The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 1: Henry S. Whitehead

by Henry S. Whitehead

  “Did you see it, sar?” he inquired, biting back the trembling of his mouth.

  I paid practically no attention to this remark. Indeed, I barely heard it. I was, you see, very busily engaged in staunching the flow of blood. Brutus had already lost a considerable quantity, and my rough bandaging was directed entirely to the end of stopping this. Instead of replying to Brutus’ question I turned to Carswell, who had finished with the lamp and the window, and now stood by, ready to lend a hand in his efficient way.

  “Run up to the bathroom, will you, Carswell, and bring me a couple of rolls of bandage, from the medicine closet, and a bottle of mercurochrome.” Carswell disappeared on this errand and I sat, holding my hands tightly around Brutus’ leg, just above the bandage. Then he repeated his question, and this time I paid attention to what he was saying.

  “See what, Brutus?” I inquired, and looked at him, almost for the first time—into his eyes, I mean. Hitherto I had been looking at my bandaging.

  I saw a stark terror in those eyes.

  “It,” said Brutus; “de T’ing, sar.”

  I sat on the side of the bed and looked at him. I was, naturally, puzzled.

  “What thing, Brutus?” I asked, very quietly, almost soothingly. Such terror possessed my second house-man that, I considered, he must, for the time being, be treated like a frightened child.

  “De T’ing what attack me, sar,” explained Brutus.

  “What was it like?” I countered. “Do you mean it is still here—in your room?”

  At that Brutus very nearly collapsed. His eyes rolled up and their irises nearly disappeared; he shuddered as though with a violent chill, from head to foot. I let go his leg. The blood would be no longer flowing, I felt sure, under that tight bandaging of mine. I turned back the bedclothes, rolled poor Brutus under them, tucked him in. I took his limp hands and rubbed them smartly. At this instant Carswell came in through the still open doorway, his hands full of first-aid material. This he laid without a word on the bed beside me, and stood, looking at Brutus, slightly shaking his head. I turned to him.

  “And would you mind bringing some brandy, old man? He’s rather down and out, I’m afraid—trembling from head to foot.”

  “It’s the reaction, of course,” remarked Carswell quietly. “I have the brandy here.” The efficient fellow drew a small flask from his jacket pocket, uncorked it, and poured out a dose in the small silver cup which covered the patent stopper.

  I raised Brutus’ head from the pillow, his teeth audibly chattering as I did so, and just as I was getting the brandy between his lips, there came a slight scuttering sound from under the bed, and something, a small, dark, sinister-looking animal of about the size of a mongoose, dashed on all fours across the open space between the bed’s corner and the still open doorway and disappeared into the night outside. Without a word Carswell ran after it, turning sharply to the left and running past the open window. I dropped the empty brandy cup, lowered Brutus’ head hastily to its pillow, and dashed out of the cabin. Carswell was at the end of the cabins, his flashlight stabbing the narrow alleyway where I had found the miniature African hut. I ran up to him.

  “It went up here,” said Carswell laconically.

  I stood beside him in silence, my hand on his shoulder. He brightened every nook and cranny of the narrow alleyway with his light. There was nothing, nothing alive, to be seen. The Thing had had, of course, ample time to turn some hidden corner behind the cabins, to bury itself out of sight in some accustomed hiding-place, even to climb over the high, rough-surfaced back wall. Carswell brought his flashlight to rest finally on the little hut-like thing which still stood in the alleyway.

  “What’s that?” he inquired. “Looks like some child’s toy.”

  “That’s what I supposed when I discovered it,” I answered. “I imagine it belongs to the washer’s pickaninny.” We stepped into the alleyway. It was not quite wide enough for us to walk abreast. Carswell followed me in. I turned over the little hut with my foot. There was nothing under it. I daresay the possibility of this as a cache for the Thing had occurred to Carswell and me simultaneously. The Thing, mongoose, or whatever it was, had got clean away.

  We returned to the cabin and found Brutus recovering from his ague-like trembling fit. His eyes were calmer now. The reassurance of our presence, the bandaging, had had effect. Brutus proceeded to thank us for what we had done for him.

