Murgunstrumm and Others

by Cave, Hugh

  The room was a pit of blackness, except for that bluish cone of light. A chill sensation took possession of me. I knew that we were not alone. I felt a malignant, gloating presence, invisible but sentient. All about me emanated that tenuous thread of sound, high-pitched now and wailing in an almost articulate voice. Human!

  The boy crept forward. He breathed heavily. His body quivered and trembled like a thing disjointed. I knew instinctively what he wanted. It was that grim thing on the farther wall.

  Mechanically my eyes turned to stare at it. Then, overcome by what I saw, I fell back.

  A wall of darkness faced me. To right, to left, above and below, not a single detail of its construction was visible—except one. There, in the very space where that gleaming skeleton had hung before, a mad thing leered out at me.

  It was no dead rack of bones—not now. It was a face—a living, twisted, cruel face, set atop a writhing body. Even as I watched, a mist of phosphorescent light, bluish white, began to emanate from it. The rack of bones became a glowing torso, taking on human form.

  Young Ramsey stood glued to the floor before it. Behind me I heard a stifled sob come from the girl's lips. I could not advance—could not move.

  Slowly the thing changed contour. Slowly it twisted forward, coiling its sinuous way out of the great gilt frame. It was a skeleton no longer. It had become an undead form, indefinite in shape, swelling and contracting to grotesque mockeries of human mold. I saw a misty outline of ancient clothing hanging from its limbs—a garb that was hundreds of years old in style. And the face, lifted in terrible malice, was the face of an English nobleman.

  It burned with a frightful glow, vivid and unnatural. The living dead hands writhed up—up to the thing's own throat, with evil suggestiveness.

  And then, as if from a great distance, a strangled screech split the silence of that room of death. The specter's lips curled apart, revealing a double row of broken teeth. Words came through them. Vicious, compelling words.

  "To strangle one's self is better than to be mad for eternity! Do you hear, Ramsey? To strangle one's self—"

  Sir Edward stumbled back, away from it. I saw his hands jerk up to his throat. I saw that fiendish, dead-alive creature lunge toward him.

  Then a thin cry rose behind me, from Lady Sybil's lips. I was pushed roughly aside. Sobbing wildly, the girl dashed past me and fell upon the great gilt frame, slashing at it with a knife-like thing which she clutched in her hand. Flat against it, she raked the canvas into ribbons, clawing, ripping at it in sheer madness.

  I think it was the sight of her, overcome by the horror of what we had seen, that made me move. I swung about, lurched forward. Against the wall, close to that living monstrosity, reeled Sir Edward. His face was livid with insanity—insanity brought on by the damned thing that grappled with him. His mouth was twisted apart, thick with blood and foam. His body twisted convulsively. And his hands—his own hands—were clenched in his throat.

  That shapeless thing was all about him, hideously malformed. It had no limits, no bounds. It was a mold of bluish mist, with leering face and groping hands. And the hands—God, I can never forget them! They were huge, hairy, black. They were twined about the boy's wrists, forcing the boy's fingers into his own throat. Strangling him! Murdering him! And the thumb of the hairy left hand was missing!

  With a mighty jerk I wrenched those fingers from their hold. Behind me the girl was still hacking at the contents of the huge frame, tearing the canvas. The wailing shriek rose to a frenzy—shrilled higher and higher.

  Then, all at once, the voice became a sob—a sob of unspeakable anguish, as the girl's knife struck home. It gurgled into silence. The massive shape before me dissolved into a circular, throbbing, writhing wraith of fog, with only hands and face visible. The face lifted upward in agony; the hands clenched on themselves, doubled into knots. Before my eyes the thing became a blurred outline. And then—nothing.

  Young Ramsey slid to the floor on hands and knees, in a dead faint. I whirled about, stumbling to Lady Sybil's side.

  Neither of us noticed, then, that the room was once more in utter darkness. We were intent upon only one thing. Together we tore at that infernal painting, dragging it out of its frame, raking it to shreds.

  The frame fell with a crash, hurtling down upon us. Lady Sybil reeled back with a cry of fear. I held her erect. Together we stood there, staring—staring into something empty and black and sinister.

