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

by Henry S. Whitehead

  “Well, Mr. Stewart, you just ask somebody, sometime about Morris’ death.”

  Not another word about Old Morris could I extract out of Mr. Bonesteel.

  But of course he had me aroused. I tried Despard, who lives on the other end of the island, a man educated at the Sorbonne, and who knows, it is said, everything there is know about the island and its affairs.

  It was much the same with Mr. Despard, who is an entirely different kind of person; younger, for one thing, my old friend the government surveyor.

  Mr. Despard smiled, a kind of wry smile. “Old Morris!” said he, reflectively, and paused.

  “Might I venture to ask—no offense, my dear sir!—why you wish to rake up such an old matter as Old Morris’ death?”

  I was a bit nonplused, I confess. Mr. Despard had been perfectly courteous, as he always is, but, somehow, I had not expected such an intervention on his part.

  “Why,” said I, “I should find it hard to tell you, precisely, Mr. Despard. It is not that I am averse to being frank in the face of such an inquiry as yours, sir. I was not aware that there was anything important—serious, as your tone implies—about that matter. Put it down to mere curiosity if you will, and answer or not, as you wish, sir.”

  I was, perhaps, a little nettled at this unexpected, and, as it then seemed to me, finicky obstruction being placed in my way. What could there be in such a case for this formal reticence—these verbal safe-guards? If it were a “jumbee” story, there was no importance to it. If otherwise, well, I might be regarded by Despard as a person of reasonable discretion. Perhaps Despard was some relative of Old Morris, and there was something a bit off-color about his death. That, too, might account for Mr. Bonesteel’s reticence.

  “By the way,” I enquired, noting Despard’s reticence, “might I ask another question, Mr. Despard?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Stewart.”

  “I do not wish to impress you as idly or unduly curious, but—are you and Mr. Bonesteel related in any way?”

  “No, sir. We are not related in any way at all, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Despard,” said I, and, bowing to each other after the fashion set here by the Danes, we parted.

  I had not learned a thing about Old Morris’ death. I went in to see Mrs. Heidenklang. Here, if anywhere, I should find out what was intriguing me.

  Mrs. Heidenklang is an ancient Creole lady, relict of a prosperous storekeeper, who lives, surrounded by a certain state of her own, propped up in bed in an environment of a stupendous quantity of lacy things and gauzy ruffles. I did not intend to mention Old Morris to her, but only to get some information about the Zombi, if that should be possible.

  I found the old lady, surrounded by her ruffles and lace things, in one of her good days. Her health has been precarious for twenty years!

  It was not difficult to get her talking about the Zombi.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Heidenklang, “it is extraordinary how the old beliefs and the old words cling in their minds! Why, Mr. Stewart, I was hearing about a trial in the police court a few days ago. One old Black woman had summoned another for abusive language. On the witness stand the complaining old woman said: ‘She cahl me a wuthless ole Cartagene, sir!’ Now, think of that! Carthage was destroyed ‘way back in the days of Cato the Elder, you know, Mr. Stewart! The greatest town of all Africa. To be a Carthaginian meant to be a sea-robber—a pirate: that is, a thief. One old woman on this island, more than two thousand years afterward, wishes to call another a thief, and the word ‘Cartagene’ is the word she naturally uses! I suppose that has persisted on the West Coast and throughout all those village dialects in Africa without a break, all these centuries! The Zombi of the French islands? Yes, Mr. Stewart. There are some extraordinary beliefs. Why, perhaps you’ve heard mention made of Old Morris, Mr. Stewart. He used to live in your house, you know?”

  I held my breath. Here was a possible trove. I nodded my head. I did not dare to speak!

  “Well, Old Morris, you see, lived most of his earlier days in Martinique, and, it is said, he had a somewhat adventurous life there, Mr. Stewart. Just what he did or how he got himself involved, seems never to have been made clear, but—in some way, Mr. Stewart, the Black People believe Morris got himself involved with a very powerful ‘Jumbee,’ and that is where what I said about the persistence of ancient beliefs comes in. Look on that table there, among those photographs, Mr. Stewart. There! that’s the place. I wish I were able to get up and assist you. These maids! Everything askew, I have no doubt! Do you observe a kind of fish-headed thing, about as big as the palm of your hand? Yes! that is it!”

