Murgunstrumm and Others

by Cave, Hugh

  The hour of parting drew near. I feared to think of it. With her close to me, holding my hand, I was at peace; but I knew that without her I should lapse again into an agony of doubt and fear, If I could have died then, with her near me, I think I should have been contented.

  But it was not to be. She bent over to kiss me tenderly, and then rose from the divan.

  "I—must go back, beloved," she whispered.

  "Stay a moment more," I begged. "One moment—"

  "I dare not, Paul."

  She turned away. I watched her as if she were taking my very soul with her. She walked very softly, slowly, to the window, I saw her look back at me, and she smiled. God, how I remember that last smile! It was meant to give me courage—to put strength into my heart.

  And then she stepped to the window.

  Even as she moved that last step, the horrible thing happened. A monstrous, livid streamer of white light seared across the space in front of her. It blazed in her face like a rigid snake, hurling her back. There, engraved upon the wall, hung the sign of the cross, burning like a thing possessed of life!

  She staggered away from it. I saw the terror in her face as she ran to the opposite wall. Ten steps she took; and then that wall too shone livid with the cross. Two horrible wires, transformed into writhing reality by some tremendous charge of electricity, glowed before her.

  She sought frantically for a means of escape. Back and forth she turned. The sign of the cross confronted her on every side, hemming her in. There was no escape. The room was a veritable trap—a trap designed and executed by the infernally cunning mind of Rojer Threng.

  I watched her in mute madness. Back and forth she went, screaming, sobbing her helplessness. I have watched a mouse in a wire cage do the same thing, but this—this was a thousand times more terrible.

  I called out to her. I attempted to rise from the divan and go to her; but weakness came over me and I fell back quivering.

  She realized then that it was the end. She fought to control herself, and she walked to the divan where I lay, and knelt beside me.

  She did not speak. I think she had no voice at that moment. I held her close against me, my lips pressed into her hair. Like a very small, pitiful leaf she trembled in my arms.

  And then—even as I held her—the first gleam of dawn slid across the floor of that ghastly room. She raised her head and looked into my face. "Good-bye—Paul—"

  I could not answer her. Something else answered. From the spy-hole in the opposite wall of the room came a hoarse, triumphant cackle—in Rojer Threng's malignant voice.

  The girl was dead—dead in my arms. And that uncouth voice from the wall, screaming its derision, brought madness to my heart.

  I lunged to my feet, fighting against the torture that drove through my body. I stumbled across the room. I reached the wall—found the spy-hole with my frozen fingers—clawed at it—raged against it—

  And there, fighting to reach the man who had condemned me to an eternity of horror—I died.

  My story is finished. The chimes of the Old North Church have just tolled a single funereal note to usher in the hour. One o'clock..

  It is many, many years since that fateful night when I became a creature of the blood. I do not dare to remember the number of them. Between the hours of sunrise and sunset! cling to the earth of my grave—where I refuse to stay, until I have avenged her. Then I shall write more, perhaps, pleading for your assistance that I may join her in the true death. A spike through the heart will do it

  From sunset until sunrise, throughout the hours of night, I am as one of you. I breathe, I drink; occasionally, as at this moment, I write—so that I may speak her name again and see it before me I have attended social functions, mingled with people. Only one precaution must I take, and that to avoid mirrors, since my deathless body casts no reflection.

  Every night—every night—I have visited the great house where Rojer Threng lives. No, I have not yet avenged her. The monster is too cunning, too clever. The sign of the cross is always upon him, to keep me from his throat. But sometime—sometime—he will forget. And then—ah, then!

  When it is done, I shall find a way to quit this horrible brotherhood. I shall die the real death, as she did—and I shall find her.

  The Door of Doom

  The great mansion, rising out of the depths of the moor before me, seemed to be a thing endowed with life-in-death. In spite of the immense height of its crumbling turrets, it seemed to be crouching with outstretched arms, waiting for me to come within reach. I stood there in a clump of stubble, staring at it uneasily.

  For the better part of an hour I had been groping my way across desolate miles of barren country, through the enveloping darkness. Back in the little village of Norberry, where I had inquired my way, the native Britons had peered into my face and cringed away from me, muttering maledictions and whispering among themselves. The tottering old inn-keeper, as ancient and as wise as the moor itself, had seized my arm in one trembling hand and pointed off into the lonely, terrifying expanse of wasteland that lay before me.

  "There ain't nobody lived there for years," he mumbled. "It's the house of the undead, it is. Ain't nobody ever goes there, neither tradespeople nor travelers. Folks passin' near in the night-time has heard horrible things—things that ain't, by no manner o' means human. Voices from the grave, they be, singin' death chants. . .

  Now, having trudged my weary way across the moor and finally arrived before my destination, I hesitated to step within reach of those ancient walls. Yet I feared the ridicule of my comrades more than I dreaded this repulsive, malignant pile. With heavy feet I groped the last hundred paces. Passing through the stone gateway, I climbed to the topmost step and let the iron knocker fall into its worn grooves.

  Above me the twisted walls of the house hung in a menacing mass, resembling nothing so much as a giant vampire bat with outflung wings. Behind me, as I stood there, lay the flat, bleak expanse of scrub through which I had come.

