Three yards from the pitifully naked body, eyes glowed in the deep grass. A lean, gray wolf wriggled forward on its belly. The beast’s jaws quivered. From between them, the pink tongue reached slowly forth and licked tenderly at the still warm cheek of the dead girl. The faint breeze stirred in her golden curls, and the gray wolf turned away. He drew his legs under him and sprang swiftly up the slope.
“There goes one! Git ’im!”
Rifles spat a ragged volley. Silver slugs whined and crackled around the fleeing wolf. The prodigal waste of precious metal was a sign of the ranchers’ determination.
The were-beast reached the shadows in safety and skulked there, looking down upon the valley. The human eyes showed grief and sorrow, but no hate or fear. The creek and its cottonwoods was a black snake wriggling the length of the valley. Men hid in the cottonwoods—men with silver death in their guns.
In the west the moon hung low. The starshine had begun to pale in the east. So little time was left.
He turned and trotted up the slope, among the whispering pines.
The clan had gathered on the ridge. Above lay only gloomy rocks and barrenness. The ranchers waited below. The gray wolf moved silently among the pack. They were afraid, and he knew it.
Picking his way carefully, the gray wolf moved to a spot above them, atop a gaunt, ill-shaped boulder leaning out of the mountainside. In black silhouette against the milky dawn, he lifted his muzzle to the jewel-spattered velvet of the sky. He howled as a wolf howls, savagely, mournfully, with desperate loneliness and grief. One by one, the pack took up the cry and gave voice to their own requiem.
The men in the valley shuddered at the hideous sound that floated down from the ridge upon the chill breath of dawn. Some crossed themselves. Others cursed under their breath.
The wolf looked with glowing eyes upon the remainder of his people. He would lead them. He would lead them into the deliverance he had promised himself they should have. The words of Sam Carver had shown him the way.
The moon slipped behind the shoulder of the mountain that was like a great, sleeping wolf set to guard the valley. The shadow of it cut ominous and menacing across timbered slopes and grassy prairies: The chill of dawn fingered into the cottonwoods.
Like shadows came the wolves, streaming down the slope. The sky in the east grew whiter and whiter still. In the heart of the gray wolf was calmness and peace. His people followed him into the face of death by silver. And it freed them of Satan’s bondage.
CURSED AWAKENING
Originally published in Weird Tales, September 1943.
Tropic night mantled Sanan and crowned it with the glory of moonlight. The jungle-matted slopes of the island beeped and chittered with the invisible, rustling life of tree-top and undergrowth.
In the back of Lieutenant Blaine Evest’s mind, the sound was a piquant obligato overlying the diapason of the South Pacific pawing at the shingled beach, muffled by the burlap hangings in the dugout door.
The air was stale within the sand-bagged walls, the light a faint emanation from a smoky kerosene lantern turned low. Oil was precious on Sanan, precious indeed to the handful of Marines who struggled daily to hold the island from the Jap invader.
Evest was writing a letter. He had gotten as far as “Dear Gloria.” He crumpled the sheet, took a fresh one, and wrote, “Gloria dearest.” He frowned at what he had written, the expression etching lines of suffering on his lean, young face. Gray eyes peered pensive and brooding, slightly bloodshot, and the corners of his strong mouth drooped a little with weariness. He sighed and laid down his pen. It was impossible to concentrate on something no longer read to him. He knew no reality now except the sweltering hell of sweat and mosquitoes, the nightly plague of Jap bombs.
Six weeks on Sanan had aged him. It had been a terrible six weeks, directing the construction of an advanced airbase that some day was to serve as a jumping-off place for Jap-harrying bombers. It had taken a mighty assault in the first place to establish the beachhead, followed by two weeks of wriggling through jungle, of subsisting on K ration, of firing at flitting brown devils and being fired upon in return.
