“In those years, the streams, ponds, rivers and underground watercourses of the Earth were populated by a race of elemental beings called undines…popularly represented as being entirely female, but there were males among them too, naturally.”
“You say these things are fact,” Beverly put in. “How do you know?”
Ben smiled slightly. “My dear, I am a student of the…occult…a vastly misunderstood word by the way. It simply means hidden. All my life, I have studied the hidden things…the things that are true but not evident, simply because people refuse to believe in them. The undines may be included in this classification, and they still exist in spite of man’s stupid ignorance of them.”
His mouth set in a thin, hard line. He mused on his next words.
“We have been watching your house every night, Zuelda and I, since the night Tom Ellers was drowned by the undines.”
Beverly straightened with a gasp.
“It wasn’t…his heart?”
“I assume John did not tell you. But you must know now. It is important. The undines drowned Ellers because it is their simplest and most effective means of attack against human beings. The fact that Ellers was drowned in a perfectly dry area gave me my first clue that it was the work of undines.
“You see,” Ben went on, “the undines have for many centuries been forced to live away from the habitat of man. Man’s attitude toward them…his vain pretense of enlightenment…made further contact between the two races impossible. In places far from men, some undines still people the surface waters of Earth, but there are many of them, and not enough isolated waters. So many, indeed, have taken to the streams and pockets of water under the earth. Occasionally, some of them come to the surface, take on human form and mingle a while with men, but they cannot stay too long away from their natural medium…a few months at most. In order to stay longer requires the peculiar spiritual nature possessed by man alone.”
“I don’t understand,” Beverly interrupted, quietly.
“You have heard a great deal of talk,” Ben shrugged, “about something called the human soul. It is not exactly what you and the greater part of mankind think it is…there are not even words in the language to describe its exact nature. Anyway, no undine possesses this something called a soul.”
A light of dawning comprehension gleamed in Beverly’s blue eyes.
“I know! They can get a soul by marrying a human being!”
Ben smiled again, slowly. “That is how the fables phrase it. It is true in a sense, but only in the manner of speaking. We are speaking of perfectly natural powers now, and not of mythical beings and mythical souls. The human soul, as we must call it, is as real as the electricity that lights that lamp. It is a force or power that can be used, transferred, and otherwise treated like any other source of energy.
“The undines have a ritual of marriage with human beings, by which the mind-force of the group acts upon the individual human being to absorb him or her into the race of undines. In doing so, the human being is forced to give up that focus of living energy he calls his soul, which may then be trapped into the service of a waiting undine. Have I made myself clear?”
Beverly stared. Her mouth worked. “This…this marriage ceremony is some kind of witchcraft that will change a man into an undine…and the undine he ‘marries’ into a human being with a soul?”
“Precisely! Tonight, the undines celebrate the marriage of their queen with your husband.”
Beverly’s eyes blazed. Her lips tightened, white-edged.
“She can’t do that! John is married to me!”
“The marriage of the undines is only a travesty on human marriage. The two have nothing in common. Unless we act to prevent it, the queen of the undines tonight will gain a soul…and Jack will become an immortal, soulless undine.”
He held up a warning hand as Beverly attempted to speak.
“We’ve been watching, as I said before, and twice already—last night and the night before—Jack has kept a secret rendezvous with the undines in the thicket, where they have made an entrance to their watery world under the surface. Tonight is the last night…your husband is with them now. We need your help, Zuelda and I…we need your human soul as a catalyst in what we have to do. Will you come with us into the thicket…now?”
There was a long silence. Beverly said, hollowly, “I…I can’t believe a word you’ve said! I…”
“Don’t try. Just come with us and do as I tell you.”
“Now…?”
“Now!… You want to save Jack’s life, don’t you?”
The bluntness of his statement shattered her reserve, penetrated where his other arguments had not. She acquiesced with vehemence. A minute later, the three picked their way cautiously through the moonlight and shadow of the dreaming thicket.
At first, Beverly could see nothing but a moonlit glade among the scrub, grass blades turned to the moon, glowing as if powdered with diamond dust. Beyond the glade, the shadows were deep and dark, and there was an uncanny stillness on the warm night air.
Ben halted her with a light touch, whispered to her to sit. Beverly obeyed, puzzled, frightened, as she peered out on the empty glade. Then Ben Harrian leaned over her and murmured something softly, a few syllables she did not quite catch. Before Beverly could ask him to repeat, she drew her breath in sharply at sight of the dancing figures, afire with moonglow, with which the glade seemed to be filled.
“These are the undines,” Ben hissed. “Watch them well! Remain here…don’t move or make a sound, no matter what you may see or hear. Remember…your husband’s life is at stake out there…”
Then she heard the brush rustle softly as Ben departed in one direction and Zuelda in another, circling the glade as if to surround it with the three of them.
Moment by moment her eyes accustomed themselves to the treacherous light. Now she made out more plainly the dancing troupe, saw their nakedness, the lasciviousness of their gestures and dance. She could not guess how many there were…perhaps a couple of dozen…perhaps as many as fifty or more. That they were lovely she could see at a glance…lovely, graceful, and possessed of an appeal that made even her pulses quicken.
