Night Creatures

by Seabury Quinn

  The costume was by no stretch of imagination to be called ‘fancy’. It consisted of a fringed buckskin shirt worked with wampum and stained baby porcupine quills at neck and cuffs, a pair of buckskin breeches, long buckskin leggings, deeply fringed, and a pair of moccasins on which the beaded design of the jacket had been repeated. To top it off there was a coonskin cap with the hair left on and a wisp of ringed tail swinging from the back. ‘It is the dress of a coureur de bois, not just a modern imitation, but a true, historical antique,’ the little man explained. ‘One worn by the so formidable scouts who kept the forest trails open for the government when Louisiana was New France and New Orleans the capital of a great new empire. Yes, certainly.’

  He stepped back, dragged a full-length mirror forward, and held the buckskin garments out to Holloway. ‘Put them on, M’sieu’,’ he urged. ‘Regard yourself in them and say if I have not the flair for costuming a patron in accordance with his character and physique.’

  The costume fitted Holloway as if it had been tailored to his measure, and as he viewed himself in the long mirror he had to admit that it ‘complemented’ him, as the proprietor had declared.

  Holloway was long and rangy, six feet in his stockings, loosely jointed, agile, but inclined to be deliberate in his movements. A tennis player since his tenth year, a veteran of three years in the Southwest Pacific, he had not an ounce of surplus flesh on his big frame, though he tipped the scales at an even hundred and eighty. As he surveyed himself in the glass it seemed as if a century and more had been rolled back and he saw one of Governor Kerlerec’s Kentucky mercenaries looking back at him. ‘H’m,’ he conceded, ‘it’s not half bad, but if I’m to be tricked out as a coureur de bois I ought to have some armament——’

  ‘Perfectly, M’sieu’,’ the proprietor was delighted. ‘Me, I have just what is needed. Oh, yes!’ The weapon he produced from an old brass-bound chest was a museum piece, a flintlock rifle with a long octagonal barrel, walnut stock with brass butt plate, and a wooden ramrod. Its rear sight was a brass notch, its forward one a small button of silver. With it went two wooden powder flasks, one for the rifle’s charge, the other for the finer priming powder, and a buckskin bag of bullets.

  Holloway slung the rawhide thongs of the ammunition carriers over his shoulders and weighed the gun critically. It was a sweetly balanced piece, some fifty inches long from butt plate to muzzle, and as he laid his cheek against the hollow, carved for it in the dark walnut stock, he realized here was a precision weapon, slower in action and with less striking power than the M-1 he had been used to in the Pacific, but accurate to a hair’s width within its rather short range. ‘Does this go with the suit?’ he asked incredulously. ‘It must be worth——’

  ‘No matter, M’sieu’,’ the costumer broke in. ‘Me, I do not deal in trash. All my costumes are authentic, all my equipment genuine, I assure you.’

  Darkness had begun to fall, and purple shadows gathered in the narrow street as he emerged from the costumer’s with the long rifle cradled in the bend of his left elbow and a half-mask hiding the upper portion of his face and giving him a comfortable feeling of anonymity. The effects of his excellent dinner were still with him, and somehow he made several wrong turnings and found himself in Basin Street instead of Canal, where already crowds were gathering to watch the gorgeous spectacle of the parade.

  Behind him, looking like a giant barrel laid on its side, rose the roof of the Municipal Auditorium, a little to his left were the tall whitewashed walls of the old cemetery, and beyond the iron grille of its gate rose the ornate three-storied tomb of the ‘Widow Paris’, once famous as a voodoo priestess. Behind the tomb, as tightly packed as soldiers marching in close formation, the lime-washed sepulchers of long-dead citizens of New Orleans stood rank on solid rank. ‘Now, let’s see,’ he murmured. ‘Rampart Street should be that way; if I walk down it I’ll come to Canal, and——’

  The sharp, metallic click of a gate latch broke through his unilateral conversation and he looked up just in time to see a girl emerge from the old graveyard. Even at the little distance of a street’s width he could not distinguish much of her, for a dark cloak covered her from neck to heels, enveloping her completely as an Arab woman’s burnoose, but her walk was graceful as a dancer’s movements, a cadenced, sensuous swinging of the hips and breasts that was innate and unconscious as breathing, but none the less provocative, and as she turned her head so unconcernedly that he was sure she was unaware of his presence he caught a fleeting glimpse of her face, perfect oval with a small, sharp chin, a small straight nose, and hair that curled in a halo of tiny jet-black ringlets round her brow and ears. Then she was gone, her dark cloak blending with the violet shadows till it seemed a part of them.