  I found the “fish-headed thing” and carried it over to Mrs. Heidenklang, She took it in her hand and looked at it. It lacked a nose, but otherwise it was intact, a strange, uncouth-looking little godling, made of anciently-polished volcanic stone, with huge, protruding eyes, small, humanlike ears, and what must have been a nose like a Tortola jack-fish, or a black witch-bird, with its parrot beak.

  “Now that,” continued Mrs. Heidenklang, “is one of the very ancient household gods of the aborigines of Martinique, and you will observe the likeness in the idea to the Lares and Penates of your school-Latin days. Whether this is a lar or a penate, I can not tell,” and the old lady paused to smile at her little joke, “but at any rate he is a representation of something very powerful—a fish-god of the Caribs. There’s something Egyptian about the idea, too, I’ve always suspected; and, Mr. Stewart, a Carib or an Arawak Indian—there were both in these islands, you know—looked much like an ancient Egyptian; perhaps half like your Zuñi or Aztec Indians, and half Egyptian, would be a fair statement of his appearance. These fish-gods had men’s bodies, you see, precisely like the hawk-headed and jackal-headed deities of ancient Egypt.

  “It was one of those, the Black People say, with which Mr. Morris got himself mixed up—‘Gahd knows’ as they say-how! And, Mr. Stewart, they say, his death was terrible! The particulars I’ve never heard, but my father knew, and he was sick for several days, after seeing Mr. Morris’ body. Extraordlnary, Isn’t it? And when are you coming this way again, Mr. Stewart? Do drop in and call on an old lady.”

  I felt that I was progressing.

  The next time I saw Mr. Bonesteel, which was that very evening, I stopped him on the street and asked for a word with him.

  “What was the date, or the approximate date, Mr. Bonesteel, of Mr. Morris’ death? Could you recall that, sir?”

  Mr. Bonesteel paused and considered.

  “It was just before Christmas,” said he. “I remember it not so much by Christmas as by the races, which always take place the day after Christmas. Morris had entered his sorrel mare Santurce, and, as he left no heirs, there was no one who ‘owned’ Santurce, and she had to be withdrawn from the races. It affected the betting very materially and a good many persons were annoyed about it, but there wasn’t anything that could be done.”

  I thanked Mr. Bonesteel, and not without reason, for his answer had fitted into something that had been growing in my mind. Christmas was only eight days off. This drama of the furniture and Old Morris getting into bed, I thought (and not unnaturally, it seems to me), might be a kind of re-enactment of the tragedy of his death. If I had the courage to watch, night after night, I might be relieved of the necessity of asking any questions. I might witness whatever had occurred, in some weird reproduction, engineered, God knows how!

  For three nights now, I had seen the phenomenon of Morris getting into bed repeated, and each time it was clearer. I had sketched him into my drawing, a short, squat figure, rather stooped and fat, but possessed of a strange, gorillalike energy. His movements, as he walked toward the bed, seized the edge of the mosquito-netting and climbed in, were, somehow, full of power, which was the more apparent since these were ordinary motions. One could not help imagining that Old Morris would have been a tough customer to tackle, for all his alleged age!

  This evening, at the hour when this phenomenon was accustomed to
enact itself, that is, about eleven o’clock, I watched again. The scene was very much clearer, and I observed something I had not noticed before. Old Morris’ simulacrum paused just before seizing the edge of the netting, raised its eyes, and began, with its right hand, a motion precisely like one who is about to sign himself with the cross. The motion was abruptly arrested, however, only the first of the four touches on the body being made.

  I saw, too, something of the expression of the face that night, for the first time. At the moment of making the arrested sign, it was one of despairing horror. Immediately afterward, as this motion appeared to be abandoned for the abrupt clutching of the lower edge of the mosquito-net, it changed into a look of ferocious stubbornness, of almost savage self-confidence. I lost the facial expression as the appearance sank down upon the bed and pulled the ghostly bedclothes over itself.