With joyous abandon, the undines danced in the moonlight, and, as if from far away, the sound of their singing penetrated to the ear of her mind, wailing and wonderful, utterly sweet beyond measure, throbbing with undertones of passion and grief.
It seemed to Beverly that the words of the song were half understood by her, and the undines were wailing their farewell to the queen they loved, promising a welcome to the one who was to take her place among them.
The dancing group swirled apart foe a moment, and Beverly saw her husband, seated on the floor of the glade. His face, was toward her, but lifted, so that the moon caught his expression in full brilliance, and she saw his lips parted in a grimace of ecstasy, his hands clutching the turf with agonized fervor.
Beverly’s breath came in short gasps. She felt sticky and wet with a perspiration of anxiety. She leaned forward, peering through the shadows of the scrub, into that moonlit glade in the heart of the thicket.
Around and around the undines danced, their song growing louder, trilling more sweetly as it filled with the ecstasy of the marriage bed. The bride was coming, the song related, to meet her groom.
The bride—it must be she, Beverly thought with a jealous pang—drifted from the press of dancers alone into the center of the circle they made. Which it was, Beverly could not tell, for the creature had her back turned, her dark hair a floating cloud about her naked shoulders. Her body swayed voluptuously to the tempo of the dance; her arms and legs writhed to the pulse of melody. The queen of the undines approached Drake, who awaited her in eager expectation.
Beverly’s breath caught in her throat. It was all she could do to keep from crying out and r
ushing into the glade. She restrained herself with an effort, trembling, panting, her eyes straining to realize the tableau… Any woman would know what the dancer’s gestures meant…and Beverly shuddered with revulsion as she saw her husband responding. Slowly the undine bride with averted face circled her waiting groom; then she seemed to melt downward as she flung herself writhing at Drake’s feet. Her body twisted—white, arms reached out to embrace him as he hurled himself upon her.
Harsh upon the sudden stillness that followed cessation of the undine song; a man’s voice boomed across the clearing. Beverly started with wonder and relief. It was Ben’s voice, and he was chanting something not understandable, a semi-song of rolling syllables that had the sound of some ancient tongue long dead upon the face of the Earth.
What she expected, Beverly did not know, but she was not prepared for the sudden vanishment that occurred. One moment, the undines circled in a refulgent splendor of silvery flesh, in their midst an obscene spectacle of lewdness against which Beverly shut her eyes in horror and disgust. When she looked again, impelled by the silence, the glade was empty, a slice of moonlight carved out of the shadow.
Beverly fainted then, and was only dimly conscious of Ben’s arms supporting her as he carried her back through the thicket to the house. She was also vaguely aware of softly thudding foot; steps that followed, Zuelda’s footsteps, light and indistinct on the deadening humus.
“Put her in the bedroom,” Zuelda directed crisply, turning on the lights as they went through the house.
Ben deposited his burden on the bed and turned to leave the room.
“Undress her. She will be all right. She is sleeping naturally.”
He went out and waited in the living room, turning off the overhead light, leaving the room dimly lit by a small television lamp on the console. Zuelda joined him softly.
He whirled, seized her arms in a fierce paroxysm of passion.
His eyes gleamed fervidly in the half-light. Zuelda did not draw away. She collapsed against him, turned her face up to his with a smile of luxurious triumph. Her eyes were half-veiled, somnolent, flickering with nameless fires.
“How does it feel?” he cried hoarsely, devouring her with his eyes. “How does it feel?”
She laughed throatily, did a dancing pirouette out of his grasp, and threw herself breathless on the davenport.
“Not like going through the sump pump last night. That tickled!”
“You tried to rush things last night,” he accused her. “You put us off a whole day.”
“What is a day…in eternity?”
He regarded her somberly, half across the space of the living room.
“You can feel it?”
“Of course I can! You will know what it feels like…by and by…”
He lunged at her, seized her shoulders, shook her.
“Tell me!”
She arched her back, like a cat stretching. Her mouth was red and wide with soundless laughter, eyes closed to gleaming slits.
“Wonderful, darling! Oh…wonderful…to have a soul!”
He retreated, an enigmatic smile twisting his handsome, unhuman face. He cocked his head listening.
“It is worth the trouble then…and now, the undines sing…”
The undines were outside the house and in it, below it and on all sides, dancing their endless dance, trilling the bridal song of the blue-lit caverns of limestone far down in the earth.
Ben squared his shoulders, murmured to his wife.
“Now that you have a soul, you will be the catalyst for me…”
His eyes held hers and she laughed without sound again, red lips parted, pointed white teeth gleaming in the lamplight. “Hurry…” she whispered, “…and come back to me!”
