Through the gray wisps of smoke he regarded the gilded mask, at first idly, then with an intentness that he sought to deny himself. Something new was stirring disquietingly in his mind. He forced himself to think of Tarbis whose slender length was now stretched out on the Shemaka rug that covered the divan. Tarbis du Lac…Tarbis of the Lake…asleep or awake, she would be smiling in whimsical mockery of her latest lover.
Even though she had never once hinted that he had any predecessors in her affections, Rankin knew that Tarbis must have had many lovers before him. He knew that she must have learned ever so long ago that illusion is more alluring than candor.
And this thought slowly but certainly brought his consciousness back to the gilded face before him. The convictions that had haunted him so long became stronger than ever before. Had the occupant of that sycamore case lived until today, she too would have learned from experience that no lover cares for candor about his predecessors. Had she lived—
Then Rankin surrendered to a new madness which was more perturbing than that which he had sought to conquer that evening. It was terrifying. He shivered and sat erect in his chair. The scented poison of the cigarette curled unheeded around his fingers and stained them.
If the carver had given life and animation to those long almond-shaped eyes, they would be the eyes of Tarbis. The fire of the cigarette ate into his fingers and momentarily broke the spell. He ground the butt into the rug beneath his feet and struck light to another smoke. But the distraction was not enough to stop the surge of surmise that had become knowledge. That curved, antique smile of gilt was Tarbis herself staring at him, mocking the wooden conventions of Egyptian carving and fighting through the gold leaf into faithful portraiture.
He knew now what Tarbis had intended to convey to him. He had been haunted by the outlandish idea that Tarbis, ages ago, had discovered the secret of everlasting youth. Rankin had considered such a fancy outrageous, and any woman who inspired the like, uncanny. But now—
Tarbis had become something infinitely more terrifying: she was not one who had, ages ago, discovered the secret of eternal youth, but rather the product of an Egyptian magic which had enabled dead Tarbis to materialize and present the semblance of a physical woman.
Rankin clutched the arms of his chair. Every memory of Tarbis and her amorous encircling arms denied the conviction carried by that gilded smile; yet as he stared, Rankin began to remember things which he wished that he had never learned. To distract himself from the fancy that Tarbis was age-old, he had listened to adepts in High Asia, who muttered of Tibetan lore, and the lost magic of Egypt, never suspecting that he was acquiring a knowledge that would in the end be more horrible than the whim he sought to cast out.
He wondered when she emerged from the painted case with its painted hieroglyphs. He wondered what she had done with her endless yards of linen bandages, and how she had escaped their firm embrace. Then, bit by bit, there came back to Rankin the words of that slant-eyed adept he had befriended.
“There are nine elements which when fused into a unit make what your eye sees as a single human body: the physical, flesh-and-blood body; the shadow; the double, or astral counterpart called the ka; the soul, or ba; the heart; a spirit called khu; a Power; a Name; and a ninth component which is a motivating force.…And all these, mark you, are used in a mystical, or esoteric sense. Yet this knowledge if truly interpreted and rightly used can serve to work all the wonders of the hidden Egyptian magic that was codified by Thoth.…”
The embalmed physical body of Tarbis was in the case before Rankin; and that which had seemed to him to be a living woman was but an aggregation of elements that had joined the ka, which lingers near the physical body until it utterly disintegrates.
Every whimsical speech and mannerism of Tarbis came trooping back to confirm Rankin’s dismaying conviction. His brain reeled at the recollection of her avoidance of daylight.
“My dear,” she had murmured one evening, “you sit up to the most unusual hours making love to me—oh, ever so charmingly!—and then you marvel that I’d rather not spend the following day strolling along the Esplanade, or scaling Pic de Jer. And it’s one of my pet vanities, tu comprends, this being seen only at my best, at night, by my own lighting.…”
It was clear, now. That ancient necromancy had not been able to restore the missing shadow, so that Tarbis could not appear by the shadow-casting sun. The Name, the Power, the ka…perhaps all but the one missing irreplaceable element were present.
Then Rankin’s sanity revolted. He fought the urge to wrench the lid from the sycamore case. He dared not yield to the demand to find out what was behind that gilded, smiling mask. If indeed it was empty, that would mean that that dead, bandage-swathed thing emerged from its cell to offer him the unholy semblance of a living woman.
Rankin shivered as though a breath of the abysmal outer spaces had been exhaled into his veins and was chilling his blood.
“It can’t be empty!” his mind screamed to his self. “Good God, if it’s empty—!”
He dared not complete the utterance. He refused to think of the slender, shapely arms of Tarbis and her curved, carmine smile.
“But if it is in there, then she’s an illusion—a shadow from the tomb. That is as bad—or is it worse?”
Rankin forced his brain to cease that insistent surging that would end by cracking his skull. The veins in his temples would in another moment burst like rotted fire-hose.
Then the strokes of the cathedral bell mercifully interrupted the dread that he could neither accept nor deny. And during the moment of respite accorded him by that sound from the outer world, he noted for the first time the possible significance of the peculiar aroma of the cigarettes Tarbis had left in her case. It was reminiscent of something they smoked in Persia and Hindustan.
