The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  The major stepped forward, gently drew the paper from Laveller.

  There were many star-shells floating on high now, the trench was filled with their glare, and in their light he scanned the fragment.

  On his face when he raised it there was a great awe—and as they took it from him and read this same awe dropped down upon the others like a veil.

  For over the line the surgeon had written were now three other lines—in old French—

  Nor grieve, dear heart, nor fear the seeming—Here is waking after dreaming.

  She who loves you, Lucie.

  That was McAndrews’s story, and it was Hawtry who finally broke the silence that followed his telling of it.

  “The lines had been on the paper, of course,” he said; “they were probably faint, and your surgeon had not noticed them. It was drizzling, and the dampness brought them out.”

  “No,” answered McAndrews; “they had not been there.”

  “But how can you be so sure?” remonstrated the Psychologist.

  “Because I was the surgeon,” said McAndrews Quietly. “The paper was a page torn from my note book. When I wrapped it about the sprig it was blank—except for the line I myself had written there.

  “But there was one more bit of—well, shall we call it evidence, John?—the hand in which Laveller’s message was penned was the hand in the missal in which I had found the flowers—and the signature ‘Lucie’ was that same signature, curve for curve and quaint, oldfashioned angle for angle.”

  A longer silence fell, broken once more by Hawtry, abruptly.

  “What became of the paper?” he asked. “Was the ink analyzed? Was—”

  “As we stood there wondering,” interrupted McAndrews, “a squall swept down upon the trench. It tore the paper from my hand; carried it away. Laveller watched it go; made no effort to get it.”

  “‘It does not matter. I know now,’ he said—and smiled at me, the forgiving, happy smile of a joyous boy. ‘I apologize to you, doctor. You’re the best friend I ever had. I thought at first you had done to me what no other man would do to another—I see now that you have done for me what no other man could.’

  “And that is all. He went through the war neither seeking death nor avoiding it. I loved him like a son. He would have died after that Mount Kemmel affair had it not been for me. He wanted to live long enough to bid his father and sister goodby, and I— patched him up. He did it, and then set forth for the trench beneath the shadow of the ruined old chateau where his brown-eyed demoiselle had found him.”

  “Why?” asked Hawtry.

  “Because he thought that from there he could—go back—to her more quickly.”

  “To me an absolutely unwarranted conclusion,” said the psychologist, wholly irritated, half angry. “There is some simple, natural explanation of it all.”

  “Of course, John,” answered McAndrews soothingly—“of course there is. Tell us it, can’t you?”

  But Hawtry, it seemed, could not offer any particulars.

  THE WHITE ROAD (1949)

  (When A. Merritt passed away in 1943, he left several unfinished projects on his desk. Two of these literary fragments proved to be the opening chapters of novels. […] It is believed that “The White Road” was to have been a novel based on the theme of “Through the Dragon Glass,” and “When Old Gods Wake” […] and would have been a sequel to his novel The Face in the Abyss. Tantalisingly incomplete, we think they show even in their few pages the same delicate Merritt touch that characterizes his best work. —Donald A. Wollheim)

  CHAPTER I

  GATE OF THE WHITE ROAD

  David Corfax laid down the last torn sheet of the stained old parchment with a wonder that had grown steadily while he read. What he had read was incredible, but the true incredibility lay in that it had been written. Therein was the heart of his wonder and the indefinable terror of it. For what the writing dealt with was—the White Road!

  All his life he had known the White Road. You saw it first as a slit, a hair-line of white light, just the width of your eyes and somewhere, it seemed behind them—somewhere between your brain and your eyes, in your own head. In childhood, it had been after you had gone to bed; sometimes as soon as your lids closed, sometimes when you were dropping off to sleep. Later it might come in broad daylight, while you sat thinking or reading. But at those times you never got far on the White Road.

  The laws of this world not those of yours.

