Weird Tales volume 24 number 03

by Wright, Farnsworth, 1888-€“1940

  At that moment ragged lightning seemed to tear the southern sky in two,

  VINE TERROR

  349

  answered by an eruption of light in the north. As the following thunder battered the place with sound, Haverland stood up thrilling. He had a brilliant vision of the dying Keene; for indeed, this again was the legendary halo. The two colossal charges of electricity in the sky seemed to serve as electrodes," each bolt a pole, the laboratory between; and in this room the halo appeared once more, just as Haverland had seen it over the tube of gas three months past. There was a full, mysterious effulgence throughout the room. A pale, thin radiance flowed out from the thing on the floor and filled the room with a glory of soft light. By this illumination the engineer saw that it was really a denuded length of vine, now more like a hideous, tapering worm; saw, too, that there was scarcely a leaf remaining on the tangle of vines at the window. In the glory of the halo these boneless arms serpentined in a terrible dance; every tentacle glittered with sweat in small beads, that winked at the lightning like innumerable eyes. The vine in the room began to raise itself from the floor.

  And now, having formed a towering, closed palisade about it, and accompanied by the sound of shouting leaves and colliding trunks, the vine-hung grove of cot-tonwoods was advancing on the house. It was the sound of earthquake; the hill shook, and metal clanged in the central chamber of the laboratories. Followed a stupendous crash. Haverland hurried to the door, half stunned.

  Through the broad windows of this central chamber one commanded a view of the entire countryside. The hill itself was just high enough to permit sight over the foliaged heads of the oaks and cotton-woods. Haverland, looking down at the trees, saw the entire woods bathed in cold flame. The grove was one vast phos-

  phorescence. The tree-trunks glowed, and the masses of leaves shone like soft, burnished metal. All the great vines were alive with light, and hung from the trees in waterfalls of flame. It was a thing seen in a nightmare or read in a fairy-tale. Another Birnam Wood, that was coming by degrees, but surely, toward the central point that was the laboratories. The laboratory hill seemed to rise from a chasm whose walls were solid light. Trees and vines in motion. Before their advancing trunks and stems the earth was rolling away in waves. Then, dark off in one end of the chamber, the engineer saw that the oak on the hill had already entered the building. The end generator had been shouldered aside and crashed through the floor into the basement. Commotion was in the air. The storm entered the chamber with the oak, and rain beat on Haverland's face.

  And still it was not too late. The engineer whirled and retreated through his own laboratories, leaping the handful of twining creepers in his way. In the back of the building he picked up a sledgehammer, then raced back through the smother of rain to the garage, in which stood three full drums of gasoline. He ran up the incline on which the drums rested, and worked rapidly with a wrench. He stepped back a little, swung the sledge in one heavy blow. The drums, released, tumbled booming down the runway, spilling their contents as they went, and bounded out the doorway to go careering down the hill.

  Haverland waited, dripping with rain and perspiration, then produced a box of matches. As he was about to strike a light the heavens gaped and a volcano of flame plunged cracking and thundering into the woods like the finger of God.

  Haverland flung himself out of the garage in time to escape the arm of fire

  WEIRD TALES

  that leaped up the hill. From the back of the laboratories he watched a tower of flame boom up in the declining storm. Above low thunders he heard three successive explosions as the gasoline drums went. There was enough of it, he felt, to suffocate, if not to consume. A shift of wind carried the sound of crackling and hissing vegetation, and carried into the engineer's nostrils the charnel stench of all the pyres of history. Sickened, he stumbled back into the laboratories.

  THE following day dawned calm and clear. Roman Sholla came out early and stood on his front lawn, smoking his pipe deliberately and looking up at the hill. A crew had appeared several hours before, and were making much noise as they repaired the damage done to the laboratories by a falling oak. There had been a strong, unpleasant odor in the air all morning, which likely enough came with the shift of the wind from the packing-plant in the city. The members of the crew, as one occasionally came down into South, found the work distasteful, the stench seemingly worse the higher one got up the hill.