He smiled at the gilded mask. The last rich note of the cathedral bell reminded him that Lourdes was a holy city. He envied the calm priests and the pious pilgrims, and was glad that they were there, not far from the foot of the hill.
“Tarbis, you devil, and your cigarettes!” he exulted, gratefully ascribing his dreadful fancies to the influence of charras, or whatever other like drug they might have contained thus to upset his mind. He sighed with relief and weariness. “But maybe I deserve it.”
He rose and found that he still trembled violently. His legs barely supported his weight; but his brain no longer rocked and quivered from clamorings from beyond the Border.
Tarbis would be waiting for him in the living-room. She would see the mark of terror still branding his features. But he forgave her the ghastly jest. He could be generous, now that he had conquered his obsession by expressing it in words. He had asked her: and she had answered by showing him in her oblique way that there were fancies infinitely more disturbing than that of her possessing everlasting youth. Only Tarbis could have devised such an answer: slender, alluring Tarbis curled up on the Shemaka rug.
But as he reached the door, a lurking residue of the evening’s horror returned to remind him that his conquest had not been complete. He knew that in the end he would begin to wonder anew whether that case was or was not empty, and whether Tarbis was a revenant imprisoned by day, but loose at night to fascinate him with her archaic, Egyptian smile. And Rankin’s dreadful surmises marched once more in a circle that was started afresh by his glance of premature triumph at that gilded mask. That subtle, gilded smile! That hint of a hidden jest!
He retraced his steps. With an effort he grasped the cover. And then he slowly withdrew his hands. He knew that his sanity demanded that he refrain from giving any physical expression to that question. But, as he was about to step back, he knew what would become of his regained reason if he retreated without having learned, for ever and always, what the case contained, whose names and titles were depicted in painted hieroglyphs upon that carven sycamore.
Rankin thrust the cover aside. And then
he tore the crumbling linen bandages that swathed the features of the dead. He had ceased thinking; he had nerved himself to the task and he could not stop. His mind was dead, but his fingers lived. They tore another layer of bandages, and another.
Something forced him to look at that face. A blind instinct and a compelling terror urged him to learn the truth, whatever it might be. The dust of centuries mingled with the dust of crumbled linen and pungent spices and choked him. Then he stepped back and regarded the shrunken, hideously life-like features. The gilded mask had been a portrait; but here he faced Tarbis herself!
He gasped for breath. He sought to deny his eyes, refute the evidence of his senses, prove that he had not felt the burning ardor of those shriveled lips. This was the supreme horror, the utterly most outrage.
Rankin forced his eyes at last to leave that mockery of the loveliness of Tarbis. He saw what was worse: the final link in the evidence that bound Tarbis to that which had lived and died, ages ago. On the now exposed breast of the mummy he could see a knife scar: that same scar that marred the perfection of the living Tarbis—or the one that he had thought was living.
Rankin was bereft of all sensation but a terrific whirring in his ears and a drumming at his temples. He leaped back and flung open the door of the room. For a moment he thought of flight—flight in any direction whatsoever. Then he knew that he could never escape that which he had seen face to face, never elude the recollection of an Egyptian magic that was based on the reassembling of the scattered nine elements of a corpse. Rankin had penetrated the veil; he had pried, and loosened upon himself a doom. He thought for an instant of the day when he met Tarbis, a living, lovely woman. Each move that he had made had taken him further from the woman he loved; yet the knowledge that there was no refuge from that which stared at him drove him to his final desperate resource!
Rankin snatched the oil lamp from its bracket and unscrewed its top. Then he poured the contents of the bowl over the mummy. He applied the still-burning wick to the linen bandages. That would settle it, once and for all: decide now and for ever who and what was waiting for him in that living-room, one flight below, and centuries away.
As the flames enveloped the bandaged figure, he heard the voice of Tarbis screaming from the anguish of the dissolution of the bonds that tied the spiritual essences to the mummified body. He heard that awful cry from the living-room and knew that that fascinating simulacrum was in the agony of a second and final separation from its body. And the horror of having loved a shadow from the tomb was drowned in the greater horror of having caused the everlasting extinction of one who had loved life so well that she had returned from the dead.
Rankin dared not pass through that lower room to escape. And escape he must! Instantly, or never; yet to see beloved Tarbis—beloved though she was but the khu, the ka, the Name, and the Power assembled by a forgotten necromancer—to see her being consumed by the astral counterpart of the flames which enveloped the linen-bandaged body—
Rankin burst through the window at the head of the stairs. As he leaped, he heard above the crash and tinkle of glass a scream of mortal misery and despair more acute than any flame could wrench from her lips. He heard her very clearly pronounce his name.
She knew. As much of her as still remained knew that no power could ever restore her; that Rankin had destroyed her.
Rankin picked himself from the ground and fled blindly, without thought or sensation, and maddened by that final cry of agony. In his flight down the steep slope of the street leading from the hill of the citadel to the level of the city, Rankin stumbled and pitched headlong in a heap against a wall.
