“But, Bud, don’t be a fool. They’re not real. It’s a trick of the eyes. It’s electric-charged air and too much nonsense from Captain Ek.”
“I don’t care a damn what it is, an’ women don’t git my goat, but I’m goin’ t’ have a chunk o’ wealth an’ a swim in Bimini. An’ nobody’s goin’ t’ stop me now!”
Crayne clutched at Murphy, whose fists shot out, but the older, taller man swung his long arms from behind and pinioned Murphy’s arms. Then began a struggle of desperation on the slope of the outer rim, and above danced the Children of Light, nearer and nearer, their song of joy changing to one of sorrow. Crayne was aware of Grief filling the world, aware that the curse of Babel was gone in that center of earth and that he understood their song of mourning over dissent among men.
As if the Light disclosed the workings of human minds to their eyes, the Nymphs sang of Love, pleading with these two humans to aspire to the spirit instead of lusting for wealth that would mock and betray.
Crayne realized a flash of shame as they read his own longing to possess such wealth, yet it was still controlled. His one desire was to save this boy from death, and Murphy was dragging him nearer and nearer that topmost brim. He realized the Children of Light kept at a distance. The visitation and wooing of the night was changed to aloofness as they darted to and fro, sweeping their gossamer drapes in maddening and dazzling glitter so close that it webbed the two struggling men like a gladiator’s net, and in those veils they were helpless. Then came a rustling as of gigantic wings unfolding, and locked in each other’s arms, powerless to move hand or foot, Crayne and Murphy stared at the swirling maelstrom of the Bowl and saw an arch curve upward, springing like a rainbow, and sweeping her gleaming robes about her came the royal figure they had seen on the silver path after their arrival.
A voice came, piercing and silver-clear. It touched understanding, and without words they knew their punishment decreed. It was as if She commanded, “Give them the desire of the eyes, my Maidens.”
Crayne felt the scream in his own throat but heard no sound as the Bowl brim crumbled beneath his feet and he fell with Murphy into an abyss of such terrific Light that sight was gone. He felt the lave and spray and caress of Light, piercing, dissolving flesh. They sank as in the sea and came up on tongues of crimson flame washed over the Bowl brim, at which both clutched spasmodically, then lay still, clutched in their combined grip, to stare at that rainbow arch which still quivered and pulsed over the Bowl.
They knew the others had arrived. They heard the clear sound of bell chime, the song of the spheres. They saw Captain Ek at the Bowl brim fighting the grasp of Bjornsen and the two mechanics, but he shook off their detaining hands as if they were the fingers of children. Then the queenly figure smiled and winged above the arch, remained poised between earth and stars, and from that circle of dancing Nymphs came a young figure, golden-haired, warm-tinted, straight and strong, with her eyes downcast. And up the gleaming Arch toward her Captain Ek went. They saw that his face was suddenly young, his body slender, and he wore the look of youth.
There was one moment he stood clear against the glory, then her arms lifted, enfolded him, and the Arch was one arc of a wheel that revolved slowly as man and maid descended into the white central flame, and whirled faster and faster until human endurance broke before that vast and dreadful radiance.
Yet Crayne was not unconscious. He realized that the Light was gone except for the stars and soft aurora and that he was being carried over the hummocks and stretched on the couch of the Birmingham cabin. He was wakened in time by the sound of hammering as the mechanics repaired the broken wheel-axle and leaking cylinder. He felt Murphy sit on the side of the couch and clutch his wrist, and when he opened his eyes, Murphy was grinning.
“We got it,” he said, “an’ we got it good. Little lump o’ rock it looks like. And we went for a swim in Bimini. Boy, oh boy, I’m only waitin’ to try out that there youthstuff back home! But”—his grin was sobered and his voice slightly hushed—“the old man got across. And Bjornsen’s gone.”
“Bjornsen?” cried Crayne, jerking upright.
