Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  Suddenly every eye turned to the altar.

  There came from a recess a woman, tall and graceful, bearing in her hands a slender vase of white stone. From this, on reaching the altar, she poured out upon it a thin stream of golden-colored oil. An intense, reddish flame arose at once. The vast audience stood motionless.

  Then a note on the pipe, and from the throng, quite close to Grosvenor, a young man stepped, and mounted broad, shallow steps to the altar. In his hand he carried a live beetle held delicately by the edge of elevated wings. Straight to the altar he proceeded and dropped the insect in the center of the flame. So silent was the motionless throng that the rackle of the flame devouring this inconsiderable offering was plainly heard. Bowing to the priestess, the young man returned to his place.

  A sigh, such as proceeds from a large concourse of people who have been keeping silence, now arose from the throng, which forthwith broke up into conversing groups.

  Then the first intimation of fear fell upon Grosvenor like a black mantle. For the first time since his arrival among this incredible company, a quarter of a mile underneath the surface of an ‘uninhabited’ West Indian island, he took sudden thought for his safety. It was late in the day to think of that! He was surrounded by these people, had intruded into their worship, a worship ancient when the Classics were composed. He was effectually cut off from any chance of escape, should they prove hostile. He saw a thickening group closing in about him – curious, incredulous, utterly taken by surprize at discovering this stranger in their midst . . .

  By a great effort, and in a voice hardly more than a whisper – for his danger had made itself overwhelmingly apparent to him – he spoke in his best attempt at pure Greek.

  ‘I give you greeting, in the name of Pan!’ he said.

  ‘And to you, greeting, O barbarian,’ replied a deep and rich voice behind him.

  The throng about him stirred – a movement of deference. He turned. The graceful priestess stood close to him. He bowed, prompted by an instinct for ‘good manners’.

  The priestess made a graceful inclination before him. Instinct prompted him a second time. He addressed her.

  ‘I come to you in love and peace.’ It was a phrase he had gathered from the hymn to Pan – that phrase ‘love and peace’. He continued: ‘I have sojourned in the Land of Hellas, the home of the great Pan, though no Hellene, as my speech declares.’

  ‘Sojourn here, then, with Pan’s people in love and peace,’ returned the priestess with commanding dignity. She made him a summoning gesture.

  ‘Come,’ she said, and, turning, led the way back toward the altar.

  He followed, into the blackening gloom of the sanctuary, and straight before him walked his conductress without so much as a glance right or left. They passed at last between two enormous curtains screening an aperture, and Grosvenor found himself in a very beautiful room, square, and unmistakably Greek in its appointments. Two long couches stood at each side, along the walls. In the center a chaste, rectangular table held a great vase of the yellow metal, heaped with pomegranates.

  The priestess, pausing, motioned him gracefully to one of the seats, and reclined opposite him upon the other.

  She clapped her hands, and a beautiful child ran into the room. After a round-eyed glance at the stranger, he stood before the priestess, who spoke rapidly to him. He left the room, and almost immediately returned with a vase and two small goblets of the ruddy gold. The drink proved to be pomegranate-juice mingled with cold water. Grosvenor found it very refreshing.

  When they had drunk, the priestess began at once to speak to him.

  ‘From where do you come, O barbarian?’

  ‘From a region of cold climate, in the north, on the mainland.’

  ‘You are not, then, of Hispaniola?’

  ‘No. My countrymen are named “Americans”. In my childhood my countrymen made war upon those of Hispaniola, driving them from a great island toward the lowering sun from this place, and which men name “Cuba”. ’

  The priestess appeared impressed. She continued her questioning.

  ‘Why are you here among the People of Pan?’

  Grosvenor explained his mission to the island of Saona, and, as well as his limited knowledge of Greek permitted, recounted the course of his adventure to the present time. When he had finished: ‘I understand you well,’ said the priestess. ‘Within man’s memory none have been, save us of the People of Pan, upon this island’s surface. I understand you are the forerunner of others, those who come to take of the wood of the surface. Are all your fellow-countrymen worshippers of Pan?’

