“I’d like to shoot some squirrels,” I agreed. “And I know a good place. Can you leave tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow; my vacation starts then,” he replied. “But for a long time I’ve wanted to go back to my old stamping-grounds. It’s not so very far—only a little over a hundred miles, and”—he looked at me in apology for differing with my plans—“in Sacrament Wood there are more squirrels than you ever saw.”
And so it was agreed.
Sacrament Wood is an anomaly. Three or four miles wide and twice as long, it fills the whole of a peculiar valley, a rift, as it were, in the rugged topography of the higher Ozarks. No stream flows through it, there is nothing to suggest a normal valley; it is merely there, by sheer physical presence defying all questions. Grim, tree-flecked mountains hem it in on every side, as though seeking by their own ruggedness to compensate this spot of gentleness and serenity. And here lies the peculiarity: though the mountains around here are all inhabited— sparsely, of course, through necessity—the valley of the wood, with every indication of a wonderful fertility, has never felt the plow; and the tall, smooth forest of scented oak has never known the ax of the woodman.
I too had known Sacrament Wood; it was generally recognized as a sportsman’s paradise, and twice, long before, I had hunted there. But that was so long ago that I had all but forgotten, and now I was truly grateful to have been reminded of it again. For if there is a single place in the world where squirrels grow faster than they can be shot, it is Sacrament Wood.
It was midafternoon when we finally wound up the last mountain trail to stop at last in a small clearing. A tiny shanty with clap-board roof stood as ornament beside the road, and behind it a bent figure in faded overalls was chopping the withered stalks of cotton.
“That would be old Zeke,” confided my companion, his eyes shining with even this reminder of childhood. “Hallo!” he shouted, stepping to the ground.
The old mountaineer straightened, and wrinkled his face in recognition. He stood thus a moment, until my companion inquired as to the hunting; then his eyes grew dull again. He shook his head dumbly.
“Ain’t no hunting now, boys. Everything is dead. Sacrament Wood is dead.”
“Dead!” I cried. “Impossible! Why is it dead?”
I knew in a moment that I had spoken without tact. The mountaineer has no information to give one who expresses a desire for it— much less an outlander who shows incredulity.
The old man turned back to his work. “Ain’t no hunting now,” he repeated, and furiously attacked a stalk of cotton.
So obviously dismissed, we could not remain longer. “Old Zeke has lived too long alone,” confided Fred as we moved away. “All mountaineers get that way sooner or later.”
But I could see that his trip was already half spoiled, and even fancied he was nettled with me for my unfortunate interruption. Still, he said nothing, except to note that Sacrament Wood was our next valley.
We continued. The road stretched ahead for some distance along the level top. And then, as we started the rough descent, Sacrament Wood burst full upon our view, clothed as I had never before seen it. Bright red, yellow, and brown mingled together in splashes of beauty as the massive trees put on their autumnal dress. Almost miniature it appeared to us from our lookout, shimmering like a mountain lake in the dry heat of early fall. Why, as we gazed for a moment silently, did a vague thought of uncleanness make a shudder pass through my body? Was I sensitive to the ominous words of the old mountaineer? Or did my heart tell me what my mind could not—that the season was yet too early to destroy every trace of greenery, and replace it with the colors of death? Or was it something else?—something not appealing to the senses, nor yet to the intellect, but yet sending a message too strong to be dismissed?
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM
But I did not choose to dwell long upon the subject. The human mind, I have long known, in striving to present a logical sequence of events, often strains the fabric of fact for the sake of smoothness. Perhaps I really felt nothing, and my present conceptions have been altered by subsequent events. At any rate, Fred, although unnaturally pale, said nothing, and we continued the descent in silence.
Night comes early in the deep valley of Sacrament Wood. The sun was just resting on the high peak in the west as we entered the forest and made camp. But long after comparative darkness had come over us, the mountain down which we had come was illuminated a soft gold.
