But in other ways they extended the boundaries of life. In their nighted kingdom they discovered other, older caverns, which led them into the very bowels of the earth. They learned lost secrets, long forgotten or never known by men, sleeping in the blackness far below the hills. Darkness is conducive to silence, so they gradually lost the power of speech, a sort of telepathy taking its place. And with each grisly gain they lost more of their human attributes. Their ears vanished; their noses grew snout-like; their eyes became unable to bear the light of the sun, and even of the stars. They had long abandoned the use of fire, and the only light they used was the weird gleams evoked from their gigantic jewel on the altar, and even this they did not need. They changed in other ways. John Reynolds, watching, felt the cold sweat bead his body. For the slow transmutation of the Old People was horrible to behold, and many and hideous were the shapes which moved among them before their ultimate mold and nature were evolved.
Yet they remembered the sorcery of their ancestors and added to this their own black wizardry developed far below the hills. And at last they attained the peak of that necromancy. John Reynolds had had horrific inklings of it in fragmentary glimpses of the olden times, when the wizards of the Old People had sent forth their spirits from their sleeping bodies to whisper evil things in the ears of their enemies.
A tribe of tall painted warriors came into the valley, bearing the body of a great chief, slain in tribal warfare.
Long eons had passed. Of the ancient city only scattered columns stood among the trees. A landslide had laid bare the entrance of the outer cavern. This the Indians found and therein they placed the body of their chief with his weapons broken beside him. Then they blocked up the cave mouth with stones and took up their journey, but night caught them in the valley.
Through all the ages, the Old People had found no other entrance or exit to or from the pits, save the small outer cave. It was the one doorway between their grim realm and the world they had so long abandoned. Now they came through the secret door into the outer cavern, whose dim light they could endure, and John Reynolds’ hair stood up at what he saw. For they took the corpse and laid it before the altar of the feathered serpent, and an ancient wizard lay upon it, his mouth against the mouth of the dead, and above them tom-toms pulsed and strange fires flickered, and the voiceless votaries with soundless chants invoked gods forgotten before the birth of Egypt, until inhuman voices bellowed in the outer darkness and the sweep of monstrous wings filled the shadows. And slowly life ebbed from the sorcerer and stirred the limbs of the dead chief. The body of the wizard rolled limply aside and the corpse of the chief stood up stiffly; and with puppet-like steps and glassy staring eyes it went up the dark tunnel and through the secret door into the outer cave. The dead hands tore aside the stones and into the starlight stalked the Horror.
Reynolds saw it walk stiffly under the shuddering trees while the night things fled gibbering. He saw it come into the camp of the warriors. The rest was horror and madness, as the dead thing pursued its former companions and tore them limb from limb. The valley became a shambles before one of the braves, conquering his terror, turned on his pursuer and hewed through its spine with a stone axe.
And even as the twice-slain corpse crumpled, Reynolds saw, on the floor of the cavern before the carved serpent, the form of the wizard quicken and live as his spirit returned to him from the corpse he had caused it to animate.
The soundless glee of incarnate demons shook the crawling blackness of the pits, and Reynolds shrank before the verminous fiends gloating over their new-found power to deal horror and death to the sons of men, their ancient enemies.
But the word spread from clan to clan, and men came not to the Valley of the Lost. For many a century it lay dreaming and deserted beneath the sky. Then came mounted braves with trailing war-bonnets, painted with the colors of the Kiowas, warriors of the north, who knew nothing of the mysterious valley.
They pitched their camps in the very shadows of those sinister monoliths which were now no more than shapeless stones.
They placed their dead in the cavern. Reynolds saw the horrors that took place when the dead came ravening by night among the living to slay and devour–and to drag screaming victims into the nighted caverns and the demoniac doom that awaited them. The legions of Hell were loosed in the Valley of the Lost, where chaos reigned and nightmare and madness stalked. Those who were left alive and sane walled up the cavern and rode out of the hills like men riding from Hell.