  All his life he had known the White Road; in all his life he had spoken of it only to three persons. Two of these were dead; the third had been a child whom he had not seen for years and who should long ago have forgotten. Yet it had been she who had sent him the parchment. And out of it had come a voice silent four hundred years, and speaking of the White Road as one who had been a pilgrim upon it.

  How young he had been when first he saw the White Road, David Corfax could not tell. But it was as real to him as was this old house in which he sat, the sun of a September afternoon streaming through the window upon this yellowed manuscript which told him that the White Road was no dream—or if a dream then not his alone.

  And there had been that enigmatic postscript of Deborah’s: “I too have seen the White Road!”

  Was it real after all? Whether real or not, it had its mechanics, unchanging, unchangeable. First there was the humming, not heard but felt, a vibration along every nerve, in every cell. Then the slit, the hair-line of white light.

  Then the slit would open—half an inch, an inch. And then the White Road would begin to unroll. You could see straight ahead of you, but that was all. It was as though you stood a little distance back of the slit.

  In a sort of black box that moved smoothly along the road. And yet you seemed to be out on the road, too. Sometimes the sides would sweep past swiftly, as though you were galloping on some effortlessly moving horse; sometimes slowly as though you were walking. But once the road began to unroll you never stopped. And you never looked back, that is until you learned that looking back meant journey’s end. When you stopped, the slit went out—like a light and you were back in your room. You looked back into your room. When you turned, the road was gone.

  Nor could you control the motion with which you went, nor could you, try as you would, by any effort of will cause the window that opened on the road to appear. It was there, without warning—or it was not. Nor could he ever remember clearly what he had seen when on the White Road. The road itself was always plain—wide and smoothly paved, sometimes straight sometimes curving, going on and on and on. There were people, but of what kind he never remem bered. There were forests, colorful and flowered…a towering range of mountains, strangely serrated, toothed, pinnacled…enormously high, purple and amethyst and looking as though they had been cut from cardboard…no distance to them and with garlands of little suns circling their peaks…there was a city of domes and minarets…beside a purple sea. And there were things that terrified…that had been in childhood when he had learned to look back to escape them. Later, he faced them…but could not remember, waking, what he had faced. Memory of music…like Sibelius.

  The road appeared without warning? No, there was always the humming that preceded it. It was a strange sound, not heard but felt. It seemed to vibrate through him, and as it did so his body became weightless. He could not feel the bed he lay in if he clenched his hands he could not feel the fingers…the humming seemed to deaden all nerves of touch. It grew louder, swifter rather rising in vibrancy rather than in pitch as the slit widened. He remembered, ah, there was one thing he remembered clearly enough. One night the humming had quickened and the slit had opened wider than ever before—or since. And over it, like a climber, a woman’s hand, long-fingered, yellow as old ivory had clawed with talons like a condor had crept. And two unwinking, amber eyes had glared into his. He remembered how he had screamed, and his mother had come to him, and he could see today the fright, the numb horror, that had appeared upon her face when he had wept and sobbed about
the White Road…he had been no more than six then. He remembered.

  When you looked back, and the road came again, you had to begin at the beginning. But if you could hold your nerve, and not look back, after a while you went to sleep. Then, if the dream came again the next night, as sometimes it did, you would go on from where you had stopped the night before. That was how he had gotten as far as sight of the strange city beside the purple sea. Three nights he had been on the road. Yes, there was some system, some law governing it.

  There was a dark: road too. That was an evil road. Even in childhood he knew that it came close to the White Road and was to be avoided. But later, he felt a pull as he put it, to this road. And often yielded. He could see nothing on this, could only hear voices. And he must go so gently, so quietly. There was a hill, and behind it the murmur of voices, the creaking of stays, the sounds of a port. He knew it was a hill, because it loomed blackly against a faintly red sky, as though there were fires burning. He knew that he must never look over that hill, never go over it or he would be utterly lost. Could never return.

  Then his mother had died. He had gone through boarding school, through college, become a wanderer. Two years on the desert.

