Liquid Death And Other Stories

by John Russell Fearn

  Throb, throb, throb…

  "No!" he shouted hoarsely, leaping out of the bed. "No! Stop!"

  And instantly the sound ceased!

  The whole house seemed to become mute, horribly silent after the torturing rhythm of the beating.

  With dragging footsteps and sweat-drenched face Hilton moved to the adjoining room and twisted the door key with trembling fingers. All was quiet within. Wayne lay like a log in the dim gloom, stirred only slightly as a match flared in Hilton's quaking hand. The old man's hoarse voice came to him.

  "Courtney, you heard it?" he demanded thickly. "You heard that beating?"

  "I heard nothing," Wayne muttered dully, and relaxed again.

  For a moment the old man stood gazing at him, then he went out. Wayne lay silent for a while after he had gone, wondering what he had been talking about. He certainly had heard nothing. Then once more he set to work on the laborious task of fraying through his ropes.

  In the meantime Hilton returned to his room and waited a long time in the shadowed gloom, but the mysterious sound was not repeated. At last recovering some of his courage he climbed into bed, nerves tensed for a recurrence of the sound.

  Presently he heard it, very soft and low, that measured beat sweeping up from nowhere.

  Louder and louder became the ticking, mad, nerve-racking tempo. Hilton shot out of bed once more, again screamed for it to stop—and as before it obeyed. Weakly he staggered to the front hall door and opened it, stared out toward the dimness of the drive.

  Slowly he crept outside and looked about him, down past the many rear out-houses with their sloping roofs. There was nothing unusual visible—only a quiet, dark immensity.

  He knew not how long he stood shivering in the night breeze. His next clear remembrance was of being back in his bedroom. He crawled back onto the bed at last and lay in frigid horror for the return of the beating—but the night passed quietly and he awoke again to the gray glimmerings of an ashy dawn.

  III "Why Did You Kill Me?"

  SHAKEN BY THE experience of the night Abner Hilton felt like a trapped animal. Though he did not believe in the supernatural, though he inwardly boasted that he had no conscience, he could not altogether rid himself of the remembrance of his crime. Time and time again the vision of the slain girl rose up before him.

  In his mind he could again hear the sloughing of the knife as it carved her flesh, the grate of the saw against her bones.

  He scraped together a scanty meal and then went in to his prisoner with a few crusts and some water. Wayne looked at him dully, but behind his back his hands were slowly pulling away the remainders of his frayed rope. A night of rubbing on the floor staple nearest to him had cut them through. They gave way just as Hilton was bending towards him.

  Instantly his fingers closed round the old man's skinny throat, sent the meager meal hurtling through the air. Hilton was pulled down to the floor with Wayne's fingers crushing hard into his leathery neck.

  Wayne wished desperately he could get to his feet, but his bound ankles prevented it. His only hope lay in strangling the old man where he was—but in that he was doomed to failure. With a sudden vicious twist Hilton wriggled sideways, brought round his foot with all his strength and kicked Wayne violently in the ribs.

  He gasped with the sudden pain, desisted in his effort to get to his feet—and in that moment Hilton acted. He had the advantage in every way. Wayne was bound and weak from his ordeal; Hilton was free and furiously energetic.

  "So you thought you'd escape, eh?" he breathed venomously. "You thought you'd fool me, huh? Well you won't!"

  With that he dived away and snatched up the heavy, dirty plate on which he had brought the food. Even as Wayne tried to get up the plate came down on his head with stunning force, edgewise. He sank down mutely, blood streaming from a scalp cut.

  "It was you who plotted that heart beating stunt!" Hilton screamed. "You! I don't know how, but you did it! You'll not do it again, Courtney. Damn you, no! I'll kill you first!"

  Savagely he rebound his victim's ropes, spread-eagled him back in his old position. Then he refilled the can and stood looking at the unconscious figure in vicious glee.

  "You can stay that way until I want you! Without food and without water—at least to drink! No more leniency—no more leniency!"

  And with that he stamped fiercely from the room, slammed and locked the door.

