The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE BOWL OF SACRIFICE

  I awakened as though escaping from some singularly unpleasant dream. I could not remember what the dream had been, but I knew it had been rotten. It was a stormy day, the surges hammering against the rocky shores, the wind wailing, and the light that came through the windows was gray. I raised my left arm to look at my watch, but it was not there. Nor was it on the table beside the bed. My mouth was dry, and my skin was dry and hot. I felt as though I had been drunk for two days.

  Worst of all was my fear that I would remember the dream.

  I sat up in bed. Something was missing besides my watch—the gun under my armpit—McCann’s gun. I lay back, and tried to remember. There had been a green drink which had sparkled and effervesced—after that, nothing. There was a fog between the green drink and now. The fog hid what I feared to have uncovered.

  Fog had been in the dream. The pistol had been in the dream, too. When I had taken the green drink I still had the gun. There was a flash of memory—after the drink the gun had seemed absurd, unconsequential and I had thrown it into a corner. I jumped out of the bed to look for it.

  My foot struck against a black and oval bowl. Not all black—there were stains along its sides, and inside it was a viscous scum.

  The bowl of sacrifice!

  Abruptly the fog lifted and there was the dream…if dream it had been…stark and clear in each dread detail. I recoiled from it, not only sick of soul but nauseated of body…

  If it had been no dream, then was I damned and trebly damned. If I had not killed, I had acquiesced in killing. If I had not beaten in the breasts of the sacrifices with my own hands, I had not lifted a hand to save them—and I had fed the fires that were their funeral torches.

  Equally with Dahut and de Keradel, I had summoned that black and evil Power…equally with them I was murderer, torturer…thrall of Hell.

  What was there to prove it dream? Illusion suggested by de Keradel and Dahut while my will lay quiescent under the spell of the green drink? Desperately out of the damning memories I tried to sift some evidence that it had been only dream. There had been the flaring of the feral phosphorescence in their eyes—and in mine. A physiological peculiarity which man does not commonly possess, nor could any drink create the layer of cells which causes it. Nor does humanity bear within its breasts, over its hearts, perceptible lumens bright in youth and dimmed and yellow in age. Yet they had glowed in the breasts of the sacrifices!

  Nor where except in dream do oaks chant as though their leafed boughs had voices?

  But—there was the blood-stained bowl! Could that materialize from a dream?

  No…but de Keradel or Dahut might have placed it there to make me, waking, believe the dream had been real. And dream or no dream—I was tainted with their evil.

  I got up and searched for the automatic. I found it in the corner of the room where I had tossed it. Well, that much had been true. I strapped the holster under my arm. My head felt like a hive, my brain a honeycomb in and out of which lame bees of thought went buzzing aimlessly. But a cold, implacable hatred, a loathing of de Keradel and his witch-daughter held steady in the shaken fabric of my mind.

  The rain lashed the windows, and the gale cried around the old house. Somewhere a clock struck a single clanging note. Whether it was the half-hour or the full I could not tell. A straight thought struck through the aimless ones. I took a pinch of the leaves out of the holster and chewed them. They were exceedingly bitter, but I swallowed them—and almost instantly my head was clear.

  There was no use in hunting out de Keradel and killing him. In the first place, I could give no real defense for doing so. Not unless there was a heap of bodies in the Cairn, and I could open the cavern of the paupers. I had not the slightest belief that I could find that cavern or that there would be any bodies. Killing de Keradel would seem the act of a mad man, and for doing so a madhouse would be the best I could expect. Also, if I killed him, there would yet be the blank-eyed servants to reckon with.

  And Dahut…I doubted whether I could shoot down Dahut in cold blood. If I did there still would be the servants. They would kill me…and I had no especial desire to die. The face of Helen came before me…and still less did I desire to die.

  Also, there was the necessity of knowing whether what I had been visualizing had been dream or reality. It was most necessary that I know that.

  Someway, somehow, I must get in touch with McCann. Whether dream or reality, I must continue to play the game, not allow myself to be trapped again. At any rate, at first I must seem to believe in its reality; convince de Keradel that I did so believe. For no other reason could he or Dahut have left the bowl beside my bed.

