The 2014 Halloween Horrors Megapack Page 17

  Again the path opened before them. They were nearing the great circle of burned grass, now. What a fine theater, Gwen thought! She dared a question:

  “It is—all for me—for us? And, of course, Sal, and Mugro.”

  So much wonder for so few eyes. So favored hers. So lucky, of all children in the world!

  The Doctor answered.

  “First, know this!” he said. “Now listen carefully.

  “Others will come. Friends of Sal and Mugro, you may think them. Dark people, drawn from darkness. For Sal and Mugro came home with me when I took the pictures that will be shown tonight. They are pictures of happy, primitive, dark-skinned people who have been true to the hidden power and knowledge, and to the strong elder gods who gave these things to them. Sad it is that only in the outlying hidden places such things, such rites still reign. But—you will see—”

  The folds of the cape fell away as he raised an arm skyward, and it was naked and coarsely haired. Like the hair of an animal, Gwen thought and shrank a little. But then she was fascinated and enthralled again. For the dark Doctor waved his hand and all the stars were blotted out by a thick murk that filled the emptiness that showed above the branches. Only the wasted moon leered down, blurry and pallid.

  Now the night was black indeed; but a livid, sulphurous glow streamed from the earth like vapor from an evil, underground fire. Gwen put her bare feet down shrinkingly, and was dragged ahead by the strong hands of her companions.

  In this witch light, for as such she knew it, small ugly animals could be seen running and hopping, speeding toward the burnt clearing. There were toads, great, shiny slugs and snakes, and rats. A black bird like the one that lived in Hep Cat’s room went past them, flying low; and the cat Grim slunk by, crouching, every coarse hair abristle.

  Now Gwen would have drawn back, but she could not. And, cheering herself with the thought of the Cinerama show that must shortly appear where the spiderweb screen was hidden in the dark, she cast a backward glance over her shoulder. In that direction, more or less, she supposed there must be set up great projection machines; but Hep Cat jerked at her right arm and Dr. Mordred at her left, and so for an instant all three of them stood still, Gwen wriggling a little because her hands and arms hurt now.

  Dr. Mordred’s voice was very low, and deep and frightening.

  “Now you must know, Girl—” he commanded her—“that you are to be silent and obedient. Whatever you are told to do you will do. This is the hour of your initiation. You will never again use the silly name by which you have called the priestess of our rites. She is Hecate; named for the great witch who drew down power from the moon goddess and wrought in darkness among the peoples of the younger Earth.

  “Your reward will be such as is due you. If you pass all tests—Ah!”

  He stopped quite suddenly.

  Ahead of them a picture formed, the picture of a strange and lovely place. And it was Cinerama, oh, Gwen was sure! There was no flatness, it was quite, quite real. It drew your eyes into a funnel-like feeling of going ahead right into the picture, without moving your feet or your body. It was more powerful than that, even. It pulled at every part of you. Your seeing, your thinking, your very soul; every cell seemed drawn and driven forward, into a vortex. If you were to run only a little way—

  Gwen shivered. As though in answer to her thoughts, as though an unseen knowing Thing said silently “Take care!”—just for a moment the vision partly faded. She could see through and beyond a thing dreadful and horrible—a thing that was like a whirlpool made of quicksand. Stickily the ground bubbled and whirled like water whirling down the drain of a bathroom hand basin or tub. Beyond the foreground of the lovely tropic scene she glimpsed this horror, and had wit to know that it cut her off from running ahead too far, from running on into the wood beyond the clearing where—maybe a quarter of a mile away—she knew there was a main highway on which cars passed all night.

  Then, childlike, she forgot the moment’s dizzy terror in the sheer beauty before her.