  Grosvenor was stuck! But his sense of humor came to his rescue and made an answer possible.

  ‘We have a growing “cultus” of Pan and his worship,’ he answered gravely. ‘Much in our life comes from the same source as yours, and in spirit many of us follow Pan. This following grows fast. The words for it in our tongue are “nature-study”, “camping”, “scouting”, “golf”, and there are many other varieties of the cult of Pan.’

  The priestess nodded.

  ‘Again, I understand,’ she vouchsafed. She leaned her beautiful head upon her hand and thought deeply.

  It was Grosvenor who broke a long silence. ‘Am I permitted to to make enquiries of you?’ he asked.

  ‘Ask!’ commanded the priestess.

  Grosvenor enquired about the rise and fall of the water in the great cylinder; the origin of the cylinder itself: was the metal of which the floors and steps and handrail were made common? Where did the People of Pan get the air they breathe; How long had they been here, a quarter of a mile beneath the earth’s surface? On what kind of food did they live? How could fruit – he indicated the pomegranates – grow here in the bowels of the earth?

  He stopped for sheer lack of breath. Again the priestess smiled, though gravely.

  ‘Your questions are those of a man of knowledge, although you are an outlander. We are Hellenes and here we have lived always. All of us and our fathers and fathers’ fathers were born here. But our tradition teaches us that in the years behind the years, in the very ancient past, in an era so remote that the earth’s waters were in a different relation to the land, a frightful cataclysm overwhelmed our mother-continent, Antillea. That whole land sank into the sea, save only one Deucalion and his woman, one Pyrrha, and these from Atlantis, the sister continent in the North. These, so the legend relates, floated upon the waters in a vessel prepared for them with much food and drink, and these having reached the Great Land, their seed became the Hellenes.

  ‘Our forebears dwelt in a colony of our mother continent, which men name Yucatan, a peninsula. There came upon our forebears men of warlike habit, men fierce and cruel, from a land adjacent to Hellas, named “Hispaniola”. These interlopers drove out our people who had for eons followed the paths of love and peace; of flocks and herds; of song and the dance, and the love of fields and forest and grove, and the worship of Pan. Some of our people they slew and some they enslaved, and these destroyed themselves.

  ‘But among our forebears, during this persecution, was a wise man, one Anaxagoras, and with him fled a colony to the great island in the South which lies near this island. There they settled and there would have carried on our worship and our ways of peace. But here they of Hispaniola likewise came, and would not permit our people to abide in peace and love.

  ‘Then were our people indeed desperate. By night they fled on rafts and reached this low-lying place. Here they discovered the cylinder, and certain ones, greatly daring, cast themselves on the mercy of Pan and descended while the waters were sunken.

  ‘Here, then, we have dwelt since that time, in peace and love.

  ‘We know not why the waters fall and rise, but our philosophers tell us of great reservoirs far beneath the platform where man’s foot had not stepped. In these, as the planet revolves, there is oscillation, and thus the waters flow and ebb once in the day and not twice as does the salt sea.

  ‘We believe that in
times past, beyond the power of man to measure or compute, the dwellers of these islands, which then were mountain-tops, ere the submersion of Antillea and its sister continent Atlantis, caused the waters of the sea to rise upon them, and whose descendants those of Hispaniola did name “Carib” were men of skill and knowledge in mighty works, and that these men, like one Archimedes of the later Hellas, did plan to restore the earth’s axis to its center, for this planet revolves not evenly but slantwise, as they who study the stars know well. We believe that it was those mighty men of learning and skill who built the cylinder.

  ‘Vessels and the metal of the floor were here when we came, and this metal, being soft and of no difficulty in the craftsman’s trade, we have used to replace the vessels as time destroys them and they wear thin. This metal, in vast quantities, surrounds our halls and vaults here below the surface of the land above.

  ‘Our light is constant. It is of the gases which flow constantly from the bowels of the earth. Spouts confine it, fire placed at the mouths of the spouts ignites it. The spouts, of this metal, are very ancient. Upon their mouths are coverings which are taken away when fire is set there; replaced when the light is needed no more in that place.