“Yeah. Nobody thought of him goin’. The ol’ captain shook ’im off like a terrier shakes a rat, an’ went. An’ the wheel began to turn, they said, an’ Bjornsen ran out on one o’ the spokes an’ the dames caught him, an’ he was gone. They’s just the two mechs an’ Mose, an’ you an’ me. An’ the boat’ll be ready in an hour or so. An’ here’s all we got to show for that dip into glory water.”
Murphy rolled two objects that looked like fragments of black glass, flaked unevenly; and, touching them, Crayne felt a tingling as of a mild galvanic battery charge, which was not so much sensation to the fingers as of ceaselessly working energy of the mass.
“Mose decided they was black diamonds an’ he’s bin cuddlin’ ’em considerable, an’ it’s a funny thing but his wool is white as ours and losing its marcel kink.”
“White—ours?” asked Clayne.
Murphy snatched a tiny shaving mirror from the wall and thrust it into Crayne’s hand; then pulled off his fur cap. The boy’s young face was framed in snow-white curls. Crayne looked in the mirror and saw his own ruddy thatch was the color of ivory. His arms went out, his hand touched Murphy, and suddenly the boy had clutched him in a tight grasp of young arms.
“Maybe it’s real, an’ it’s you an’ me alone some day. We’d better keep on speakin’ terms.” He tried to laugh, then suddenly dashed from the cabin.
In three hours the Birmingham was repaired and tested, and they set to work smoothing a stretch of ice where she could race for the take-off. In the galley cubby, Mose was singing jazz, and between preparations for a meal, darting to the mirror to stare at his white, straight hair. An excited but silent company took their last look at the reflection of that vast and awful source of the world’s atomic energy, the light of which men call the Aurora Borealis.
Then the flight began, and with it an eery moaning of winds that blow between the worlds. They stood at salute, faces toward the Bowl, a gesture of honor and farewell to Captain Ek and Bjornsen.
Then came the fight with gales that howled, drove frozen snow like flails in a constant tattoo on the wings and body of the Birmingham, until she was tossed like a bird. The weary mechanics slept. Crayne was at the throttle. Mose crouched in a heap with the fragments of rock in his arms, his teeth chattering as he saw the strain on the faces of Crayne and Murphy.
Suddenly Crayne cried out, and Murphy leaped to his side.
“The stick’s gone,” he yelled above the fury of elemental cataclysms about them.
The end came suddenly—a downward plunge, a crash, then flames leaping. Crayne was on his feet in a moment. The cabin of the Birmingham had burst like an eggshell, and from it rolled Mose still clutching the rock, and Murphy. Of the others—the two sleeping mechanics—they had not sight or sound. Flame soared and roared, the black smoke streaked through the storm, and what had been a steel-thewed bird of flight was a roaring inferno, the heat of which must have brought merciful death to the poor wretches stunned by the crash.
Glowing framework was all that was left of her in but a few minutes. Crayne, Mose and Murphy faced the bitter blast without food, fire or shelter.
It was Crayne who roused the other two from stupefaction.
“We can’t be far from the ship. We die if we hesitate. Let’s go.”
And buffeting the storm they went, three puny forms, without compass or star; went until Mose staggered from exhaustion and plunged on his face in the snow. Then without a word they lifted him, drew his arms over their shoulders and pressed on.
“But,” said Crayne at the end of hours of torture, “it’s true, I think. We were due to slip out when she crashed. We’re due to go down now. Man can’t live in this wind up here, and I’m not even tired. How about you?”
“Nope. Seems like it’s right, boy. Bimini stuff, maybe. An’ if that ain’t a ship’s mast-head light, I’m a liar. An’ hear
the dogs! We’ve come some distance, no rest, no grub, no anything. They was something in it. Bimini!”
Over the snow, dogs streaked with yelps and howls, and from a star of light hung low over the ice that had hemmed her in came men of the Aurora to meet them.
They had pulled the beard of death, seen visions, dreamed dreams. Yet when they met the men of their own race they were silent.
