The Horror Megapack

by H. P. Lovecraft

The sentry protested. The émir was not to be disturbed. The ceremony had started. Crane shrugged and offered him the silver peacock.

  “Hurry, idiot!” growled Crane. “Tell him I’m here!”

  The flash shifted toward the silver token. The drawn pistol was hol­stered and an empty hand reached for the sym­bol. And then Crane’s bludgeon cracked down. The guardian collapsed. Crane caught him and the flashlight.

  The fellow was wearing a gown, and a hood from which hung a mask to con­ceal his face. Crane donned the disguise. This was no time for qualms.

  The memory of that mangled girl nerved his arm. He raised the pistol, smashed down with the barrel. Then he picked his way down a narrow case­mate inclining sharply into the earth.

  Furtive flashes of his light guided Crane. He descended a stairway of ar­chaic masonry, crumbled treads whose rubbish litter had been swept against the walls. A splash of fresh blood guided him.

  Finally there was an indirect glow ahead. Drums were thumping, and voices muttered in eerie rhythm. Some satanic ritual was in progress.

  Reasonably, Crane should now notify the police; but that brained sentry left him with no retreat. More than ever, his story had to be good.

  He halted at the jamb of an arch opening into a vaulted chamber illumi­nated by flickering wax tapers. Its cir­cular walls were pierced with other arch­es that led to further and darker crypts.

  Upward of a score of scarlet-robed and hooded figures were informally gathered in groups. They sat on low wooden tripods the size of coffee tables. Their muttered conversation was low-voiced and unintelligible, but Crane sensed the tension that gripped them, felt their awe and soul-stabbing anticipation.

  There was one, tall and commanding, who strode from group to group. Red-masked faces jerked abruptly upward at his approach.

  But most revealing of all was the blank arch opposite Crane. Stretched out on a massive block of stone lay a woman, bound hand and foot: Diane, recaptured for the ritual from which she had es­caped. Her body was to serve as an al­tar, perhaps to feel the thrust of a sac­rificial knife. Black candles burned about her, diffusing acrid fumes which half obscured her; but Crane saw that she breathed. The tourniquet with his initials, however, had been removed.

  Since Diane was alive; he need not find that damning handkerchief, pro­vided that he could extricate her. But though he was armed with the sentry’s pistol, the odds were far too great for open attack.

  Then he saw that the figure on the two foot, brazen crucifix behind that altar of bare, lacerated flesh was in­verted. That final detail sent frost rac­ing through his blood. Those hooded figures had gathered for the Black Mass, the evil ritual of modern satanism, ut­terly different from the oriental devil-worship. Crane wondered how that sil­ver peacock fitted into the tangle.

  From one of the passages at the left came bestial snarls and half human mutterings: some monster held in reserve for the ultimate horror of that mad gathering.

  The lordly figure in black clapped his hands. The devotees shifted into crescent formation. Crane joined them as they moved toward the altar.

  The Black Monster was donning a priest’s stole and cope. Six red-robed acolytes filed from a passageway. Three carried thuribles from which poured blue-black, pungent fumes; the others had trays of hammered copper, all heaped with diamond shaped lozenges. They passed among the gathering, swing­ing their thuribles and offering wafers to the devotees.

  Crane tasted one of the confections; but instead of swallowing, he palmed it. It reeked with hasheesh and datura, blended with other oriental drugs he could not identify; but the two he rec­ognized warned him. Both were brain-searing aphrodisiacs. Those wafers of illusion would make the partaker a crazed beast gnawed by outrageous fancies and delusions. That would give Crane his chance to act.

  And all the while that bestial mum­bling and groaning and the vibration of pounded iron echoed from the further crypt.

  Crane watched the high priest of Satan make a foul mockery of the genu­flections of the Mass, saw him spit upon the reversed crucifix, heard him chant­ing in a high, malignant voice.

  Crane could scarcely understand the ritual, but some phrases of ultimate blasphemy were all too clearly burned into his reeling brain.

  “Satan, Lord of the World, defend us against an unjust god who created only to damn…defend us against hy­pocrisy that mocks with the lure of re­demption…hear the voice of the damned, O Lucifer, Son of the Morn­ing! Satan, to you we make our prayer, Just and Logical God…”

  Finally, the priest faced about and mocked the caricatured crucifix.