  Holloway had an odd, eerie feeling, a sort of sudden stab of poignant yearning. He had been restless with the restlessness none but the soldier trying desperately to reaccustom himself to civilian life can understand since he had left the separation center. New York, which he had dreamed of with a longing half-painful, half-ecstatic, was somehow disappointing. Life had gone on without him for three years; his old friends had married or formed other interests, and one and all were intent on business. ‘How are you? Glad to see you! Good bye, now!’ had been the universal formula, and he was terribly lonesome. His old job waited for him, but somehow it seemed to have lost its attraction. ‘Make up your mind, man; are you coming back, or aren’t you?’ Wilbur Flacker had asked. ‘We’ve got a slue of work in the office—five new accounts came in yesterday, and we can use a good copywriter. We want to do the right thing by the returned soldier, of course, but if you don’t want the job. . . .’

  On sudden inspiration he had taken a train for New Orleans. He didn’t need to give Flacker a final answer till Monday, in the meantime he might find surcease from restlessness in the gayety of Mardi Gras. So there he was, due to go back tomorrow on the morning train, and still as lonesome as a cat in a strange alley, still mentally at sea.

  That girl, what had there been about her to attract him so suddenly and powerfully? It couldn’t have been love, or even the quick passion of the predatory male. He had no idea whether she were thin or chubby, his glimpse of her face had been only momentary, yet—there it was, as if far down in his subconscious a deep layer of desire had stirred and trembled.

  He hesitated for a moment, then set out after her, his long stride eating up the little distance separating them. An immense, inarticulate desire seemed to surge through him, for the moment nothing in the world seemed so important as to speak to this only half-glimpsed girl who had glanced at him so briefly across her cloaked shoulder.

  Overtaking her should have been easy, but somehow gathering darkness, unfamiliar streets, and perhaps his own eagerness combined to thwart him, so here he was, as much at fault as a hound when the fox takes to a brook, gazing down an empty, shadow-haunted street with no sign of his quarry in sight. ‘Chump!’ he repeated to himself. ‘Of all the chuckle-headed——’

  Plop! Something struck the sidewalk beside him with a soft impact and he looked down to see a white camellia at his feet. ‘Now, where the devil did that come from——’ he began when a light laugh sounded just above him.

  The house before which he stood was typical of the older buildings in the Vieux Carré—the old French Quarter. Sitting back some eight or ten feet from the sidewalk, it had double porches or ‘galleries’ before it, supported by intricately wrought iron grille work. The lower gallery, at street level, was without railing, but the upper was guarded by a balustrade of quaintly designed iron scroll work. ‘Mon fleuron, s’il vous plait, M’sieu’!’ came the command in a soft, high voice—‘My flower, if you please!’ A girl leaned laughing from the balcony, her slim, bare arm extended toward him and her slender fingers reaching for the flower at his feet.

  The pale light of the newly risen moon hung round her like a nimbus, and he recognized her instantly: the lady of the cemetery.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he greeted in
anely. ‘I’d been wondering——’

  ‘Ma fleur!’ she interrupted imperiously. ‘Toss it up to me—instantly, if you please!’

  He threw the white bloom up, but it fell just short of her questing fingers, and she laughed delightedly as he caught it before it could strike the pavement again. ‘Encore!’ she ordered. ‘Try again, great clumsy one.’

  Once more he tossed the blossom up, and once again, but each time it eluded her grasp. ‘C’est sans profit,’ she told him finally. ‘You lack the skill or I the length of arm, it seems. Bring her up to me, if you please.’

  This was more than he had hoped for. ‘You mean I may come up?’

  ‘But naturally. What is there to fear? Although I have the teeth I shall perhaps not bite you.’