  ‘Our air we receive from shaft-ways from the surface of the earth above. Their ground openings are among the white rocks. Our philosophers think the yellow metal was melted by the earth’s fires and forced up through certain of the ancient air-openings from below.’

  The priestess finished her long recital, Grosvenor listening with all his faculties in order to understand her placid speech.

  ‘I understand it all except the fruit,’ said he.

  The priestess smiled again, gravely.

  ‘The marvels of nature make no difficulty for your mind, but this simple question of fruit is difficult for you! Come – I will show you our gardens.’

  She rose; Grosvenor followed. They passed out through various chambers until they arrived at one whose outer wall was only a balustrade of white stone. An extraordinary sight met Grosvenor’s eyes.

  On a level piece of ground of many acres grew innumerable fruits: pineapples, mango-trees, oranges, pomegranates. Here were row upon row of sapodilla trees, yam-vines, egg-plants, bananas, lemon and grapefruit trees, even trellises of pale green wine-grapes.

  At irregular intervals stood metal pipes of varying thickness and height, and from the tops of these, even, whitish flares of burning gas illuminated the ‘gardens’. A dozen questions rose in Grosvenor’s mind. ‘How? Why?’

  ‘What causes your failure to understand?’ enquired the priestess, gently. ‘Heat, light, moisture, good earth well tended! Here, all these are present. These fruits are planted from long ago, and constantly renewed; originally they grew on the earth’s surface.’

  They walked back through the rooms to the accompaniment of courteous inclinations from all whom they passed. They resumed their places in the first room. The priestess addressed Grosvenor.

  ‘Many others will follow you; those who come to procure the wood of the forest above. Nothing we have is of any value to these people. Nothing they may bring do we desire. It would be well if they came and took their wood and departed knowing naught of us of the People of Pan here underground.

  ‘We shall, therefore, make it impossible for them to descend should they desire so to do. We shall cut the topmost steps of the ladder away from the stone; replace them when your countrymen who drove the people of Hispaniola from Cuba have departed. I will ask you to swear by Pan that you will reveal nothing of what you have seen. Then remain with us if you so desire, and, when your countrymen have departed, come again in peace and love as behooveth a devotee of Pan.’

  ‘I will swear by Pan, as you desire,’ responded Grosvenor, his mind on the incalculable fortune in virgin gold which had here no value beyond that of its utility for vessels, and floors, and steps! Indeed he needed no oath to prevent his saying anything to his ‘countrymen’! He might be trusted for that without an oath! A sudden idea struck him.

  ‘The sacrifice,’ said he, – ‘the thurìa, or rather, I should say, the holokautósis – the burnt offering. Why was only an insect sacrificed to Pan?’

  The priestess looked down at the burnished metal floor of the room and was silent. And as she spoke, Grosvenor saw tears standing in her eyes.

  ‘The sinking and rise of the waters is not the only rhythm of this place. Four times each year the gases flow from within the earth. Then – every living thing upon this island’s surface dies! At such seasons we here below are safe. Thus it happens that we have no beast worthy of an offering to Pan. Thus, at our festivals we may offer only inferior things. We eat no flesh. That is sacred to Pan, as it has been since our ancestors worshipped Him in the groves of Yucatan. That He may have His offering one or more of us journeys to the cylinder’s top at full moon. Some form of life has always been found by diligent search. Somewhere some small creature survives. If we should not discover it, He would be angry, and, perhaps, slay us. We know not.’

  ‘When does the gas flow upward again?’ enquired Grosvenor. He was thinking of Christian Fabio waiting for him there on the beach.

  ‘At the turning of the season. It seethes upward in three days from now.’

  ‘Let me take my oath, then,’ replied Grosvenor, ‘and depart forthwith. Then I would speak concerning what I am to do with those others who follow me to this land.’