A bitter grin twisted Evest’s mouth. The Japs had resisted well, but they were wiped out. And now they were still making it tough. Nightly they came over from some hidden base to the north. The Tojo Express, the Marines called it in grim jest. Six Zeros paid them a visit every night at twelve. On the dot. Precise as a timetable. The Marines had two fighters to throw into the air against them, some three-inch and twenty millimeter ack-ack, .50 and .30 caliber machine-guns—those besides the seacoast artillery batteries and a variety of special weapons. Evest, only thirty, was very young to command such a group, but one night a colonel, a major, two captains and another lieutenant had been grouped when the Zeros came over. Lieutenant Evest took over the responsibilities the moment the bomb hit.
They couldn’t hold out much longer. Evest knew that, and he wondered if this was to be Bataan all over again. He creaked the lantern open and blew out its feeble flame. He thrust out through the burlap-hung doorway and hurried toward the canvas-covered lean-to that served as a mess-hall.
Grant and Bronson, the Marine flying officers, were sipping coffee, hot and rancidly black. Evest spoke to them briefly, casually. Formality had died among the men on Sanan, for the men themselves expected to die shortly. Grant and Bronson put down their cups and plodded into the vine-hung mouth of a jungle path. From the partly completed airfield behind the fringe of jungle came the coughing roar of engines being warmed. Evest wriggled the tightness from his shoulders and turned to for inspection of the waiting anti-aircraft batteries.
* * * *
The drenching moonlight served both friend and enemy that night. It picked out installations with harsh outlines of shadow at the same time that it etched the enemy planes in bold relief against the sky.
Three and three they came. The scream of their six motors split the sky, and the jungle hushed. Bombs began to crump like rotten coconuts, machine-guns chattered, the anti-aircraft guns vomited flames and steel. Twenty endless minutes of scarlet, rocking Hell…then it was gone with two remaining Zeros that limped away to northward.
Four would never rise again from the troubled waters of the strait—nor rise again would laughing-eyed Bronson, whose fighter had described an arcing trail of smoke and flame into the jungle. Grant brought his crippled ship in with one wing dragging, caught a wobbling wheel in a newly-made bomb crater and nosed gently over. Grant went to the sick bay that served as a hospital. He had a broken leg.
Evest checked the damage with a bleak expression. Somebody had to go out into the jungle and search for Bronson. He arranged that detail and went back to the dugout.
How much longer? How many more hell-racked nights? He leaned against the wall of wet sandbags and stared seaward, cursing softly. Out there on the moon-tracked sea he expected to see a flotilla of friendly ships bringing men and supplies. But they did not come. Frustration and disappointment gripped him. He hated his job, he hated Sanan, he hated everybody and everything that might be deemed responsible for his being where he was. He flung himself into his bunk in tight-lipped fury.
* * * *
Evest came awake with a feeling of unearthly weirdness. The creak of the rusted lantern-chimney had awakened him. Cragged and bearded, the face of Gunnery Sergeant Malpek was solemn in the faint light.
“What’s the word, Malpek?” Evest was still half asleep.
Malpek shrugged. “You’ll have to see for yourself, Lieutenant.”
The burly gunner motioned toward the burlap hanging. The folds of it swept aside, and Evest’s breath caught harshly in his throat. He stood up quickly.
“My God!” he said. Then, “Where did you get her?”
Two guards who had come in with the girl withdrew at a gesture from Malpek. She stood slim, lovel
y and naked, unashamed, in bronze relief against the coarse background. Her great, luminous brown eyes looked at Evest without a trace of fear, unblinking.
“She swam in,” Malpek grunted.
“From a canoe—” Evest broke off the thought. “She can’t stand there like that! It—it’s indecent.”
He burrowed hastily into his seabag, brought out coffee-stained shorts and a khaki shirt. He threw them to the girl.
“Put them on,” he commanded gruffly.
“Shall I—” Malpek began.
“You shall not!” Evest hurled at him. “Stay here with me.”
The girl looked curiously at the garments lying at her feet, but made no move to pick them up.
“She doesn’t understand,” Malpek said.
Evest tried to keep his eyes off her. He made signs until a slow smile of understanding parted her red lips in a breathless expression. She draped the shirt around soft, brown shoulders, crossed over and sat down on Evest’s bunk.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she, Malpek?” Evest flushed. Malpek grinned faintly.