  The street door of the house was unlatched and Holloway pushed it back, groped through a narrow, almost lightless hall, and up a flight of narrow, winding stairs. She waited for him on the balcony, and close up she was even lovelier than he had realized. Her face was pale, colorless, and fine-textured as a magnolia petal, but her lips were brilliant red. Her black hair, worn in a long bob with curls about the brow and neck, was positively gleaming, and he knew instinctively that the ringlets had not been put in with a hot iron. Beneath the haughty arch of slender brows her eyes were dark and soft, he could not say if they were black or pansy-purple, but they were beaming with good humor, and the smile upon her crimson lips pushed a small dimple in her cheek.

  ‘Er—ah——’ he began ineptly, for suddenly he felt tongue-tied, but she saved the situation.

  ‘Ma fleur, M’sieu’!’ she ordered with mock hauteur, as she held out her hand, then, with a sudden, rippling laugh, ‘mais non,’ she turned her back to him. ‘But no. Into your hand it fell; it is that you must set it back into its proper place.’ She bent her had and pointed to the curl in which she wished the flower set. ‘Come, M’sieu’, I wait upon you.’

  Her hair was almost incredibly soft and fine as it brushed his fingers, and his hand trembled as he put the flower in place and took quick stock of her. She made him think of ladies he had seen pictured in old French prints. Her gown was China silk, so heavy that it hung as straight as if it had been weighted at the hem, yet so sheer that it showed the lovely shadow of her figure. It was white, high-waisted, and cut with a low neck line and tiny shoulder-puff sleeves that showed her lovely arms off to perfection. Beneath her bosom was a sash of pale-blue silk that tied at the back underneath her shoulders in a coquettish knot and trailed its fringed ends almost to her dress-hem. Her slim, small feet were stockingless and shod with sandals fastened with cross-straps of purple ribbon laced across the instep and high up the ankle. Save for the small gold rings that shone in her ears she wore no ornaments of any kind.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he breathed as he set the white flower in place among the gleaming black curls.

  ‘Comment?’ She looked across her shoulder, arching her brows at him. ‘What is that you say?’

  ‘You’re lovely!’

  ‘M’sieu’!’ the laugh that rippled from her lips was like the sound of water poured from a tall silver vase. ‘But it is you who say the pretty things! Poor little Clothilde Deschamps, she is ugly like a frog and scrawny like the plucked pullet, yet you say that she is lovely, her. How can you say such utter flattery? No matter, I delight in it. We shall sit here tête-à-tête, and you shall tell me monstrous complimentary lies, and I shall believe them all. Come.’

  She took his hand and led him to a sofa standing by the wall, dropped down on it, and drew him down beside her. ‘Commence,’ she ordered arrogantly. ‘Lie to me grand comme le bras—as long as your arm. Tell me I am lovely, me——’ She moved a little closer and her soft hair brushed his cheek, its perfume fresh and sweet. Her eyes were wide and soft, and her mouth tender. ‘You meant it, vraiment?’

  Wine could not have raced his blood faster than it was racing with the intoxication of her nearness and the music of her voice. ‘Lovely!’ he whispered, and his heart beat so that he could hardly force the word out.

  Her eyelids lowered slowly, as those of one who falls into a gentle sleep might do, and her lips parted like the petals of a flower. ‘Embrasse moi!’ she whispered, and put her hands up to his cheeks, drawing his mouth down to hers. Her lips were smooth and soft as the flower petals in her hair, her arms were warm and tender round his neck, the sweetness of her perfumed body pressed against his was like an enervating drug. A humming sounded in his ears; everything went dark around him, and a spell of dreamy lassitude crept over him. He was fainting, swooning, dying . . . and he did not care. Nothing mattered. Nothing. . . .

  Abruptly she pushed him from her and rose to her feet. ‘We must make haste,’ she told him, almost matter-of-factly. ‘Await me here while I prepare my toilette. I shall be but one little moment, perhaps two or three, no longer.’

  ‘Your toilette?’ he echoed. ‘Why——’

  ‘Ah bah,’ she laughed as one might laugh at the inept question of a dull child. ‘You would not have me put the shame on you by going to the bal masque in such clothes as these?’ There was a patter of small feet upon the gallery floor, and she was gone.