  One man alone in the building, the chief engineer, Haverland, had escaped serious injury when lightning had touched off three drums of gasoline in the garage and burned it. The South woods had suffered heavily, with a number of the trees and the extraordinarily large vines that grew here either totally burned or badly charred. The famous oak that had taken a journey away from Sholla's own yard, though not burned, was now dead, its leaves already withered.

  Eric Shane came out presently, scratching his head and blinking cautiously. He and Sholla were joined shortly by little Fred Yanotsky and Papa Freng. Sholla, situated as he was nearest the laboratory,

  took on some importance. He told how the storm had wakened him. The woods had caught on fire somehow, and three explosions ("when those gasoline go off") illuminated the room he slept in.

  "It was one big bonfire," he said, holding out his arms.

  He told of seeing the lightning strike.

  "Big," he said helplessly, shaking his head. The bolt was indescribably huge. He could tell of the sharp burned-leather and ozone smell in the air afterward, though, and did. But the thunder, ah! They all remembered that sound of cataclysm when the big bolt struck, but that could not be described either.

  Sholla's three friends were silent. They had said nothing yet, and seemed very much satisfied about something as they looked up at the crew busy at the shattered masonry and twisted metal above them.

  "Well, Fred," said Sholla, "what you think of it, eh?"

  "I t'ink," said dark little Yanotsky, "maybe it vas a good t'ing if all the plant fall in. Never, no good come of machines."

  "Ah!" said Sholla contemptuously. "Always the same. Crazy stubborn like your father. You should go to school, Fred Yanotsky!"

  "This morning," said white-haired Papa Freng, "a squirrel came to my window for nuts. He was very tame, and the first I have seen in a long time." His eyes were fixed on the dreaming distance. As he spoke, something moving near by brought him to sharp attention. With something of eagerness in his voice he exclaimed, "Look!"

  He pointed up the road. A small cottontail, pursuing a rather aimless course of exploration or foraging, was proceeding along the ditch, nibbling at green

  VINE TERROR

  351

  shoots. Its way was blocked presently by a creeper that lay along the road and sagged under its own weight. It was remarkable in being almost totally leafless. The rabbit, in skipping over it, suddenly froze, as beast does in the presence of beast. But if the grotesque old Keene had been responsible for the mockery of sentience in these singular growths of

  South, his ghost must have rested at last. The watchers saw the rabbit pass carelessly, unmolested, over the stiff tangle of vines and disappear among the ruins of the South woods. Roman Sholla walked the few paces up to the vine, and, toeing its snarled trunks and leafless ten-drills, said, "Dead."

  able Revery

  (Written to music) By ROBERT NELSON

  Black roses sprout across the sky, Pipes sing insensate 'neatfi the sea, The clamant heads of madmen fly And shatter with a dark outcry, As tones transpose to deeper dye And leaves whirl wild with jubilee Through themad organist's rambling brain; In the disordered sepulcher A lady's dead eyes strive to stir, She dares to laugh, but all in vain; Three-fingered hands paint a far frieze With the black blood of vanquished devils, Who sway and slay the music-breeze In their daft and dying revels.

  Now ebon fluids 'gin to flow And drip with waxen candle-men; Black disks of stone are trundling low; From the organ's bosom fuming slow, Fouler and sadder perfumes blow To dr
own the bourns of demon ken; Skulls flown from swarthy corpses kiss

  And feed upon the organist's soul, Which ne'er doth cease to toll and roll Bell-like within this dusk abyss; Fell plants and flowers writhe in wombs Of blighted worlds remote from morn, And musty myrrh exhales from tombs Whirling in utmost stars forlorn.

  Swart suns on sounding waters swell The turgid notes to direr din, And murky spirits soar from hell To flap their cerements palpable In the wild player's face, and tell Jet jewels into his mouth, and spin Mad gossamers amid his hair; Swift raven locks entwine his throat, His eyes no longer glare and gloat; As from a tower high in air, The console wakes a weirder fear; His flaming, fitful fingers chill; One tear he weeps, a dead man's tear: The sable revery is still.

  Uhe

  GJ

  rail of the Cloven Hoof

  By ARLTON EADIE

  "One look was enough. I snapped off my flashlight and fled."