The impact numbed his senses and for the moment dulled the misery of his mind. Then a man’s voice pronounced his name, and a firm hand helped him to his feet.
In the moonlight he recognized Father Peytral. The old priest’s usually placid features were tense, as with a reflected terror that he read in Rankin’s staring eyes.
“My son,” said Father Peytral in a low, trembling voice, “I was watching across the street. I heard, and I saw the flames.…You have freed her earthbound soul…no, don’t try to explain.…Little as I know, it is too much. But she is released from an abomination.
“I understand your grief,” the old man continued, as he took Rankin’s arm. “Let us pray for her soul, and the healing of yours.”
“Too late,” muttered Rankin in a strained, hoarse voice. The unutterable grief of Tarbis rang again through his memory. “My soul is damned beyond the redemption of time, or your prayers.”
Rankin bowed; and the priest did not seek to detain him as he I turned and strode down the slope.
THE GARDEN OF EVIL
Originally published in Spicy Mystery Stories, July 1935.
“I betake me to the Lord of the Daybreak for refuge from evils that He hath created; and from the evils of the night when it darkeneth, and from the spells of women when they mutter, and from the envy of the envier when he envieth.”
—al Koran, Chapter CXIII.
Anything can happen in a city half as old as Time; but even the antiquity of Glenn Farley’s villa in the Salahiyeh suburb of Damascus failed to account for the uncanny action of the courtyard gate.
He was certain that he had barred it before seating himself in the arcade to watch the fumes of his bubbling narg-hileh blend with the moon glamor and the fountain mist; yet it was opening, stealthily, furtively, without the suggestion of squeaking hinges or the metallic grating of the bolt.
A narrow, slowly widening tongue of light marked its progress, and a faint, alluring whiff of perfume blended with the sweetness of Damask roses. Farley’s heart began pounding, and the hair at the back of his neck crept and twitched.
Then he saw that it was no ghost that crossed the threshold, but a girl in an acacia yellow ensemble. Her shapely legs were a silken splendor, and the twining tendrils of hair that evaded the confinement of her close fitting hat shimmered in the moon glow like gilt threads of a Boukhariot tapestry.
Farley was on his feet, but amazement checked his tongue. She was looking directly at him, yet he was certain that she was quite unaware of his presence. For a moment it seemed that some sleep-walker had found her way into the courtyard.
“I’m looking for Glenn Farley,” she finally said. Her voice was caressing, yet she spoke as though reciting a speech learned by rote.
He shivered, and not from the evening chill; for despite her glamorous beauty, Farley felt that she was guided by some alien and evil will; that something uncanny and sinister had entered the courtyard.
Then that uncomfortable moment passed and he rearranged the heap of cushions scattered about the Shirazi rug he had spread on the tiles of the arcade.
“Sit down,” he invited. “You’ve found him. Or wait a second, till I can rustle up a chair.”
But she did not wait. She seated herself as though she were an exceptionally graceful animated doll.
He licked his dry lips and wondered what she’d say next. The acacia yellow skirt had hitched up above her knees, but he ignored the eye-inviting white curves that found refuge in the frothy lace beyond her garter clasps.
“Mr. Farley, take a good look and tell me whether you’ve ever seen me before.” Her voice now was intense and pleading. “I’ve forgotten everything. Except that I know you. Can’t you tell me who I am?”
Before he could answer her outrageous question, something urged Farley to look toward the courtyard door. It was now closed. As he bounded across the garden he heard the soft, metallic scrape of the bolt, and the perceptible chunk as it seated.
But when he reached the solid panel he decided not to peer into the street. He was afraid that he would find no one there, and not even footprints in the dust.
“Damn…” he muttered, wiping away the sweat that had cropped out on his forehead. “In another minute I’ll be as screwy as she is!”
He retraced his steps, seated himself beside her, and said, “Listen, darling—you’re not the kind of woman anyone could ever forget. Now quit kidding me. What’s the racket?”
But he knew there wasn’t any racket. Something utterly outrageous had sent this lovely stranger to call him by name.
He took her gold mesh handbag, poked around in the assortment of coins, keys, and cosmetics, and found a letter addressed to Madeline Larkin, Hotel Metropole, Damascus.
It was postmarked Beirut. The note was brief. She was to have met her sister at the Beramakeh station at six that evening.
“So there’s no doubt about it,” he concluded. “You’re Madeline Larkin. Isn’t that familiar?”
“Of course,” she agreed, perceptibly brightening.
A name seems to make a difference. Now that she was properly tagged, Farley gave less thought to her uncanny entry into the courtyard. The sweetness of Damask roses was no longer going to waste, and neither were Madeline’s aphrodisiac curves. No one had ever claimed that breasts like twin lotus buds were any the less alluring because of amnesia.
“It was ghastly!” she murmured. “Just imagine forgetting one’s identity! If I hadn’t remembered you—”
“Think nothing of it!” Farley’s arms encircled her, and before she could break from his embrace, he had found her lips and fiercely kissed their pomegranate blossom sweetness. “I’ve got a wonderful cure for failing memory.”
The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction Page 13