The Doctor Satan

by The Complete Series from Weird Tales

  The lean tall figure in the red cloak, and these warped creatures of after-life, were of the same stuff. Satan could command them, not be destroyed by them, because he thought as they did and lived as they had lived before death took them.

  “Take him!” he caught Satan’s soundless command to the hideous gray shapes. “Take his soul! Hold it here, that on earth his body may be forever a lifeless shell, with soul and intelligence gone!”

  And then the gray shapes were on Keane, and he was a wavering form in a monstrous sea.

  There was no pain. He saw claw-like hands rip into him, and saw the likeness of his body shredded from him as bits of cloud are shredded from the main cloud bank by a screaming wind. But there was, of course, no pain.

  However, there was mental agony far exceeding any physical pain. He had no way of being told it, but he knew the truth: If these clawing hands managed to rip away entirely the thought-mantle that clothed his spirit, if they managed to strip him of his conception of himself, then he could never go back the way he came.

  He would be really dead, with no link between him and the hulk of himself that sat before the empty water glass on the ebony desk.

  “Take him.” Doctor Satan was exhorting the host he would assuredly join when it was his turn really to die. “Strip his soul! Keep him here!”

  No real substance, but mist-stuff that could be shredded and torn as misty veils are torn! Keane struggled in the hideous current of writhing, clawing, venomous forms. Doctor Satan was near him. He got to the red-cloaked form.

  He had but half an arm left, though like a man in a nightmare, he could look at it and be appalled and yet feel no pain. But the hand remained on this arm, the whole underside of which had been clawed away. That hand drove for Satan’s throat, and found it.

  Perhaps it was because Keane was not really dead, and that hence his materialization had a shade more actuality than those of the writhing things about them. Perhaps it was that his hate of the man, whose cruel joke it was to act as Lucifer as well as costume himself in Luciferian manner, was strong enough to take some tangible form here in a place of intangibility. At any rate, Keane’s one crippled hand did more damage than all the clawing hands of all the clawing things that tore at him.

  Like a ball of mist on a mist-column, Satan’s head wavered and seemed about to leave its body as Keane’s hand grasped at the shadowy throat.

  “Take him!” Satan exhorted, frenziedly, fearfully, to the crawling throng. “Take him—”

  His own red-gloved hands were wrenching and tearing at Keane’s mangled wrist. But they could not tear it away.

  “Take him—”

  Something was happening to Keane.

  Suddenly, impossibly, he was beginning to feel pain. It was as though Keane’s body was being broken and every atom of flesh on it was crushed. As the pain swept down on him in even-increasing waves, the horrible gray shapes faded from his perception—as did the red-clad form of Doctor Satan. The luminous gray nothingness in which he had moved for a unguessable length of time (it might have been a minute or a year or a century) began to fade too.

  There was Satan’s thwarted, raging command, “Take him—”

  There was a last vengeful tightening of his hand on Satan’s throat. Then, the pain mounted over everything else and robbed him of consciousness.…

  A voice was calling to him. A girl’s voice, frantic, urgent.

  “Ascott! Ascott!” He tried to open his eyes, and could not for a moment. He was shuddering, and felt clammy with perspiration. He had just undergone some terrible ordeal, but for a little while longer he was spared memory of it.

  “Ascott! Darling—”

  He knew that voice. Yes… the Voice of Beatrice Dale… yes.…

  With an enormous effort he opened his eyes. He saw the polished ebony of his desktop within inches of his face; saw his hands.

  His hands! He gasped, and stared at them as memory returned. But his hands were all right. He had them both, and neither was torn or mutilated. Nor were his arms.

  “Nightmare!” he muttered.

  But he knew better than that. He had undergone an actual experience in an actual place: the land of the dead. Now—

  He sat up. He had been slumped over his desk with his hands supporting his head while his intelligence roamed afar from his body under the influence of Marxman’s antidote. But now he sat up—and saw Beatrice’s white face.