We sat over our pipes in the gathering dusk. It was deeply peaceful, there in the darkening wood, and yet Fred and I were unnaturally silent, perhaps having the same thoughts. Why were the massive trees so early shorn of leaves? Why had the birds ceased to sing? Whence came the faint, yet unmistakable odor of rottenness?
A cheery fire soon dispelled our fears. We were again the two hunters, rejoicing in our freedom and our anticipation. At least, I was. Fred, however, somewhat overcame my feeling of security.
“Art, whatever the cause, we must admit that Sacrament Wood is dead. Why, man, those trees are not getting ready for dormance; they are dead. Why haven’t we heard birds? Bluejays used to keep this place in a continual uproar. And where did I get the feeling I had as we entered here? Art, I am sensitive to these things. I can feel a graveyard in the darkest night; and that is how I felt as I came here—as if I was entering a graveyard. I know, I tell you!”
“I felt it, too,” I answered, “and the odor, too.... But all that is gone now. The fire changes things.”
“Yes, the fire changes things. Hear that moaning in the trees? You think that is the wind? Well, you’re wrong, I tell you. That is not the wind. Something not human is suffering; maybe the fire hurts it.”
I laughed, uncomfortably enough. “Come,” I said, “you’ll be giving me the jimmies, too. I felt the same way you did; I even smelt an odor, but the old man just had us upset. That’s all. The fire has changed things. It’s all right now.”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s all right now.”
For all his nervousness, Fred was the first to sleep that night. We heaped the fire high before turning in, and I lay for a long while and watched the leaping flames. And I thought about the fire.
“Fire is clean,” I said to myself, as though directed from without. “Fire is clean; fire is life. The very life of our bodies is preserved by oxidation. Yes, without fire there would be no cleanness in the world.”
But I too must have dropped off, for when I was awakened by a low moan the fire was dead. The wood was quiet; not a whisper or rustle of leaves disturbed the heavy stillness of the night. And then I sensed the odor.... Once sensed, it grew and grew until the air seemed heavy, even massive, with the inertia of it, seemed to press itself into the ground through sheer weight. It eddied and swirled in sickening waves of smell. It was the odor of death, and putridity.
I heard another moan.
“Fred,” I called, my voice catching in my throat.
The only answer was a deeper moan.
I grasped his arm, and—my fingers sank in the bloated flesh as into a rotting corpse! The skin burst like an over-ripe berry, and slime flowed over my hand and dripped from my fingers.
Overcome with horror, I struck a light; and under the tiny flare I saw for a moment—his face! Purple, bloated, the crawling flesh nearly covered his staring eyes; white worms swarmed his puffed body, exuded squirming from his nostrils, and fell upon his livid lips. The foul stench grew stronger; so thick was it that my tortured lungs cried out for relief. Then, with a shriek of terror, I cast the lighted match from me, and threw myself into the bed, and buried my face in the pillow.
How long I lay there, sick, trembling, overcome with nausea, I do not know. But I slowly became aware of a rushing sound in the tree-tops. Great limbs creaked and groaned; the trunks themselves seemed to crack in agony. I looked up and saw a ruddy light reflected about us. And like a crash of thunder came the thought into my brain:
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM
“Fire is clean; fire
is life. Without fire there would be no cleanness in the world.”
And at this command I rose, and grasped everything within reach, and cast it upon the dying flames. Was I mistaken, or was the odor of death really less? I hauled wood, and heaped the fire high. Fortunate indeed that the match I had thrown had fallen in the already sere leaves!
When next I thought of my companion the roaring blaze was leaping fifteen feet in the air. Slowly I turned, expecting to see a corpse weltering in a miasma of filth, and saw—a man calmly sleeping! His face was flushed, his hands still slightly swollen; but he was clean! He breathed. Could I, I asked, have dreamed of death, and the odor of death? Could I have dreamed the worms?
I awoke him, and waited.
He half looked at me, and then, gazing at the fire, gave a cry of ecstasy. A light of bliss shone for a moment in his eyes, as in a young child first staring at the mystery of cleansing flame; and then, as realization came, this too faded into a look of terror and loathing.