  I dressed, and picked up the bowl and went downstairs, holding it behind me. De Keradel was at the table, but the Demoiselle was not. I saw that it was a little after one. He looked up at me, sharply, as I sat and said: “I trust you slept well. I gave order that you should not be disturbed. It is a desolate day, and my daughter sleeps late.”

  I laughed: “She should—after last night.”

  He asked: “What do you mean?”

  “No need to fence longer with me, de Keradel,” I answered, “after last night.”

  He asked, slowly: “What do you remember of last night?”

  “Everything, de Keradel. Everything—from your convincing disquisition upon the dark begetting of life, its darker delivery, its darkest evolution—and the proof of it in what we summoned to the Cairn.”

  He said: “You have dreamed.”

  “Did I dream this?”

  I set the stained bowl upon the table. His eyes widened; he looked from it to me and back again to the bowl. He asked: “Where did you find that?”

  I answered: “Beside my bed. When I awoke not long ago.”

  The veins upon his temples swelled and began to throb; he whispered: “Now why did she do that…”

  I said: “Because she is wiser than you. Because she knows I should be told the truth. Because she trusts me.”

  He said: “As once before she trusted you—and to her cost and to her father’s.”

  “When I was Lord of Carnac,” I laughed. “The Lord of Carnac died last night. She told me so.”

  He looked at me, long: “How did the Lord of Carnac die?”

  I answered, brutally: “In your daughter’s arms. And now she prefers—me.”

  He pushed back his chair, walked to the window and stared out at the driving rain. He came back to the table and sat quietly down: “Caranac, what did you dream?”

  I said: “A waste of time to answer that. If it was a dream, you dictated it, and therefore know. If it was no dream, you were there.”

  He said: “Nevertheless, I ask you to tell me.”

  I studied him. There was something strange about this request, made apparently in all sincerity. It threw a totally unexpected monkey-wrench of doubt into the simple machinery of my deductions. I sparred for time.

  “After I’ve eaten,” I answered.

  Not once while I breakfasted did he speak to me; nor, when I looked at him, were his eyes on me. He seemed deep in not particularly pleasant thoughts. I tried to fish the monkey-wrench out of my calculations. His surprise and anger when I produced the bowl had seemed genuine. If so, then obviously he had not put it beside me. Therefore it was not he who had wished to awaken my memory—either of dream or reality.

  Then it must have been Dahut. But why should she want me to remember if her father did not? The only answer seemed to be that they were in conflict. Yet it might mean something else, far wider reaching. I had respect for de Keradel’s mentality. I did not believe he would ask me to tell him something he already knew. At least not without a reason. Did his question mean that he had taken no part in the summoning of the Gatherer? That there had been no sacrifices…that all had been illusion…and that he had taken no part in the creation of the illusion?

  That all had been the work of Dahut alone?

&nbs
p; But wait! Might it not also mean that the green drink, after it changed me into what I had become, had also been supposed to make me forget? And that for some reason I had been partly immune to its effect? That now de Keradel wanted to know to what extent it had failed…to compare my memories with what he knew had occurred?

  Yet there was the bowl…and twice I had seen fear in his eyes when Dahut had spoken to him…and what was the rift between the pair…and how could I take advantage of it?

  Could anyone except Dahut have left beside me the sacrificial bowl…any thing…

  I heard the voice of Ralston changing to the buzzing of a fly…I heard Dick’s voice crying out to me…Beware, beware of Dahut…give me release…from the Gatherer…Alan.

  And the room darkened as though the dripping clouds had grown heavier…or had filled with shadows…

  I said: “Dismiss the servants, de Keradel. I’ll tell you.”

  And when he had done so, I did tell him. He listened without interrupting, expression unchanged, pale eyes now glancing out of the windows, now fixed on mine. When I was through, he asked, smiling:

  “Do you think it dream—or real?”

  “There is this—” I threw the stained bowl on the table.