“Commander Crayne, Lieutenant Murphy and Mose the Negro cook were the only members of the Birmingham’s crew to return from the ill-fated flight to the magnetic pole,” was the news account flashed south by the Aurora’s “sparks.” “The plane crashed and burned. A particularly marvelous display of northern lights was followed by the worst storm recorded in these latitudes, in which the plane crashed.”
A later report told of the loss of the Aurora off the Grand Banks:
“The schooner Aurora is sunk, the last of a series of disasters of this ill-starred cruise. In spite of berg-finding apparatus and modern appliances, the Aurora struck a low-lying berg which opened her from stem to stern. Her crew saved themselves in boats that were picked up by fishermen. Commander Crayne, Lieutenant Murphy and the Negro cook, Mose Johnson, were on the bridge when the boats pulled away from the doomed vessel, having refused to go in the boats although there was room. The government cruiser Mohawk was dispatched to the scene of the disaster in hope that the three men had somehow survived.”
Later dispatches:
“After a miraculous escape, clinging for hours to a floating raft with bitterly cold seas washing over them, Commander Crayne, Lieutenant Murphy and Mose Johnson were picked up by the Mohawk, little the worse for their dreadful experiences. These three men of the Birmingham, lost near the magnetic pole, seemingly bear charmed lives. The only statement Commander Crayne made was that he wanted a month’s quiet; then he would plan for another northern trip of discovery. The will of Captain Ek, lost in Crayne’s flight, has left his vast fortune to charity with only two individual bequests. His books are willed to Professor Bjornsen, who perished with him, and they will revert to his son, also a professor of sciences in Christiania. The other bequest is that of his estate in Norway to Commander Crayne, where Crayne and Murphy will go immediately.”
Reading the news accounts, Murphy crumpled the paper and looked at Crayne.
“Dare you to swim the Atlantic and try out that Bimini stuff? he said.
“Bud,” replied Crayne, “standing in the Aurora’s wheelroom with locked doors when she slipped from the berg and sank in God alone knows how many fathoms, and us three coming up, catching a spar and living for two days and nights in berg-cold water, is proof enough for me. Bimini. Perhaps we have dipped in hell!”
THE CURSE OF YIG, by H.P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop
In 1925 I went into Oklahoma looking for snake lore, and I came out with a fear of snakes that will last me the rest of my life. I admit it is foolish, since there are natural explanations for everything I saw and heard, but it masters me none the less. If the old story had been all there was to it, I would not have been so badly shaken. My work as an American Indian ethnologist has hardened me to all kinds of extravagant legendry, and I know that simple white people can beat the redskins at their own game when it comes to fanciful inventions. But I can’t forget what I saw with my own eyes at the insane asylum in Guthrie.
I called at that asylum because a few of the oldest settlers told me I would find something important there. Neither Indians nor white men would discuss the snake-god legends I had come to trace. The oil-boom newcomers, of course, knew nothing of such matters, and the red men and old pioneers were plainly frightened when I spoke of them. Not more than six or seven people mentioned the asylum, and those who did were careful to talk in whispers. But the whisperers said that Dr. McNeill could shew me a very terrible relic and tell me all I wanted to know. He could explain why Yig, the half-human father of serpents, is a shunned and feared object in central Oklahoma, and why old settlers shiver at the secret Indian orgies which make the autumn days and nights hideous with the ceaseless beating of tom-toms in lonely places.
It was with the scent of a hound on the trail that I went to Guthrie, for I had spent many years collecting data on the evolution of serpent-worship among the Indians. I had always felt, from well-defined undertones of legend and archaeology, that great Quetzalcoatl—benign snake-god of the Mexicans—had had an older and darker prototype; and during recent months I had well-nigh proved it in a series of researches stretching from Guatemala to the Oklahoma plains. But everything was tantalising and incomplete, for above the border the cult of the snake was hedged about by fear and furtiveness.
Now it appeared that a new and copious source of data was about to dawn, and I sought the head of the asylum with an eagerness I did not try to cloak. Dr. McNeill was a small, clean-shaven man of somewhat advanced years, and I saw at once from his speech and manner that he was a scholar of no mean attainments in many branches outside his profession. Grave and doubtful when I first made known my errand, his face grew thoughtful as he carefully scanned my credentials and the letter of introduction which a kindly old ex-Indian agent had given me.
