by Otto Penzler
The clergyman soon arrived—a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age—one whom Gerard Douw respected much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one, perhaps, more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian—of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined, and immediately on his arrival she requested him to pray for her, as for one who lay in the hands of Satan, and who could hope for deliverance—only from heaven.
That our readers may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event which we are about imperfectly to describe, it is necessary to state the relative position of the parties who were engaged in it. The old clergyman and Schalken were in the anteroom of which we have already spoken; Rose lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her guardian; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment.
The old man now cleared his voice, as if about to commence; but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay, and she, with hurried alarm, exclaimed:
“Godfrey, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.”
Gerard Douw, forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions in the immediate impulse, stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired.
“O God do not go, dear uncle!” shrieked the unhappy girl; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him.
But the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung to by a strong blast of wind.
Schalken and he both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to shake it.
Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Schalken and Douw applied every energy and strained every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain.
There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open.
One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonised as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence.
A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and, yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, they were nearly precipitated into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Schalken sprang to a chair and gazed out upon the street and canal below. He saw no form, but he beheld, or thought he beheld, the waters of the broad canal beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circular ripples, as if a moment before disturbed by the immersion of some large and heavy mass.
No trace of Rose was ever after discovered, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer detected or even suspected; no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth and to arrive at a distinct conclusion was to be found. But an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers as at all approaching to evidence upon the matter, nevertheless produced a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Schalken.
Many years after the events which we have detailed, Schalken, then remotely situated, received an intimation of his father’s death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in the church of Rotterdam. It was necessary that a very considerable journey should be performed by the funeral procession, which, as it will readily be believed, was not very numerously attended. Schalken with difficulty arrived in Rotterdam late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. The procession had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear.
Schalken strolled down to the church—he found it open—notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The official who corresponds to our sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected funeral, pacing the aisle of the church, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing wood fire, which, as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled on the hearth of a chamber which communicated, by a flight of steps, with the vault below.
In this chamber Schalken and his entertainer seated themselves, and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can to solace his solitude.
In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Godfrey Schalken, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened by some one shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room.
He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of light robe of muslin, part of which was so disposed as to act as a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, and towards the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults.
Schalken felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure, and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow its guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and, turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of his first love, Rose Velderkaust. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant the artist long before in his happy days.
A feeling of awe and of interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the spectre, if spectre it were. She descended the stairs—he followed; and, turning to the left, through a narrow passage, she led him, to his infinite surprise, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Dutch apartment, such as the pictures of Gerard Douw have served to immortalise.
Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black-cloth curtains around it; the figure frequently turned towards him with the same arch smile; and when she came to the side of the bed, she drew the curtains, and by the light of the lamp which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror-stricken painter, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Vanderhausen. Schalken had hardly seen him when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was lying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and he had fallen beside a large coffin which was supported upon small stone pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin.
To his dying day Schalken was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him a curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event we have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made Schalken’s pictures sought after, but even more so as presenting a portrait, as close and faithful as one taken from memory can be, of his early love, Rose Velderkaust, whose mysterious fate must ever remain matter of speculation.
The picture represents a chamber of antique masonry, such as might be found in most old cathedrals, and is lighted faintly by a lamp carried in the hand of a female figure, such as we have above attempted to describe; and in the background, and to the left of him who examines the painting, there stands the form of a man apparently aroused from sleep, and by his attitude, his hand being laid upon his sword, exhibiting considerable alarm: this last figure is illuminated only by the
expiring glare of a wood or charcoal fire.
The whole production exhibits a beautiful specimen of that artful and singular distribution of light and shade which has rendered the name of Schalken immortal among the artists of his country. This tale is traditionary, and the reader will easily perceive, by our studiously omitting to heighten many points of the narrative, when a little additional colouring might have added effect to the recital, that we have desired to lay before him, not a figment of the brain, but a curious tradition connected with, and belonging to, the biography of a famous artist.