  Helped by Carswell, I gingerly removed my rough bandage. The blood about that ugly bite—for a bite it certainly was, with unmistakable tooth-marks around its badly torn edges—was clotted now. The flow had ceased. We poured mercurochrome over and through the wound, disinfecting it, and then I placed two entire rolls of three-inch bandage about Brutus’ wounded ankle. Then, with various encouragements and reassurances, we left him, the lamp still burning at his request, and went back to the ladies.

  Our contract game was, somehow, a jumpy one, the ladies having been considerably upset by the scare down there in the yard, and we concluded it early, Carswell driving Mrs. Spencer home and I walking down the hill with Mrs. Squire to the Grand Hotel where she was spending that winter.

  It was still several minutes short of midnight when I returned, after a slow walk up the hill, to my house. I had been thinking of the incident all the way up the hill. I determined to look in upon Brutus Hellman before retiring, but first I went up to my bedroom and loaded a small automatic pistol, and this I carried with me when I went down to the cabins in the yard. Brutus’ light was still going, and he was awake, for he responded instantly to my tap on his door.

  I went in and talked with the man for a few minutes. I left him the gun, which he placed carefully under his pillow. At the door I turned and addressed him:

  “How do you suppose the thing—whatever it was that attacked you, Brutus—could have got in, with everything closed up tight?”

  Brutus replied that he had been thinking of this himself and had come to the conclusion that “de T’ing” had concealed itself in the cabin before he had retired and closed the window and door. He expressed himself as uneasy with the window open, as Carswell and I had left it.

  “But, man, you should have the fresh air while you sleep. You don’t want your place closed up like a field-laborer’s, do you?” said I, rallyingly. Brutus grinned.

  “No, sar,” said he, slowly, “ain’t dat I be afeared of de Jumbee! I daresay it born in de blood, sar. I is close up everyt’ing by instinct! Besides, sar, now dat de T’ing attackin’ me, p’raps bes’ to have the window close up tightly. Den de T’ing cyant possibly mek an entrance ‘pon me!”

  I assured Brutus that the most agile mongoose could hardly clamber up that smooth, whitewashed wall outside and come in that window. Brutus smiled, but shook his head nevertheless.

  “‘Tain’t a mongoose, nor a rat, neither, sar,” he remarked, as he settled himself for rest under the bed-clothes.

  “What do you think it is, then?” I inquired.

  “Only de good Gawd know, sar,” replied Brutus cryptically.

  I was perhaps half-way across the house-yard on my way to turn in when my ears were assailed by precisely one of those suppressed combinations of squeals and grunts which John Masefield describes as presaging an animal tragedy under the hedge of an English countryside on a moonlit summer night. Something—a brief, ruthless combat for food or blood, between two small ground animals—was going on somewhere in the vicinity. I paused, listened, my senses the more readily attuned to this bitter duel because of what had happened in Brutus’ cabin. As I paused, the squeals of the fighting animals abruptly ceased. One combatant, apparently, had given up the ghost! A grunting noise persisted for a few instants, however, and it made me shudder involuntarily. These sounds were low, essentially bestial, commonplace. Yet there was in them something so savage, albeit on the small scale of our everyday West Indian fauna, as to give me pause. I could feel the beginning of a cold shudder run down my spine under my white drill jacket!

 
I turned about, almost reluctantly, drawn somehow, in spite of myself, to the scene of combat. The grunts had ceased now, and to my ears, in the quiet of that perfect night of soft airs and moonlight, there came the even more horrible little sound of the tearing of flesh! It was gruesome, quite horrible, well-nigh unbearable. I paused again, a little shaken, it must be confessed, my nerves a trifle unstrung. I was facing in the direction of the ripping sounds now. Then there was silence—complete, tranquil, absolute!

  Then I stepped towards the scene of this small conflict, my flashlight sweeping that corner of the yard nearest the small alleyway.