  There was a little lake, tiny and unruffled, and the water was as black as black enamel, and on it, jewel-like, floated bright-colored water lilies and other unknown flowers. Rimming this lake were houses built on stilts. The thatched roofs sagged down crescent-shaped, as though they were held up by bent roof poles. A fire burned in the foreground, and around it danced strange black men, with hair curled and piled high, fantastically, upon their heads. Something struggled on the ground, and was held there by several of the men, and these wore masks. The masks looked shiny and all over little coins—no, they had small shells stuck over them. In the background silent dark women stood watching, and there were children; and suddenly one of the masked men drew a small boy from the huddle and led him to the struggling thing upon the ground. Into the boy’s hand he pressed a long, sharp, curved knife. The boy held back a little, but the man guided his small hand, great, somber feathers from some unknown bird nodding funereally forward as he did so.

  The knife plunged down.

  Gwen screamed. The picture faded. The black murk lay ahead like unlit fog. The sulphur-colored phosphorescence writhed up into it from the ground.

  Dr. Mordred spoke to—Hecate—over Gwen’s head.

  “Tell her something. Keep her quiet!” he said; and licked his lips, as though the slaking of hunger had been interrupted.

  The lovely fair face of the witch bent down, came close.

  “You’ll be my darling little helper, won’t you?” she murmured in Gwen’s ear. “See! In a moment more, your time will come. What you saw—it’s a scene from one of the lonely places in New Guinea. Those people are called Tchambuli.” She spelled the word out for Gwen, and continued. “The thing the boy must learn to kill for the feast—why, it was a young goat or a wild pig. The Tchambuli were never cannibals, if that frightened you—if you remembered our talk about the anthropophagi, the new word you learned. No, they were head hunters not long ago, and still perhaps—

  “But this is just a feast, a feast—only a forerunner of ours—”

  She paused to lick dry lips, as the man in the black cape had done. Her body looked ashiver in the dim phosphorescent light, through its filmy veiling.

  “So we go on!” she said, quickly. “Down the river—it will be just like going in a boat. Down to the river tribe of the Mundugumor. To another feast—and you must not interrupt, Girl, now you must help! From this instant, disobedience would be—”

  The unspoken word boomed in Gwen’s mind like a solemn bell. The word was “Death.” She heard herself whispering desperately, softly—“Oh, I will obey—I will obey—”

  They were on a boat that rode fast down a swirling, turgid river—or she thought so. The vortex that drew her had drawn her now right into the picture. Oh, this was more than Cinerama! But of course, whatever it had been, now it was the great Spell. And what she saw was real—oh, real—

  The boat drifted into a dismal shore. Here were no dancing men, but heavy bodied dark people with faces set in ugly lines of utter ferocity. They scowled each at the other as they gathered round the fire—a very large one, though its flames were smoky and lurid. The women gathered with the men, and every one of them licked hungry lips as they closed round the thing on the ground. They came between so that it was hard to see its form at all; and the smoke from the fire drifted toward it and around it and enwrapped it too. And among them were Sal and her Mugro. Gwen knew them instantly, and knew now that she had averted her eyes from Sal’s face always—not because of her ugliness as she had thought, but because of something horrible and nameless.

  Now Hecate drooped Gwen’s hand and upflung her arms toward the moldering old slice of the moon, and cried out words that were all made of strange syllables. And the dark people began to chant; though only two voices came clear in the humming, throbbing cadence, and those were the voices of one man and woman only—of Sal and Mugro.

  And at some signal, Mugro came right up to the three who stood now on the bank of the
dark river, without ever having climbed out of the boat. Dr. Mordred released Gwen, and Mugro snatched her by the hand and dragged her forward.

  Forward, horribly, into the heart of the picture that was now quite real. Horribly up to the prostrate figure that was some animal lying near the fire. And none of the dark people held it down, this time, for something had been done to it that made it lie stupid and dumb before its butchers.

  And after all, the chant that came now at last from many throats seemed to resemble more than anything the silly syllables Gwen had misunderstood that first night when Dr. Mordred had said the new word that meant cannibals. Or else something in Gwen’s sick head and heart heard them that way.

  “And throw Pa-Pa-Guy! And throw Pa-Pa-Guy!”

  Pa Pa Guy would be thrown into the fire—No, the fire was for the mute, limp animal that was to be eaten. One of the vicious looking sullen boys would be given a knife, now—Gwen would be made to stand here, to see it all.