Once more Lost Valley lay gaunt and naked to the stars. Then again the coming of men broke the primal solitude and smoke rose among the trees. And John Reynolds caught his breath with a start of horror as he saw these were white men, clad in the buckskins of an earlier day–six of them, so much alike that he knew they were brothers.
He saw them fell trees and build a cabin in the clearing. He saw them hunt game in the mountains and begin clearing a field for corn. And all the time he saw the vermin of the hills waiting with ghoulish lust in the darkness. They could not look from their caverns with their nighted eyes, but by their godless sorcery they were aware of all that took place in the valley. They could not come forth in their own bodies in the light, but they waited with the patience of night and the still places.
Reynolds saw one of the brothers find the cavern and open it. He entered and the secret door hung open.
The man went into the tunnel. He could not see, in the darkness, the shapes of horror that stole slavering about him, but in sudden panic he lifted his muzzle-loading rifle and fired blindly, screaming as the flash showed him the hellish forms that ringed him in. In the utter blackness following the vain shot they rushed, overthrowing him by the power of their numbers, sinking their snaky fangs into his flesh. As he died he slashed half a dozen of them to pieces with his bowie knife, but the poison did its work quickly.
Reynolds saw them drag the corpse before the altar; he saw again the horrible transmutation of the dead, which rose grinning vacantly and stalked forth. The sun had set in a welter of dull crimson. Night had fallen. To the cabin where his brothers slept, wrapped in their blankets, stalked the dead. Silently the groping hands swung open the door. The horror crouched in the gloom, its bared teeth shining, its dead eyes gleaming glassily in the starlight. One of the brothers stirred and mumbled, then sat up and stared at the motionless shape in the doorway. He called the dead man’s name–then he shrieked hideously–the Horror sprang–
From John Reynolds’ throat burst a cry of intolerable horror. Abruptly the pictures vanished, with the smoke. He stood in the weird glow before the altar, the tom-toms throbbing softly and evilly, the fiendish faces hemming him in. And now from among them crept, on his belly like the serpent he was, the one which wore the gemmed circlet, venom dripping from his bared fangs. Loathsomely he slithered toward John Reynolds, who fought the inclination to leap upon the foul thing and stamp out its life. There was no escape; he could send his bullets crashing through the swarm and mow down all in front of the muzzle, but those would be as nothing beside the hundreds which hemmed him in. He would die there in the waning light, and they would send his corpse blundering forth, lent a travesty of life by the spirit of the wizard, just as they had sent Saul Fletcher. John Reynolds grew tense as steel as his wolf-like instinct to live rose above the maze of horror into which he had fallen.
And suddenly his human mind rose above the vermin who threatened him, as he was electrified by a swift thought that was like an inspiration. With a fierce inarticulate cry of triumph, he bounded sideways just as the crawling monstrosity lunged. It missed him, sprawling headlong, and Reynolds snatched from the altar the carven serpent and, holding it on high, thrust against it the muzzle of his cocked pistol. He did not need to speak. In the dying light his eyes blazed madly. The Old People wavered back. Before them lay he whose peaked skull Reynolds’ pistol had shattered. They knew a crook of his trigger-finger would splinter their fantastic god into shining bits.
For a tense space th
e tableau held. Then Reynolds felt their silent surrender. Freedom in exchange for their god. It was again borne on him that these beings were not truly bestial, since true beasts know no gods. And this knowledge was the more terrible, for it meant that these creatures had evolved into a type neither bestial nor human, a type outside of nature and sanity.
The snakish figures gave back on each side, and the waning light sprang up again. As he went up the tunnel they were close at his heels, and in the dancing uncertain glow he could not be sure whether they walked as a man walks or crawled as a snake crawls. He had a vague impression that their gait was hideously compounded of both. He swerved far aside to avoid the sprawling bulk that had been Saul Fletcher, and so, with his gun muzzle pressed hard against the shining brittle image borne in his left hand, he came to the short flight of steps which led up to the secret door. There they came to a standstill. He turned to face them. They ringed him in a close half-circle, and he understood that they feared to open the secret door lest he dash out through the cavern into the sunlight, where they could not follow, with their image. Nor would he set down the god until the door was opened.