  The priestess clapped her hands, and the little serving-lad entered. To him she gave a brief order, and he took his departure. Then with the priestess Grosvenor made his arrangement about the wood-cutting force – a conversation which occupied perhaps a quarter of an hour. The little messenger returned as they were finishing. He bowed, spoke rapidly to the priestess, and retired.

  ‘Rise, and follow me,’ she directed Grosvenor.

  Before the great idol the people were again gathering when they arrived beside the altar. They stood, and the priestess held out her arms in a sweeping gesture, commanding silence. An imponderable quiet followed.

  His hands beneath hers on the altar of Pan, Grosvenor took his oath as she indicated it to him.

  ‘By the great Pan, I swear – by hill and stream, by mountain and valley, by the air of the sky and the water of streams and ponds, by the sea and by fire which consumes all things – by these I swear to hold inviolate within me that which I have known here in this temple and among the People of Pan. And may He pursue me with His vengeance if I break this my oath, in this world and in the world to come, until water ceaseth to flow, earth to support the trees, air to be breathed, and fire to burn – by these and by the Horns and Hooves of Pan I swear, and I will not break my oath.’

  Then, conducted by the priestess, Grosvenor walked through the people, who made a path for them, across the great expanse of the temple to the small anteroom beside the cylinder. Here the priestess placed her hands upon Grosvenor’s head. ‘I bless thee, in Pan’s name,’ she said, simply. He opened the door, passed through onto the metal platform, and pushed it shut behind him . . .

  He found the ascent very wearing and his muscles ached severely before he could discern clearly the stars flaming in the disk above his head. At last he grasped the stone handles on the rim. Wearily he drew himself above ground, and stretched himself upon the level rim of the cylinder.

  Before starting down the gentle slope for his camp under the shade of the mahogany forest’s abundant leafage, he paused beside one of the white rocks, laboriously heaving it to one side. Beneath it was an aperture, running straight down, and lined with a curiously smooth, lavalike stone. He had seen one of the air-pipes which the priestess had described. He knew now that he had not been passing through some incredibly strange dream. He stepped away and was soon within the forest’s grateful shade.

  He reached camp and Christian Fabio a little before seven-thirty that evening, finding supper ready and the faithful Christian agog for news. This he proffered in Christian’s kind of language, ending by the statement that the
stream ‘originated in a lake of indubitably prehistoric volcanic origin possessing superficial undulatory siphonage germane to seismic disturbance.’

  Christian, pop-eyed at this unexpected exhibition of learning on his master’s part, remarked only: ‘How very extraordinary!’ and thereafter maintained an awed silence.

  The next day Grosvenor signaled the Madeleine, on her return trip, and taking Christian with him, returned to San Juan ‘for certain necessary supplies which had been overlooked’.

  From there he sent the company a long letter in which he enlarged on the danger of the periodic gas-escape and gave a favor-able report on the island’s forestation. He discharged Christian with a recommendation and a liberal bonus. Then he returned to Saona alone and completed his month’s survey, doing his own cooking, and sleeping with no attention to non-existent insects. He did not visit the island’s center again. He wished to expedite the woodcutting in every possible way, and disliked the loss of even a day.

  The survey completed – in three weeks – he went back to San Juan, cabled his full report, and was at once instructed to assemble his gang and begin.

  Within another month, despite the wails of ‘mañana’ – tomorrow – a village, with himself as lawmaker, guide, philosopher, friend, and boss, was established on Saona. Cooks, camp roustabouts, wood-cutters, and the paraphernalia of an American enterprise established themselves as though by magic, and the cutting began. Only trees in excess of a certain girth were to be taken down.

  By almost superhuman efforts on Grosvenor’s part, the entire job was finished well within the three-month period. Three days before the exact date when the gas was to be expected, every trace of the village except the space it had occupied was gone, and not a person was left on Saona’s surface. The great collection of mahogany he had made he took, beginning a week later, by tugboat to San Juan, whence it was reshipped to New York and Boston, to Steinway, and Bristol and other boat-building centers; to Ohio to veneering plants; to Michigan to the enormous shops of the Greene and Postlewaithe Furniture Company.