“This is madness, Kiles,” expostulated Conrad. “Jonas is dead–you had a nightmare–”
“Nightmare!” his voice rose in a cracked scream. “I’ve had plenty since I stood beside his evil death-bed and heard the blasphemous threats pour like a black river from his foaming lips; but this was no dream! I was wide awake, and I tell you–I tell you I saw my demon-brother Jonas leering hideously through the window at me!”
He wrung his hands, moaning in terror, all pride, self-possession and poise swept away by stark, primitive, animal terror. Conrad glanced at me, but I had no suggestion to offer. The matter seemed so utterly insane that the only thing obvious seemed to summon the police and have old Job sent to the nearest madhouse. Yet there was in his manner a fundamental terror which seemed to strike even deeper than madness, and which, I will admit, caused a creepy sensation along my spine.
As if sensing our doubt, he broke out again, “I know! You think I’m crazy! I’m sane as you! But I’m going to that tomb, if I have to go alone! And if you let me go alone, my blood will be on your heads!
Are you going?”
“Wait!” Conrad began to dress hurriedly. “We’ll go with you. I suppose the only thing that will destroy this hallucination is the sight of your brother in his coffin.”
“Aye!” old Job laughed terribly. “In his tomb, in the lidless coffin! Why did he prepare that open coffin before his death and leave orders that no lid of any sort be placed upon it?”
“He was always eccentric,” answered Conrad.
“He was always a devil,” snarled old Job. “We hated each other from our youth. When he squandered his inheritance and came crawling back, penniless, he resented it because I would not share my hard-gotten wealth with him. The black dog! The fiend from Purgatory’s pits!”
“Well, we’ll soon see if he’s safe in his tomb,” said Conrad. “Ready, O’Donnel?”
“Ready,” I answered, strapping on my holstered .45. Conrad laughed.
“Can’t forget your Texas raising, can you?” he bantered. “Think you might be called on to shoot a ghost?”
“Well, you can’t tell,” I answered. “I don’t like to go out at night without it.”
“Guns are useless against a vampire,” said Job, fidgeting with impatience. “There is only one thing which will prevail against them–a stake driven through the fiend’s black heart.”
“Great heavens, Job!” Conrad laughed shortly. “You can’t be serious about this thing?”
“Why not?” A flame of madness rose in his eyes. “There were vampires in days past–there still are in Eastern Europe and the Orient. I’ve heard him boast about his knowledge of secret cults and black magic. I suspected it–then when he lay dying, he divulged his ghastly secret to me–swore he’d come back from the grave and drag me down to Hell with him!”
We emerged from the house and crossed the lawn. That part of the valley was sparsely settled, though a few miles to the southeast shone the lights of the city. Adjoining Conrad’s grounds on the west lay Job’s estate, the dark house looming gaunt and silent among the trees. That house was the one luxury the miserly old man allowed himself. A mile to the north flowed the river, and to the south rose the sullen black outlines of those low, rolling hills–barren-crowned, with long bush-clad slopes–which men call the Dagoth Hills–a curious name, not allied to any known Indian language, yet used first by the red man to designate this stunted range. They were practically uninhabited. There were farms on the outer slopes, toward the river, but the inner valleys were too shallow of soil, the hills themselves too rocky, for cultivation. Somewhat less than half a mile from Conrad’s estate stood the rambling structure that had housed the Kiles family for some three centuries–at least, the stone foundations dated that far back, though the rest of the house was more modern. I thought old Job shuddered as he looked at it, perched there like a vulture on a roost, against the black undulating background of the Dagoth Hills.
It was a wild windy night through which we went on our mad quest. Clouds drove endlessly across the moon and the wind howled through the trees, bringing strange night noises and playing curious tricks with our voices. Our goal was the tomb which squatted on an upper slope of a hill which projected from the rest of the range, running behind and above the high tableland on which the old Kiles house stood. It was as if the occupant of the sepulcher looked out over the ancestral home and the valley his people had once owned from ridge to river. Now all the ground remaining to the old estate was the strip running up the slopes into the hills, the house at one end and the tomb at the other.
