by Cave, Hugh
Clear! Paul stumbled to a stop. A dry moan came from his lips as his prey screamed beyond reach. He stood helpless—for a fraction of an instant.
Then, out of his pocket, his revolver leaped into his fist. He spun about. Twin spurts of flame burned toward the fleeing shape which was already careening from side to side in wild sweeps. There was an explosion, sharp and bellowing. The car lurched drunkenly, whirled sideways. Brakes screeched. Like a blundering mastodon the machine shot into the deep grass as the bursting tire threw it out of Allenby's feeble control.
And Paul was running again. He was beside the groaning shape before the driver could get out from behind the wheel. The revolver dug viciously into Allenby's ribs.
"Get out!"
Allenby hesitated, then obeyed, trembling.
"I—I won't go back there!"
The gun pressed deeper. Allenby stared suddenly into Paul's face. What he saw there made him shudder. He stood quite still. Then, pushing the revolver away nervously, he mumbled.
"You—you are not as mad as I thought."
"You should have known that before you tried to get away."
"Perhaps I should have."
"You're going back with me."
Allenby's voice trembled. "I have no alternative?"
"None."
With a shrug of defeat, the physician walked very quietly, very slowly, back toward the house.
The Gray Toad Inn had not changed. At one table Kermeff sat stiff and silent, under Jeremy's cold scrutiny. In the corner, among the shadows, sat the girl of the ermine wrap with her escort, only vaguely interested in what had happened.
Murgunstrumm still stood in the center of the floor, staring. The creature who had come, only a few moments before, from the bowels of the house, now sat alone at a nearby table. He glanced up as the door closed behind Paul and the physician. Then he looked down again, indifferently. And then, eagerly, Murgunstrumm approached him.
"Can I go now?" the cripple demanded.
"Yes. Get out."
Murgunstrumm rubbed thick hands together in anticipation. Breathing harshly, noisily, he wheeled about and limped quickly back to the table where his four guests were once again sitting quietly. His mouth was moving as he swept the lantern away and turned again.
He had forgotten, now, the presence of his undesirable guests. He did not look at them. His eyes, stark with want, were visioning something else—something he had waited for hours. And he was trembling, as if in the grip of fever, as he started toward the door where the strange gentleman had first appeared.
But he did not reach it. Before he had covered half the intervening distance he stopped very abruptly and wheeled with a snarl of impatience, glaring at one of the covered windows. He stood rigid, listening.
Whatever he heard, it was a sound so inaudible and slight that only his own ears, attuned to it by long habit, caught its vibrations. The men at the table, turning jerkily to peer in the same direction, at the same window, saw nothing, heard nothing. But Murgunstrumm was scraping hurriedly toward the aperture, swinging his lantern resentfully.
He twisted the shade noisily. As it careened up, exposing the bleak oblong of unclean glass, the lantern light fell squarely upon the opening, revealing a fluttering shape outside. More than that the watching men did not discover, for the innkeeper's hands clawed at the window latch and heaved the barrier up quickly.
It was a winged thing that swooped through the opening into the room. The same hairy obscene creature that had whispered to Murgunstrumm, more than an hour ago, to admit the four unsuspecting guests! Rushing through the aperture now, it flopped erratically about the lantern, then darted to the ceiling and momentarily hung there, as if eyeing the occupants of the inn with satisfaction. Murgunstrumm closed the window hurriedly and drew the shade again. And the bat—for bat it was—dropped suddenly, plummet-like, to the table where sat the man who had recently come from the inner rooms.
It happened very quickly. At one moment, as Paul and his companions gazed in sudden dread, the winged thing was fluttering blindly about the ghastly white face of the man who sat there. Next moment there was no winged thing. It had vanished utterly, disintegrated into nothingness; and there at the table, instead of a solitary red-lipped man in evening clothes, sat two men. Two men strangely alike, similarly dressed, with the same colorless masks of faces.
They spoke in whispers for a moment, then turned, both of them, to glance at the four men near them. And one—the one who had appeared from the mysterious internals of the inn—said casually:
"We have visitors tonight, eh, Costillan?"
