Gaunt and terrible they loomed against the night, silent phantoms from
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she assented with no enthusiasm and returned my kiss in a rather perfunctory manner. Compulsory obedience was repugnant.
I returned to my room and retired. Sleep did not come to me at once however, for I was hurt at my sister’s evident resentment and I lay for a long time, brooding and staring at the window, now framed boldly in the molten silver of the moon. At length I dropped into a troubled slumber, through which flitted vague dreams wherein dim, ghostly shapes glided and leered.
I awoke suddenly, sat up and stared about me wildly, striving to orient my muddled senses. An oppressive feeling as of impending evil hovered about me. Fading swiftly as I came to full consciousness, lurked the eery remembrance of a hazy dream wherein a white fog had floated through the window and had assumed the shape of a tall, white bearded man who had shaken my shoulder as if to arouse me from sleep. All of us are familiar with the curious sensations of waking from a bad dream–the dimming and dwindling of partly remembered thoughts and feelings. But the wider awake I became, the stronger grew the suggestion of evil.
I sprang up, snatched on my clothing and rushed to my sister’s room, flung open the door. The room was unoccupied.
I raced down the stair and accosted the night clerk who was maintained by the small hotel for some obscure reason.
“Miss Costigan, sir? She came down, clad for outdoors, a while after midnight–about half an hour ago, sir, and said she was going to take a stroll on the moor and not to be alarmed if she did not return at once, sir.”
I hurled out of the hotel, my pulse pounding a devil’s tattoo. Far out across the fen I saw the ruins, bold and grim against the moon, and in that direction I hastened. At length–it seemed hours–I saw a slim figure some distance in front of me. The girl was taking her time and in spite of her start of me, I was gaining–soon I would be within hearing distance. My breath was already coming in gasps from my exertions but I quickened my pace.
The aura of the fen was like a tangible something, pressing upon me, weighting my limbs–and always that presentiment of evil grew and grew.
Then, far ahead of me, I saw my sister stop suddenly, and look about her confusedly. The moonlight flung a veil of illusion–I could see her but I could not see what had caused her sudden terror. I broke into a run, my blood leaping wildly and suddenly freezing as a wild, despairing scream burst out and sent the moor echoes flying.
The girl was turning first one way and then another and I screamed for her to run toward me; she heard me and started toward me running like a frightened antelope and then I saw. Vague shadows darted about her–short, dwarfish shapes–just in front of me rose a solid wall of them and I saw that they had blocked her from gaining to me. Suddenly, instinctively I believe, she turned and raced for the stone columns, the whole horde after her, save those who remained to bar my path.
I had no weapon nor did I feel the need of any; a strong, athletic youth, I was in addition an amateur boxer of ability, with a terrific punch in either hand. Now all the primal instincts surged redly within me; I was a cave man bent on vengeance against a tribe who sought to steal a woman of my family. I did not fear–I only wished to close with them. Aye, I recognized these–I knew them of old and all the old wars rose and roared within the misty caverns of my soul. Hate leaped in me as in the old days when men of my blood came from the North. Aye, though the whole spawn of Hell rise up from those caverns which honeycomb the moors.
Now I was almost upon those who barred my way; I saw plainly the stunted bodies, the gnarled limbs, the snake-like, beady eyes that stared unwinkingly, the grotesque, square faces with their unhuman features, the shimmer of flint daggers in their crooked hands. Then with a tigerish leap I was among them like a leopard among jackals and details were blotted out in a whirling red haze. Whatever they were, they were of living substance; features crumpled and bones shattered beneath my flailing fists and blood darkened the moon-silvered stones. A flint dagger sank hilt deep in my thigh. Then the ghastly throng broke each way and fled before me, as their ancestors fled before mine, leaving four silent dwarfish shapes stretched on the moor.
Heedless of my wounded leg, I took up the grim race anew; Joan had reached the druidic ruins now and she leaned against one of the columns, exhausted, blindly seeking there protection in obedience to some dim instinct just as women of her blood had done in bygone ages.
The horrid things that pursued her were closing in upon her. They would reach her before I. God knows the thing was horrible enough but back in the recesses of my mind, grimmer horrors were whispering; dream memories wherein stunted creatures pursued white limbed women across such fens as these.
Lurking memories of the ages when dawns were young and men struggled with forces which were not of men.
The girl toppled forward in a faint, and lay at the foot of the towering column in a piteous white heap.
And they closed in–closed in. What they would do I knew not but the ghosts of ancient memory whispered that they would do Something of hideous evil, something foul and grim.
From my lips burst a scream, wild and inarticulate, born of sheer elemental horror and despair. I could not reach her before those fiends had worked their frightful will upon her. The centuries, the ages swept back. This was as it had been in the beginning. And what followed, I know not how to explain–but I think that that wild shriek whispered back down the long reaches of Time to the Beings my ancestors worshipped and that blood answered blood. Aye, such a shriek as could echo down the dusty corridors of lost ages and bring back from the whispering abyss of Eternity the ghost of the only one who could save a girl of Celtic blood.