  WHEN OLD GODS WAKE (1948)

  CHAPTER I

  ALTAR OF KUKULKAN

  The silence seemed to be focused within the temple; to have its heart there; a heart that did not need to beat, since all the silence was alive. Outside the heat of the Yucatan midday held the ruins in breathless grip. Barry Manson, crouching at the base of the ancient altar, thought: the silence…marched…marched into the temple. The shrieks of the parrots were cut off first…then the little blue and yellow birds stopped quarreling in the crimson fruited tree at the base of the shattered stairway…and then the silence marched up the stairway and into this chamber and crowded against the seaward side…and that shut out the swish of the waves.

  He looked at Joan. She sat a few paces away, her back against the massive pedestal of a broken pillar. Her hands were clasped around her knees. Her eyes were intent upon the wall behind the altar. A painting once had covered that wall. The fingers of time, working patiently through the centuries, had plucked away most of the stucco that had carried it. But above the altar, as though protected by its shadow, a large and irregular fragment remained. Upon it, colors still vivid, Were the head and shoulders of Kukulkan, God of the Air of the ancient Mayans—and much more than that.

  The Feathered Serpent, his symbol and his avatar, floated over him, fanged jaws agape, plumed wings spread wide. The face of Kukulkan was the conventionalized one of the New Empire; the nose grotesquely lengthened like that of a tapir, lips thick and protruding, prognathous-jawed, bat-eared; the ears ringed and the labret through the nostrils; head plumed with the sacred panacho.

  The painted gaze of the god seemed fixed as intently upon the girl as hers upon him.

  The pedestal against which Joan leaned was covered with carved figures of priests of Kukulkan who had served him when ruined Tuloom had been one of the great cities of the Mayans, and this its holiest temple. On these figures the colors were also bright. Into them Joan’s copper hair melted, merged with their reds and ochres so that for an instant Barry had the illusion that her face was all of her.

  A disembodied face peering out of the stone and holding communion with the god like a summoned priestess.

  Impatiently Barry arose and walked over to her. She dis not look up. She whispered, eyes still absorbed by the painted god:

  “Don’t break the silence, Barry! It’s like the silence that wraps the city of Jade…where the thousand sages of T’zan T’zao sit holding fast to the thought that created the world…and that the ghost of a ghost of a sound would destroy…and with it the world.…”

  He felt increase of revolt against the fantasies gathering about him. He shook his shoulders and laughed. He said, loudly:

  “The silence is broken, Joan—and the world still spins.”

  It was true. The silence was broken. It was retreat ing from the chamber, slowly…marching away as it had marched in. Faintly came the swish of the waves, growing ever stronger. The silence was marching out of the chamber toward the shattered stairway up which it had come. Joan arose, slowly…it was odd, Barry thought, how every movement of hers in rising kept to the rhythm, kept to the beat, of the unseen and unheard feet of the retreating silence.

  The silence marched down the stairway. He heard again the quarreling of the little blue and yellow birds…then the shrieks of the parrots…

  Joan said, unsteadily: “It was time you did that, Barry. It was…doing things to me. Look, Barry—look…!”

  He followed her finger, pointing to the painted face of Kukulkan. For a breath he saw it…another face looking out from the wall.

  An ageless face…the nose long and curved and delicate. The lips full but sharply cut, archaically sensuous…hair as red as his own and eyes as blue as. Joan’s. A face as devoid of human equivalence as it was timeless…yet human…as though the seed from which it had sprung into godhood had been human. Incalculable, unreadable…but still within it something that could be read up to that point where the humanness of it merged into the god…might be read more plainly if the god would within it merge more fully into the humanness. Nothing of benevolence in it…but neither was there shade of malevolence, cruelty…humanless, in human mask.