At last they withdrew several yards, and he cautiously set the image on the floor at his feet where he could snatch it up in an instant. How they opened the door he never knew, but it swung wide, and he backed slowly up the steps, his gun trained on the glittering god. He had almost reached the door–one back-thrown hand gripped the edge–the light went out suddenly and the rush came. A volcanic burst of effort shot him backward through the door which was already rushing shut. As he leaped he emptied his gun full into the fiendish faces that suddenly filled the dark opening. They dissolved in red ruin and as he raced madly from the outer cavern he heard the soft closing of the secret door, shutting that realm of horror from the human world.
In the glow of the westering sun John Reynolds staggered drunkenly, clutching at the stones and trees as a madman clutches at realities. The keen tenseness that had held him when he fought for his life fell from him and left him a quivering shell of disrupted nerves. An insane titter drooled involuntarily through his lips, and he rocked to and fro in ghastly laughter he could not check.
Then the clink of hoofs on stone sent him leaping behind a cluster of boulders. It was some hidden instinct which led him to take refuge. His conscious mind was too dazed and chaotic for thought or action.
Into the clearing rode Jonas McCrill and his followers and a sob tore through Reynolds’ throat. At first he did not recognize them–did not realize that he had ever seen them before. The feud, with all other sane and normal things, lay lost and forgotten far back in dim vistas beyond the black tunnels of madness.
Two figures rode from the other side of the clearing–Bill Ord and one of the outlaw followers of the McCrills. Strapped to Ord’s saddle were several sticks of dynamite, done into a compact package.
“Well, gee whiz,” hailed young Ord, “I shore didn’t expect to meet yuh-all here. Did yuh git him?”
“Naw,” snapped old Jonas, “he’s done fooled us again. We come up with his horse, but he wasn’t on hit.
The rein was snapped like he’d had hit tied and it’d broke away. I dunno where he is, but we’ll git him.
I’m a-goin’ on to Antelope to git some more of the boys. Yuh-all git Saul’s body outa that cave and foller me as fast as yuh can.”
He reined away and vanished through the trees, and Reynolds, his heart in his mouth, saw the other four approach the cavern.
“Well, by God!” exclaimed Jack Solomon fiercely. “Somebody’s done been here! Look! Them rocks are tore down!”
John Reynolds watched as one paralyzed. If he sprang up and called to them they would shoot him down before he could voice his warning. Yet it was not that which held him as in a vise; it was sheer horror which robbed him of thought and action and froze his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His lips parted but no sound came forth. As in a nightmare he saw his enemies disappear into the cavern. Their voices, muffled, came back to him.
“By golly, Saul’s gone!”
“Look here, boys, here’s a door in the back wall!”
“By thunder, it’s open!”
“Let’s take a look!”
Suddenly from within the bowels of the hills crashed a fusillade of shots–a burst of hideous screams. Then silence closed like a clammy fog over the Valley of the Lost.
John Reynolds, finding voice at last, cried out as a wounded beast cries, and beat his temples with his clenched fists, which he brandished to the heavens, shrieking wordless blasphemies.
Then he ran staggeringly to Bill Ord’s horse which grazed tranquilly with the others beneath the trees.
With clammy hands he tore away the package of dynamite and, without separating the sticks, he punched a hole in the end of the middle stick with a twig. Then he cut a short–a very short–piece of fuse, and slipped a cap over one end which he inserted into the hole in the dynamite. In a pocket of the rolled-up slicker bound behind the saddle he found a match, and lighting the fuse he hurled the bundle into the cavern. Hardly had it struck the back wall when with an earthquake roar it exploded.
The concussion nearly hurled him off his feet. The whole mountain rocked and with a thunderous crash the cave roof fell and tons and tons of shattered rock crashed down to obliterate all marks of Ghost Cave, and to shut the door to the pits forever.