The foremost of the Things were almost upon the prostrate girl; their hands were clutching for her, when suddenly beside her a form stood. There was no gradual materializing. The figure leaped suddenly into being, etched bold and clear in the moonlight. A tall white bearded man, clad in long robes–the man I had seen in my dream! A druid, answering once more the desperate need of people of his race. His brow was high and noble, his eyes mystic and far-seeing–so much I could see, even from where I ran. His arm rose in an imperious gesture and the Things shrank back–back–back–They broke and fled, vanishing suddenly, and I sank to my knees beside my sister, gathering the child into my arms. A moment I looked up at the man, sword and shield against the powers of darkness, protecting helpless tribes as in the world’s youth, who raised his hand above us as if in benediction, then he too vanished suddenly and the moor lay bare and silent.
Dead Man’s Hate
They hanged John Farrel in the dawn amid the market-place;
At dusk came Adam Brand to him and spat upon his face.
“Ho, neighbors all,” spake Adam Brand, “see ye John Farrel’s fate!
’Tis proven here a hempen noose is stronger than man’s hate!
“For heard ye not John Farrel’s vow to be avenged on me
Come life or death? See how he hangs high on the gallows tree!”
Yet never a word the people spake, in fear and wild surprize–
For the grisly corpse raised up its head and stared with sightless eyes, And with strange motions, slow and stiff, pointed at Adam Brand And clambered down the gibbet tree, the noose within its hand.
With gaping mouth stood Adam Brand like a statue carved of stone, Till the dead man laid a clammy hand hard on his shoulder-bone.
Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell; the red blood left his face And he reeled away in a drunken run through the screaming market-place; And close behind, the dead man came with face like a mummy’s mask, And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked with their unwonted task.
Men fled before the flying twain or shrank with bated breath,
And they saw on the face of Adam Brand the seal set there by death.
He reeled on buckling legs that failed, yet on and on he
fled; So through the shuddering market-place, the dying fled the dead.
At the riverside fell Adam Brand with a scream that rent the skies; Across him fell John Farrel’s corpse, nor ever the twain did rise.
There was no wound on Adam Brand but his brow was cold and damp, For the fear of death had blown out his life as a witch blows out a lamp.
His lips were writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend’s on Satan’s coals, And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls.
Such was the doom of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate;
For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man’s hate.
The Tavern
There stands, close by a dim, wolf-haunted wood,
A tavern like a monster, brooding thing.
About its sullen gables no birds sing.
Oft a lone traveller, when the moon is blood,
Lights from his horse in quest of sleep and meal.
His footfalls fade within and sound no more;
He comes not forth; but from a secret door
Bearing a grisly burden, shadows steal.
By day, ’neath trees whose silent, green leaves glisten,
The tavern crouches, hating day and light.
A lurking vampire, terrible and lean;
Sometimes behind its windows may be seen
Vague leprous faces, haggard, fungus-white,
That peer and start and ever seem to listen.
Rattle of Bones
“Landlord, ho!” The shout broke the lowering silence and reverberated through the black forest with sinister echoing.
“This place hath a forbidding aspect, meseemeth.”
The two men stood in front of the forest tavern. The building was low, long and rambling, built of heavy logs. Its small windows were heavily barred and the door was closed. Above the door its sinister sign showed faintly–a cleft skull.
This door swung slowly open and a bearded face peered out. The owner of the face stepped back and motioned his guests to enter–with a grudging gesture it seemed. A candle gleamed on a table; a flame smoldered in the fireplace.
“Your names?”
“Solomon Kane,” said the taller man briefly.
“Gaston l’Armon,” the other spoke curtly. “But what is that to you?”
“Strangers are few in the Black Forest,” grunted the host, “bandits many. Sit at yonder table and I will bring food.”
The two men sat down, with the bearing of men who have traveled far. One was a tall gaunt man, clad in a featherless hat and somber black garments, which set off the dark pallor of his forbidding face. The other was of a different type entirely, bedecked with lace and plumes, although his finery was somewhat stained from travel. He was handsome in a bold way, and his restless eyes shifted from side to side, never still an instant.
The host brought wine and food to the rough-hewn table and then stood back in the shadows, like a somber image. His features, now receding into vagueness, now luridly etched in the firelight as it leaped and flickered, were masked in a beard which seemed almost animal-like in thickness. A great nose curved above this beard and two small red eyes stared unblinkingly at his guests.
“Who are you?” suddenly asked the younger man.
“I am the host of the Cleft Skull Tavern,” sullenly replied the other. His tone seemed to challenge his questioner to ask further.
“Do you have many guests?” l’Armon pursued.
“Few come twice,” the host grunted.
Kane started and glanced up straight into those small red eyes, as if he sought for some hidden meaning in the host’s words. The flaming eyes seemed to dilate, then dropped sullenly before the Englishman’s cold stare.
“I’m for bed,” said Kane abruptly, bringing his meal to a close. “I must take up my journey by daylight.”
“And I,” added the Frenchman. “Host, show us to our chambers.”