  Barry thought: it is like that mountain peak in the City of Jade of which Joan spoke…the peak shaped like the head of a man and all of clearest crystal to which the thoughts of men are drawn…all their thoughts…and pass from its eyes and mouth cleansed of falsehood and of error, prejudice and hatred and love…standing naked and stark before T’zan T’wo to be judged…

  Power was in the face, immense power…and something of wildness, of freedom…the freedom of primaeval things…like the wind, the waves, the sun.…

  And then the face was gone. Upon the wall was the tapir snout of Kukulkan, the protruding lips, the fanged and feathered serpent.

  His hand was clenching Joan’s wrist. She whispered:

  “You saw it! You’re hurting me!”

  He dropped her wrist. He said: “It is another painting beneath this one. An older painting. Some trick of the light brought it out.”

  She said, doubtful: “Maybe. But I think it was Kukulkan as the first Mayans knew him. Kukulkan who came to them from still an older race. Kukulkan when he was worshipped with flowers and fruits and incense and prayer. Before his worship was debased and the cruel human sacrifices began. That was when and why he turned from the Mayans. And so their doom came swiftly upon them. For it was never he who came to them thereafter, Barry. It was an evil god hiding behind his mask and name—”

  She hesitated, seemed listening: “But yes—he did come. Came even to the Aztecs, who steeped his rites in even greater cruelties and renamed him Quetzalcoatl…came again and again to thwart that other god when his evil grew too strong…the Lord of Darkness, the Lord of the Dead.…”

  Her voice died; she stood with eyes rapt, face colorless, bent as though listening. He took her by the shoulders, shook her:

  “Snap out of it, Joan. What’s the matter with you? You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Am I, Barry? It was what Kukulkan was telling me.”

  She dropped her head on his shoulder; clung to him, trembling. His hands slipped from her shoulders, drew her to him. He said huskily:

  “Coming any closer to loving me, Joan?”

  She raised her eyes to his frankly, yet with something of regret lurking in them.

  “Sorry, Barry dear. But it’s still the same. I— ”

  He interrupted her, speaking monotonously: “Like you better than any other man I know, except Bill, of course, and I wish I could love you the way you want, but—yes, Joan, I know all that by heart now.”

  She flushed and said: “That’s not fair. After all, Bill’s my brother and why shouldn’t I love him? And I do like you better than anyone else. So much so th
at at times—” she stopped; he repeated eagerly:

  “That at times?”

  “Never mind. Barry, why do you want me? There are plenty of nice girls who like just the things you do. I know a dozen who would love you—and any one of them would make you a perfect wife. I don’t like the ‘things you do. Or if I do, to me they’re only brief amusements. Why, I’d rather help Bill dig up a cup from some ruin that spans the gap of knowledge between its maker and us than win a thousand sporting trophies.”

  He said: “If you loved me that wouldn’t make any difference.”

  She shook her head: “We’ve been brought up differently, Barry—and we’re both too set in our ways to change. I am anyway…” Suddenly she laughed:

  “And you haven’t fooled me by this trip, Barry Manson. I know damned well that it wasn’t any abrupt interest in the Mayans that prompted it. I’m mighty grateful to you for giving Bill the chance he’s always wanted. But I wouldn’t marry you out of gratitude, and I don’t think you’d want me to—would you, Barry?”

  His gray eyes narrowed: he said, brutally: “Listen, redhead. You don’t fool me any either. It’s damned little of highbrow or blue-stocking you’d be if you fell in love with a man. Nature didn’t build you that way. And it would be damned little you’d be thinking of fossils if that happened. You’d be too busy having babies.”

  She said, coldly: “I think that’s rather—beastly!”

  He said, hotly: “Is that so? What’s beastly about babies? You’d be getting a slant on the present day with some outlook on the future—instead of burying your red head in the past. What I’m afraid of is that you’ll marry some dusty-dry, mummy-minded, scientific grave robber and spend the rest of your life nursing fossils instead of what you are obviously designed for—”

  She interrupted, furiously, eyes snapping blue sparks:

  “I’ll let nobody pick my husband! Least of all—you!”