  It picked up the victim almost at once, and I thought—I could not be quite sure—that I saw at the very edge of the circle of illumination, the scrambling flight of the victor. The victim was commonplace. It was the body, still slightly palpitating, of a large, well-nourished rat. The dead rat lay well out in the yard, its freshly drawn vital fluid staining a wide smear on the flagstone which supported it—a ghastly-looking affair. I looked down at it curiously. It had indeed, been a ruthless attack to which this lowly creature had succumbed. Its throat was torn out, it was disembowelled, riven terrifically. I stepped back to Brutus’ cabin, went in, and picked up from a pile of them on his bureau a copy of one of our small-sheet local newspapers. With this, nodding smilingly at Brutus I proceeded once more to the scene of carnage. I had an idea. I laid the paper down, kicked the body of the rat upon it with my foot, and, picking up the paper, carried the dead rat into Brutus’ cabin. I turned up his lamp and carried it over to the bedside.

  “Do you suppose this was your animal, Brutus?” I asked. “If so, you seem to be pretty well avenged!”

  Brutus grinned and looked closely at the riven animal. Then:

  “No, sar,” he said, slowly, “‘Twas no rat whut attacked me, sar. See de t’roat, please, sar. Him ahl tore out, mos’ effectively! No, sar. But—I surmise—from de appearance of dis t’roat, de mouf which maim me on de laig was de same mouf whut completely ruin dis rat!”

  And, indeed, judging from the appearance of the rat Brutus’ judgment might well be sound.

  I wrapped the paper about it, said good night once more to Hellman, carried it out with me, threw it into the metal waste-basket in which the house-trash is burned every morning, and went to bed.

  At three minutes past four the next morning I was snatched out of my comfortable bed and a deep sleep by the rattle of successive shots from the wicked little automatic I had left with Brutus. I jumped into my bathrobe, thrust my feet into my slippers, and was downstairs on the run, almost before the remnants of sleep were out of my eyes and brain. I ran out through the kitchen, as the nearest way, and was inside Brutus’ cabin before the empty pistol, still clutched in his hand and pointed towards the open window, had ceased smoking. My first words were:

  “Did you get It, Brutus?” I was thinking of the thing in terms of “It.”

  “Yes, sar,” returned Brutus, lowering his pistol. “I t’ink I scotch him, sar. Be please to look on de window-sill. P’raps some blood in evidence, sar.”

  I did so, and found that Brutus’ marksmanship was better than I had anticipated when I entrusted him with the gun. To be sure, he had fired off all seven bullets, and, apparently, scored only one hit. A small, single drop of fresh blood lay on the white-painted wooden window-sill. No other trace of the attacker was in evidence. My flashlight revealed no marks, and the smooth, freshly-whitewashed wall outside was unscathed. Unless the Thing had wings—something suddenly touched me on the forehead, something light and delicate. I reached up, grasping. My hand closed around something like a string. I turned the flashlight up and there hung a thin strand of liana stem. I pulled it. It was firmly fastened somewhere up above there. I stepped outside, with one of Brutus’ chairs, placed this against the outer wall under the window, and standing on it, raked the eaves with the flashlight. The upper end of the liana stem was looped about a small projection in the gutter, just above the window.

  The Thing, apparently, knew enough to resort to this mechanical method for its second attack that night.

  Inside, Brutus, somewhat excited over his exploit, found a certain difficulty in describing just what it was that had drawn his aim.

  “It hav de appearance of a frog, sar,” he vouchsafed. “I is wide awake when de T’ing land himse’f ‘pon de sill, an’ I have opportunity for takin’ an excellent aim, sar.” That was the best I could get out of Brutus. I tried to visualize a “Thing” which looked like a frog, being able to master one of our big, ferocious rats and tear out its inner parts and go off with them, not to mention liana stems with loop-knots in them to swing from a roof to an open window, and which could make a wound like the one above Brutus Hellman’s ankle. It was rather too much for me. But—the Reign of Terror had begun, and no mistake!

  Running over this summary in my mind as I stood and listened to Brutus telling about his marksmanship, it occurred to me, in a somewhat fantastic light, I must admit—the idea of calling in “science” to our aid, forming the fantastic element—that the Thing had left a clue which might well be unmistakable; something which, suitably managed, might easily clear up the mounting mystery.