  Only once did he return, and that was towards evening. Wayne was half-conscious, muttering supplications for release. The old man's feral lips twisted in an unholy smile; his only response was to make sure the water can was refilled then he went into his bedroom to pass the night.

  But the instant he entered the gloomy shoddiness—for the oil in his lamp was exhausted—he felt a strange fear clawing at his heart. The memory of the night before returned to him. He sat on the bed edge, listening with one ear half cocked for some sound of the heart, but instead there came something else, something that sent the blood crawling in streams of ice through his withered body.

  "Abner Hilton, why did you kill me?"

  The merest whisper, an ice-cold question that seemed to creep from the Unknown. It started Hilton's heart racing madly, set crawling fingers of ghastly fear clutching at his vitals.

  "Abner Hilton, why did you kill me?"

  It was stronger this time—a woman's voice calling softly, from an incredible distance. As in the beating of that enigmatic heart it was impossible to guess the exact source of the sound.

  "Why did you kill me?" Words dreary with anguished reproach.

  He leaped savagely to his feet and stared madly round him in the dimness. Viciously he struck a match, but the flickering light revealed no change. It went out and scorched his fingers.

  "Imagination!" he panted hoarsely. "Imagination—or nerves!"

  "No, Abner Hilton—neither imagination or nerves, but the voice of the woman you killed," the voice answered somberly.

  "You slew me, carved my body into pieces and buried the remains! You tore out the heart—but in the heart there is not life—only in the mind. The mind lives on. In the end I will destroy you, as you destroyed me!"

  With a pallid face he listened to the words, heart racing agonizedly against his skinny ribs. Her voice—the voice of Mary Lillian Digby—speaking from hell knew where!

  Suddenly he found relief in action. As before he made straight for the second drawing room and stared in palsied fear at the bound figure of Wayne. He certainly was not responsible.

  Mad with fright he left him and blundered outside into the half clouded moonlight, glared about the sodden grounds of his home with the eyes of a maniac. Just as on the previous night there was nothing to disturb the aching quiet.

  Breathless, shaking with fear, he returned inside at last, bolted the heavy front door with fingers that were oddly brittle. Cold seeping waves of superstitious fear were clawing at his evil heart.

  As he tottered uncertainly down the hall, striking match after match to allay the crushing dark, he tried to convince himself that it was all imagination. That he hadn't heard anything. It was some trick of Courtney Wayne's; it had to be!

  He twisted round and fumbled along to the second drawing room again, passed inside and examined the spread-eagled man closely, was forced to admit as before that he was not responsible. He was a silent, stupefied man, water trickling down his ashen face from the slowly dripping can.

  Very quietly Hilton withdrew again into the abysmal dark of the hall, nearly wept with rage and fear as he found his matches were exhausted. Weakly, knees like jelly, he clawed his way back into the main living room and stood for a while in the jetty gloom, eyes staring at the hazy gray oblong where the window lay.

  Turning he searched for the rickety chair and dropped his leaden limbs into it. Spittle was drooling unheeded from his quivering lips; sweat drenched his skinny body. The complete ghastly fear of a supernatural unknown had him in its grip.

  For nearly an hour he sat there and h
eard nothing. A blank nothing that hemmed him in like a living, avenging presence. The only sound he once detected was a long drawn out groan, which he knew came from Courtney Wayne as he returned to consciousness.

  A third look at the bound man convinced him; he was still there in the very dim moonlight filtering through the blind. In some odd way he was glad of the man's presence; it did something to alleviate the terrible fear numbing his being.

  An hour later quivering, brain-numbing reaction set in. With heavy feet he scraped along to his bed and lay face down upon it, trying to muffle his ears to the dreaded sound he was afraid to hear. Softly, gently, came the resumed beating of that heart—and above it the awful, sepulchral voice.

  "Abner Hilton, it is dark and cold in the grave you dug for me! I cannot rest. I am returning to life, to the land of mortals, to ask you face to face why you killed me! I am not dead, Abner Hilton. I am alive! Listen to the beat of the heart you cut away! Listen to it, gathering power!"

  Shaking like an aspen Hilton listened—could not help himself. The voice ceased and the subdued rhythm of the heart became swifter, louder.