The answer was a triumphant gloating voice, obviously meant to be overhead. "Ay, and why not? They were coming here as I was leaving. Our fool of an innkeeper would have refused them admission."
"So? But he was afraid. He is always afraid that he will one day be discovered. We must cure that, Costillan. Even now he has told your guests to leave."
The man called Costillan—he who had an instant before been something more than a man—turned sharply in his chair. Paul, staring at him mutely, saw a face suddenly distorted with passion. And the man's voice, flung suddenly into the silence, was vibrant with anger.
"Murgunstrumm!"
Hesitantly, furtively, the cripple limped toward him.
"What—what is it, sir?"
"You would have allowed our guests to depart, my pretty?"
"I—I was—"
"Afraid they would learn things, eh?" The man's fingers closed savagely over Murgunstrumm's wrist. He made no attempt to guard his voice. Obviously he held only contempt for the men who were listening. "Have we not promised you protection?"
"Yes, but—"
"But you would have let them leave! Did I not order you to keep them here? Did I not whisper to you that I might return—hungry?"
Murgunstrumm licked his lips, cringing. And suddenly, with a snarl, the creature flung him back.
"Go down to your foul den and stay there!"
At that Murgunstrumm scuttled away.
No sound came from Paul's lips. He sat without stirring, fascinated and afraid. And then a hand closed over his arm, and Jeremy's voice said thickly, harshly:
"I'm goin' to get out of here. This place ain't human!"
Paul clutched at the fingers and held them. Escape was impossible; he knew that. It meant death, now. But he had only two hands: he could not also hold Kermeff and the physician's terrified companion. Lurching to his feet, Kermeff snarled viciously:
"If we stay here another instant, those fiends will—"
"You cannot leave," Paul countered dully.
"We shall see!" And Kermeff kicked back his chair violently as he reeled away from the table. Allenby, rising after him, clung very close.
A revolver lay in Paul's pocket. His hand slid down and closed over it, then relaxed. Jeremy, frowning into his face, muttered thickly. The two physicians stumbled toward the door.
Sensing what was coming, Paul sat quite still and peered at the nearby table. The two men in evening attire had stopped talking. They were watching with hungry, triumphant eyes. They followed every movement as Kermeff and Allenby groped to the door. And then, silent as shadows, they rose from the table.
The two fleeing men saw them each at the same instant. Both stood suddenly still. Kermeff's face lost every trace of color, even in the yellow hue of the lamp. Allenby cried aloud and trembled violently. The two creatures advanced with slow, deliberate steps, gliding steps, from such an angle that retreat to the door was cut off.
And then, abruptly, Paul saw something else, something infinitely more horrible.
The remaining two inhabitants of this place of evil—the man and woman who had entered together but a short time ago—were rising silently from their table near the wall. The man's face, swathed in the glow of the candlelight beneath it, was a thing of triumph, smiling hideously. The girl—the girl in the white ermine wrap—stood facing him like one in the grip of deep sleep. No expressio
n marred her features; no light glowed in her eyes.
The candle flame flickered on the table between them. The man spoke. Spoke softly, persuasively, as one speaks to a mindless hypnotic. And then, taking her arm, he led her very quietly toward the door through which Murgunstrumm had vanished.
And, as on that other occasion when he had lain in the deep grass of the clearing outside, Paul's mind broke with sudden madness.
"No, no!" he shrieked. "Don't go with him!"
He rushed forward blindly, tumbling a chair out of his path. At the other end of the room, the creature turned to look at him, and laughed softly. And then the man and the girl were gone. The door swung silently shut. A lock clicked. Even as Paul's hands seized the knob, a vibrant laugh echoed through the heavy panels. And the door was fast.
Savagely Paul turned.
"Jeremy! Jeremy, help me! We can't let her go—"
The cry choked on his lips. Across the room, Jeremy was standing transfixed, staring. Kermeff and Allenby huddled together, rigid with fear. And the two macabre demons in evening clothes were advancing with arms outthrust.