  I went back to the house, broached my medicine closet, and returned to the cabin with a pair of glass microscopic slides. Between these I made a smear of the still fresh and fluid blood on the window-sill, and went back to my room, intending to send the smear later in the morning to Dr. Pelletier’s laboratory-man at the Municipal Hospital.

  I left the slides there myself, requesting Dr. Brownell to make me an analysis of the specimen with a view to determining its place in the gamut of West Indian fauna, and that afternoon, shortly after the siesta hour, I received a telephone call from the young physician. Dr. Brownell had a certain whimsical cast apparent in his voice which was new to me. He spoke, I thought, rather banteringly.

  “Where did you get your specimen, Mr. Canevin?” he inquired. I understood you to say it was the blood of some kind of lower animal.”

  “Yes,” said I, “that was what I understood, Dr. Brownell. Is there something peculiar about it?”

  “Well—” said Dr. Brownell slowly, and somewhat banteringly, “yes—and no. The only queer thing about it is that it’s—human blood, probably a Negro’s.”

  I managed to thank him, even to say that I did not want the specimen returned, in answer to his query, and we rang off.

  The plot, it seemed to me, was, in the language of the tradition of strange occurrences, thickening! This, then, must be Brutus’ blood. Brutus’ statement, that he had shot at and struck the marauder at his open window, must be imagination—Negro talk! But, even allowing that it was Brutus’ blood—there was, certainly, no one else about to supply that drop of fresh fluid which 1 had so carefully scraped up on my two glass slides—how had he got blood, from his wounded lower leg, presumably, on that high window-sill? To what end would the man lie to me on such a subject? Besides, certainly he had shot at something—the pistol was smoking when I got to his room. And then—the liana stem? How was that to be accounted for?

  Dr. Brownell’s report made the whole thing more complicated than it had been before. Science, which I had so cheerfully invoked, had only served to make this mystery deeper and more inexplicable.

  Handicapped by nothing more than a slight limp Brutus Hellman was up and attending to his duties about the house the next day. In response to my careful questioning, he had repeated the story of his shooting in all particulars just as he had recounted that incident to me in the gray hours of the early morning. He had even added a particular which fitted in with the liana stem as the means of ingress. The Thing, he said, had appeared to swing down onto the window-sill from above, as he, awake for the time being between cat-naps, had first seen it and reached for the pistol underneath his pillow and then opened fire.

  Nothing happened throughout the day; nor, indeed, during the Reign of Terror as I have called it, did anything untoward occur throughout, e
xcept at night. That evening, shortly after eight o’clock, Brutus retired, and Stephen Penn, who had accompanied him to his cabin, reported to me that, in accordance with my suggestion, the two of them had made an exhaustive search for any concealed “Thing” which might have secreted itself about Brutus’ premises. They had found nothing, and Brutus, his window open, but provided with a tight-fitting screen which had been installed during the day, had fallen asleep before Stephen left. Penn had carefully closed the cabin door behind him, making sure that it was properly latched.

  The attack that night—I had been sleeping “with one eye open”—did not come until two o’clock in the morning. This time Brutus bad no opportunity to use the gun, and so I was not awakened until it was all over. It was, indeed, Brutus calling me softly from the yard at a quarter past two that brought me to my feet and to the window.

  “Yes,,” said I, “what is it, Brutus?”

  “You axed me to inform you, sar, of anything,” explained Brutus from the yard.

  “Right! What happened? Wait, Brutus, I’ll come down,” and I hurriedly stepped into bathrobe and slippers.

  Brutus was waiting for me at the kitchen door, a hand to his left cheek, holding a handkerchief rolled into a ball. Even in the moonlight I could see that this makeshift dressing was bright red. Brutus, it appeared, had suffered another attack of some kind. I took him into the house and upstairs, and dressed the three wounds in his left cheek in my bathroom. He had been awakened without warning, fifteen minutes before, with a sudden hurt, had straightened up in bed, but not before two more stabs, directly through the cheek, had been delivered. He had only just seen the Thing scrambling down over the foot of the bed, as he came awake under the impetus of these stabs, and, after a hasty search for the attacker had wisely devoted himself to staunching his bleeding face. Then, trembling in every limb, he had stepped out into the yard and come under my window to call me.