  The door swung open as I waited. For thirty seconds I remained motionless, staring over the threshold into the slanted, expressionless, deep-rimmed eyes of the Oriental servant who had opened it. Then the servant said softly:

  "Who are you?"

  "Captain Reed," I informed him. He drew the great door a foot wider and flattened against it to permit me to pass.

  "You go inside," he said impassively. "The others, they are all here, waiting for you."

  I let him lead the way. As I paced along behind him, marveling that his sandaled feet made no sound on the thick carpet of the hall, I glanced about me and shuddered.

  I had hardly expected this sort of thing, even after the three-hour drag on a once-a-day train and the four-mile tramp across an untraveled moor. Perhaps I should have been somewhat prepared, knowing the peculiar whims and idiosyncrasies of James Lamoran, and after listening to Rojer Macon's quiet exclamations in the Army and Navy Club the preceding afternoon. Yet of all the possible places for the annual reunion of the Deathless Four, this was certainly the most gruesome, the most dismally black and horrible, that Lamoran's acute imagination could have conceived!

  Worse than that, Lamoran had actually taken a two-year lease upon this ghastly structure, and intended to live here. Macon had run across him in Soho, and learned the news; and then later, in the smoking room of the club, Macon had chanced upon David Pell and me, and passed the word along.

  "What kind of a place is it?" Pell had demanded, and both he and I leaned close to catch every word.

  "What kind of place? Precisely the sort of place you'd expect it to be, old man, when Doctor Jim Lamoran rents it! Lamoran wouldn't live in a house, you know. He has to have a haunted graveyard or a ruined abbey replete with vampires and all the necessary horrible creeping affairs. I haven't seen the place, of course; but Jim informed me that it's out Norberry way, sunk in the center of the deadest, blackest, loneliest stretch of moor in Cheshire. It's been there, he says, for half a million years or so, allow
ing for exaggerations. At any rate, it has neither date nor postmark on it."

  Now, as I trailed silently after the corpse-faced Oriental, I began to feel that Macon's dry comments were more fact than mockery. Moreover, I could hear Macon's modulated voice emanating from a closed door at the far end of the corridor along which I paced.

  "He'll be here," Macon was saying. "Eddy Reed might be late once in a while, but he always arrives eventually. I don't envy him his walk across the moor at this hour."

  "Quite possible," this in Lamoran's voice, "that he thinks we're all quite mad. He probably asked directions in the village, and listened to the fantastic tales that surround this place. He'll be here, though."

  The Oriental opened the door. I stepped over the threshold into a huge reception chamber where my three soldier friends were seated at one end of the long table. Instantly the three faces turned toward me, as the Oriental droned my name. Then, scrambling out of their chairs, Macon, Lamoran, and Pell swooped down upon me, making me welcome and besieging me with questions.

  A strangely mingled feeling of joy and sadness came over me at that moment, as they led me to the table. We four had been through the Great War together, side by side, from start to finish. We alone, of the members of a certain squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, had returned to tell of the horrors. They had named us—the newspapers and the men of the Army and Navy Club—the "Deathless Four," and we in turn strove to perpetuate the memory of our companions by coming together at least once each year for twenty-four hours of companionship.

  We were a strange lot, and yet the chains which bound us together have bound many a stranger group of men under the same circumstances. Doctor James Lamoran, the oldest among us, was a tall, finely formed gentleman of infinite knowledge, eternally studying some intricate phase of occultism which happened to meet his attention. Pell was the portly, overstuffed, altogether prosperous banker. Rojer Macon, our youngest member and hero, since he had brought down more enemy Fokker’s than the rest of us combined, was once again a smiling, irresponsible sportsman of the blue blood—happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, and ready for anything with a tinge of adventure in it!

  As for myself, I am an American. My father and my father's father were soldiers before me. It is in my blood. In the spring of 1916, despairing that my countrymen would ever see action in the great combat, I threw my lot in with the R.F.C. Now, to-night, fourteen years later, I found myself sitting here in this most sinister of ruined houses, in company with the three dearest friends I had in the entire world.

  "Why," I demanded of Lamoran, "did you lease this ghastly house?"

  He smiled before he replied. Then:

  "You asked your way in the village?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "And you heard nothing?"

  "I heard enough," I frowned, "to send me back to London as if all hell and the devil were on my tail. The yokels hissed at me and whispered like gibbets, calling this place the—"

  "The House of the Undead, eh?"

  "Yes," I shuddered.

  "Maybe they're right," Macon grinned. "Ever since we got here I've been hearing the most gruesome creaks and groans and—"

  "Where did the Chinese chap come from?" I demanded, ignoring his banter. Lamoran's eyes narrowed very slightly, as if I had touched upon a vital point. He looked straight at me and said simply:

  "That I don't know."

  "What? You mean you didn't bring him?"

  "He was here when I came, Reed."

  "But they told me in the village--"

  "That the house has been uninhabited for fifteen years? That is true."