THORP McCLUSKY (1906–1975) studied music at Syracuse University but spent most of his life as a freelance writer in New Jersey. As is true for most journalists and fiction authors who don’t enjoy great success in a single literary genre or special field of expertise, McClusky wrote both fiction and nonfiction in wildly disparate areas. He enjoys a modest reputation as the author of about forty short stories for the pulps, mostly in the horror category, occasionally for the prestigious Weird Tales, though he also wrote Westerns and mysteries. Among his best-known works are the serial Loot of the Vampire, published in book form in 1975, and the frequently reprinted “The Crawling Horror.” He used a variety of pseudonyms, including L. MacKay Phelps, Thorp McClosky, Otis Cameron, and Larry Freud.
Among his juveniles are Chuck Malloy Railroad Detective on the Streamliner (Big Little Book, 1938) and Calling W-1-X-Y-Z Jimmy Kean and the Radio Spies (Better Little Books, 1939). Most of his pulp fiction was published in the 1930s and 1940s, after which he mainly produced journalism for The Saturday Evening Post, Man’s Magazine, and others. His single nonfiction book was Your Health and Chiropractic (1962). He also served as the editor of Motor magazine.
“While Zombies Walked” was the uncredited inspiration for the B movie Revenge of the Zombies, produced by Monogram in 1943. Directed by Steve Sekely, with an “original” screenplay by Van Norcross and Ed Kelso, it starred John Carradine, Robert Lowery, Gale Storm, and Mantan Moreland. The story was first published in the September 1939 issue of Weird Tales.
THE PACKARD ROADSTER had left the lowland and was climbing into the hills. It was rough going; this back road was hardly more than two deep, grass-grown ruts—the car barely crawled. Overhead the vivid greenery of the trees nearly met, shrouding, intensifying the heat.
Eileen’s letter had brought Anthony Kent down the Atlantic seaboard, his heart leaden, his thoughts troubled. There had been a strangeness in Eileen’s brusque dismissal.
“Tony,” the letter had read, “you must not come to see me this summer. You must not write to me any more. I do not want to see you or hear from you again!”
It had not been like Eileen—that letter; Eileen would at least have been gentle. It was as though that letter had been dictated by a stranger, as though Eileen had been but a puppet, writing words which were not her own. . . .
“Back in the hills aways,” an emaciated, filthy white man, sitting on the steps of a dilapidated shack just off the through highway, had said sourly, in answer to Tony’s inquiry. But Tony, glancing at his speedometer, saw that he had already come three and seven-tenths miles. Had the man deliberately misdirected him? After that first startled glance there had been a curious flat opacity in the man’s eyes. . . .
Abruptly, rounding a sharp bend in the narrow road, the car came upon a small clearing, in the heart of which nestled a tiny cabin. But at a glance Tony saw that the cabin was deserted. No smoke curled from the rusty iron stovepipe, no dog lay panting in the deep shade, the windows stared bleakly down the road.
Yet a planting of cotton still struggled feebly against the lush weeds! This was the third successive shack on that miserable road that had been, for some strange reason, suddenly abandoned. The peculiarity of this circumstance escaped Tony. His thoughts, leaden, bewildered, full of the dread that Eileen no longer loved him, were turned too deeply inward upon themselves.
It had been absurd of Eileen—throwing up her job with the Lacey-Kent people to rush off down here the instant she heard of her great-uncle’s stroke. Absurd, because she could have done more for the old fellow by remaining in New York.
And yet old Robert Perry had raised his dissolute nephew’s little girl almost from babyhood, had put her through Brenau College; Tony realised that Eileen’s gesture had been the only one compatible with her nature.
But why had she jilted him?
The woebegone shack had merged into the forest. The road, if anything, was growing worse; the car was climbing a gentle grade. Now, as it topped the rise, Tony saw outspread before his eyes a small valley, hemmed in by wooded hills. A rambling, pillared house, half hidden by mimosa and magnolias, flanked by barns, outbuildings, and a tobacco shed, squatted amid broad, level acres lush with cotton.
At first glance the place seemed peculiarly void of life. No person moved in the wide yard surrounding the house; no smoke curled from the field-stone chimney. But as Tony’s gaze swept the broad, undulating fields he saw men working, men who were clad in grimy, dirt-greyed garments that were an almost perfect camouflage. Only a hundred feet down the road a man moved slowly through the cotton.