John Reynolds walked slowly away, and suddenly the whole horror swept upon him and the earth seemed hideously alive under his feet, the sun foul and blasphemous over his head. The light was sickly, yellowish and evil, and all things were polluted by the unholy knowledge locked in his skull, like hidden drums beating ceaselessly in the blackness beneath the hills.
He had closed one Door forever but what other nightmare shapes might lurk in hidden places and the dark pits of the earth, gloating over the souls of men? His knowledge was a reeking blasphemy which would never let him rest, for ever in his soul would whisper the drums that throbbed in those dark pits where lurked demons that had once been men. He had looked on ultimate foulness, and his knowledge was a taint because of which he could never stand clean before men again or touch the flesh of any living thing without a shudder. If man, molded of divinity, could sink to such verminous obscenities, who could contemplate his eventual destiny unshaken? And if such beings as the Old People existed, what other horrors might not lurk beneath the visible surface of the universe? He was suddenly aware that he had glimpsed the grinning skull beneath the mask of life and that that glimpse made life intolerable. All certainty and stability had been swept away, leaving a mad welter of lunacy, nightmare and stalking horror.
John Reynolds drew his gun and his horny thumb drew back the heavy hammer. Thrusting the muzzle against his temple, he pulled the trigger. The shot crashed echoing through the hills and the last of the fighting Reynoldses pitched headlong.
Old Jonas McCrill, galloping back at the sound of the blast, found him where he lay, and wondered that his face should be that of an old, old man, his hair white as hoar-frost.
The Hoofed Thing
Marjory was crying over the loss of Bozo, her fat Maltese who had failed to appear after his usual nightly prowl. There had been a peculiar epidemic of feline disappearances in the neighborhood recently, and Marjory was disconsolate. And because I never could stand to see Marjory cry, I sallied forth in search of the missing pet, though I had little hope of finding him. Every so often some human pervert gratifies his sadistic mania by poisoning animals of which people are fond, and I was certain that Bozo and the score or more of his kind which had vanished in the past few months had fallen victims to some such degenerate.
Leaving the lawn of the Ash home, I crossed several vacant weed-grown lots and came to the last house on that side of the street–a run-down, rambling estate which had recently been occupied–though not rejuvenated–by a Mr. Stark, a lonely, retiring sort of a man from the East. Glancing at the rambling old house, rising among the great oak trees and
set back a hundred yards or so from the street, it occurred to me that Mr. Stark might possibly be able to cast some light on the present mystery.
I turned into the sagging, rusty iron gate and went up the cracked walk, noting the general dilapidation of the place. Little was known about the owner, and though he had been a neighbor of mine for some six months, I had never seen him at close range. It was rumored that he lived alone, even without servants, though he was a cripple. An eccentric scholar of taciturn nature and with money to indulge his whims, was the general opinion.
The wide porch, half covered with ivy, crossed the whole front of the house and flanked both sides. As I prepared to lift the old-fashioned door knocker, I heard a limping, dragging step and turned to face the owner of the house who came hobbling about the corner of the porch. He was a striking figure, despite his deformity. His face was that of an ascetic and a thinker, with a high magnificent forehead, heavy black brows that almost met, and shaded deep dark eyes, piercing and magnetic. His nose was thin and high-bridged, hooked like the beak of some bird of prey, his lips were thin and firmly set, his jaw massive and jutting, almost brutal in its lines of uncompromising resolution. He was not a tall man, even had he stood erect, but his thick short neck and massive shoulders promised power denied by his posture. For he moved slowly and with apparent difficulty, leaning on a crutch, and I saw that one leg was drawn up in an abnormal way, and on the foot he wore a shoe such as is worn on a club-foot.
He looked at me inquiringly and I said, “Good morning, Mr. Stark, sorry to have troubled you. I’m Michael Strang. I live in the last house on the other side of the street. I just dropped in to learn if you’d seen anything of a big Maltese cat recently.”
His eyes bored into me.
“What makes you think I might know anything about a cat?” he asked in a deep-timbered voice.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard Page 37