“So you’ve been studying the Yig legend, eh?” he reflected sententiously. “I know that many of our Oklahoma ethnologists have tried to connect it with Quetzalcoatl, but I don’t think any of them have traced the intermediate steps so well. You’ve done remarkable work for a man as young as you seem to be, and you certainly deserve all the data we can give.
“I don’t suppose old Major Moore or any of the others told you what it is I have here. They don’t like to talk about it, and neither do I. It is very tragic and very horrible, but that is all. I refuse to consider it anything supernatural. There’s a story about it that I’ll tell you after you see it—a devilish sad story, but one that I won’t call magic. It merely shews the potency that belief has over some people. I’ll admit there are times when I feel a shiver that’s more than physical, but in daylight I set all that down to nerves. I’m not a young fellow any more, alas!
“To come to the point, the thing I have is what you might call a victim of Yig’s curse—a physically living victim. We don’t let the bulk of the nurses see it, although most of them know it’s here. There are just two steady old chaps whom I let feed it and clean out its quarters—used to be three, but good old Stevens passed on a few years ago. I suppose I’ll have to break in a new group pretty soon; for the thing doesn’t seem to age or change much, and we old boys can’t last forever. Maybe the ethics of the near future will let us give it a merciful release, but it’s hard to tell.
“Did you see that single ground-glass basement window over in the east wing when you came up the drive? That’s where it is. I’ll take you there myself now. You needn’t make any comment. Just look through the moveable panel in the door and thank God the light isn’t any stronger. Then I’ll tell you the story—or as much as I’ve been able to piece together.”
We walked downstairs very quietly, and did not talk as we threaded the corridors of the seemingly deserted basement. Dr. McNeill unlocked a grey-painted steel door, but it was only a bulkhead leading to a further stretch of hallway. At length he paused before a door marked B-116, opened a small observation panel which he could use only by standing on tiptoe, and pounded several times upon the painted metal, as if to arouse the occupant, whatever it might be.
A faint stench came from the aperture as the doctor unclosed it, and I fancied his pounding elicited a kind of low, hissing response. Finally he motioned me to replace him at the peep-hole, and I did so with a causeless and increasing tremor. The barred, ground-glass window, close to the earth outside, admitted only a feeble and uncertain pallor; and I had to look into the malodorous den for several seconds before I could see what was crawling and wriggling about on the straw-covered floor, emitting every now and then a weak and vacuous hiss. Then the shadowed outlines began to take shape, and I perceived that the squirming entity bore some remote resemblance to a
human form laid flat on its belly. I clutched at the door-handle for support as I tried to keep from fainting.
The moving object was almost of human size, and entirely devoid of clothing. It was absolutely hairless, and its tawny-looking back seemed subtly squamous in the dim, ghoulish light. Around the shoulders it was rather speckled and brownish, and the head was very curiously flat. As it looked up to hiss at me I saw that the beady little black eyes were damnably anthropoid, but I could not bear to study them long. They fastened themselves on me with a horrible persistence, so that I closed the panel gaspingly and left the creature to wriggle about unseen in its matted straw and spectral twilight. I must have reeled a bit, for I saw that the doctor was gently holding my arm as he guided me away. I was stuttering over and over again: “B-but for God’s sake, what is it?”
Dr. McNeill told me the story in his private office as I sprawled opposite him in an easy-chair. The gold and crimson of late afternoon changed to the violet of early dusk, but still I sat awed and motionless. I resented every ring of the telephone and every whir of the buzzer, and I could have cursed the nurses and interns whose knocks now and then summoned the doctor briefly to the outer office. Night came, and I was glad my host switched on all the lights. Scientist though I was, my zeal for research was half forgotten amidst such breathless ecstasies of fright as a small boy might feel when whispered witch-tales go the rounds of the chimney-corner.
It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan—was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October; and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas.
The Weird Fiction Megapack Page 39