“You can imagine what the boys thought when they saw her coming up out of the surf. Lucky for her the moonlight is bright tonight. They’ve got itchy trigger fingers on the beach patrol.”
“You gave them the word, Malpek?” Malpek’s grin broadened. “I told ’em to look out for a couple more like her.”
Evest looked back at the girl, trying vainly to guess her race or nationality. She sat humming, combing slim fingers through long, black hair that still glistened with the wetness of the sea. Her skin was glowing bronze, soft and responsive to the underneath movement of supple muscles. She seemed like a child, sitting there draped in Evest’s worn shirt.
He dropped his gaze from the blossoming fullness of her red-lipped mouth to the pulsing hollow of her bare, brown throat.
“Look,” he said, “you speakee English?” She did not look up. He stuttered through a phrase of French, followed by a few words of Island dialect. She remained unresponsive.
“You sleep now,” he said, frustrated, and took Malpek’s arm. “We’ll keep her here tonight,” he said, “and see what can be done about her in the morning. Post a guard at the door. I’ll turn in at the mess-hall.”
* * * *
The dawn was like soundless cannonading in the eastern sky. The calling of seabirds and the answering raucous cries of jungle denizens greeted the day. The first gray light crept in under the canvas top covered with palm fronds. There were no walls.
Evest gave orders to a sleepy messman to take food to the girl in the dugout, and sat down to his own portion of strong, black coffee and soggy pancakes. The messman came back hurriedly.
“There’s nobody in the dugout, sir.” He put down the plate of hotcakes he had carried over and back.
“Damn! Where is the guard?” Evest got to his feet.
The guard came hurrying up, “He’s right, sir. I just reported to the gunny. He told me to report to you.”
“When did you take over the post?”
“Two o’clock, sir.”
“Was she—was anybody in the dugout then?”
“I don’t know, sir. The guard reported all secure. I took it for granted—”
“In the Marine Corps, you take nothing for granted!” Evest ground out savagely. He checked his temper. “Get me Gunnery Sergeant Malpek.”
The two men looked over the ground outside the dugout door. The sandy soil was tracked by the guard’s field shoes, but little else. Sharp examination revealed a few blurred prints of girlish feet, bare, but all pointing toward the dugout. None came away from it.
Malpek scratched his head and opined she had burrowed out through the deck and filled the hole in after her.
“Don’t,” said Evest, “be an ass.”
* * * *
In the first hush of nightfall, Lieutenant Evest walked along the line where jungle met the beach, face set in bitter, brooding lines. Thought of the strange girl had drifted into the crevices of his mind, and he contemplated the hopelessness of their position with a kind of savage despair. When would reinforcements come? It was hopeless to try to hold this shattered base, forgotten by all but the enemy. But there was nothing for it, except to stand and fight according to the established creed of the Corps. He wondered, was it worth it?
He strained his gaze seaward in search of shadowed ships and saw nothing but black water, gold tracked in the dim effulgence of the rising moon. In time his attitude relaxed. A strange light played in his eyes, and it was evident his gaze was focused nearer than the horizon, upon the tossing fringe of honey-colored surf. But no supple shadow rose out of the sea, only the shadow that taunted him in imagination.
He turned and strolled thoughtfully back toward camp.
The sound came from the jungle at his right. He whirled, arrowed his glance into the black, rancid shadows of the undergrowth. Vines rustled. Evest froze, groping for the automatic that swung at his hip. It was almost ridiculous to imagine that the enemy…but still—
“Who’s there?” he called hoarsely. He threw himself flat, pistol butt hard against the sweaty palm of his hand.
Soft laughter rippled on the night. The girl parted the vines and stepped into the moonlight, and Blaine Evest’s breath stopped in his throat with the beauty of her. She stood silently laughing, and the moon made gold of her naked body. The light softened her mature curves, splashed on the shimmering blackness of her hair and sparkled in the depths of her luminous eyes. Evest felt all the madness of loneliness burning inside of him. The laughing loveliness of her kindled a savage spark in his being. He lurched erect and stumbled forward.