The hill upon which the tomb was built diverged from the others, as I have said, and in going to the tomb, we passed close by its steep, thicket-clad extremity, which fell off sharply in a rocky, bush-covered cliff.
We were nearing the point of this ridge when Conrad remarked, “What possessed Jonas to build his tomb so far from the family vaults?”
“He did not build it,” snarled Job. “It was built long ago by our ancestor, old Captain Jacob Kiles, for whom this particular projection is still called Pirate Hill–for he was a buccaneer and a smuggler. Some strange whim caused him to build his tomb up there, and in his lifetime he spent much time there alone, especially at night. But he never occupied it for he was lost at sea in a fight with a man-of-war. He used to watch for enemies or soldiers from that very bluff there ahead of us, and that’s why people call it Smuggler’s Point to this day.
“The tomb was in ruins when Jonas began living at the old house, and he had it repaired to receive his bones. Well he knew he dared not sleep in consecrated ground! Before he died he had made full arrangements–the tomb had been rebuilt, the lidless coffin placed in it to receive him–”
I shuddered in spite of myself. The darkness, the wild clouds scudding across the leprous moon, the shrieking wind-noises, the grim dark hills looming above us, the wild words of our companion, all worked upon my imagination to people the night with shapes of horror and nightmare. I glanced nervously at the thicket-masked slopes, black and repellent in the shifting light, and found myself wishing we were not passing so close to the bush-grown, legend-haunted cliffs of Smuggler’s Point, jutting out like the prow of a ship from the sinister range.
“I am no silly girl to be frightened by shadows,” old Job was chattering. “I saw his evil face at my moon-lit window. I have always secretly believed that the dead walk the night. Now–what’s that?”
He stopped short, frozen in an attitude of utter horror.
Instinctively we strained our ears. We heard the branches of the trees whipping in the gale. We heard the loud rustling of the tall grass.
“Only the wind,” muttered Conrad. “It distorts every sound–”
“No! No, I tell you! It was–”
A ghostly cry came driving down the wind–a voice sharpened with mortal fear and agony. “Help! Help!
Oh, God have mercy! Oh, God! Oh, God–”
“My brother’s voice!” screamed Job. “He is calling to me from Hell!”
“Which way did it come from?” whispered Conrad, with lips suddenly dry.
“I don’t know.” The goose-flesh stood out clammily on my limbs. “I couldn’t tell. It might have come from above–or below. It sounds strangely muffled.”
“The clutch of the grave muffles his voice!” shrieked Job. “The clinging shroud stifles his screams! I tell you he howls on the white-hot grids of Hell, and would drag me down to share his doom! On! On to the tomb!”
“The ultimate path of all mankind,” muttered Conrad, which grisly play on Job’s words did not add to my comfort. We followed old Kiles, scarcely able to keep pace with him as he loped, a gaunt, grotesque figure, across the slopes mounting towards the squat bulk the illusive moonlight disclosed like a dully glistening skull.
“Did you recognize that voice?” I muttered to Conrad.
“I don’t know. It was muffled, as you mentioned. It might have been a trick of the wind. If I said I thought i
t was Jonas, you’d think me mad.”
“Not now,” I muttered. “I thought it was insanity at the beginning. But the spirit of the night’s gotten into my blood. I’m ready to believe anything.”
We had mounted the slopes and stood before the massive iron door of the tomb. Above and behind it the hill rose steeply, masked by dense thickets. The grim mausoleum seemed invested with sinister portent, induced by the fantastic happenings of the night. Conrad turned the beam of an electric torch on the ponderous lock, with its antique appearance.
“This door has not been opened,” said Conrad. “The lock has not been tampered with. Look–spiders have already built their webs thickly across the sill, and the strands are unbroken. The grass before the door has not been mashed down, as would have been the case had anyone recently gone into the tomb–or come out.”
“What are doors and locks to a vampire?” whined Job. “They pass through solid walls like ghosts. I tell you, I will not rest until I have gone into that tomb and done what I have to do. I have the key–the only key there is in the world which will fit that lock.”
