The Macabre Reader

by Donald A. Wollheim

  But, then, I must stop this. If Sutherland or Travers were to read what I have set down here, they would think that I was losing my senses or would declare me already insane. And yet, as there is a heaven above us, it seems that I do actually believe that this frightful place knows the presence of beings other than ourselves and our dogs—things which we cannot see but which are watching us.

  Enough of this.

  Only fifteen miles from the Pole. Now for a sleep and on to our goal in the morning. Morning! There is no morning here, but day unending. The sun now rides as high at midnight as it does at midday. Of course, there is a change in altitude, but it is so slight as to be imperceptible without an instrument.

  But the Pole! Tomorrow the Pole! What will we find • there? Only an unbroken expanse of white, or—

  Jan 4.—The mystery and horror of this day—oh, how could I ever set that down? Sometimes, so fearful were those hours through which we have just passed, I even find myself wondering if it wasn’t all only a dream. A dream! I would to heaven that it had been but a dream! As for the end —I must keep such thoughts out of my head.

  Got under way at an early hour. Weather more wondrous than ever. Sky an azure that would have sent a painter into ecstasies. Cloud-formations indescribably beautiful and grand. The going, however, was pretty difficult. The place a great plain stretching away with a monotonous uniformity of surface as far as the eye could reach. A plain never trod by human foot before? At length, when our dead reckoning showed that we were drawing near to the Pole, we had the answer to that. Then it was that the keen eyes of Travers detected some object rising above the blinding white of the snow.

  On the instant Sutherland had thrust his amber glasses up onto his forehead and had his binoculars to his eyes.

  “Cairn!” he exclaimed, and his voice sounded hollow and very strange. “A cairn or a.—tent. Boys, they have beaten us to the Pole!”

  He handed the glasses to Travers and leaned, as though a sudden weariness had settled upon him, against the provision-cases on his sled.

  “Forestalled!” said he. “Forestalled!”

  I felt very sorry for our brave leader in those, his moments of terrible disappointment, but for the life of me I did not know what to say. And so I said nothing.

  At that moment a cloud concealed the sun, and the place where we stood was suddenly involved in a gloom that was deep and awful. So sudden and pronounced, indeed, was the change that we gazed about us with curious and wondering looks. Far off to the right and to the left, the plain blazed white and blinding. Soon, however, the last gleam of sunshine had vanished from off it. I raised my look up to the heavens. Here and there edges of cloud were touched as though with the light of wrathful golden fire. Even then, however, that light was fading. A few minutes, and the last angry gleam of the sun had vanished. The gloom seemed to deepen about us every moment. A curious haze was concealing the blue expanse of the sky overhead. There was not the slightest movement in the gloomy and weird atmosphere. The silence was heavy, awful, the silence of the abode of utter desolation and of death.

  “What on earth are we in for now?” said Travers. Sutherland moved from his sled and stood gazing about into the eerie gloom.

  “Queer change, this!” said he. “It would have delighted the heart of Doré.”

  “It means a blizzard, most likely,” I observed. “Hadn’t we better make camp before it strikes us? No telling what a blizzard may be like in this awful spot.”

  “Blizzard?” said Sutherland. “I don’t think it means a blizzard, Bob. No telling, though. Mighty queer change, certainly. And how different the place looks now, in this strange gloom! It is surely weird and terrible—that is, it certainly looks weird and terrible.”

  He turned his look to Travers.

  “Well, Bill,” he asked, “what did you make of it?”

  He waved a hand in the direction of that mysterious object the sight of which had so suddenly brought us to a halt.

  I say in the direction of the object, for the thing itself was no longer to be seen.

  “I believe it is a tent,” Travers told him.

  “Well,” said our leader, “we can soon find out what it is —cairn or tent, for one or the other it must certainly be.”

  The next instant the heavy, awful silence was broken by the sharp crack of his whip.

  “Mush on, you poor brutes!” he cried. “On we go to see what is over there. Here we are at the South Pole. Let us see who has beaten us to it.”