9. A Strange Procession
They were no longer men. Like twin vultures they slunk forward, an unholy metamorphosis already taking place in their appearance. A misty bluish haze enveloped them, originating it seemed from the very pores of their obscene bodies, growing thicker and deeper until it was in itself a thing of motion, writhing about them like heavy opaque fog moved by an unseen breeze. More and more pungent it grew, until only a single feature of those original loathsome forms was visible—until only eyes glowed through it.
Kermeff and Allenby retreated before those eyes in stark terror. They were stabbing pits of swirling green flame, deep beyond human knowledge of depth, ghastly wide, hungry. They came on relentlessly, two separate awful pairs of them, glittering through dimly human shapes of sluggish, evil-smelling vapor.
As they came, those twin shapes of abomination, uncouth hands extended before them. Misty, distorted fingers curled forth to grope toward the two cringing victims. Allenby and Kermeff fell away from them like men already dead: Kermeff stiff, mechanical, frozen to a fear-wracked carcass of robot-like motion; Allenby mumbling, ghastly gray with terror.
Back, step by step, the two physicians retreated, until at last the wall pressed into their bodies, ending their flight. And still the twin forms of malevolence came on, vibrant with evil.
Not until then did reason return to the remaining two men in the room. Jeremy flung himself forward so violently that his careening hips sent the table skidding sideways with a clink of jumping china. Paul, rushing past him, flung out a rasping command.
"The cross! The cross under your coats!"
Perhaps it was the stark torment of the words, perhaps the very sound of his voice, as shrill as cutting steel. Something, at any rate, penetrated the fear that held Kermeff and Allenby helpless. Something drove into Kermeff's brain and gave him life, movement, power of thought. The physician's big hands clawed up and ripped down again. And there, gleaming white and livid on his chest hung the cross-shaped strips of cloth which Paul had sewn there.
Its effect was instantaneous. The advancing shapes of repugnance became suddenly quite still, then recoiled as if the cross were a thing of flame searing into them. Kermeff shouted luridly, madly. He stumbled a step forward, ripping his coat still farther apart. The shapes retreated with uncanny quickness, avoiding him.
But the eyes were pools of absolute hate. They drilled deep into Kermeff's soul, stopping him. He could not face them. And as he stood there, flat-pressed against the wall, the uncouth fiends before him began once again to assume their former shape. The bluish haze thinned. Outlines of black, blurred with the white of shirt-fronts, glowed through the swirling vapor. When Paul looked again the shapes were men: and the men stood close together, eyeing Kermeff and Allenby—and the cross—with desperate diabolical eyes.
Suddenly one of them, the one called Costillan, moved away. Swiftly he walked across the floor—was it walking or floating or some unearthly condition halfway between?—and vanished through the doorway which led to the mysterious rear rooms. The other, retreating slowly to the outside door, flattened there with both arms outflung, bat-like, and waited, glaring with bottomless green orbs at the four men who confronted him.
And then Paul moved. Shrill words leaped to his lips: "That girl—we've got to get to her before—"
But the cry was drowned in another voice, Jeremy's. Stumbling erect, Jeremy said hoarsely:
"Come on. I'm gettin' out of here."
"Look out! You can't—"
But Jeremy was already across the intervening space, confronting the creature who barred the barrier.
"Get out of the way!" he bellowed. "I've had enough of this."
There was no answer. The vulture simply stood there, smiling a little in anticipation. And suddenly, viciously, a revolver leaped into Jeremy's fist. "Get out of the way!"
The creature laughed. His boring eyes fixed themselves in Jeremy's face. They deepened in color, became luminous, virulent, flaming again. And Jeremy, staggering from the force of them, reeled backward.
"I'll kill you!" he screeched. "I'll—"
He lost control. Panic-stricken, he flung up the revolver and pulled the trigger again and again. The room trembled with the roar of the reports. And then the gun hung limp in Jeremy's fingers. He stood quite still, licking his lips, staring. Amazed, he stepped backward into the table, upsetting a glass of red liquid over the white cloth.