  Three nights later, when all this had become as greatly intensified as had the clearing-up process that had affected the furniture, I observed another motion, or what might be taken for the faint foreshadowing of another motion. This was not on the part of Old Morris. It made itself apparent as lightly and elusively as the swift flight of a moth across the reflection of a lamp, over near the bedroom door (the doors in my house are more than ten feet high, in fourteen-foot-high walls), a mere flicker of something—something entering the room. I looked, and peered at that corner, straining my eyes, but nothing could I see save what I might describe as an intensification of the black shadow in that corner near the door, vaguely formed like a slim human figure, though grossly out of all human proportion. The vague shadow looked purple against the black. It was about ten feet high, and otherwise as though cast by an incredibly tall, thin human being.

  I made nothing of it then; and again, despite all this cumulative experience with the strange shadows of my bedroom, attributed this last phenomenon to my eyes. It was too vague to be at that time accounted otherwise than as a mere subjective effect.

  But the night following, I watched for it at the proper moment in the sequence of Old Morris’ movements as he got into bed, and this time it was distinctly clearer. The shadow, it was, of some monstrous shape, ten feet tall, long, angular, of vaguely human appearance, though even in its merely shadowed form, somehow cruelly, strangely inhuman! I can not describe the cold horror of its realization. The head-part was, relatively to the proportions of the body, short and broad, like a pumpkin head of a “man” made of sticks by boys, to frighten passers-by on Hallowe’en.

  The next evening I was out again to an entertainment at the residence of one of my hospitable friends, and arrived home after midnight. There stood the ghostly furniture, there on the bed was the form of the apparently sleeping Old Morris, and there in the corner stood the shadow, little changed from last night’s appearance.

  The next night would be pretty close to the date of Old Morris’ death. It would be that night, or the next at latest according to Mr. Bonesteel’s statement. The next day I could not avoid the sensation of something impending!

  I entered my room and turned off the light a little before eleven, seated myself, and waited.

  The furniture tonight was, to my vision, absolutely indistinguishable from reality. This statement may sound somewhat strange, for it will be remembered that I was sitting in the dark. Approximating terms again, I may say, however, that the furniture was visible in a light of its own, a kind of “phosphorescence,” which apparently emanated from it. Certainly there was no natural source of light. Perhaps I may express the matter thus: that light and darkness were reversed in the case of this ghostly bed, bureau, wardrobe, and chairs. When actual light was turned on, they disappeared. In darkness, which, of course, is the absence of physical light, they emerged. That is the nearest I can get to it. At any rate, tonight the furniture was entirely, perfectly, visible to me.

  Old Morris came in at the usual time. I could see him with a clarity exactly comparable to what I have said about the furniture. He made his slight pause, his arrested motion of the right hand, and then, as usual, cast from him, according to his expression, the desire for that protective gesture, and reached a hard-looking, gnarled fist out to take hold of the mosquito-netting.

  As he did so, a fearful thing leaped upon him, a thing out of the corner by the high doorway—the dreadful, purplish shadow-thing. I had not been looking in that direction, and while I had not forgotten this newest of the strange items in this fantasmagoria which had been repeating itself before my eyes for many nights, I was wholly unprepared for its sudden appearance and malignant activity.

  I have said the shadow was purplish against black. Now that it had taken form, as the furniture and Old Morris himself had taken form, I observed that this purplish coloration was actual. It was a glistening, humanlike, almost metallic-appearing thing, certainly ten feet high, completely covered with great, iridescent fish-scales, each perhaps four square inches in area, which shimmered as it leaped across the room. I saw it for only a matter of a second or two. I saw It clutch surely and with a deadly malignity, the hunched body of Old Morris, from behind, just, you will remember, as the old man was about to climb into his bed. The dreadful thing turned him about as a wasp turns a fly, in great, flail-like, glistening arms, and never, to the day of my death, do I ever expect to be free of the look on Old Morris’ face—a look of a lost soul who knows that there is no hope for him in this world or the next—as the great, squat, rounded head, a head precisely like that of Mrs. Heidenklang’s little fish-jumbee, descended, revealing to my horrified sight one glimpse of a huge, scythe like parrot-beak which it used, with a nodding motion of the ugly head, to plunge into its writhing victim’s breast, with a tearing motion like the barracuda when it attacks and tears.