As elusive as the moonlight on the dimpled sea, she avoided his embrace. He caught the delicate scent of her in his nostrils, eddying in the draft she left behind. His arms grasped nothingness. From the bush came the sound of her mocking laughter, then that, too, faded.
Evest paused, frustrated and resentful. Who was this girl who taunted him so? The puzzle of her presence and strange manner oppressed him and made him half angry with her. He returned to the camp possessed with an air of bitter brooding.
* * * *
The Tojo Express failed its schedule that night. Evest drummed slender fingers on the top of his packing-crate desk. Why? Was there some connection between the bronze girl’s presence on the island and the lacking raid? He discarded that hypothesis and regarded the truth with a calm, cold eye. The cessation of hostile activity augured only an attack in force—but when?
* * * *
All day the men toiled with shovel and sandbags, reinforcing the gun emplacements and defensive fortifications. Stripped to the waist, Evest toiled with them, muscles straining smoothly beneath suntanned skin.
Malpek patted the sand-bagged wall of their position.
“Strong,” he murmured. “Strong enough to hold off the devil himself!”
Lieutenant Evest straightened slowly. His mouth was grim.
“For how long?”
Malpek shrugged, grunted, and spat on his hands. The work continued in silence.
* * * *
Not the blazing sun nor the grueling labor could drive from Evest’s mind, as he had hoped it might, the mocking sound of the native girl’s laughter. He persisted in thinking of her as a native girl, yet he knew that she was not of the race of people that inhabited these islands. There was the regularity of a civilized people in her features. Her grace and manner were beyond comparison with the uncouth actions of the aborigines. The sheer, physical perfection of her stimulated his memory, and his blood ran hot with the thought of her.
A combination of hope and desire led Evest again along the shoreline, where the previous night’s wandering had brought a meeting with the bronze girl. Exhaustion tingled in nerves and muscles, yet his mi
nd was awake with a fervid eagerness. In spite of his weariness, there was a curious lightness to his step, an avid fire in the searching glance of his keen, gray eyes.
The rising moon had a slightly flattened edge, and the stars made a glorious symphony of patterned light across the blue-black sky. The moontrack upon the sea was a causeway of gold, taking off into the mysterious immensities of space beyond the tossing horizon. The eldritch illumination hinted at weird, spine-chilling things that might lurk in the shadows, the unknown things that stalk the world by night. A voiceless gibbering sounded in the restless jungle foliage. The night was alive with ancient menaces, with fears and mental turmoils that haunt the bravest brain.
On the spot they had met yester-eve, Evest halted and peered into the shadows. The murmuring night held no sound of her laughter, the creaking of fronds and vines was occasioned by the breeze only. He stole into the shadow of a palm, sat and rested his back against the fibrous bole. This time, he planned, he should surprise her with his presence.
* * * *
Evest awoke suddenly, guiltily conscious that he had been sleeping. The moon had climbed two hours higher, and the shadow that hid concealed him was gone. He lay blinking in the naked moonlight, scanning the beach where nothing moved. A cool hand touched his forehead, and he sat up quickly.
She sat tailor-fashion nearby where his head had been. White teeth sparkled with her smile, and her eyes were luminous and tender. He spent one ravishing glance on the exquisite curves of her body. Their eyes met, and he yielded to the tantalizing promise of her red-lipped mouth. That kiss was sweet with the ultramundane sweetness of ecstatic pain, throbbing pain where tiny teeth had pierced his lip. The salt taste of blood was upon his tongue, and a rivulet of red stained his chin.
“Blaine—Blaine, my lover…”
Magic syllables she whispered, limpid and foreign, yet understandable to him. Where before had he heard this strange tongue? What forgotten recollections did it stir deep in the race-memory of the subconscious? He paid no heed to the perplexing questions engendered. He existed in a sphere of untroubled comfort, where the tangled skein of the jungle retreated in their moment of bliss. Then he was walking hand in hand with her toward the foaming edge of the sea. Somewhere he had left his clothes and he walked as naked as she, nor did the knowledge of his nakedness embarrass him. He moved in a veil of confusion, not understanding what he did, nor remembering his actions. The surf swirled around their bodies and swallowed them.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 6