  Presently I found courage enough to grope for a match and strike it. I blundered forward, only to stop as if an outfiung hand had suddenly thrust me back, while the match dropped from my fingers. I must have screamed.

  But I was saturated with horror. I was immune to anything more. Grimly I found a second match and, with the yellow glare preceding me, stepped into the aperture revealed by the falling of the picture.

  The space was long, thin, hardly more than three feet deep—a silent, ancient vault. There, lying at my feet, extended an oblong box, black and forbidding, with closed cover. A coffin.

  I scratched another match, and lifted the cover slowly. Glowering up at me, made livid by the light of the match, lay a skeletonic form, long dead, crumbling in decay.

  I stared down at it for an eternity. It was repulsive, even in death. The skull was a grinning mask. The hands were folded on the chest—and the thumb of the left hand was missing.

  Beneath those hands lay something else—a rectangular plate of tarnished metal, engraved with minute lettering. I picked it out with nervous fingers. The legend was hardly visible. I rubbed the metal on the sleeve of my coat, scraping away the film of dust. But the engraving had been scored deep. Holding the match close to it, I made out the words:

  Sir Richard Ravenal. Famous artist. Eternal seeker into the secrets of the Undead. His body placed here, secretly by his son, in accord witb a request made before his death. The hatred between Ramsey and Ravenal may never die!

  Mechanically I returned the inscription to its resting-place. The girl stood behind me. I stepped past her, out of the vault, and paced across the gallery to where Sir Edward Ramsey lay motionless on the floor.

  Lifting him in my arms, I turned to the door.

  "Come," I said to the girl.

  She followed me out of the room. In silence we descended the black staircase to the lower levels. There, in the boy's chamber, I lowered Sir Edward to the bed; and, bringing my medicine kit from my own room, I worked over him until he regained consciousness.

  The boy stared up at me, reaching out to clutch my hand. He was weak, pathetically weak, but the haunted sheen of terror was gone out of his eyes. I moved away, allowing Lady Sybil to take my place.

  Then I left them there—those two who loved each other with a love that was more intense than the most utter terror of this gaunt house.

  I groped down the main staircase to the servants' level and roused the ferret-faced deaf man. Together we climbed to the galleries. There we dragged forth that grim coffin with its horrible contents.

  Later, in the kitchen of that sinister house, we kindled a great fire. Into it we cast the remains of the shattered picture. Into it we threw the oblong box.

  And we stood there side by side, with the scarlet glare of the flames reflected in our faces, until the curse of the House of Ramsey had burned to a handful of dead ashes.

  The Cult of the White Ape

  The hour is midnight. The oil lamp on the table before me, casting its weird glow over my face, is a feeble, inadequate thing that flickers constantly as the corrugated iron roof of the shack trembles with the throbbing beat of incessant rain. It has rained here in the village of Kodagi for the last four months —a horrible, maddening dirge that drives its way into a man's brain and undermines his reason. The M'Boto Hills of the Congo, sunk in the stinking sweat of the rain belt, are cursed with such torment.

  It was raining when Matthew Betts came here. I was outside at the time, working on the veranda inside my cage of mosquito-netting. A man must have some
relief from the monotony or else go mad; and I had found, after being sent here by the Belgian government to fill the position of chef de poste, that my hobby of entomology was a heaven-sent blessing.

  When Betts came, I was busily sorting specimens and mounting them on the little oki-wood table in my veranda laboratory. Beside me, on the stoop, squatted old Kodagi. A cunning man, Kodagi. A wizened monkey of a man with parchment face and filed teeth and a broad grin that bespeaks much hidden knowledge. He belongs, I believe, to the Zapo Zaps—a queerly deformed race which inhabits these mysterious jungles. For years he has been the village Ngana, the witch-doctor and magician of the tribe.

  Kodagi, I like to believe, is my friend. It is a peculiar half-dead friendship at most, and yet I am thankful for the little that is allotted me. There are rumors—more than rumors—that Kodagi disliked intensely the white man who held the position of chef de poste before me, and that this white man died a slow, unpleasant, and altogether inexplicable death. More than once I have suspected that Kodagi is one of the all-powerful members of the Bakanzenzi—the terrible, cannibalistic secret cult which even the natives of my village speak of in fearful undertones.