  I fainted then, for that was the last of the fearful picture which I can remember.

  I awakened a little after one o’clock, in a dark and empty room peopled by no ghosts, and with my own, more commonplace, mahogany furniture thinly outlined in the faint light of the new moon which was shining cleanly in a starry sky. The fresh night-wind stirred the netting of my bed. I rose, shakily, and went and leaned out of the window, and lit and puffed rapidly at a cigarette, which perhaps did something to settle my jangling nerves.

  The next morning, with a feeling of loathing which has gradually worn itself out in the course of the months which have now elapsed since my dreadful experience, I took my drawing again, and added as well as I could the fearful scene I had witnessed. The completed picture was a horror, crude as is my work in this direction. I wanted to destroy it, but I did not, and I laid it away under some unused clothing in one of the large drawers of my bedroom wardrobe.

  Three days later, just after Christmas, I observed Despard’s car driving through the streets, the driver being alone. I stopped the boy and asked him where Mr. Despard was at the moment. The driver told me Mr. Despard was having breakfast—the West Indian midday meal—with Mr. Bonesteel at that gentleman’s house on the Prince’s Cross Street. I thanked him and went home. I took out the drawing, folded it, and placed it in the inside breast pocket of my coat, and started for Bonesteel’s house.

  I arrived fifteen minutes or so before the breakfast hour, and was pleasantly received by my old friend and his guest. Mr. Bonesteel pressed me to join them at breakfast, but I declined.

  Mr. Bonesteel brought in a swizzel, compounded of his very old rum, and after partaking of this in ceremonious fashion, I engaged the attention of both gentlemen.

  “Gentlemen,” said I, “I trust that you will not regard me as too much of a bore, but I have, I believe, a legitimate reason for asking you if you will tell me the manner in which the gentleman known as Old Morris, who once occupied my house, met his death.”

  I stopped there, and immediately discovered that I had thrown my kind old host into a state of embarrassed confusion. Glancing at Mr. Despard, I saw at once that if I had not actually offended him, I had, by my question, at least put him “on his dignity.” He was looking at me severely,
rather, and I confess that for a moment I felt a bit like a schoolboy. Mr. Bonesteel caught something of this atmosphere, and looked helplessly at Despard. Both men shifted uneasily in their chairs; each waited for the other to speak. Despard, at last, cleared his throat.

  “You will excuse me, Mr. Stewart,” said he, slowly, “but you have asked a question which for certain reasons, no one, aware of the circumstances, would desire to answer. The reasons are, briefly, that Mr. Morris, in certain respects, was—what shall I say, not to do the matter an injustice?—well, perhaps I might say he was abnormal. I do not mean that he was crazy. He was, though, eccentric. His end was such that stating it would open up a considerable argument, one which agitated this island for a long time after he was found dead. By a kind of general consent, that matter is taboo on the island. That will explain to you why no one wishes to answer your question. I am free to say that Mr. Bonesteel here, in considerable distress, told me that you had asked it of him. You also asked me about it not long ago. I can add only that the manner of Mr. Morris’ end was such that—” Mr. Despard hesitated, and looked down, a frown on his brow, at his shoe, which he tapped nervously on the tiled floor of the gallery where we were seated.

  “Old Morris, Mr. Stewart,” he resumed, after a moment’s reflection, in which, I imagined, he was carefully choosing his words, “was, to put it plainly, murdered! There was much discussion over the identity of the murderer, but the most of it, the unpleasant part of the discussion, was rather whether he was killed by human agency or not! Perhaps you will see now, sir, the difficulty of the matter. To say that he was murdered by an ordinary murderer is, to my mind, an impossibility. To assert that some other agency, something abhuman, killed him, opens up the question of one’s belief, one’s credulity. ‘Magic’ and occult agencies are, as you are aware, strongly intrenched in the minds of the ignorant people of these islands. None of us cares to admit a similar belief. Does that satisfy you, Mr. Stewart, and will you let the matter rest there, sir?”