  “And You, O Thief of Homage and Deceiver of Mankind, I compel you to become incarnate in this bread…by the mockery you have ordained, I who am ordained command you and you will obey…yea, while we draw blood anew from your wounds…and press fresh thorns of vengeance on your brow…this I can and this I will do…Accursed Nazarene…Traitor Son of a Traitor God…”

  A low rumbling mutter drowned his amen; then with an inverse gesture of his left hand, the priest blessed the gath­ering and in mocking accents completed the blasphemy: “Hoc est enim corpus meum!”

  He spat upon the consecrated bread, stolen from some consecrated altar; he scattered the fragments among the frothing, slavering devotees. They closed in, maddened with blasphemy and Asiatic drugs. They groveled, clawing and growling as they fought for the fragments.

  Crane joined them. It was too early for a break. He had to outwit the un-drugged acolytes.

  First voices, then the tearing of the scarlet robes told him that women were among those who writhed and panted and grappled on the floor. Hoods and masks yielded to clawing fingers. Soon they forgot blasphemy. The Asiatic drugs were biting deep.

  In a moment the vault had become an animation of the bestial carvings of a Tantric temple, Women in jewels and costly gowns, and men in formal eve­ning dress were clawing each other with a fury that stripped clothing to shreds.

  A golden-haired fiend with crazed eyes and hungry red mouth emerged un­paired from the tangle and twined eager arms about Crane. A few scraps that glittered with green sequins trailed from her hips and what remained of a bras­siere clung to breasts that throbbed from her fierce, drugged passion. Her legs were white serpents and her quivering body was a multitude of consuming flames, and her loose hair blinded and choked Crane as he swallowed his hor­ror of that uncontrollable madness.

  Yet he had to play his part. That black-robed demon’s eyes glittered fiercely from behind his mask as he cir­cled the arena, watching their ever fouler fancies cropping out…

  That golden-haired woman’s madness was cleaner than what was on every side. And despite his qualms, Crane’s blood surged in irrepressible response to her savage frenzy…

  Yet even as he yielded to that vortex of passion, a remote corner of his brain remained untainted. He plied her with answering kisses, felt the shudder of her hot flesh, but that one sane morsel was wondering. And at times he saw what was about him.

  He recognized a black-bearded man whose face had appeared in every major newspaper of the world…another, who had led a victorious army…and one who from the sidelines told premiers what to say…

  The Master gestured, and an acolyte dashed to the passageway at the left.

  Crane’s fist smashed home, driving away a black-haired woman who sought to displace his companion. Her body was raked and bitten and slashed, but she was seeking more savage company…Crane saw how Diane had been mangled. Her terror hinted that she had not been drugged…

  Then Crane saw what had been re­leased when those unseen iron bars clanged open. A tall, gray-haired man whose deeply lined face had once been handsome and commanding. He wore what remained of full evening dress. The ribbon that had crossed his shirtfront trailed like a streamer as he approached; and on it Crane saw the ribbons of civil and military decorations.

  He recognized the man. He knew now from whose formal garb that purple ro­sette had been torn. His mouth frothed, and his eyes
burned insanely. He snarled bestially and plunged into the surging orgy.

  This was a man whose whispers shook Europe. Now he rolled vilely in that tangle of writhing flesh.

  But why—Great God, why?

  The Master laughed and gestured. The sullen ruddy glow of the tapers was drowned in a blue white, dazzling radiance, pitilessly revealing what sha­dows had shrouded.

  Then Crane saw and understood.

  A motion picture camera was covering the hideous show. That dam­nable film would place those drugged dignitaries forever in the power of that master of blasphemy. He had tricked them from Biarritz with hints of sensa­tional ritual, drugged them, and the rec­ord of their unspeakable wallowings would doom them. Satanism had a logi­cal purpose: political blackmail.

  Time to move. The Master was dis­tracted by his own show. Crane kicked clear of his companion, reached for his pistol.

  It was gone! Lost in that writhing vortex.

  He bounded to the altar, snatched that mockery of a crucifix, and whirled toward the Master. A pistol crackled. Crane felt the stab of hot lead, hurled himself aside as bullets spattered the masonry. The acolytes closed in. The brazen crucifix crunched home. But the survivors overwhelmed him, hammering and kicking and grinding him into the flagstones.

  The Master joined them. Crane, bat­tered and stunned, heaved up out of the gory tangle, clawed the mask aside. He slashed at that swarthy, aquiline face. He missed, ducked a knife thrust, and closed in. This was the émir, the Asi­atic enemy whose grip on the drugged dignitaries would buy state and army secrets, upset an African colonial em­pire.