He drew it forth–a huge old-fashioned implement–and thrust it into the lock. There was a groan and creak of rusty tumblers, and old Job winced back, as if expecting some hyena-fanged ghost to fly at him through the opening door.
Conrad and I peered in–and I will admit I involuntarily braced myself, shaken with chaotic conjectures.
But the blackness within was Stygian. Conrad made to snap on his light, but Job stopped him. The old man seemed to have recovered a good deal of his normal composure.
“Give me the light,” he said, and there was grim determination in his voice. “I’ll go in alone. If he has returned to the tomb–if he is again in his coffin, I know how to deal with him. Wait here, and if I cry out, or if you hear the sounds of a struggle, rush in.”
“But–” Conrad began an objection.
“Don’t argue!” shrieked old Kiles, his composure beginning to crumble again. “This is my task and I’ll do it alone!”
He swore as Conrad inadvertently turned the light beam full in his face, then snatched the torch and drawing something from his coat, stalked into the tomb, shoving the ponderous door to behind him.
“More insanity,” I muttered uneasily. “Why was he so insistent that we come with him, if he meant to go inside alone? And did you notice the gleam in his eyes? Sheer madness!”
“I’m not so sure,” answered Conrad. “It looked more like an evil triumph to me. As for being alone, you’d hardly call it that, since we’re only a few feet away from him. He has some reason for not wanting us to enter that tomb with him. What was it he drew from his coat as he went in?”
“It looked like a sharpened stick, and a small hammer. Why should he take a hammer, since there is no lid to be unfastened on the coffin?”
“Of course!” snapped Conrad. “What a fool I’ve been not to understand already! No wonder he wanted to go in to the tomb alone! O’Donnel, he’s serious about this vampire nonsense! Don’t you remember the hints he’s dropped about being prepared, and all that? He intends to drive that stake through his brother’s heart! Come on! I don’t intend that he shall mutilate–”
From the tomb rang a scream that will haunt me when I lie dying. The fearful timbre of it paralyzed us in our tracks, and before we could gather our wits, there was a mad rush of feet, the impact of a flying body against the door, and out of the tomb, like a bat blown out of the gates of Hell, flew the shape of Job Kiles. He fell head-long at our feet, the flashlight in his hand striking the ground and going out. Behind him the iron door stood ajar and I thought to hear a strange scrambling, sliding noise in the darkness. But all my attention was rivetted on the wretch who writhed at our feet in horrible convulsions.
We bent above him. The moon sliding from behind a dusky cloud lighted his ghastly face, and we both cried out involuntarily at the horror stamped there. From his distended eyes all light of sanity was gone–blown out as a candle is blown out in the dark. His loose lips worked, spattering forth. Conrad shook him. “Kiles! In God’s name, what happened to you?”
A horrible slavering mewling was the only answer; then among the drooling and meaningless sounds we caught human words, slobbering, and half inarticulate.
“The thing!–The thing in the coffin!” Then as Conrad cried a fierce question, the eyes rolled up and set, the hard-drawn lips froze in a ghastly mirthless grin, and the man’s whole lank frame seemed to sink and collapse upon itself.
“Dead!” muttered Conrad, appalled.
“I see no wound,” I whispered, shaken to my very soul.
“There is no wound–no drop of blood.”
“Then–then–” I scarcely dared put the grisly thought into words.
We looked fearsomely at the oblong strip of blackness framed in the partly open door of the silent tomb.
The wind shrieked suddenly across the grass, as if in a paean of demoniac triumph, and a sudden trembling took hold of me.
Conrad rose and squared his shoulders.
“Come on!” said he. “God knows what lurks in the hellish grave–but we’ve got to find out. The old man was overwrought–a prey to his own fears. His heart was none too strong. Anything might have caused his death. Are you with me?”
What terror of a tangible and understood menace can equal that of menace unseen and nameless? But I nodded consent, and Conrad picked up the flashlight, snapped it on, and grunted pleasure that it was not broken. Then we approached the tomb as men might approach the lair of a serpent. My gun was cocked in my hand as Conrad thrust open the door. His light played swiftly over the dank walls, dusty floor and vaulted roof, to come to rest on the lidless coffin which stood on its stone pedestal in the center. This we approached with drawn breath, not daring to conjecture what eldritch horror might meet our eyes. With a quick intake of breath, Conrad flashed his light into it. A cry escaped each of us; the coffin was empty.