  “Ascott! Thank God. You’ve been unconscious—dead, from all appearances—for an hour over the twelve the drug was supposed to stop working! I was going to call a doctor, the police, anything! But now—”

  “Now, I’m all right,” said Keane, breathing heavily. “All right—now—nightmare I went through.”

  Beatrice bathed his clammy face, gave him adrenalin, ministered to him with all the affection she kept from expressing verbally for him. And then, when he was breathing normally and, while pale, seemed all right again, she said, “Did you—did you find Doctor Satan, Ascott?”

  Keane’s nostrils thinned.

  “I did. I got him in time. And—he almost got me. He calls himself Doctor Satan—and there is a hell, Beatrice, and at his command I was almost kept in it! I wonder.… Many a circumstance is shaped apparently by coincidence, and many a mortal unconsciously acts in a way to bear out literally the conceptions of religion. An actual hell.… I wonder if our red-cloaked friend really could be an incarnation of the evil force we’ve always called Satan, though he himself thinks he is only acting a part?”

  “Drink this,” said Beatrice, handing him a cup of coffee with the practicality of the female. “Ascott, did Doctor Satan come back to life too?”

  “I’m afraid he did,” sighed Keane.

  “Then everything was useless? Satan can return whenever he pleases, and get the secrets of the dead as he did before?”

  Keane shook his head.

  “That, at least, I think we can stop. There is a hell, and creatures in it like maimed demons. Then it follows that there must be beings in the land of the dead who were decent in life and are so in death. And it also must follow that they outnumber the maimed.”

  He stared at the coffee, making no effort to drink it.

  “I was almost kept from returning to life by the things from hell. I think Doctor Satan might be kept from returning to life by the decent dead. Anyway, I’m going back, now, to see my father and band the dead against Satan if he should ever return. Go to Marxman’s assistant and get another dose of the antidote.”

  “For God’s sake, Ascott—”

  Keane stared at her. His eyes were as grim as death, and as impersonal.

  “Get more of the drug, please, Beatrice.”

  Beatrice Dale’s lips parted, closed again without uttering words. She turned and left him.

  THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE, by Paul Ernst

  Originally published in Weird Tales, May 1936.

  CHAPTER I

  The Sword Dance

  It was the middle of an early summer afternoon in Louisville. The sun bathed the streets with hot gold. People thronged the main avenue. Women shoppers streamed in and out of the stores; men hurried on business; traffic rolled in orderly haste.

  The middle of a prosaic afternoon. All seemed as it should be.…

  The town car turned onto the avenue from a side street. It was a big foreign car, speaking of great wealth. Its curtains were drawn.

  The town car stopped before a building which was under construction. The sidewalk here was railed off to prevent pedestrians on the walk from being struck by falling bricks. But as the town car halted, a man appeared from the interior of the unfinished building. He walked unobtrusively past the car.

  As he passed, one of the curtains over the car windows was raised. A shaking hand came out with a newspaper-wrapped package in it. The man from the building took the package. He
walked back into the building again.

  The town car’s motor raced preparatory to going away. But before it could get into motion, another car with curtained windows swung onto the avenue. This did not stop anywhere. It slowed a little near the town car, but that was all.

  However, in the short time of its slowing, it discharged a passenger. Of the hundreds on the avenue, only a few noticed the car, a big blue sedan. Of these few, only two or three saw the passenger get out. At first, that was!

  A prosaic street, crowded with prosaic people going about their commonplace affairs.…

  And then, seemingly all at once, they began to stare at the discharged passenger. Once they had seen, they craned their necks to look again, shocked out of all commonplace living by what their eyes were regarding.

  The person who had come from the blue sedan was a woman—a girl, rather, scarcely more than twenty. She was tall, maturely curved, strikingly lovely. She had dark hair and great dark eyes, and skin so fair that it looked snow-white in contrast to the blackness of her hair and eyes.