The somberly handsome undine turned, stepped toward the bedroom…
* * * *
John Drake opened his eyes in the cavern of blue spangles and encrusted limestone walls. Full memory was his now. The charm that had held him powerless had acted upon that other side of him…that part of him which was his no longer. He was an undine…as soulless as these others who swam around him, peering curiously, pathetically half-afraid, wishing to make him welcome, yet not daring the possibility of his wrath.
It was peculiar, Drake thought, that he did not feel angry. He fully understood how he had been duped, and by whom, but his mind viewed the situation with a logical philosophy. He was without emotion…and it occurred to him that perhaps that had been taken from him, along with that other…his soul. The word echoed flatly in the corridors of his thinking.
The tragic enormity of his transgression in the ethereal glade he reviewed with a calm deliberation. He remembered well the dancing undines, the poignant sweetness of their song, remembered again the ecstasy of that joyous embrace of the queen of the water-world…then he felt again in memory the sharp pangs of dissolution, felt himself flowing away into the dark earth, a watery substance that fled through minute interstices of the clay, into the phosphorescent blue sanctuary of the limestone underworld.
Remorse and disgust bit him, these being not emotions but states of mind. He knew that the life force…the soul…erstwhile his, now caressed the body and spirit of Zuelda Harrian, while her husband…he knew that, too.
The undines flashed away from him as he moved suddenly…and then he heard them singing again, their unheard voices lifted in the pagan lilt of their betrothal song.
He knew he must go…or spend eternity in this blue-lit water-world with Beverly…and the undines.
The throng was streaming away from him now, arrowing upward in full song, and Drake hurtled in the midst of them, came out with them in the moonlit glade, and flowed down the thicketed slope toward the lighted house.
Drake cast his other-sense ahead of him, palping the night for the last act of this unhuman drama.
While the undines danced, he glided and ran. He was half a man-shape when he reached the house, a water blob of a man that shone in the unwavering moonlight. He found the door and hurled it open, flung himself into the living room.
Zuelda sat with eyes closed upon the davenport, attuned to the rapture of the undine song. Drake’s uncouth entry startled her into outcry. She flung herself erect.
“Jack!”
Drake halted. “So you were my bride tonight.” He chuckled obscenely. “I rather think you left me at the altar, my dear!”
“No!” she gasped. “No!”
She voiced not a denial of his statement, but a frantic rejection of the intent she read in his mind.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“But I would dare,” Drake mimicked her tone softly. “You forgot a few things, my pretty bride. You forgot that when you took the vital essence of my life, you took also the means by which you could control me!”
Her eyes were big and dark, pits of smouldering despair. She backed in a half-circle around him. The blood had drained from her face, taking with it her sparkling vivacity, the color of her beauty, leaving her cheeks sallow, sagging, quivering with alarm.
“I’m going to do to you,” he said deliberately, “what you did to Tom Ellers out there in the thicket. Because he had a soul and was human…he could die. You killed him then, because he came upon you taking form in the glade, and he knew you for what you are…” He chuckled with a tinge of bitterness. “Poor old devil…you were using him just for show to work me into the proper psychological mood, but you forgot to control him. Maybe if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have had enough on my mind to come back here from your blue cavern…” He paused.
“Jack!” Zuelda whispered desperately. “Ben is in the bedroom with…”
He laughed savagely.
“Another thing you forget, Zuelda…that I am an undine now. I can see where poor humans can not. He is standing on
the other side of the door, in quite as much of a funk as you are. But you have the soul, see? My soul…and I want it back. You can die now, remember, like Tom Ellers died…”
“If you kill me,” she whispered in ghastly panic, “you will lose your soul forever!”
“You won’t die, my dear. I won’t let you…not for a long time. Drowning is not a pleasant death…but you wouldn’t know anything about dying. You will learn, though…or go back to your hole in the ground!”
She moved swiftly to dart past him, into the kitchen. Drake elongated his body into a shining ribbon of water. A watery pseudopod burst from his side and plunged against her face, choking the scream that welled into her throat. His other hand, semi-solid, held her fast.
“I wish the sheriff could see this,” he murmured into her threshing hair. “He’d see how a man can drown without getting his clothes wet!”
Zuelda struggled piteously, floundering in his aqueous grip.
The bedroom door burst open. Ben Harrian was wild-eyed, ferocious of countenance.
“Will she let me kill her, Ben?” Drake taunted.
Alarm flooded Ben’s unhumanly handsome features.
“Don’t do it, Jack!”
“She can give it up…if she wants to. She is drowning now, Ben.”
Ben didn’t move. He called out, “Zuelda!”
The sound of water gargling in Zuelda’s lungs was a horrid answer to his call.
“Zuelda! Don’t let him do it, darling! Give it up…hear? Let him have the damned thing back…it’s probably bound for Hell, anyway!”
He glared fiercely at Drake’s shining form. “Give it back to him, and we’ll go back to our world and our people together.”
Zuelda relaxed in Drake’s grip. Her body began to lose form and substance. He knew that she had assented to her husband’s plea with the last gasp of life in her tissues. Drake held his grip. He must not let go too soon.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 19