  Pat, pat, pat, pat…

  "You hear, Abner Hilton?" the voice breathed. "I live! I have come back from the grave to ask why you killed me! Look in my grave! Dig down deep and you will find I have gone! Dig! Dig!"

  IV The Remains Walk!

  HILTON COULD STAND it no longer. With a desperate scream he leaped out of the bed, blundered through the dark to the kitchen, felt round frantically until he encountered the handle of his shovel. Panting hard he wrenched back the outer door and charged madly into the garden outside, plowing heavily through rank soaking weeds and grass to the clear soil space where he had put Mary's butchered remains.With savage desperate movements born of ghastly fear he drove the blade into the earth, shoveled the soil to one side. He worked with mechanical frenzy until the blood pounded insanely through his veins and drove his heart to erratic spurts of beating.

  On and on he shoveled, flinging the loose earth away with the ease of a maniac, until at last his spade ploughed through the sack in which he had placed the remains. Shaking with fright and exertion he pulled it free, gazed with stupid eyes as it moved drearily in the night breeze.

  It was indeed empty! The remains had gone!

  "No!" he muttered desperately. "No—no, it can't be! I'm going mad! I know I'm going mad! You couldn't rise from the grave! You were utterly destroyed—dismembered! You—"

  He stopped, the sack falling from his nerveless fingers. The moon, which had been shining diffusedly through ragged clouds suddenly emerged from their midst with a pale and leprous glow, cast its pale silver over the unkempt grounds and the hole of the grave.

  But it was to none of these things that Hilton's mind was directed—his fixed, incredulous eyes were chained to a figure walking slowly towards him along the uneven ground.

  It appeared to be the naked figure of a woman, arms extended towards him! And as she came nearer he could behold quite clearly against the whiteness of her skin the black marks at the joints of her legs and arms where he had cut them from the body! One other, round the base of the neck, held him mute.

  Making hardly any sound she quietly advanced, coming nearer and nearer, and still he stood paralyzed with numbing shock.

  "Abner Hilton, you killed me!" she said at last, in the same dreary grave-ridden voice he had heard in the house. "I have come back—to ask you why you did it!"

  Within six feet of him she stopped, a lovely but forlorn figure, hair moving slightly in the mild wet wind. Clearly he could distinguish the graceful curves of her body, the rounded formations of her breasts—but upon one of them was a dark patch—a hole where he had torn out the heart to make sure she would never come back.

  Never come back! That realization burst in his diseased mind like a bolt of living fire. He found action at last in a desperate, piercing scream, turned swiftly and went blundering and gasping over the uneven ground—anything to escape the woman who had risen to question her fate.

  Even as he flew over the ground, driven by insane terror, he could hear feet racing after him—not the sound of woman's feet but the heavy clomping of a nightmare creature.

  Thud, thud, thud, like the beating heart he had heard.

  He threw himself screaming through the front doorway, into the hall. His fingers twisted the key of the second drawing room door and he went flying inwards to hurl himself beside the silent figure of Wayne.

  "Courtney, in God's name save me!" he screamed frantically. "Save me! She's come back! Mary's come back from the grave!" His trembling fingers wrenched a penknife from his pocket, slashed through the ropes holding the tortured man. "Save me, Courtney! Say you will! It's Mary!"

  That jerked something of consciousness into Wayne's leaden brain. He stared into the dark, down, at the dim, pawing, gulping figure on the floor beside him. Stiffly he tried to move to his feet—then his eyes jerked round at the sound of feet in the hall. A light was bobbing along it.

  Cold terror surged through him too as in the doorway he beheld the same naked woman's figure that Hilton had seen—a woman who stared tensely, wounds on her rejoined limbs clearly visible. Almost at the same moment the owner of the storm lantern became visible, pushed the woman to one side and charged forward, clutched the screaming Hilton round the neck.

  In the light of the storm lantern on the floor Wayne dazedly watched what took place, saw a powerful shouldered man with a face of frozen hate clutch Hilton's skinny throat in sinewy fingers, crush into it with all the strength at his command.