  But the dogs didn’t want to go on, which did not surprise me at all, because, for some time now, they had been showing signs of some strange, inexplicable uneasiness. What had got into the creatures, anyway? For a time we puzzled over it; then we knew, though the explanation was still an utter mystery to us. They were afraid. Afraid? An inadequate word, indeed. It was fear, stark, terrible, that had entered the poor brutes. But whence had come this inexplicable fear? That also we soon knew. The thing they feared, whatever it was, was in that very direction in which we were headed!

  A cairn, a tent? What did this thing mean?

  “What on earth is the matter with the critters?” exclaimed Travers. “Can it be that—”

  “It’s for us to find out what it means,” said Sutherland.

  Again we got in motion. The place was still involved in that strange, weird gloom. The silence was still that awful silence of desolation and of death.

  Slowly but steadily we moved forward, urging on the reluctant, fearful animals with our whips.

  At last Sutherland, who was leading, cried out that he saw it. He halted, peering forward into the gloom, and we urged our teams up alongside his.

  “It must be a tent,” he said.

  And a tent we found it to be—a small one supported by a single bamboo and well guyed in all directions. Made of drab-colored gabardine. To the top of the tent-pole another had been lashed. From this, motionless in the still air, hung the remains of a small Norwegian flag and, underneath it, a pennant with the word “Fram” upon it. Amundsen’s tent! What should we find inside it? And what was the meaning of that—the strange way it bulged out on one side?

  The entrance was securely laced. The tent, it was certain, had been here for a year, all through the long Antarctic night; and yet, to our astonishment, but little snow was piled up about it, and most of this was drift. The explanation of this must, I suppose, be that, before the air currents have reached the Pole, almost all the snow has been deposited from them.

  For some minutes we just stood there, and many, and some of them dreadful enough, were the thoughts that came and went. Through the long Antarctic night! What strange things this tent could tell us had it been vouchsafed the power of words! But strange things it might tell us, nevertheless. For what was that inside, making the tent bulge out in so unaccountable a manner? I moved forward to feel of it with my mittened hand, but, for some reason that I cannot explain, of a sudden I drew back. At that instant one of the dogs whined—the sound so strange and the terror of the animal so unmistakable that I shuddered and felt a chill pass through my heart. Others of the dogs began to whine in that mysterious manner, and all shrank back cowering from the tent.

  “What does it mean?” said Travers, his voice sunk almost to a whisper. “Look at them. It is as though they are imploring us to—keep away.”

  “To keep away,” echoed Sutherland, his look leaving the dogs and fixing itself once more on the tent.

  “Their senses,” said Travers, “are keener than ours. They already know what we can’t know until we see it.”

  “See it!” Sutherland explained. “I wonder. Boys, what are we going to see when we look into that tent? Poor fellows! They reached the Pole. But did they ever leave it? Are we going to find them in there dead?”

  “Dead?” said Travers with a sudden start. “The dogs would never act that way if ’twas only a corpse inside. And, besides, if that theory was true, wouldn’t the sleds be here to tell the story? Yet look around. The level
uniformity of the place shows that no sled lies buried here.”

  “That is true,” said our leader. “What can it mean? What could make that tent bulge out like that? Well, here is the -mystery before us, and all we have to do is unlace the entrance and look inside to solve it.”

  He stepped to the entrance, followed by Travers and me, and began to unlace it. At that instant an icy current of air struck the place and the pennant above our heads flapped with a dull and ominous sound. One of the dogs, too, thrust his muzzle skyward, and a deep and long-drawn howl arose. And while the mournful, savage sound yet filled the air, a strange thing happened.

  Through a* sudden rent in that gloomy curtain of cloud, the sun sent a golden, awful light down upon the spot where we stood. It was but a shaft of light, only three or four hundred feet wide, though miles in length, and there we stood in the very middle of it, the plain on each side involved in that weird gloom, now denser and more eery than ever in contrast to that sword of golden fire which thus so suddenly had been flung down across the snow.

  “Queer place this!” said Travers. “Just like a beam lying across a stage in a theater.”