  She had descended from the car, run a few paces to get her balance as she hit immovable ground from a moving object, and then stood still in the middle of the avenue, with surprised drivers jamming their brakes to keep from running her down.

  For an instant she continued to stand there, in the middle of the street, as if dazed, with traffic a twin river around her. Then cars began to stop on each side of her, and cars and staring crowds began to ring her in.

  “What’s the matter with her?” a woman snapped. “Is she walking in her sleep?”

  “Might be, at that,” a man snickered beside her. “Looks like she’s got a nightie on.”

  Dazedly the beautiful girl looked around at the crowds. And it could be seen that the nightgown simile was not far from the mark.

  Sheer strips of some stuff swathed her body, were draped loosely around her legs. That was all she wore, the sheer stuff through which her form could be vaguely seen as through mist.

  “What is she—a veil dancer?” snorted another man.

  The traffic cop from the corner began to force his way to the block-up in the center of the square. Like a statue swathed in mist, the girl stood in the cleared space. And now the door of the town car opened and an elderly man stumbled out. His eyes were wide with horror. He staggered toward the girl, hands outstretched as though groping his way.

  Suddenly the girl moved. She poised one slippered foot and from the folds of gauze that covered her she drew a short, slim blade. Her voice raised in a shrill, eerie incantation, the words of which could not be distinguished. She waved the sword. She began to dance.

  “A publicity gag,” someone shouted. “She’s a sword-dancer after a newspaper write-up.”

  The crowd laughed and yelled agreement. Some fool began to beat time to the girl’s slow rhythmic steps by clapping his hands. But horror was growing on the face of the elderly man from the town car. And on the face of the cop, as he came nearer through the crowd, was amazement and something like awe.

  “It’s Jane Ivor,” he panted suddenly. “By the saints—Jane Ivor!”

  The dancing girl whirled more rapidly, more wildly. Her great dark eyes glittered with lurid fires. She performed her sword dance in the middle of the city’s main street with more abandon.

  “That’s the girl,” shouted the man who was clapping time. “If publicity’s what you want, you’ll get it.”

  The girl seemed not to hear him—seemed not to hear or see anybody. Her supple left hand tore at her breast, and a strip of the gray gauze enfolding her came loose and floated to the ground, exposing her smooth white shoulders.

  “Now you’re going to town!” laughed the man who clapped.

  “More, more!”

  “Jane Ivor—” panted the traffic cop, tearing his way forward with ever less ceremony.

  “My daughter!” groaned the elderly man from the town car, fighting the heedless mob between him and the girl.

  The girl began to sing more wildly. And now the crowd stilled a bit as a few words could be distinguished in her chant, and as more and more of the swathing gauze was torn from her body. People began looking at one another inquiringly.

  “Satan… my master…” some of the words of the girl’s chant sounded. “Devil… worship…”

  The swathing gauze was nearly all on the street now. And a woman cried out a bit as the meaning came home to all. No publicity seeker would go quite so far. No girl would dare such censure in a mere quest for notoriety.

  “Let me through, damn you!” shrieked the elderly man, fighting at the heedless ranks still between him and the girl.

  “Get out of the way, you dumbbells,” raged the cop, beginning to use his night stick. “Jane Ivor—let me get to her!”

  There was stunned silence, in which the girl’s chant sounded louder, more weird than ever. Then, like a concerted echo, the crowd repeated the name.

  “Jane Ivor! Jane Ivor!”

  A young man in the outer fringe of the crowd gasped.

  “Good God! It is Jane Ivor! Most beautiful deb in the city! Daughter of John Ivor, the distilling magnate! Kidnapped a week ago, along with her kid brother! And now she comes back—like this!”

  In the cleared spot on the avenue now danced a girl with moonlight hair and eyes, who wore nothing but frayed, high-heeled slippers. Her eyes were frenzied as she waved the slim sword above her head and chanted. And now the words of the incantation were only too clear.

  “Satanic Majesty, I worship you. You, the Devil, are my master. Death to your enemies!”

