to us. We’ve let him come, and now we make him welcome to our community.”

  I stood and looked on those women. Scylla I’d met. She creased her scowl at me. Of the other two, one was tall and gaunt and as straight as a guitar string, with a smooth-cheeked face and a firm-held mouth and behind great big glasses dark eyes so bright and sharp they could near about cut into you.

  She wore a black skirt and tailored jacket and a white blouse, more or less like some boss lady in an office somewhere. With her came a young one, a right young one, and she smiled on me like a cat on a dish of cream, with little, even white teeth a-showing inside wide, full red lips. Her black hair hung heavy on her shoulders, below a red ribbon tied on it above the ears. Her face was round and rosy-tanned, and her eyes were brown as brown. Her tight-filled blouse was a rosy tan color, too, it more or less matched her face, and her short skirt was a darker brown. No stockings on her curvy legs with the same rosy tan on them, and on her feet sandals of dark shiny leather straps with what looked like silver buckles.

  “John, this is Alka,” Harpe made an introduction, and the tall one's tawny-braided head nodded me. “And this is Tarrah."

  The young girl said, “Hello," and smiled me the wider.

  “Sit down at the table with us, ladies," Harpe said to them. “Sit down, all of you. John will be interested to hear how you came to be on Cry Mountain, and what you do here to help me in a truly great endeavor."

  They dragged them up chairs and sat down. Tarrah, the young one, fetched her chair right close to mine. Harpe poured more liquor into clay cups and gave them round. Scylla's scowling face looked like as
if it didn't want to see me. The one named Alka nodded again as she took her cup. Tarrah giggled up at me. When I sat down, something sort of snuggled up against my boot. I didn't need to look down to know that that was Tarrah’s sandal.

  She kept her smile on me.

  “We make John welcome here," said Harpe again. “We know of things he’s done, we know how very well and profitably he’ll fit in with us."

  “I don’t aim to stay," I said right out.

  “But you must stay, John," said Harpe, and silk was in his voice. “You realize by now that you couldn’t venture outside our stockade and live more than five minutes.”

  I couldn’t think of air reply to that. Harpe nodded Scylla. “You first, my dear,” he said.

  She sat a-clutching her cup. I saw her bony knuckles all white with the clutch.

  “I’m from Salem in Massachusetts,” she began in her shrill voice.

  “Yes, and what a historic town,” put in Harpe. “The town of witchcraft. Where, back in 1692, the colonial judges executed witches.”

  “I’ve read about it some,” I said. “What the histories call the Salem witchcraft delusion.”

  “No delusion,” Scylla scraped out. “Those judges didn’t know how to go about their oyer and terminer trials. Why, some of them couldn’t even sign their names. And they hanged some of the old religion, but others they missed.” Her eyes glittered like chunks of glass. “A lot of others. The old religion goes on.”

  “And you’re a Salem witch by blood descent and home training,” said Harpe. “Isn’t that so?”

  “That’s so, and I’m glad it’s so. I had the old wisdom, I had the old powers. Many came to consult me, including Ruel Harpe.”

  “We decided to become partners,” Harpe added on, “and to establish our headquarters here on Cry Mountain.”

  “I located Cry Mountain, from rumors drifting up to Salem,” said Scylla, “I chose it.”

  “True,” Harpe agreed her, “but it was I who came here first, by myself, made sure how carefully it was avoided, and gathered a crew of helpers to build our stockade and our living quarters.” He made a wave of his hand. “All this, and the grounds outside.”