  A startling weird mystery story, of strange deaths on the desolate

  Moor of Exham, and the mysterious creature known as

  "The terror of the Moor"

  The Story Thus Far

  WHILE on a tramping vacation on Exmoor, Hugh Trenchard discovers an old recluse, Silas Marie, lying unconscious after having been attacked by a mysterious thing which, though speaking with a human voice, leaves behind it a trail of footprints shaped like a cloven hoof.

  352

  Seeking help at the nearest house, a private hospital, Hugh meets Professor Felger, the proprietor, a sinister figure whose features are hidden beneath a surgeon's gauze mask. The professor tries to prevent Hugh phoning the police, but he gets the message through by a stratagem, afterward making his escape.

  Ronnie Brewster, a former fellow-stu-

  W. T.—S

  THE TRAIL OF THE CLOVEN HOOF

  353

  dent of Hugh's, is called in to attend to Silas Marie's injuries, and one night Ronnie and Hugh are astonished by the arrival of a strange girl, Joan Endean, apparently half dead with cold and exhaustion. She recovers with suspicious suddenness the moment she is alone with Hugh, and to his unbounded amazement informs him that she has just made her escape from Professor Felger's institution, which is really a private mental hospital. So convinced is Hugh of her sanity that when Dawker arrives to take her back, he resolutely refuses to give her up.

  The police have been notified, however, and when Sergeant Jopling arrives he finds that Joan has gone, but lying on the bed is the body of Silas Marie, stabbed to the heart with a dagger whose hilt is shaped like a cloven hoof. Later that night the body is found to be missing, and the only clue to its disappearance is a trail of cloven hoofs beneath the bedroom window.

  Andrew Shale, Marie's lawyer, requests an interview with Hugh, and informs him that Marie has signed a letter of attorney, giving Hugh the benefit of his fortune, conditional on his giving a solemn undertaking to use his utmost endeavor to destroy the supernatural monster which is referred to as "The Terror of the Moor."

  13

  There was a long pause after the lawyer had made his startling announcement. He carefully folded the document, laid it on the pile by his side, then once more leant forward on his desk, his chin resting on his interlocked fingers, his shrewd eyes fixed on the young man's face.

  Hugh Trenchard, on his part, found himself utterly at a loss for words. The W. T.—6

  ® This is the third installment of a fascinating book-length serial story by Arlfon Eadie, a British master of weird fiction, whose skill in building up eery plots and gripping suspense is rapidly winning him a well-deserved fame and making new friends for his stories. If you have not yet read the preceding installments of this thrilling weird mystery novel, then you should begin reading it with this issue, for otherwise you will be missing a real treat. For your convenience we preface this installment of "The Trail of the Cloven Hoof" with a synopsis of the chapters which have gone before.

  news of the unexpected legacy—for legacy it was, in spite of the lawyer's respect for legal nicety of expression—followed so swiftly by the fantastic, knight-errant task on which it was conditional, filled him with an amazement too deep to be expressed by the usual commonplaces of speech. His mind groped in vain for a rational explanation. Was it the mere desire for revenge that had induced Silas Marie to offer his fortune as a reward for the destruction of the mysterious thing that had caused his death? Or was there another, a deeper motive?

  "Well, Doctor Trenchard," the voice of the lawyer snapped his train of thought. "I suppose you would like a little time in which to think over things, before coming to a decision?"

  "It certainly seems to call for a little serious thought," Hugh answered with a smile.

  The smile was reflected on Shale's features as he shrugged his shoulders.

  "I should imagine that the answer to that depends on your own belief in matters supernatural. If you are convinced

  WEIRD TALES

  that this so-called Terror of the Moor' exists only in the imagination of my client, you may be inclined to settle the matter by accepting right now. It would not be a very dangerous or difficult task to rid the earth of a thing which is nonexistent."