For the man in evening clothes, despite the bullets which had burned through him, still stood motionless against the closed door, and still laughed with that leering, abhorrent expression of triumph.
There was silence after that for many minutes, broken finally by the familiar shf-shf-shf of limping feet. Into the room, glaring from one still form to another, came Murgunstrumm, and behind him the companion of the undead fiend at the door.
Costillan pointed with a long thin arm at Kermeff, and at the white cross which hung on the physician's breast.
"Remove it," he said simply.
Murgunstrumm's lips curled. His huge hands lifted, as if only too eager to make contact with the cross and the human flesh beneath it. Slowly, malignantly, he advanced upon Kermeff's still form, arms outstretched, mouth twisted back over protruding teeth. And the mouth was fresh with blood—blood which had not come from the cripple's own lips.
But Paul was before him, and a revolver lay in Paul's fingers. The muzzle of the gun pointed squarely into the innkeeper's face.
"Stand back," Paul ordered curtly.
Murgunstrumm hesitated. He took another step forward.
"Back! Do you want to die?"
Fear showed in the cripple's features. He came no closer. And a thin breath of relief sobbed from Paul's lips as he realized the truth. He had not known, had not been sure, whether Murgunstrumm was a member of the ghoulish clan that inhabited this place, or was a mere servant, a mere confederate.
"Jeremy," Paul's voice was level again with resolution.
"What—what do you want, sir?"
"Lock every window and door in this room except the one behind me."
"But, sir—"
"Do as I say! We've got to find that girl before any harm comes to her—if it's not already too late. When you've locked the exits, take— You have a pencil?"
Jeremy groped in his pockets, frowning. Fumbling with what he drew out, he said falteringly:
"I've a square of chalk, sir. It's only cue chalk, from the master's billiard room."
"Good. When you've locked the doors and windows, make a cross on each one as clear and sharp as you can. Quickly!"
Jeremy stared, then moved away. The other occupants of the room watched him furtively. Only one moved—Costillan. And Costillan, snarling with sudden vehemence, stepped furtively to the door and flattened there.
One by one Jeremy secured the windows and marked them with a greenish cross, including
the locked door in the farther shadows, through which the girl in the white wrap had vanished. When he turned at last to the final barrier, which led to the gravel walk outside, his way was blocked by the threatening shape which clung there, glowering at him, waiting for him to come within reach.
"One side," Jeremy blurted. "One side or I'll—"
"Not that way!" Paul cried sharply. "The cross on your chest, man. Show it."
Jeremy faltered, then laughed grimly. Deliberately he unbuttoned his jacket and advanced. The creature's eyes widened, glowing most strangely. Unflinching, Jeremy strode straight toward them.
Just once, as if fighting back an unconquerable dread, Costillan lifted his arms to strike. Then, cringing, he slunk sideways. And at the same moment, seeing the barrier unguarded, Kermeff lurched forward.
"I'm getting out of here!"
"You're staying, Kermeff."
The physician jerked around, glaring. Paul's revolver shifted very slightly away from Murgunstrumm's tense body to include Kermeff in its range of control. Kermeff s forehead contracted with hate.
"I tell you I won't stay!"
But he made no attempt to reach the door, and Paul said evenly to Jeremy: "Lock it."
Jeremy locked it and made the sign of the cross. And then Paul's finger curled tighter on the trigger of the gun. The muzzle was still on a line with Murgunstrumm's cowering carcass. Paul said roughly:
"Allenby!"
"Yes?"
"You are remaining here, to make sure nothing attempts to enter from the outside. Do you understand? And if the girl in the white wrap comes back through that door"—Paul pointed quickly to the locked barrier which had baffled him only an instant before—"or if that fiend comes back alone, lock the door on this side and keep the key!"
"I can't stay here alone!"
"Nothing will harm you, man. Keep your coat open, or strip it off. They can't come near the cross. Sit at the table and don't move. We're going."
"You're going? Where?" Allenby croaked.
"To find that girl, you fool! And you"—Paul glared into Murgunstrumm's bloated face—"are going to lead us."