“The worms!” he cried. “The maggots! The odor came, and with it the worms. And I awoke. Just as the fire died....I couldn’t move; I couldn’t cry out. The worms came—I don’t know whence; from nowhere, perhaps. They came, and they crawled, and they ate. And the smell came with them! It just appeared, as did the worms, from out of thin air! It just—became. Then—death!—I died, I tell you—I rotted—I rotted, and the worms—the maggots—they ate . . . I am dead, I say! Dead! Or should be!” He covered his face with his hands.
How we lived out the night without going mad, I do not know. All through the long hours we kept the fire burning high; and all through the night the lofty trees moaned back their mortal agony. The rotting death did not return; in some strange way the fire kept us clean of it, and fought it back. But our brains felt, and dimly comprehended, the noisome evil floundering in the darkness, and the pain which our immunity gave this devilish forest.
I could not understand why Fred had so easily fallen a victim to the death, while I remained whole. He tried to explain that his brain was more receptive, more sensitive.
“Sensitive to what?” I asked.
But he did not know.
Dawn came at last, sweeping westward before it the web of darkness. From across the forest, and around us on all sides, the giant trees rustled in pain, suggesting the gnashing of millions of anguished teeth. And over the ridge to eastward came the smiling sun, lighting with clarity the branches of our wood.
Never was a day so long in coming, and never so welcome its arrival. In a half-hour our belongings were gathered, and we quickly drove to the open road.
“Fred, you remember our conversation of a couple of evenings ago?” I asked my companion, after some time of silence. “I’m wondering whether that couldn’t apply here.”
“Meaning that we were the victims of—hallucination? Then how do you account for this?” He raised his sleeve above his elbow, showing his arm. How well did I remember it! For there, under curling skin and red as a brand, was the print of my hand!
“I sensed, not felt, you grip me last night,” said Fred. “There is our evidence.”
“Yes,” I answered, slowly. “We’ve got lots to think of, you and I.”
And we rode together in silence.
When we reached home, it was not yet noon, but the brightness of the day had already wrought wonders with our perspective. I think that the human mind, far from being a curse, is the most merciful thing in the world. We live on a quiet, sheltered island of ignorance, and from the single current flowing by our shores we visualize the vastness of the black seas around us, and see—simplicity and safety. And yet, if only a portion of the cross-currents and whirling vortices of mystery and chaos would be revealed to our consciousness, we should immediately go insane.
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM
But we can not see. When a single cross-current upsets the calm placidness of the visible sea, we refuse to believe. Our minds balk, and can not understand. And thus we arrive at that strange paradox: after an experience of comprehensible terror, the mind and body remain long upset; yet even the most terrible encounters with things unknown fade into insignificance in the light of clear day. We were soon about the prosaic task of preparing lunch, to satisfy seemingly insatiable appetites!
And yet we by no means forgot. The wound on Fred’s arm healed quickly; in a week not even a scar remained. But we were changed. We had seen the cross-current, and—we knew. By daylight a swift recollection often brought nausea; and the nights, even with the lights left burning, were rife with horror. Our very lives seemed bound into the events of one night.
Yet, even so, I was not prepared for the shock I felt when, one night nearly a month later, Fred burst into the room, his face livid.
“Read this,” he said in a husky whisper, and extended a crumpled newspaper to my hand. I reached for it, read where he had pointed.
MOUNTAINEER DIES
Ezekiel Whipple, lone mountaineer, aged 64, was found dead in his cabin yesterday by neighbors.
The post-mortem revealed a terrible state of putrefaction; medical men aver that death could not have occurred less than two weeks ago.
The examination by the coroner revealed no sign of foul play, yet local forces for law and order are working upon what may yet be a valuable clue. Jesse Layton, a near neighbor and close friend of the aged bachelor, states that he visited and held conversation with him the day preceding; and it is upon this statement that anticipation of possible arrest is based.
“God!” I cried. “Does it mean——”
“Yes! It’s spreading—whatever it is. It’s reaching out, crawling over the mountains. God knows to where it may finally extend.”