  Kodagi was watching me astutely as I went about my work. His beady eyes followed me everywhere, saw every movement. Occasionally he muttered something to me under his breath; but the monotonous beat of the rain smothered his voice.

  All at once he turned, to stare at the opposite wall of the clearing.

  "Look, Bwana!" he pointed.

  I jerked about obediently, to see the nose of a safari winding its sluggish way into our silent domain. Sloshing through the soft mud they came, with heads down and backs bowed under the weight of their burdens. At their head strode a white man—a hulking buffalo of a man with coarse red face and loose-fitting white drill which hung from him like a drenched winding-sheet. In one hand he carried a kiboko. The other hand he flung up to salute me, and shouted boisterously, at the same time turning in his tracks to snarl at the cringing natives behind him. They were afraid of him evidently, for they cowered back in silence and huddled together in whispering groups while he strode forward to the veranda.

  I watched him quietly. I thought I knew his identity, since I had been informed that certain land close to the village had been leased by the officials of a powerful rubber company. This company, the report stated, would send a chap named Betts—Matthew Betts—to the village of Kodagi, where he would experiment with various types of latex-producing trees and vines.

  If this was the man they were sending, I decided instantly that I disliked him. He was drunk; and it is not good for white men to drink native rum in the sweating, fever-ridden murk of the Congo, less than five degrees from the equator. I was infinitely glad when my Jopaluo house-boy, Njo, relieved me of the task of opening the veranda door for him.

  I saw then that he was very drunk. He stumbled on the step and lurched forward. Perhaps he did not see Kodagi crouching there; perhaps he saw but did not care. At any rate, his outstretched foot entwined between Kodagi's black legs. He stumbled and caught himself on the mosquito-netting. Then, before I could prevent it, he swung upon Kodagi with a rasping snarl. His heavy boot drove into the Ngana's naked ribs. Kodagi, screaming in pain and writhing hideously, tumbled off the stoop into the mud.

  The result was instantaneous. Straightening up, Betts stepped toward me with a livid grin. Two steps he took, and opened his mouth to speak. Then the grin faded with uncanny abruptness, leaving an expression of unholy fear on his bloated face. I saw his eyes dilate. His features lost color. He flung himself sideways and jerked up a Luger in his fist. A sudden belch of flame seared through the muzzle; and the bullets, whining dangerously close to me, roared blindly into a patch of thick scrub beside the veranda rail.

  After that there was complete silence for a moment. Betts stood rigid, trembling. Behind him, at the rim of the clearing, the porters of his safari were running madly to safety, screeching in terror. Njo, my house-boy, was down on his knees in the middle of the doorway, muttering in his native tongue. Kodagi, who had been lying prone in the mud at the foot of the stoop, had vanished!

  I turned slowly, mechanically, to stare at the clump of brush which had excited Betts' drunken attention. I saw nothing—nothing at all. Frowning, I strode to Betts' side and gripped his arm.

  "What the devil," I snapped, "are you doing? Are you mad?"

  "Mad? Mad!" the words came from his dry mouth in a thick whisper. "You—you didn't see it, Varicks?"

  "See what?" I said curtly.

  "The—the thing—there in the reeds!" His eyes shifted furtively. Reddish brown eyes, they were, sunk in fatty pits that made them incredibly small and pointed.

  "You're drunk," I shrugged. "Come inside."

  "1—I saw it, Varicks," he muttered again. "An ape-thing—a white ape—big as a man—standing there snarling at me—"

  "Come inside," I ordered, taking hold of him. Evidently he had swilled enough native rum to put a less powerful man under the ground. White apes—in the Congo! That was about the limit—the nearest thing to D.T.'s I had seen in many months.

  But he refused to be led away. He wrenched his arm from my grip and continued to stand there, staring, muttering something about not daring to turn his back. I saw that I should have to use extreme measures, or else have a raving fever-drunk lunatic on my hands.