Black shadows wavered on the walls as the two followed their silent host down a long, dark hall. The stocky, broad body of their guide seemed to grow and expand in the light of the small candle which he carried, throwing a long, grim shadow behind him.
At a certain door he halted, indicating that they were to sleep there. They entered; the host lit a candle with the one he carried, then lurched back the way he had come.
In the chamber the two men glanced at each other. The only furnishings of the room were a couple of bunks, a chair or two and a heavy table.
“Let us see if there be any way to make fast the door,” said Kane. “I like not the looks of mine host.”
“There are racks on door and jamb for a bar,” said Gaston, “but no bar.”
“We might break up the table and use its pieces for a bar,” mused Kane.
“Mon Dieu,” said l’Armon, “you are timorous, m’sieu.”
Kane scowled. “I like not being murdered in my sleep,” he answered gruffly.
“My faith!” the Frenchman laughed. “We are chance met–until I overtook you on the forest road an hour before sunset, we had never seen each other.”
“I have seen you somewhere before,” answered Kane, “though I can not now recall where. As for the other, I assume every man is an honest fellow until he shows me he is a rogue; moreover I am a light sleeper and slumber with a pistol at hand.”
The Frenchman laughed again.
“I was wondering how m’sieu could bring himself to sleep in the room with a stranger! Ha! Ha! All right, m’sieu Englishman, let us go forth and take a bar from one of the other rooms.”
Taking the candle with them, they went into the corridor. Utter silence reigned and the small candle twinkled redly and evilly in the thick darkness.
“Mine host hath neither guests nor servants,” muttered Solomon Kane. “A strange tavern! What is the name, now? These German words come not easily to me–the Cleft Skull? A bloody name, i’faith.”
They tried the rooms next to theirs, but no bar rewarded their search. At last they came to the last room at the end of the corridor. They entered. It was furnished like the rest, except that the door was provided with a small barred opening, and fastened from the outside with a heavy bolt, which was secured at one end to the door-jamb. They raised the bolt and looked in.
“There should be an outer window, but there is not,” muttered Kane. “Look!”
The floor was stained darkly. The walls and the one bunk were hacked in places, great splinters having been torn away.
“Men have died in here,” said Kane, somberly. “Is yonder not a bar fixed in the wall?”
“Aye, but ’tis made fast,” said the Frenchman, tugging at it. “The–”
A section of the wall swung back and Gaston gave a quick exclamation. A small, secret room was revealed, and the two men bent over the grisly thing that lay upon its floor.
“The skeleton of a man!” said Gaston. “And behold, how his bony leg is shackled to the floor! He was imprisoned here and died.”
“Nay,” said Kane, “the skull is cleft–methinks mine host had a grim reason for the name of his hellish tavern. This man, like us, was no doubt a wanderer who fell into the fiend’s hands.”
“Likely,” said Gaston without interest; he was engaged in idly working the great iron ring from the skeleton’s leg bones. Failing in this, he drew his sword and with an exhibition of remarkable strength cut the chain which joined the ring on the leg to a ring set deep in the log floor.
“Why should he shackle a skeleton to the floor?” mused the Frenchman. “Monbleu! ’Tis a waste of good chain. Now, m’sieu,” he ironically addressed the white heap of bones, “I have freed you and you may go where you like!”
“Have done!” Kane’s voice was deep. “No good will come of mocking the dead.”
“The dead should defend themselves,” laughed l’Armon. “Somehow, I will slay the man who kills me, though my corpse climb up forty fathoms of ocean to do it.”
Kane turned toward the outer door, clo
sing the door of the secret room behind him. He liked not this talk which smacked of demonry and witchcraft; and he was in haste to face the host with the charge of his guilt.
As he turned, with his back to the Frenchman, he felt the touch of cold steel against his neck and knew that a pistol muzzle was pressed close beneath the base of his brain.
“Move not, m’sieu!” The voice was low and silky. “Move not, or I will scatter your few brains over the room.”
The Puritan, raging inwardly, stood with his hands in the air while l’Armon slipped his pistols and sword from their sheaths.
“Now you can turn,” said Gaston, stepping back.
Kane bent a grim eye on the dapper fellow, who stood bareheaded now, hat in one hand, the other hand leveling his long pistol.
“Gaston the Butcher!” said the Englishman somberly. “Fool that I was to trust a Frenchman! You range far, murderer! I remember you now, with that cursed great hat off–I saw you in Calais some years agone.”
“Aye–and now you will see me never again. What was that?”
“Rats exploring yon skeleton,” said Kane, watching the bandit like a hawk, waiting for a single slight wavering of that black gun muzzle. “The sound was of the rattle of bones.”
“Like enough,” returned the other. “Now, M’sieu Kane, I know you carry considerable money on your person. I had thought to wait until you slept and then slay you, but the opportunity presented itself and I took it. You trick easily.”
“I had little thought that I should fear a man with whom I had broken bread,” said Kane, a deep timbre of slow fury sounding in his voice.
The bandit laughed cynically. His eyes narrowed as he began to back slowly toward the outer door.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard Page 8