  "That's very true, Mr. Shale. But I fear the matter is not to be so easily disposed of. In my own mind I am quite certain that the moor is haunted by a— well, for the want of a more definite name, let us call it a monster, which, though not necessarily supernatural in the general meaning of the word, is certainly unknown to science. I had already made up my mind to get to the bottom of the mystery, and intended to take lodgings in the nearest village so as to be as near the scene as possible. But that will not be necessary now, as you inform me that Moor Lodge is my property. Would there be any objection to my taking up my residence there immediately?"

  Andrew Shale shook his head.

  "Your claim to the estate is incontestable, the more so in view of the fact that Mr. Marie has no living relatives. The legal formalities may take a day or two, but I will hand you the keys of the house now, if you wish to take possession immediately. I think you may rest assured that no one will dispute your presence there"—Mr. Shale paused and a slow smile twisted his parchment-like features —"unless it be the fabled 'Terror of the Moor'!"

  A few minutes later the interview terminated, and Hugh hurried back to tell his friend of the new and unexpected development that had taken place.

  Ronnie was profuse in his congratula-- tions. "Well, if you're not the luckiest lad ever!" he exclaimed. "You can't even

  get lost in a fog without barging up against a millionaire with a fortune to give away!"

  "What makes you think that Silas Marie was a millionaire?"

  PvOnnie laughed gayly.

  "I know because I've been using the highly specialized gray matter which I carry beneath my hat. My mode of deduction would do credit to the superest super-sleuth that ever sleuthed. Listen, and I will expound: I have sufficient knowledge of the habits of my fellow-bipeds to know that when a man wears a suit as old and as shabby as that of Silas Marie's, he's either very rich or very poor. Silas Marie could not have been poor, or he could not have bequeathed you anything. Therefore he was a very rich man, A millionaire is a very rich man, therefore Silas Marie was a millionaire. Q. E. D., as my friend Euclid used to say."

  "I only hope you're right," said Hugh, laughing. "But you seem to forget that I shall have to do something for the money."

  "Slay one full-sized dragon," nodded Ronnie. "Saint George up to date! What a pity Miss Endean has disappeared —she could have fitted in with the general scheme of things by taking the role of the Enchanting Princess! But you are surely not taking that Terror stuff seriously, are you?"

  Hugh drew meditatively at his pipe.

  "Upon my word, old chap, I hardly know whether I do or not," he said presently, a look of indecision on his tanned face. "Sometimes the whole affair seems so fantastic that it would be a positive relief if I could think it was all a nightmare. But I can't, and that's t
he trouble."

  "But hang it all! this is the Twentieth Century—not the Dark Ages!" expostulated his friend. "What data have you got? A few footprints made by a cloven

  355

  hoof—footprints which the Harborer of the Staghounds, a man who has grown gray on these moors, declares to have been the slot of an old stag."

  Hugh Trenchard shook his head.

  "I would only be too glad to accept that explanation if I could, Ronnie. But I know well enough that it was no stag that I encountered the night Marie was attacked."

  "Then what on earth was it?"

  "That's what I'm going to find out— and before long, too." Hugh started to his feet and began to pace the room restlessly. His lean jaws were tightly clenched and there was a light of battle in his eyes. "There must be some explanation—a natural and logical explanation that will fit the facts as we know them. The trouble is that I've grasped the tangled skein haphazard, and every attempt to straighten out the snarl only makes the confusion worse. Once the end of a thread is in my hands, the whole tangle may straighten out with one pull "

  "You remind me of my old granny soliloquizing over her knitting!" Ronnie interrupted flippantly. "What do you say to getting the car out and having a look at your new home? You may pick up a few clues, you know," he added with a grin.

  'ugh needed no second invitation. Ten minutes later he was seated in Ronnie's small but powerful car, being piloted through the winding lanes which led to the great uplands of the Moor. Each was busy with his own thoughts, and it was not until half the distance had been covered that Ronnie broke the silence.

  "So you have really decided to take up your residence at Moor Lodge?"

  Hugh glanced round in some surprize.

  "Of course. What better center could I have for my investigations?"

  "Ho, ho!—investigations?" His friend chuckled as he repeated the word with exaggerated dramatic emphasis. "That seems as if 3'ou're going into the detective business in real earnest. But surely you can't be thinking of living at that all-forsaken place like Robinson Crusoe on his island?"