  Holloway rose from the couch and walked to the porch rail. Things were happening so fast he couldn’t keep pace with them. He had found her, kissed her, now, it seemed, she was taking him to a masked ball. He looked down on the darkened street. Somehow, it seemed different. The shadows seemed to cluster more thickly, the street lamps burned less brightly, and in the changed light the houses lining the curbs seemed less ancient. From somewhere, far away, there came the muted throbbing of a drum, not the rhythmic rapaplan of a marching cadence, but a dull, persistent thrumming, urgent and impelling; there was insistence and abandon in the hollow booming of the taut parchment. He felt vaguely uncomfortable, recalling stories of the voodoo rites the blacks practiced in the days when Jackson Park was Congo Square.

  But the chill vanished and he smiled as from the house there came the sound of singing, a tune that was at once both sad and gay, as if the singer smiled through her tears. He could not distinguish the words, for they were in Creole, but the voice was charming, with the throaty, velvet quality that is the heritage of Latin races.

  ‘Voilà!’ Once more the pit-pat of her feet sounded and she stood framed in the oblong of the doorway, slim and glowing. Her tightly curling hair had been combed high and tied with a fillet of white silk at the front of which an aigret plume was fastened by a small pearl brooch. In her ears were pearls almost as large as filberts, and round her neck there lay another strand of pearls that made him catch his breath not once but twice—first, because the pearls were almost beyond price, and second, because the neck they rested on was almost the exact color of the pearls. Her gown of heavy white brocaded silk was cut low at the front and back, with little puff-sleeves at the shoulders, tight at the bosom, but flaring sharply from a high-set waist. Across her shoulders draped a scarf of silver tissue which hung down either side like the stole of a cleric. Her narrow feet were shod with satin slippers of pale shell-pink, flat-soled and heelless as a ballerina’s shoes, and laced across the instep and about the ankles with narrow ribbons. He felt his heart melt as he looked at her: The dim, misty black hair, the dark eyes like deep pools of shadow in the pale oval of her face, the smiling scarlet mouth—not a flaw in her from small head to tiny feet, her figure fine-drawn as a thoroughbred’s, slim, delicate, with dainty wrists and ankles and a neck like the stem of a flower. White and frail as a narcissus, and very beautiful.

  ‘Am I not truly élegante?’ she demanded as she took her skirts in her hands and dropped him a deep curtsey. ‘I shall not put the shame upon you, brave coureur de bois? One moment, while I set my visor on, then let us go.’ She placed a black half-mask across her face, tying its silk strings behind her head, and put her hand upon his arm, so lightly he could scarcely feel her touch.

  He glanced down at her appreciatively. The topmost curl of her coiffeur barely reached his sh
oulder. ‘What are you made up as?’ he asked. ‘The Empress Josephine?’

  Her eyes came up to his, wide with astonishment, and her lips parted in an indulgent smile for an obviously silly question. ‘I am the Empress of the French? But no, bon ami, I am nothing but poor little Clothilde Deschamps who goes out only as herself.’

  Sudden laughter bubbled up through her smile. ‘La, la!’ she exclaimed. ‘C’est drôle, hein?’

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Me, I have let you hold me in your arms, we have kissed each other; we are going to the bal masque together, and I do not even know your name, me! Ohé, but it is scandaleux, it is infamous, n’est-ce pas?’ Her laughter tinkled like a silver bell swung in the wind.

  ‘I’m Horace Holloway,’ he answered as his chuckle matched her higher, merry laugh. ‘It is a little unconventional, but——’

  ‘I like your name,’ she broke in, half gaily, half seriously. ‘It suits you very well. Horace was a poet, and I think that you are that; the very look of you says so, even if you write no verse your heart is filled with poesy. And hollow-way? A road that holds no traffic, no passengers, n’est-ce pas? Bon. I accept your poetry, my friend, and as for emptiness, cannot you find room in your heart for Clothilde? ‘As unaffectedly as a child she turned her face up to his and waited for his kiss, eyes closed, lips a little parted.

  He kissed her slowly, and she put both arms about his neck as she stood on tiptoe and pressed against him. How sweet, he thought, sweeter than the heart of a rose, sweeter than the mists of happiness—far too sweet! For deep within him a small bell seemed ringing, sounding a faint, warning tocsin of alarm. Despite the allure of her pale smooth skin, her bright vermilion lips and jet-black hair, despite her sweetness and her unaffected, trustful ardor, there was something vaguely frightening about her, some subtle, secret suggestion of the femme fatale, the vampire, the ruin of men’s souls and bodies.