  Crane bored in, but the enemy was fresh and he was dizzy and battered. They crashed to the floor, Crane under­neath, vainly trying to drive home one good blow. He jerked clear of a second knife thrust; but the next raked his ribs. The vault became a roaring redness un­til he perceived nothing but those im­placable eyes and that savage, brazen leer.

  But that last stroke did not fall. The surging tangle of madmen, sated of all but blood lust, swept Crane and his ene­mies against the wall. As the acolytes strove to club them into reason, Crane made the most of his respite.

  He snatched an abandoned thurible by the chains, swung it like a flail, flat­tening the Master’s skull. He swung again, but the chains whipped athwart a devotee who intervened, and the weap­on was jerked from Crane’s grasp. He turned toward the altar, ploughing through the writhing tangle. He tripped and was dragged back into the whirl­pool of madness, a yard short of his goal.

  A pistol roared as he struggled to his feet.

  Madeline had followed him.

  Crane jerked the weapon from her fingers and blasted the acolytes back as she struggled with her sister’s bonds.

  Another shot. The cameraman top­pled from his perch behind the altar. The pistol was empty. Crane seized the machine and smashed it across the head of a surviving enemy. The film reser­voir spewed out its reel of yellow cellu­loid, fogged beyond redemption in an instant.

  The knots yielded. Crane seized the half conscious girl and with Madeline at his heels, skirted the groveling tangle of drugged devil-worshipers. There were no acolytes left to pursue. And presently they reached the mist and moonlight…

  “As you learned,” explained Diane, hours later, in Crane’s rooms, “I was just frightened helpless by your dashing down to meet me. The émir didn’t intend for me to be clawed to ribbons. But Monsieur le Général Mar—”

  “Forget his name!” interrupted Crane, “Later, I’ll tell you why.”

  “Eh bien,” resumed Diane, “through error he prematurely took some of those drugs sooner than the émir intended. Before the ritual started. And you saw—”

  “Plenty.” Crane shuddered. Then he glanced at Madeline. “You little fool, you had to follow me!”

  “But yes. I suspected that through no fault of your own you had been involved and were following some insane Ameri­can impulse to do what you thought the right thing. So I followed, to help if I could. I feared she was dead, so I hesi­tated to call the police.”

  “Damn lucky you didn’t!”

  And then Diane interposed, “Monsieur Denis, how can I ever express my grati­tude—”

  “Madeline,” interrupted Crane, “has already taken care of that. And having had my fill of sunny France, I think I’ll leave for Spain in the morning.”

  THE GHOST OF TOWNELEY TOWERS, by Seabury Quinn

  I

  PROFESSOR HARVEY FORRESTER sank his chin deeper into the fur collar of his overcoat and gazed disconsolately about the desolate midwinter prospect. Festoons of dripping icicles hung from the disused wharf, patches of half-melted snow alternated with larger patches of foot-fettering mud, and a chill wind whipped the waters of the Potomac into angry whitecaps and howled dismally around the eaves and corners of the shuttered and boarded-up summer hotel. Furthermore, look where he would, the Professor could descry no one who remotely resembled a messenger from Towneley Towers.

  “This,” announced the Professor in a manner which admitted no gainsay or denial, “is a deuce of a fix we’re in, my dear.”

  “Are you sure we got off at the right landing?” his pretty blonde ward inquired, thrusting her small hands deeper into the pockets of her otter skin coat.

  “Sure?” echoed the Professor tartly. “Of course, I’m sure. See, here’s Towneley’s letter.” From his pocket he produced the crumpled sheet and read:

  “‘…take the steamer Swordsmith to Piny Point landing. I’ll come for you in my launch or send somebody to bring you over to the Towers.’

  “And if that ‘somebody’ doesn’t show up pretty soon we’re in a fine pickle,” he added bitterly, once more surveying the scenery with marked disfavor.

  “There’s a man with a boat over by the pier,” the girl replied. “Maybe he knows the way.”

  “Excellent idea,” the Professor commended, putting down his kit bag and approaching the aged colored man who had just made his “buckeye” one-master fast to the pierhead.

  “How much will you charge to take the young lady and me to Towneley Towers—if you know where it is?”

  The ancient negro hitched his greasy sheepskin reefer about his shoulders and regarded the Professor solemnly. “Yas, suh, Ah knows whar it is,” he vouchsafed. “Hit’s up de St. Mary’s crick a piece, ’tother side o’ Inigo’s Landing. Yas, suh, Ah knows it.”