“No. It is not a disease. It is alive. It’s alive, Fred! I tell you, I felt it; I heard it. I think it tried to talk to me.”
For us there was no sleep that night. Every moment of our half-forgotten experience was relived a thousand times, every horror amplified by the darkness and our fears. We wanted to flee to some far country, to leave far behind us the terror we had felt. We wanted to stay and fight to destroy the destroyer. We wanted to plan; but— hateful thought—how could we plan to fight—nothing? We were as helpless as the old mountaineer....
And so, torn by these conflicting desires, we did what was to be expected—precisely nothing. We might even have slipped back into the even tenor of our lives had not news dispatches showed still further spread, and more death.
Eventually, of course, we told our story. But lowered glances and obvious embarrassment told us too well how little we were believed. Indeed, who could expect normal people of the year 1933, with normal experiences, to believe the obviously impossible? And so, to save ourselves, we talked no more, but watched in dread from the sidelines the slow, implacable growth.
It was midwinter before the first town fell in the way of the expanding circle. Only a mountain village of half a hundred inhabitants; but the death came upon them one cold winter night—late at night, for there were no escapes—and smothered all in their beds. And when the next day visitors found and reported them, there was described the same terrible advanced state of putrefaction that had been present in all the other cases.
Then the world, apathetic always, began to believe. But, even so, they sought the easiest, the most natural explanation, and refused to recognize the possibilities we had outlined to them. Some new plague, they said, is threatening us, is ravaging our hill country. We will move away....Afewmoved.But the optimists, trusting all to the physicians, stayed on. And we, scarce knowing why, stayed on with them.
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM
Yes, the world was waking to the danger. The plague became one of the most popular topics of conversation. Revivalists predicted the end of the world. And the physicians, as usual, set to work. Doctors swarmed the infected district, in fear of personal safety examined the swollen corpses, and found—the bacteria of decay, and—the worms. They warned the natives to leave the surrounding country; and then, to avoid pa
nic, they added encouragement.
“We have an inkling of the truth,” they said, after the best manner of the detective agency. “It is hoped that we may soon isolate the deadly bacterium, and produce an immunizing serum.”
And the world believed....I,too, half believed, and even dared to hope.
“It is a plague,” I said, “some strange new plague that is killing the country. We were there, first of all.”
But “No,” said Fred. “It is not a plague. I was there; I felt it; it talked to me. It is Black Magic, I tell you! What we need is, not medicine, but medicine men.”
And I—I half believed him, too!
Spring came, and the encroaching menace had expanded to a circle ten miles in radius, with a point in the wood as a center. Slow enough, to be sure, but seemingly irresistible.... The quiet, lethal march of the disease, the death, as it was called, still remained a mystery—and a fear. And as week after week fled by with no good tidings from the physicians and men of science there assembled, my doubts grew stronger. Why, I asked, if it were a plague, did it never strike its victims during the day? What disease could strike down all life alike, whether animal or vegetable? It was not a plague, I decided; at least, I added, clutching the last thread of hope, not a normal plague.
“Fred,” I said one day, “they can’t stand fire—if you are right. This is your chance to prove that you are right. We’ll burn the wood. We’ll take kerosene. We’ll burn the wood, and if you are right, the thing will die.”
His face brightened. “Yes,” he said, “we’ll burn the wood, and—the thing will die. Fire saved me: I know it; you know it. Fire could never cure a disease; it could never make normal trees whisper and groan, and crack in agony. We’ll burn the wood, and the thing will die.”
So we said, and so we believed. And we set to work.
Four barrels of kerosene we took, and tapers, and torches. And on a clear, cold day in early March we set out in the truck. The wind snapped bitterly out of the north; our hands grew blue with chill in the open cab. But it was a clean cold. Before its pure sharpness, it was almost impossible to believe that we were heading toward filth and a barren country of death. And, still low in the east, the sun sent its bright yellow shafts over the already budding trees.
Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos Page 27