  She closed her eyes in sick negation. But her right hand felt the iron pressure of Mugro’s mighty one as the handle of the knife was thrust into it.

  She dared not turn. She dared not disobey. Mugro’s hand dropped from hers and this she must do freely, by herself and alone. She must do it or she must die.

  She did not want to die. Better a goat or pig… “Oh, please, not a lamb!” she thought wildly.

  And once more heard Hecate’s voice, coaching, commanding.

  “This is a feast and also a sacrifice to the Strong Dark Ones, Girl. Theirs is the power…” the voice rose to a strange, high sing-song. “Glory the and power the and kingdom…” it said. And Gwen knew the reason for the Lord’s prayer backward. It inverted everything. It took what belonged to—she could no longer think the Name.

  But her very thoughts had angered Hecate, who broke off her chanting.

  “Strike, now—or take its place!” she cried, and the crackle of old Miss Haggety’s voice obtruded through the silken rustling softness of the younger witch’s.

  Terror filled the universe and left no room for anything beside.

  Gwen threw herself forward and down, with the force of the blow she struck at the spot where Mugro’s bony finger pointed.

  But out of the dark upper air something white whirled with the speed of a bolt of lightning. Something flew and dived and fell before the point of the curved sharp knife. Something lay outstretched on the prostrate form round which the black smoke still curled, heavily hiding it. Something beat away the smoke with frantic, faltering wing strokes, white feathers falling and flying. Blood gushed over white feathers, and a long neck drooped forward limp and dying, and bright eyes, already filming, looked at Gwen in utter pleading. And as the white bird died, the necklace fell from its limp neck, Gwen’s necklace with the amethyst cross, and instinctively Gwen’s hand seized it and clutched it to her breast.

  Before the child’s staring eyes, all things changed. One still moment the universe hung poised in cosmic cleavage. Then—

  A clean wind blew, driving away the smoke. At Gwen’s feet lay the dead bird that had so loved the boy Arthur. It lay on Arthur’s breast. No goat or pig or even lamb had been the intended feast and sacrifice, but the boy it had been decided to “send away.” His blue eyes were lightless, unknowing; but they were clearing and filling with unspeakable terror.

  He clambered up, the dead bird falling with a thud at his feet. He would have taken it up, but for Gwen’s frantic urging.

  There had been the poised moment, and that was all. The many dark figures no longer crowded the place, they had vanished like smoke; but there remained two, those of Mugro and of Sal, and they were enough. Flanking the children on the other side were that other pair, Gwen saw them, saw the evil change as the witch who had allured her shed her beauty and fell into a more hag-like semblance than Miss Haggety had ever worn before.

  The tropic flowers and lush foliage as swiftly disappeared. The clearing was bleak and bare and covered with blackened grass.

  The converging movement of the four enemies, who would kill and feast the more swiftly and avidly now, began. Ahead the ground moved in bubbling syrupy convolution, showed as vortex, as death trap. And there was worse—for Something shadowy and black rose from it like a genie coming from a bottle. The very Spirit of Evil of this unhallowed spot—

  But Gwen and Arthur must run that way, because there was no other. As they leaped forward Mugro’s hand caught Gwen’s arm and his fingers half closed on it, and she swayed, half fainting. From this embrace of death she was saved most unexpectedly.

  The cat Grim, coming from nowhere, flew yowling angrily in front of the giant black so that he fell. Grim perhaps remembered a night he had spent in Gwen’s own room to which she had carried him in pitying child’s arms, his ribs sore from Miss Haggety’s well directed kick.

  Desperately the fleeing children charged away from their pursuers, in the only direction they could go. And the earth before them steadied to firmness and their feet felt the solid pressure of dead, stubbly grass and sped across even as the visible aspect of the sucking whirlpool faded. The black Thing writhed and reached for them; leered facelessly and gibbered in low moaning tones; then dissipated to thin mist and was gone.

  Through rifts in close-set branches stars shone down. Low boughs and thorns tore the children’s clothing and tender flesh, and they ran on unheeding. Behind them came the thud of heavier feet but the thicket growth let pass more easily small, slender bodies; and no black magic now opened a way for those who followed.

