by Donald Tyson
Twice during the day I awoke at the sound of wings, and crawled out to frighten away a pair of persistent vultures, who continued to circle high above. The second time I remained in view to discourage the birds. The flesh of the corpse began to blacken in patches beneath the rays of the sun, and the flies swarmed over it, clustering most thickly upon its open eyes. It felt unnatural to be exposed to the light of day, and the heat wearied me. When at last the carrion hawks flew beneath the horizon in search of easier prey, I returned to my den and slept deeply.
My veiled companion stood beside me on the crest of a high dune beneath the shimmering sun and pointed with a bony hand at a whirlwind that danced across the desert.
“All turning things are gates. That which turns defines a center and opens it. All centers are at unity. To travel through a gate, you must go to the center and return from it. Yog-Sothoth is the way. I give you his seal. Use it to open the gates.”
He bent and drew a symbol in the sand. I stared at it. He recited words in an obscure tongue, harsh and guttural to my ears. The sand began to turn beneath my gaze and a black pit opened. I felt it tug at me like a hungry mouth. With a cry of dismay I tried to pull back from its widening lip, but was drawn into the darkness.
The croaking scream still vibrated in my throat when I jerked awake and found myself lying beneath the ledge, the corpse beside me. Night had fallen, but a night filled with glowing forms. Several dozen ghouls crouched around the corpse, their bodies lit with silver, their eyes like burning lamps. The largest who was their leader stood beside the ledge staring down at me. He cocked his head in curiosity.
“I dream of a dark man who has no face,” I said, wiping cold sweat from my forehead with my palm.
“What is a dream?” the ghoul asked.
“A dream is an illusion, a thing that seems to happen but has no reality.”
“Nyarlathotep is real. We have watched him walk beneath the moon.”
“Is that his name? What can he want with me?”
The ghoul made a motion with his shoulders that I interpreted as a shrug.
“Who can know the ways of the Old Ones? Always Nyarlathotep has wandered the desert. It is unlucky to meet him.”
Crawling from under the ledge, I approached the corpse, and noticed the naked ghost of the girl standing some distance from the circle of ghouls, making anxious gestures with her hands, as though trying to brush them away.
“Do you see her?” I asked my companion.
The ghoul followed the direction of my gaze, then turned his head with disinterest.
“The shade always watches over the meat. It has no power. We ignore it.”
The others parted and allowed us to approach the hairless corpse. Its belly had distended with the gases of decay, giving it a pregnant look. The rays of the sun had shriveled its eyes.
“What is your name, human?”
My mind sought for the name of my father, but still it eluded me. I smiled bitterly in the darkness.
“Alhazred.”
“I am Gor, leader of the Black Spring Clan. All gathered here share my blood. We are few in number but strong in the hunt.”
What was the proper response to such a salutation? I spoke the first words that came to my tongue.
“May your bellies always be filled.”
A murmur of surprise arose from the creatures.
“You know the polite words. Have you been with my kind before?”
Silently I shook my head. The ghoul curled his lips away from the gums to reveal his sharp teeth and flicked out his long tongue, which glistened in the moonlight.
“As leader, it is my place to feed before the others. I give that place to you.”
Gor’s words held the cadence of ritual. I would not have dared to refuse, and in any case hunger gnawed within my bowels. Searching around the ground, I found a large stone that rested comfortably in my hand and used it to smash open the skull of the corpse. The trembling ghost of the dead girl vanished upward in a flash of light. With a broken piece of skull I scooped out the moist brain and ate it while the ghouls made approving sounds.
Their leader used his claws to slash open the swollen belly, releasing a gust of foul gas, and buried his face in the exposed intestines. With hooting cries the other members of the clan closed in and began to take pieces of the corpse. The largest fed first, but not even the smallest was denied a share of the flesh. In a few minutes nothing remained on the rock but a disordered pile of reddened bones. Even these the ghouls began to crack open with stones to release their marrow, which they sucked as though it were cream.
“You call yourselves the Black Spring Clan,” I said to Gor. “Is there meaning in the name?”
He gnawed and sucked the broken end of a thigh bone as he nodded.
“We draw our water from a spring of the same name. It is unknown to men. You are one of us now, so I will show it to you.”
Gathering up my few possessions, I went with them across the desert. I took my bearing from the star Mismar so that I could find my way back to the caravan road alone, though with my spider-enhanced vision it would have been difficult to become lost, since our footprints in the sand glowed with a pale light. Gor gestured to a low line of rocky cliffs near the northern horizon as he loped easily over the uneven ground.
“All the land to the cliffs is ours. What lies beyond belongs to the Red Hill Clan.”
“How do you know the language of men?”
“When a caravan camps for the night, we gather near in search of meat. We watch and listen.”
The ghouls moved quickly, making almost no sound. Mothers carried their infants on their backs, with each young clinging by its arms around its mother’s neck. Not all the ghouls were naked. A few wore belts with leather pouches, and many had strings of beads around their necks or bands of brass on their arms. Their smell was earthy, but not unpleasant, resembling the smell of dogs.