  The crowd, coming through heedless laughter and growing confusion to something like terror, gave back before the girl’s shimmering blade. That sword was obviously razor-sharp, and she was slashing it around with horrifying abandon.

  “The Devil’s my master! Death to his enemies!”

  The pirouetting lithe figure circled the ring of cars and people shutting it in. And then a man yelled.

  “My God!—look at her eyes!”

  The girl’s black eyes seemed about to start from her head. Wild white formed a rim around the pupils.

  “She’s mad! Get her before she kills somebody!”

  “Satan is my master! I worship the Devil—”

  Screaming now, the crowd that had been laughing rolled back from the girl. The man who had been clapping time, ashen-faced, led the rush. Several other men, with the traffic cop beside them, leaped for her.

  “Back!” she screamed, slashing with the sword. “You are enemies of Satan! I will kill all enemies of the Devil!”

  “Jane,” cried the elderly man, breaking at last through the milling crowd. “Jane—my own daughter—”

  “Back—I’ll kill—”

  The elderly man, sobbing, gasping, fell back from the keen blade that had darted toward his heart.

  “Jane—don’t you know me? It’s Dad!”

  “Back—”

  The traffic cop sprang at her. Like a tigress she stepped away, blade flashing. The cop’s face turned sickly as the blade grazed his cheek. And then, the others were on her, horrified, deathly afraid of the blade in her mad fingers, but risking their lives to catch the lovely maniac before others in the crowd died to the bite of the blade.

  “Enemies of the Devil! Enemies of the Devil!”

  Her shrill voice was a clarion call, a bugle note of madness. But they got her at last, hands gripping her white flesh firmly, though as compassionately as possible.

  The elderly man approached her as she struggled in the grip of the men, who tried to cover her writhing white body with their coats.

  “Jane,” he groaned, “Look at me, recognize me! It’s John Ivor, your father, Jane.”

  The girl only glazed at him out of great eyes in which the whites were lunatic rings around the pupils, and tried to gouge his
face with taloned fingers.

  “Jane Ivor! Released by the kidnappers—but insane!” the young man breathed. “Wait till I get that story into the paper! Insane heiress back from kidnap hell to do nude sword dance in the main street!”

  He ran for a phone. And the knot of men holding Jane Ivor, once the city’s most popular debutante, went with her to the town car which still stood beside the half-completed building, and put her in it with her white-faced father.

  CHAPTER II

  Satan’s Threat

  The air was tense, still, in the best private room of Louisville’s finest hospital.

  Four people were in that room. One, tied with webbed linen to the iron bed, was Jane Ivor. The second was her father, who sat with fingers gripping the edge of his chair till they showed white in the reflected sun-glare from the cream-colored walls. The third was the chief of staff of the hospital, an internationally known psychiatrist. The fourth was a figure such as might have stepped out of a nightmare or a masquerade ball.

  This figure was tall, spare. It was cloaked from heat to heels in a red garment that enveloped it utterly. Over its face was a cloth mask, also red. On its hands were red rubber gloves, and hiding the head and hair was a red skull-cap from which projected two knobs in mockery of Lucifer’s horns.

  Keen eyes blazed through the eyeholes of the mask. Steel-gray eyes, idly calm.

  The girl with the mad eyes writhed on the bed against the bonds. But her struggles were patently to get to the weird red figure, although in her eyes was stark horror of it.

  “Satan,” she whispered. “Master, I must serve you.”

  The figure uttered words which made the red mask move a bit over shrouded lips.

  “Yes. I am Satan. And you must serve me. You hear?”

  “I hear and I obey,” whispered the girl.

  “Jane—” faltered John Ivor, in a cracked voice.

  The red-garbed figure held up a stern hand. The fingers of that hand seemed shielded in fresh blood as the sunlight caught the smooth red rubber of its glove.

  John Ivor, Louisville’s richest citizen, bit his lips for silence. The red mask moved with more words.