  He took it, and examined it, thoughtfully. He said:

  “Let us first assume your experiences were real. Under that assumption, I am sorcerer, warlock, priest of evil. And I do not like you. Not only do I not like you, but I do not trust you. I am not deceived by your apparent conversion to our aims and purposes. I know that you came here only because of your fear of what might befall your friends if you did not. In short, I am fully aware of my daughter’s command to you, and what led up to it. I could get rid of you. Very easily. And would, were it not for one obstacle. My daughter’s love for you. In awakening those memories which were her most ancient mother’s in Ys…in resolving her into that ancient Dahut…obviously I could not pick and choose among her memories. They must, for my purposes, be complete. I must revive them all. Unfortunately, the Lord of Carnac was in them. Most unfortunately she met you, whose ancient father was that same Lord of Carnac. To destroy you would mean a complete and most probably abortive rearrangement of all my plans. It would infuriate her. She would become my enemy. Therefore you—continue to be. Is this plain?”

  “Admirably so,” I said.

  “What then—still assuming I am what you think—am I to do? Obviously, make you particeps criminis. A partner in my crimes. You cannot denounce me without denouncing yourself. I give you a certain drink which deadens your inhibitions against this and that. You become particeps criminis. Helpless to denounce, unless you want the same halter around your neck as would encircle mine. Doubtless,” he said, courteously, “all this has occurred to you.”

  “It has,” I answered. “But I would like to put a few questions to you—in your character of sorcerer, warlock, priest of evil—assumed or otherwise, of course.”

  “In that character,” he said gravely, “ask.”

  “Did you bring about the death of Ralston?”

  “I did not,” he said. “My daughter did. It is she who commands the shadows.”

  “Was the shadow which whispered him to his death—real?”

  “Real enough to cause his death,” he replied.

  “You become ambiguous,” I said. “I asked was it real?”

  He smiled: “There is evidence that he thought so.”

  “And the other three?”

  “Equally as real. It was the unexpected linking of those cases by Dr. Bennett that prompted our visit to Lowell…an exceedingly unfortunate visit, I repeat, since it resulted in my daughter meeting you. The admission, Caranac, is in my character of warlock, only.”

  “Why, in that character, did you kill them?”

  “Because we were temporarily in need of funds. You will recall there was difficulty in getting gold out of Europe. We had killed many times before—in England, in France, and otherwhere. Dahut needs amusement—so do her shadows. And they must feed—now and then.”

  Could he be speaking truth—or was he playing with me? I said, coldly, hoping to bomb him out of his calm:

  “You profit well by your daughter’s whoredom.”

  He laughed outright at that: “What is whoredom to one who is warlock, sorcerer, and priest of evil?”

  “Those who marched last night to the Cairn—still assuming these sacrifices reality—the paupers—”

  He interrupted me: “Paupers! Why do you call them that?”

  Now I laughed: “Aren’t they?” He recovered his poise: “Always under the same conditions of response, the majority of them, yes. And now you would ask me how I—collected—them. That, my dear Caranac, was remarkably simple. It involved only the bribing of an orderly or two, the administering to the paupers of a certain drug, a little whispering to them by my daughter’s shadows, their slipping away under the guidance of those shadows to where my boat lay waiting for them. And they were here—and very happy to be here I assure you…between sacrifices.”

  He asked, suavely: “Have I given tangible form to the vaguest of your suspicions, hardened into certainty those not so vague? Is not all this credible conduct for a sorcerer and his witch-daughter?”

  I did not answer. He said:

  “Speaking still in this capacity, my dear Caranac, assuming that you leave here, tell this story to others, bring down upon me man’s law—what would happen? They would find no sacrifices, either dead in the Cairn or alive in the Cavern. There would be no Cavern. I have provided for all that. They would find only a peaceful scientist, one of whose hobbies is to reproduce Carnac in miniature. He would show them his standing stones. His entirely charming daughter would accompany and entertain them. You—if you were here—would be merely a lunatic dissonance. Whether you were here or not—what would happen to you thereafter? You would not die…but very heartily would you wish to die…if mind enough remained to formulate a wish.”