A flash of light attracted my notice at the corner of my eye. It was the djinn who had communicated with me the night before, keeping pace with the ghouls.
“We are being followed,” I muttered to Gor.
He looked around alertly, his ears moving as he listened for sounds in the night.
“Can’t you see it? A spirit creature.”
He made a rough, coughing noise that I realized must be laughter, and said something in his own tongue to the rest of the clan. More of the ghouls laughed and glanced at me.
“That is one of the chaklah’i. We pay them no attention. They are vermin who feed on the remnants of the feast. This one follows you, Alhazred.”
Another of the large male ghouls spoke to Gor, and both laughed.
“He said perhaps it wants to mate with you.”
“If so, it will be disappointed,” I said, staring at the djinn as it danced along the crest of a dune and vanished on the far side.
After two hours of hard travel northward we entered a kind of great pit, shallow but of broad expanse, where the ground had fallen. In its center, well shielded by hills from the sight of any observer who might pass casually on a camel, grew a grove of date palms and grasses. The Black Spring was well named. Its waters were the color of pitch in the moonlight and appeared completely stagnant. The spring was narrow enough to leap across. Tiny bubbles ascended in its center, betraying the presence of moving water.
“It looks foul,” I said, eyeing the water with disappointment.
“It has sustained me all the nights of my life, and the bodies of all the clan for countless generations.” Gor spoke with a tone of veneration.
I recognized my error. To these creatures, the spring was more than water. It was the living heart of their world.
“You have done me great honor to show me this place,” I told him. “It is a kindness that will not be forgotten.�
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He nodded, watching me with his large eyes.
“When I saw you feast on the man-corpse, I knew you were one of us. I am glad we did not need to kill you.”
The rest of the clan separated and wandered to their homes, which lay within small fissures between rocks or in holes dug in the ground beside sheltering boulders. A cry rang up, and then another. Those who had entered the holes issued forth babbling in their guttural tongue. Gor left my side and went to learn the reason for this confusion. He listened to several of the ghouls, making no more than grunts by way of comment, then issued a rapid series of commands that sent the larger males of the clan scurrying in and out of the holes. He returned, a grim expression on his misshapen features.
“While we hunted, the Red Hill Clan raided our places of rest and stole our possessions. This cannot go unavenged. I will follow with my best warriors and punish the raiding party.”
“I will accompany you,” I said on sudden impulse.
He gazed at me for a moment, then nodded.
“We will have use for your claw.”
Taking only small skins of water, a party of nine ghouls assembled on the rim of the pit, and at Gor’s command separated and began to search the sandy ground.
“They look for the tracks of our enemies,” Gor explained.
I glanced over the desert and saw faintly glowing the footprints of a number of travelers leading away from the pit, on the side opposite where we had entered.
“There.” I pointed at the tracks. “They went east.”
Gor barked an excited command to one of the ghouls, who ran over to investigate the place I had indicated. He smelled the ground and threw back his head, howling. Several others ran over and lent their voices to his. It was like the cry of wolves, and chilled the blood in my heart. We started on the track, moving at an easy run.
“You have good eyes,” Gor said.
“They are not always so keen.”
I explained to him the effects of the white spiders, and told of the cave where I had found them.
“We have a legend of the spider cave,” he said when I finished. “None of my clan knows where it is located.”
“Someday, I will show it to you,” I promised. “It has clean water in abundance.”
We ran without pause for more than an hour. The tracks we followed gradually bent their way north toward the hills. I realized that we would never catch the raiding party of hill ghouls unless they chose to stop for rest, since they could move as fast as us across the desert. The only chance we had was the long distance they had traveled to reach the spring. They might be weary, and were likely to pause at some time during the night. I did my best not to slow down the others. They appeared tireless. I could run faster for a brief while and gain the front of the pack, thanks to the advantage of my longer legs, but they seemed able to continue their regular pace all night and never exhaust their strength. Unless we came on the raiders soon, I would be forced to fall behind to catch my breath. Already I panted in the cool night air, my cotton thawb soaked with sweat against my skin. I considered casting it away and running naked to my sandals, but I might never have the chance to return for it.
Gor raised his hand and hissed quietly. The ghouls dropped from a run to a slow walking pace, their heads tilted back as they snuffed the air through wide nostrils. The cooling night breeze touched my face. Gor put his lips near my ear.
“Ahead of us, on the other side of the sand hill,” he sighed.
Listening intently, I caught a murmur of voices, and coughing laughter.
Gor began to motion the ghouls forward, but I touched his arm and leaned close to speak. He listened to my words and nodded his head in agreement.
Leaving the others, I walked left for several minutes, then began to work my way around the place where the hill ghouls had stopped. It was my intention to come at them from as nearly opposite Gor’s band as possible, while still being mindful of the direction of the wind. If I crossed upwind of the raiders they would surely scent my approach.