  "You're seeing things," I said quietly. "Come on—we'll have a look. If anything was hiding in the reeds, there will be footprints in the mud. You'll see."

  He went with me unwillingly, holding back so much that I was practically forced to drag him along. Together we stumped down the veranda steps and wallowed through the mud to the suspicious patch of brush. He stood beside me, uneasy and twitching, as I pushed forward and parted the high reeds with my hands.

  Then, very suddenly, I froze in my tracks. My arms remained outflung, like the wings of a great bat. My groping foot stiffened in the very act of kicking the reeds aside; and there, directly beneath it, lay the soggy imprint of another foot!

  Betts' eyes went horribly wide and filled with fear. His fingers dug into my forearm. He whispered something, but I did not hear, for I was already on my knees, examining the thing in front of me.

  It was the mark of a man's foot—a naked, human foot. In the heel of it, where a little pool of water should have accumulated, lay a well of something else—something red and sticky that was blood.

  Without a word I stood up again. Carefully, painstakingly, I examined every inch of that clump of reeds. I found nothing else—nothing but that damning, significant imprint of a human foot and the spilled human blood in the heel of it. When I finally pushed Betts toward the shack, my fists were clenched and my mouth was screwed into a thin, troubled line. I was afraid.

  On the veranda, inside the screen of mosquito-netting, I lowered myself heavily into a chair. Betts sat close to me, facing me, peering fearfully into my face. For an instant neither of us offered to break the silence which had crept over us. Then, leaning forward, Betts extended an unsteady hand to clutch my knee. His lips sucked open.

  "What—what was it?" he whispered thickly.

  I did not answer him immediately. I was thinking of Kodagi, whom he had kicked into the mud, and who had disappeared with such incredible swiftness. One moment the village sorcerer had been lying lifeless in the filth. Next moment Betts had seen that hideous apparition in the reeds, and Kodagi, all at once, had vanished.

  "I don't know what it was," I said evenly, replying to Betts' query. "I only know that you've made a horrible blunder."

  "A—blunder? Me?"

  "In this village," I said meaningly, "one doesn't kick and beat the natives. This is deep-jungle territory. The natives are not the half-civilized, peaceful breed you're accustomed to handling. They are atavistic. Many of them are members of the Bakanzenzi."

  "You—you mean—"

  "Up here," I said quietly, "you are in the heart of strange jungles and strange people, where qu
eer things take place. That's the best explanation I can offer you."

  "But the ape—" he mumbled. "I saw—"

  "This is not gorilla country, Betts. The big apes never come here. They never leave their stamping-grounds in the Ogowwi and Kivu districts."

  He blinked at me uncomprehendingly. His fat hand came up shakily to wipe the sweat from his jowls. Evidently my words had made a deep impression upon him, for his eyes were quite colorless and his mouth twitched.

  "Get me—a drink, Varicks," he said gutturally. "I need it."

  I hesitated. He had had enough to drink already. But one more might serve to steady his nerves and prevent a collapse. I got out of my chair to get it.

  He rose with me and turned clumsily to the veranda door. Jerking it open, he looked toward the opposite end of the clearing, where his safari had first appeared.

  "Ludiia!" he bellowed. "Lucilia!"

  I was bewildered—even more bewildered when I followed the direction of his stare and saw what I had not noticed before. A mesbeela chair—a kind of covered hammock carried by four bearers—had been set down at the edge of the jungle. The bearers, having fled like frightened rodents at the sight of Betts' demonstration, had now returned. At the sound of the big man's voice, they lifted the masheela and carried it forward.

  "My God!" I said thickly. "You haven't brought a woman here?"

  "Why not?" Betts grumbled.

  "This is no country for a white woman, Betts. You know damned well—"

  "That's my business," he snapped. "She's my wife."

  I choked the retort that came to my lips. Then I turned to stare at the woman who was approaching us. She was young—much younger than her bull-necked husband—hardly more than a slim, very lovely girl. When Betts spoke her name and she placed her hand in mine, I felt that I should be more than glad to endure her husband's drunken presence during his stay in Kodagi's village. A white woman, here in this horrible place, was an angel from heaven.