Tony stopped the car opposite the man.
“Is this the Perry place?” he called, his voice sharp and distinct through the afternoon’s heat and stillness.
But the grey-clad toiler never lifted his gaze from the cotton beneath his eyes, never so much as turned his head or paused in his work to signify that he had heard.
Tony felt anger rising in him. His nerves were taut with worry, and he had driven many miles without rest. At least the fellow could leave off long enough to give him a civil answer!
But then, the man might be a little deaf. Tony shrugged, jumped from the car and ploughed through the cotton.
“Is this the Perry place?” he bawled.
The man was not more than six feet from Tony, working toward him, with lowered head and shadowed face. But if he heard, he gave no sign.
Sudden, blind rage swept Tony. Had his nerves not been almost at snapping-point he would never have done what he did; he would have let the man’s amazing boorishness pass without a word, would have turned back to his car in disgust. But Tony, that day, was not himself.
“Why you—” he choked. He took a sudden step forward and jerked the man roughly erect.
For an instant Tony glimpsed the man’s eyes, grey, sunken, filmed, expressionless as though the man were either blind or an idiot. And then the man, as if nothing had occurred, was once more slumping over the cotton!
“God Almighty!” Tony breathed. And suddenly a chill like ice pressing against his spine swept him, sent his mind swirling and his knees weakly buckling.
The man wore a shapeless, broad-brimmed hat, fastened on his head by a band of elastic beneath his chin. But the savage shaking Tony had given him had jolted it awry.
Above the man’s left temple, amid the grey-flecked hair, jagged splinters of bone gleamed through torn and discoloured flesh! And a greyish ribbon of brain-stuff hung down beside the man’s left ear!
The man was working in the cotton—with a fractured skull!
TONY’S THOUGHTS WERE reeling, his mind dazed. How that man could continue to work with his brains seeping through a hole in his head was a question so unanswerable he did not even consider it. And yet, dimly, he remembered the almost miraculous stories that had come out of the war, stories of men who had lived with bullet-holes through their heads and with shell fragments imbedded inches deep within their brain-cases. Something like that must have happened to this man. Some horrible accident must have numbed or destroyed every spark of intelligence in him, must have bizarrely left him with only the mechanical impulse to work.
He must be taken to the house at once, Tony knew. Gently Tony grasped his shoulders. And in the mid-afternoon’s heat his nerves crawled.
The stooping body beneath the frayed cotton shirt was snake-cold!
“Lord—he’s dying—standing on his feet!” Tony mumbled.
The man resisted Tony’s efforts to direct him toward the car. As Tony pushed him gently, he resisted as gently, turning back toward the cotton. As Tony, gritting his teeth, grasped those cold shoulders and tugged with all his strength, the man hung back with a strange, weird tenaciousness.
Suddenly Tony released his grip. He was afraid to risk stunning the man with a blow, for a blow might mean death. Yet, strong as he was, he could not budge the man from the path he was chopping along the cotton.
There was only one thing to do. He must go to the house and get help.
Stumbling, his mind vague with horror, Tony made his way to the car, and sent it hurtling the last half-mile down the narrow road to the house.
Only subconsciously, as he plunged up the uneven walk between fragrant, flowering shrubs, did he notice the strange discrepancy between the well-kept appearance of the fields and the dilapidation of the house. His mind was too full of the plodding horror he had seen. But the windows of the house were almost opaque with dirt, and at some of them dusty curtains hung limply while others stared nakedly blank. The screens on the long low porch were torn and rusted as though they had received no attention since spring; the lawn and the shrubbery were unkempt.
Three or four dust-grey wicker chairs stood along the porch. In one of those chairs sat a man.
He was old, and sparsely built. Had he been standing erect he would have measured well over six feet, but he lay back in his chair with his legs extending supinely before him. Tony knew instantly that this was Eileen’s great-uncle, Robert Perry.
As he plunged up the dirt-encrusted steps Tony exclaimed hoarsely, “Mr. Perry? I’m Tony Kent. There’s a man—”
The old man was leaning slightly forward in his chair. His blue eyes in his deeply lined face suddenly flamed.
“Have you got a gun?” The words were taut and low.