I saw them glowing against the darker sand as I surmounted the crest of an intervening dune, and quickly counted. There were fourteen males, all larger than Gor, although their bodies did not appear as powerful as those of the Black Spring Clan. Some would stand as tall as my shoulder on their thin legs. At present they squatted in a circle on the ground and drank from water skins, passing objects back and forth and admiring them.
Dropping to my hands and knees, I began to crawl toward them. I touched my sweating cheek to the ground so that the sand would stick to it. When I came closer, I emitted a piteous moan. They leapt to their feet with snarls and whirled to face me. I let myself collapse onto the ground, then panting heavy breaths that I was sure they would hear, I pressed my body once more to hands and knees and continued to approach, as though unaware of their presence.
They hissed in alarm and darted keen glances all around at the crests of the dunes, nostrils flaring as they scented the breeze, but when they saw nothing and smelled nothing, they silently approached and surrounded me. They moved with caution, knees bent and long fingers spread to expose their hooked claws. I raised my head and widened my eyes, as though seeing them for the first time.
“I am lost.” My voice croaked as though with dryness. “Where is the caravan? Where is the road to Yemen?”
A tall ghoul who seemed to be their leader spoke a few soft words to his companion, and the other laughed a coughing laugh. The leader relaxed and approached without haste.
“Water,” I croaked, hoping that my water skin was not visible hanging beneath the folds of my thawb. “Have pity, water.”
The ghoul put his broad foot on my shoulder and pressed down experimentally, testing my strength. I pretended to collapse into the sand. He grunted and turned away, speaking a few words in his language to his companion. The other approached with a purposeful attitude, his right hand working as he flexed his fingers. It was plain that he intended to tear out my throat. I wondered if these ghouls would be as fastidious as the Black Spring Clan, or if they would consume my flesh immediately after my death. My right hand slid beneath the shadow of my belly to the scabbard of my dagger and closed around the hilt of my weapon.
The ghoul grasped my robe at the shoulder and pulled me to my knees to expose my throat. As I rose from the ground, I drew the dagger and in the same motion plunged it into his belly. His cry resembled that of a hawk. I twisted the broad blade of the knife and pulled it loose, then buried its point between his ribs, where I hoped to find his heart. The ghoul dropped to his knees in the sand so that our eyes were on the same level and stared at me in amazement.
This sudden violence froze the others for a few moments. Two began to rush toward me, when the air was rent on all sides by a shrill howling. My attackers stopped and whirled around with uncertainty. One started to run, then hesitated, not knowing which way to flee. By then it was too late. The warriors of the Black Spring Clan fell upon them, cutting with teeth and slashing with claws at any exposed vital place.
I backed away from the ghoul I had killed, still on my knees, blood streaming from the point of my dagger. To my enhanced sight it looked like milk as it pooled on the sand. Something struck me hard upon the shoulder and knocked me over. At least one of the raiders had not forgotten me. I rolled with the creature, grasping his wrists instinctively to keep his deadly talons from my face. In the process my dagger was lost. The strength of the ghoul was greater than mine. His reeking breath filled my face as his teeth snapped for my throat. I could not cast the weight of his body from me, but was pinned to the sand.
A bright light suddenly surrounded the head of the ghoul and covered his snapping mouth and flared nostrils. He shook his head in irritation as though unable to see clearly and barked. One of his hands pulled loose from my grasp and began to bat at the air above his head. With my free h
and I pressed him away and rolled from beneath him. I saw the bone hilt of the dagger glowing where it had fallen and snatched it up just as the ghoul charged with claws outstretched. The bloody blade sank deep into the pit of his throat. One of his hands grazed my neck and drew blood, but I had no leisure to concern myself with the wound. A spray of blood coughed from his gaping jaws blinded me. In desperation I pulled myself close to his naked chest, inside the sweep of his claws, and ground the point of the dagger against the bones of his neck. He fell limp against me, and I realized that he was dead.
I blinked the blood from my eyes and looked around. The battle was over. Two of the hill ghouls fled up the side of a dune, both seriously wounded and pursued by several of the Black Spring Clan, but before they could pass from sight, Gor called back his warriors with a barked command. I pushed myself to my feet and stood swaying. With my fingers I examined the wound on my neck. It stung to the touch but was shallow. Twelve raiders lay dead, most with their throats or bellies ripped out. Four of Gor’s followers were also dead, and most of the others had suffered wounds. Gor himself, though covered with the blood of his foes, was not injured.
He approached and looked down at the two hill ghouls I had killed. An expression of intense joy illuminated his grotesque face. His lips writhed back from his teeth and his tongue flicked out with excitement.
“A good battle. The Red Hill Clan will remember this night to their shame.”
He began to whoop and dance around the bodies of the fallen foes, and his clan members imitated him gleefully. The fervor of their emotions intoxicated me. I found myself dancing with the rest, waving my bloody dagger in the air and singing wordlessly.
When the excitement subsided, the ghouls began to gather up their looted possessions. They stripped the bodies of their enemies of valuables, then prepared to carry their own dead back to the spring.
“Your lover waits for you,” Gor said in a jovial mood, pointing with a thumb at the dancing ball of light that hovered and pranced some distance away.