  Traver’s smile was a most apposite one, more so than he perhaps ever dreamed himself. That place was a stage, our light the wrathful fire of the Antarctic sun, ourselves the actors in a scene stranger than any ever beheld in the mimic world.

  For some moments, so strange was it all, we stood there looking about us in wonder and perhaps each one of us in not a little secret awe.

  “Queer place, all right!” said Sutherland. “But—”

  He laughed a hollow, sardonic laugh. Up above, the pennant flapped and flapped again, the sound of it hollow and ghostly. Again rose the long-drawn, mournful, fiercely sad howl of the wolf-dog.

  “But,” added our leader, “we don’t want to be imagining things, you know.”

  “Of course not,” said Travers.

  “Of course not,” I echoed.

  A litde space, and the entrance was open and Sutherland had thrust head and shoulders through it.

  I don’t know how long it was that he stood there like that. Perhaps it was only a few seconds, but to Travers and me it seemed rather long.

  “What is it?” Travers exclaimed at last. “What do you see?”

  The answer was a scream—the horror of that sound I can never forget—and Sutherland came staggering back and, I believe, would have fallen had we not sprung and caught him.

  “What is it?” cried Travers. “In God’s name, Sutherland, what did you see?”

  Sutherland beat the side of his head with his hand, and his look was wild and horrible.

  “What is it?” I exclaimed. “What did you see in there?”

  “I can’t tell you—I can’t! Oh, oh, I wish that I had never seen it! Don’t look! Boys, don’t look into that tent—unless you are prepared to welcome madness, or worse.”

  “What gibberish is this?” Travers demanded, gazing at our leader in astonishment. “Come, come, man! Buck up. Get a grip on yourself. Let’s have an end to this nonsense. Why should the sight of a dead man, or dead men, affect you in this mad fashion?”

  “Dead men?” Sutherland laughed, the sound wild, maniacal.

  “Dead men? If ’twas only that! Is this the South Pole? Is this the earth, or are we in a nightmare on some other planet?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” cried Travers, “come out of it! What’s got into you? Don’t let your nerves go like this.”

  “A dead man?” queried our leader, peering into the face of Travers. “You think I saw a dead man? I wish it was only a dead man. Thank God, you two didn’t look!”

  On the instant Travers had turned.

  “Well,” said he, “I am going to look!”

  But Sutherland cried out, screamed, sprang after him and tried to drag him back.

  “It would mean horror and perhaps madness!” cried Sutherland. “Look at me. Do you want to be like me?”

  “No!” Travers returned. “But I am going to see what is in that tent.”

  He struggled to break free, but Sutherland clung to him in a frenzy of madness.

  “Help me, Bob!” Sutherland cried.

  “Hold him back, or we’ll all go insane.”

  But I did not help him to hold Travers back, for, of course, it was my belief that Sutherland himself was insane. Nor did Sutherland hold Travers. With a sudden wrench, Travers was free. The next instant he had thrust head and shoulders through the entrance of the tent.

  Sutherland groaned and watched him with eyes full of unutterable horror.

  I moved toward the entrance, but Sutherland flung himself at me with such violence that I was sent over into the snow. I sprang to my feet full of anger and amazement.

  “What the hell,” I cried, “is the matter with you, anyway? Have you gone crazy?”

  The answer was a groan, horrible beyond all words of man, but that sound did not come from Sutherland. I turned. Travers was staggering away from the entrance, a hand pressed over his face, sounds that I could never describe breaking from deep in his throat. Sutherland, as the man came staggering up to him, thrust forth an arm and touched Travers lightly on the shoulder. The effect was instantaneous and frightful. Travers sprang aside as though a serpent had struck at him, screamed and screamed yet again.

  “There, there!” said Sutherland gently. “I told you not to do it. I tried to make you understand, but—but you thought that I was mad.”

  “It can’t belong to this earth!” moaned Travers.

  “No,” said Sutherland. “That horror was never bom on this planet of ours. And the inhabitants of earth, though they do not know it, can thank God Almighty for that.”

  “But it is here! Travers exclaimed. “How did it come to this awful place? And where did it come from?”