  Professor Forrester suppressed a sigh of vexation. Primitive peoples were alike the world over, he reflected, whether you encountered them in darkest Africa or St. Mary’s County, Maryland. The white man’s direct methods seldom appealed to them, and nothing was to be gained by losing his temper. “Well,” he repeated, “how much will you charge to take us over?”

  “Cap’n,” the negro shifted his gaze from one of his broken boots to the other, then looked intently at the ramshackle wharfhouse, as though seeking inspiration from its battered plank walls, “Cap’n, de feeshin’ ain’t ben very good dis winter, wid de oyster policemen chasin’ me all ovah de river, an’ Ah ain’t made no money ter speak ob sence Thanksgivin’.”

  “Umpf?” Forrester grunted. “I suppose that means I’ll have to underwrite your overhead. Very well, how much?”

  “Cap’n, suh,” the other returned solemnly, “Ah sho’ly would lak fer ter git fo’ bits, or mebbe a dollah; but, Cap’n, suh, dere ain’t enough money in yo’ pockets ter git me ober to no Towneley Towahs. Naw, suh. Ah don’ crave ter mess ’round wid no daid folks’ business.”

  “What do you mean, you black rascal?” the Professor demanded. “I offer you your own price for taking the young lady and me a few miles down river, and you refuse—”

  “Cap’n, suh,” the other broke in, softening the discourtesy by removing his battered slouch hat and bobbing an obsequious bow, “yuh all don’ want ter go to no Towneley Towahs. Dat place is all right fo’ Yankees, but Ah knows quality folks when Ah sees ’em, an’ Ah knows yuh all ain’t gwine ter do yo’ sefs no good by goin’ dere. Cap’n,
suh—” his voice sank to a husky whisper, and his rheumy old eyes rolled apprehensively—“hit’s ha’nted! Yassuh.”

  “Bosh!” the Professor returned. “Don’t you know there aren’t any such things as ghosts?”

  “Yassuh, Ah knows it in de daytime; but it’ll be dark befo’ we can make de landin’ dere, an’ Ah don’ crave no parts o’ dat place after de sun hides his face, suh.”

  That ended the argument. Meanwhile the sun was sinking behind the Virginia hills and long shadows were creeping down to the water’s edge.

  “Uncle Harvey,” Rosalie’s joyous hail broke in, “there’s a motor boat standing in!” Two minutes later a long, cabined cruiser pulled alongside the wharf and Eugene Towneley himself, wrapped from throat to ankles in a chinchilla ulster, and radiating health and hospitality, clambered up the sea-ladder and wrung Forrester’s hand.

  “Mighty glad you got here, Harvey, my boy,” he announced in his big voice. “Hope my little breakdown didn’t inconvenience you too much. The engine got the willies just as I was shoving off from the landing and I had to stop and repair a feed-line. All ready?”

  “We’d begun to feel like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island when you showed up,” Professor Forrester confided as the big power boat gathered speed and bucked her way through the rising rollers. “The steamer cast off the minute we’d landed, and there wasn’t a soul in sight but an old oyster pirate who vowed he’d rather starve than ferry Rosalie and me over to your place. In fact, he intimated rather broadly that Towneley Towers is—”

  “Haunted eh?” his host cut in with one of his big laughs. “Yes, that’s getting to be an old story, now. We’ve had the devil’s own time keeping any help about the place since the rumor of the ghost got about.”

  “Oh, it’s not an ancestral spook, then?”

  “No, it’s this year’s model, with all improvements,” Towneley returned, swinging the trim craft into the creek. “The Towers dates back to the Lords Proprietaries’ days, you know, and I dare say enough dark deeds were done under its roof at one time or other to justify a whole battalion of ghosties moving in, but the fact is no one ever heard of a ‘ha’nt’ in the neighborhood until after we came here to live. Usually it’s deserted houses which get the reputation of harboring spirits, you know, but the rule’s reversed in our case. Everything was quiet as a Quaker meeting until I decided to recondition the old place and live here, and the carpenters and plumbers had hardly moved out before the ghost moved in and began scaring my cooks and laundresses out of seven years’ growth. I’ve had about five hundred percent labor turnover since the first of October, and if things keep on the way they’re going I may have to shut the place up and move back to Baltimore, or do my own cooking and washing.