  "Kill my daughter, eh?" His bitter voice knifed in the quiet. "Cut her up, would you? My Annie! By God, you filthy butcher, this is where you go to the hell you deserve!"

  Hilton tried to speak but the compressing fingers would not let him. His miserable body threshed madly on the floor. Slowly but surely his struggles became weaker and at last ceased altogether.

  Only then did the man rise up and kick the corpse violently with his heavy shod foot, turned, then stared at Wayne in amazement.

  "You're alive!" he shouted hoarsely—and with his words the girl in the doorway seemed to arise from her horrific trance and advanced at a run.

  Wayne felt convinced in that moment that he was going insane at last—for the girl was Mary! There could be no mistaking her face. Mary, yes—naked, with scars of her hideous death still upon her. Mary!

  His lips moved to utter her name then even as her white arms reached towards him he relapsed into darkness and brief rest.

  Wayne realized as he came back to consciousness that he could only have been senseless a few minutes. He was lying on his back, all his ropes removed, the face of Mary and her rugged-faced companion bending over him. The only change was that she was now wrapped in an overcoat.

  "Courtney, dear—Courtney!" she breathed, gathering him into her arms. "Thank God you're alive! I thought you were dead—that was why I helped Craven here."

  Dazedly, weakly, Wayne raised himself on one elbow and stared toward the light of the lantern.

  "What—what's it all about?" he asked helplessly. "I saw you cut in pieces by that fiend, Mary—I saw it! A moment ago you were naked; I saw the marks."

  The girl smiled faintly. "Only tights, Courtney, marked on the joints with black paint. Cold, yes—but the only way to drag this fiendish uncle of mine into the open."

  "Come to think of it, I didn't see your face when—when Hilton butchered you," Wayne shuddered. "It was utterly unrecognizable, and…"

  "It isn't really so complicated as it seems, sir," the man muttered. "This filthy devil intended to kill Miss Digby here, but instead he killed my girl Annie. She was canvassing this district for radio set orders. We had got a little business together and were doing quite well."

  "Actually, Courtney," Mary intervened; "although I said in my letter to you that I was coming to see Uncle, I changed my mind at the last moment. It seems that Mr. Craven's daughter arrived at almost the time for my ap
pointment. Evidently Uncle didn't give her the chance to speak, and not having seen me for years he mistook poor Annie for me, both of us being fair and young.

  "That must have been it," Wayne nodded drearily. "As for myself I was afraid for you and came to see if I could help you when you visited your uncle. There wasn't time to come to your home first, so I came straight here. I saw somebody like you enter the house whilst I was still a distance away; after that I came in and saw…" He stopped, brokenly.

  Mary slowly nodded "I got worried when I couldn't get any news of you. All I could find out was that you'd started on a holiday. Closer inquiry, though, revealed that you'd followed me here.

  "I decided to come here after all and it was evening when I arrived; that was the evening after I should have come, of course. The first person I ran into was Mr. Craven in the grounds. He had just dug up some remains out of a sack—"

  "I'd found that Annie had last been seen at this place," Craven muttered bitterly. "I found bloodstains on the grass and traced them to that newly dug hole. I identified the remains as those of Annie—there were certain birthmarks on her body that only I knew about. It was she all right.

  "Well, I couldn't see any real motive for the brutality until Miss Digby happened upon me; then I began to see what had happened—how my poor girl had got what was intended for somebody else. It seemed pretty evident that you had probably gone the same way since you had disappeared.

  "Both of us wanted vengeance on the old fiend and were prepared to go to any lengths to exact it."

  "And yet you didn't go to the police?" Wayne asked wonderingly.

  "Police!" derided Craven contemptuously. "What could they do? Just give this devil here the hot seat for murder. That wasn't enough for me—I wanted to torture him as he had tortured my poor girl—I wanted to drive him mad with my own efforts.

  Miss Dighy felt pretty much the same way about your disappearance Of course, we had no guarantee that you really were dead, but we suspected it as the only explanation. The best way to find out was to get Hilton out of the house and look for ourselves—and that demanded something pretty ingenious. We managed it, between us."