  “Well,” consoled Sutherland, “it is dead—it must be dead.” “Dead? How do we know that it is dead? And don’t forget this: it didn’t come here alone!”

  Sutherland started. At that moment the sunlight vanished, and everything was once more involved in gloom.

  “What do you mean?” Sutherland asked. “Not alone? How do you know that it did not come alone?”

  “Why it is there inside the tent; but the entrance was laced —from the outsider

  “Fool, fool that I am!” cried Sutherland a little fiercely. “Why didn’t I think of that? Not alone! Of course it was not alone!”

  He gazed about into the gloom, and I knew the nameless fear and horror that chilled him to the very heart, for they chilled me to my very own.

  Of a sudden arose again that mournful, savage howl of the wolf-dog. We three men started as though it was the voice of some ghoul from hell’s most dreadful comer.

  “Shut up, you brute!” gritted Travers. “Shut up, or I’ll brain you!”

  Whether it was Travers’ threat or not, I do not know; but that howl sank, ceased almost on the instant. Again the

  silence of desolation and of death lay upon the spot. But above the tent the pennant stirred and rustled, the sound of it, I thought, like the slithering of some repulsive serpent. “What did you see in there?” I asked them.

  “Bob—Bob,” said Sutherland, “don’t ask us that.”

  “The thing itself,” said I, turning, “can’t be any worse than this mystery and nightmare of imagination.”

  But the two of them threw themselves before me and barred my way.

  “Nol” said Sutherland firmly. “You must not look into that tent, Bob. You must not see that—that—I don’t know what to call it. Trust us; believe us, Bob! ’Tis for your sake that we say that you must not do it. We, Travers and I, can never be the same men again—the brains, the souls of us can never be what they were before we saw that!”

  “Very well,” I acquiesced. “I can’t help saying, though, that the whole thing seems to me like the dream of a madman.”

  “That,” said Sutherland, “is a small matter indeed. Insane? Believe that it is the dream of a
madman. Believe that we are insane. Believe that you are insane yourself. Believe anything you like. Only don’t look!

  “Very well,” I told him. “I won’t look. I give in. You two have made a coward of me.”

  “A coward?” said Sutherland. “Don’t talk nonsense, Bob. There are some things that a man should never know; there are some things that a man should never see; that horror there in Amundsen’s tent is—both!”

  “But you said that it is dead.”

  Travers groaned. Sutherland laughed a little wildly. “Trust us,” said the latter; “believe us, Bob. ’Tis for your sake, not for our own. For that is too late now. We have seen it, and you have not.”

  For some minutes we stood there by the tent, in that weird gloom, then turned to leave the cursed spot. I said that undoubtedly Amundsen had left some records inside, that possibly Scott had reached the Pole, and visited the tent, and that we ought to secure any such memories. Sutherland and Travers nodded, but each declared that he would not put his head through that entrance again for all the wealth of Ormus and of Ind—or words to that effect. We must, they said, get away from the awful place—get back to the world of men with our fearful message.

  “You won’t tell me what you saw?” I said, “and yet you want to get back so that you can tell it to the world.”

  “We aren’t going to tell the world what we saw,” answered Sutherland. “In the first place, we couldn’t, and, in the second place, if we could, not a living soul would believe us. But we can warn people, for that thing in there did not come alone. Where is the other one—or the others?”

  “Dead, too, let us hope!” I exclaimed.

  “Amen!” said Sutherland. “But maybe, as Bill says, it isn’t dead. Probably—”

  Sutherland paused, and a wild, indescribable look came into his eyes.

  “Maybe it—can't die?

  “Probably,” said I nonchalantly, yet with secret disgust and with poignant sorrow.

  What was the use? What good would it do to try to reason with a couple of madmen? Yes, we must get away from this spot, or they would have me insane, too. And the long road back? Could we ever make it now? And what had they seen? What unimaginable horror was there behind that thin wall of gabardine? Well, whatever it was, it was real. Of that I could not entertain the slightest doubt. Real? Real enough to wreck, virtually instantaneously, the strong brains of two strong men. But—were my poor companions really mad, after all?