  His lips were smiling, but his eyes were pale blue ice: “I am still speaking as sorcerer, of course.”

  I asked: “Why did you come here for your experiment, de Keradel? Could you not have carried it on better in Carnac, before the ancient Cairn—the path to which the Gatherer knew well?”

  He answered: “All paths are known to the Gatherer. And how could I have had freedom to open that ancient path in a land where memory still lingers? Where could I have gotten the sacrifices—or carried on the ritual without interruption? It was not possible. Therefore I came here. Where the Gatherer is unknown—as yet.”

  I nodded; that was reasonable enough. I asked, bluntly:

  “What do you expect to gain?”

  He laughed: “You are too naive, Caranac. That I will not tell you.”

  Anger and remorse swept away my caution; I said:

  “You’ll never have my aid again in that black work, de Keradel.”

  “So!” he said, slowly. “So! And so I thought. But I will not need you again, Caranac. The rapprochement last night was almost perfect. So perfect…that I may not even need…again…Dahut.”

  He had said that last musingly, more as though sealing by words a secret thought than speaking to me. And once more I had the feeling of dissension between the two…and fear of Dahut driving him…driving him to what?…

  He leaned back and roared laughter; his eyes and lips both laughing, without malice or evil.

  “That is one side of the matter, Dr. Caranac. And now I give you the other side, the common-sense side. I am an able psychiatrist, and adventurous. I am an explorer, but not of the jungles nor the deserts of this world. I explore the brains of men, which are thousands of worlds. Mostly, I admit, they are distressingly similar; yet now and then there is one sufficiently different to justify the labor of exploration. Let us suppose that I have heard of you—as a matter of fact, Caranac, I know the history of your family better than you do yourself. Still, I have no desire to meet you until I read your interview in the case of this Ralston, w
hom I knew not at all. It arouses my curiosity, and I decide to explore—you. What is my best approach without exciting your suspicions? The most favorable, unguarded entrance into the particular territory of your brain which I wish to survey? I read that you are a friend of Dr. Bennett, who has interesting ideas upon the death of this same Ralston and others. I read that he is with Dr. Lowell, a brother psychiatrist upon whom I have long been intending to call. So I do call upon him, and what more natural that I should receive a dinner invitation for myself and my daughter. And, as I expect, there are you and Dr. Bennett.

  “Very well, then. You are a connoisseur of warlocks, a student of sorcery. I turn the conversation in that direction. You have spoken to the pressmen of shadows, and to my delight I find that Dr. Bennett is obsessed by the same idea. Better still, he is half-convinced of sorcery’s reality. You two are so thoroughly en rapport that not only do I find entrance to your mind doubly easy, but his also open to me.”

  He paused as though inviting comment. I made none. Something of the amiability faded from his face. He said: “I have called myself an explorer of minds, Caranac. I can cut my trails through them even as other explorers cut theirs through the jungles. Better. Because I can control the—vegetation.”

  Again he paused, and when again I made no comment, asked with edge of irritation: “You understand me?”

  I nodded: “I follow you perfectly.” I did not add that not only did I follow him but was a bit ahead of him…a thought was forming in my mind.

  He said: “I now suggest to you—in my character of psychiatrist, Caranac, not of sorcerer—that my whole experiment has been centered upon awakening those memories which have come down to you from ancestors who did make sacrifices to a Demon-god. Those very sacrifices in which last night it seemed to you that you participated. That what you thought you saw upon the Cairn and within the Cairn was the image of that Demon-god the imaginations of your ancestors created long centuries ago…that, and nothing more. I suggest that from the moment we met, little which has seemed reality to you has been wholly so—a tapestry of dark ancestral memories and innocent realities of which I have been the weaver. There is no Gatherer…there are no creeping Shadows…no hidden lair beneath this house. My daughter, who shares in my experiments, is in truth what sometimes she has seemed to you to be…a woman of today’s world, sophisticated, certainly, but no more witch nor harlot than the Helen you called your antique coin. And finally, that you are a guest here, only. No prisoner, and under no compulsion to remain other than your own imagination—stimulated, as I have admitted, by my own passion for research.”