“My God!” I whispered. “Job was right! But where is the–the vampire?”
“No empty coffin frightened the life out of Job Kiles’ body,” answered Conrad. “His last words were
‘the thing in the coffin.’ Something was in it–something the sight of which extinguished Job Kiles’ life like a blown-out candle.”
“But where is it?” I asked uneasily, a most ghastly thrill playing up and down my spine. “It could not have emerged from the tomb without our having seen it. Was it something that can make itself invisible at will?
Is it squatting unseen in the tomb with us here at this instant?”
“Such talk is madness,” snapped Conrad, but with a quick instinctive glance over his shoulder to right and left. Then he added, “Do you notice a faint repulsive odor about this coffin?”
“Yes, but I can’t define it.”
“Nor I. It isn’t exactly a charnel-house reek. It’s an earthy, reptilian sort of smell. It reminds me faintly of scents I’ve caught in mines far below the surface of the earth. It clings to the coffin–as if some unholy being out of the deep earth had lain there.”
He ran the light over the walls again, and halted it suddenly, focusing it on the back wall, which was cut out of the sheet rock of the hill on which the tomb was built.
“Look!”
In the supposedly solid wall showed a long thin aperture! With one stride Conrad reached it, and together we examined it. He pushed cautiously on the section of the wall nearest it, and it gave inward silently, opening on such blackness as I had not dreamed existed this side of the grave. We both involuntarily recoiled, and stood tensely, as if expecting some horror of the night to spring out at us. Then Conrad’s short laugh was like a dash of icy water on taut nerves.
“At least the occupant of the tomb uses an un-supernatural means of entrance and exit,” he said. “This secret door was constructed with extreme care, evidently. See, it is merely a large upright block of stone that turns on a pivot. And the silence with which it works shows that the piv
ot and sockets have been oiled recently.”
He directed his beam into the pit behind the door, and it disclosed a narrow tunnel running parallel to the door-sill, plainly cut into the solid rock of the hill. The sides and floor were smooth and even, the roof arched.
Conrad drew back, turning to me.
“O’Donnel, I seem to sense something dark and sinister indeed, here, and I feel sure it possesses a human agency. I feel as if we had stumbled upon a black, hidden river, running under our very feet.
Whither it leads, I can not say, but I believe the power behind it all is Jonas Kiles. I believe that old Job did see his brother at the window tonight.”
“But empty tomb or not, Conrad, Jonas Kiles is dead.”
“I think not. I believe he was in a self-induced state of catalepsy, such as is practiced by Hindu Fakirs. I have seen a few cases, and would have sworn they were really dead. They have discovered the secret of suspended animation at will, despite scientists and skeptics. Jonas Kiles lived several years in India, and he must have learned that secret, somehow.
“The open coffin, the tunnel leading from the tomb–all point to the belief that he was alive when he was placed here. For some reason he wished people to believe him to be dead. It may be the whim of a disordered mind. It may have a deeper and darker significance. In the light of his appearance to his brother and Job’s death, I lean to the latter view, but just now my suspicions are too horrible and fantastic to put into words. But I intend to explore this tunnel. Jonas may be hiding in it somewhere. Are you with me? Remember, the man may be a homicidal maniac, or if not, he may be more dangerous even than a madman.”
“I’m with you,” I grunted, though my flesh crawled at the prospect of plunging into that nighted pit. “But what about that scream we heard as we passed the Point? That was no feigning of agony! And what was the thing Job saw in the coffin?”
“I don’t know. It might have been Jonas, garbed in some hellish disguise. I’ll admit there is much mystery attached to this matter, even if we accept the theory that Jonas is alive and behind it all. But we’ll look into that tunnel. Help me lift Job. We can’t leave him lying here like this. We’ll put him in the coffin.”
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard Page 42