  A confused babble of angry voices fell ever farther behind. The great Spell of evil had been broken. Night was no longer black. As the children broke from the wood, the moon’s sinking crescent glowed in gentle mellow light. Tightly Gwen clutched her amethyst locket on its chain of gold. Her breathing slowed, the cramp in her side eased, as she and Arthur gained the open road.

  She stood pressing to her breast her locket set with its heart-framed cross made of the purple stones people once had believed to be a charm against drunkenness and enchantment and confusion of the senses. She heard a bird song of unearthly beauty, and looking saw nothing. It seemed to fall from so high up it might come from beyond the stars. She felt the blond boy move closer, knew his hand reached for hers, and could not take it; for each of her hands held tightly its own burden. She knew the voices and trampling footsteps had died away behind them. The naked man in the black loose cape and the hag covered only by black transparency would not dare the open road, nor would the half nude Sal and Mugro. Here two children could wait or walk down toward the town—for as long as it would take four murderers to go to the witch’s house and dress and overtake them.

  * * * *

  At four o‘clock in the morning, the state highway had its early traffic.

  A truck thundered by, headlights boring ahead, the tired driver’s eyes glued to the road. A car loaded with teen-agers on the loose who had hit the high spots through the night veered wildly, going fast.

  A black car tooled along slowly, in it two uniformed men. They were the State police.

  “Good God in Heaven!” the driver of this car cried out in utter reverence, braking sharply. “Do you see what I see?”

  They saw a boy and girl, barefooted, rags hanging from the girl’s dress and the boy’s odd white robe that looked like an old fashioned nightdress. They saw a trickle of black that turned to bright red when they turned their flashlights on the children, and that flowed from the boy’s side and stained his rags and soaked them. The knife stroke had been deflected, but not entirely, and only now the boy and girl seemed aware of the flesh wound, and the boy swayed so that one of the men caught and lifted him in his arms.

  The girl looked at them with the bright, clear-eyed innocence of nine years. She clutched frantically in one hand an ornament from which a gold chain dangled; and in the other a knife of the machete type, wicked blade stained with darker blood that had dried. She followed as Arthur was placed in the car, and something like t
he memory of a nightmare returning shadowed her face.

  “Me too—take me!” she cried; and the boy roused himself from weakness and exhaustion and cried out that he would not leave Gwen.

  Even wilder than their appearance was the children’s story. They took turns in the telling; and the police car detoured and found the house where Miss Haggety kindly boarded children. In the house—

  It was, of course, one of the monster-horror stories of the day. Yet, actually, not much was found to substantiate the atavistic mess of witchcraft and demonology that made up the rescued children’s tale. Still, there was enough.

  The body of a young child was found in the old well, from which, it was remembered, a suicide had been taken seven years before. The child might have been thrown in, or have managed to climb up and fall. Records of Miss Haggety’s young boarders were largely lacking, and what records there were were utterly confused.

  Yet, there was enough. Pale babies in the nursery. Bottles of blood that typed to match theirs, plus other blood, in the huge refrigerator. A house full of bloated flies and spiders—and unhygienic in the extreme. So good an impression had the public-spirited Miss Haggety made on all who contacted her, that no inspection of her place had ever been so much as suggested.

  Miss Haggety, it seemed, would be sent to an asylum. Dr. Mordred, strangely or perhaps quite naturally, was unknown either to Forestville, or to the American Medical Association. Sal and her Mugro apparently had dressed themselves and gone away as anonymously as they must have inhabited Miss Haggety’s premises.

  Kind people explained to Gwen that she and Arthur and the little children had been horribly abused, and that she and Arthur—quite naturally—had believed impossible things the old lady had told them, and had imagined more. Gwen and Arthur were put to board in a minister’s home, because in the end it was the minister who seemed to know best how to talk with them. He did not, as others did, insist very much on calling the things that had happened matters of imagination only. Simply, he spoke of God; and how He, in the end, governs all things.