  "Then how the devil," Macon exclaimed, "did the fellow—"

  "People who have lived in this place," Lamoran said quietly, "have either vanished utterly from the face of the earth, or have fled in terror. Off and on, for many hundreds of years, the house has been abandoned. For the past fifteen years it's been empty. And yet—"

  He stopped to light a cigarette, shrugged his shoulders in resignation, and finished softly:

  "When the estate agent escorted me here to look the place over early last week, the door opened in our faces and Tai-tse-Kiang stood on the threshold to welcome us!"

  "That's his name?" Macon scowled.

  "Yes. Tai-tse-Kiang."

  "It's easily explained, of course," I suggested. "The fellow was out of work in London, heard you intended to take over this place, and slipped in before you to sort of establish himself, eh?"

  "On the contrary," Lamoran smiled, "he says he has been here—always."

  "What?"

  "Always."

  "But that's pure rot!" Pell sputtered, rubbing his hands together.

  "Perhaps. We shall learn the truth in due time, I dare say. Meanwhile—"

  Lamoran stopped speaking. The service door at the opposite end of the hail had opened abruptly, and the Chinaman, Tai-tse-Kiang, was pacing mechanically forward with four wine glasses on a tray. I had an opportunity, then, to see the fellow more closely and in a better light, though the light, of course, consisted of nothing more inspiring than a massive candelabrum suspended by an iron chain from the ceiling.

  Unquestionably there was something peculiar about the Oriental's stolid face. The eyes, in particular, harbored no definite light or color; they were like the eyes of a dead creature, with a suggestion of some filmy substance masking the pupils. But that, I believe, is the rule rather than the exception with people of the Far East. They are renowned for their stolidity and lack of emotion; and this man was evidently merely significant of his race.

  He said nothing as he placed the glasses before us. When he had finished, he retired quietly and closed the connecting door. Lamoran glanced at me, smiled queerly, and lifted the glass to his lips.

  "To our less fortunate companions who cannot be with us to-night," he proposed, rising to his feet. Then, under his breath, so that only I, who was closest to him, could have heard it: "And to the succeeding events of this evening of madness!"

  We sat down again. Lamoran pushed his empty glass aside and bent forward.

  "I have a bit of a treat for you," he smiled, "and for myself. As yet I've not made a complete inspection of my new home. Tonight, with you three to accompany me, I propose to do so. There are rooms and rooms and rooms; half a hundred or more of them. What they contain I haven't the vaguest notion. Perhaps we shall find something, eh?"

  "Maybe we'll uncover some ghosts," Macon grinned.

  "So our ace of aces believes in the supernatural? Not you, Rojer!"

  "Well—"

  "A place like this," Pell said eagerly, "ought to contain some pretty valuable art treasures. That's my hobby, you know. Oriental stuff, in particular. If your everlasting Chink weren't so infernally alive, I'd stuff him and put him in my London house, Lamoran!"

  "Good! And you, Reed?"

  "Ready for anything," I grinned, "providing we all stick together. I don't believe in ghosts unless I'm left alone. Then I'm like the rest of humanity. I don't say there aren't any, because some damned thing might overhear me or read my thoughts and swoop down to offer proof that there are."

  Lamoran laughed easily. Rojer Macon, too, began to grin; but the grin vanished with uncanny abruptness. He was sitting nearest the service door. I saw him stiffen suddenly in his chair and twist about as if something had brushed past him. His laugh ended in a gurgle.

  I confess that I did not see the thing take place. I was busily staring at Macon at the moment, wondering what had come over him. Then Pell's rasping voice brought me about again.

  "My God, what's this!"

  Pell and Lamoran were both peering at the table top. Macon, too, lifted his head at that hoarse outcry and looked in fascination. There, lying on the silken cloth precisely in the center of the four empty glasses, lay a flat square of white paper, with written words scrawled over its surface! It had not been there before!

  "Something—something brushed by me!" Macon whispered sibilantly. "I felt it!"


  Pell said nothing. He reached out with nervous fingers to pick up the paper; then withdrew his hand and licked his lips. Lamoran, more calm than any of us, lifted the thing and read the message aloud:

  "The Iron Door on the lower corridor must not be opened. All other rooms in the house are yours; but the Iron Door bars the secret of the Master, and death is the penalty for intrusion. There will be no other warning."

  Lamoran let the paper fall again. The last word he had uttered—the word warning—seemed to hiss in a double crescendo through the chamber in which we sat.

  "Where did it come from?" Pell said huskily.

  "Something went past me, I tell you!" Macon muttered again.

  "Nothing came into the room," I said feebly. "Yet, the paper was not here when Tai-tse-Kiang brought in the wine."

  Lamoran's critical glance passed from Pell's face to Macon's, then to mine, and finally back to the damning sheet of paper. Suddenly, with thin lips and hands clenched, he lurched to his feet, scraping his chair out from beneath him.

  "Kiang!" His voice seared across the room with the intensity of a lash.

  The service door opened slowly. Once again the Oriental paced forward with automatic steps, looking neither to right nor left. He came to a motionless stop in front of the man who had summoned him.

  "Yes, sir?" he said unemotionally.

  "Did anyone enter this room just now?"

  "No, sir."

  "Where were you?"

  "Outside the door, sir, in the event that you called."

  "This bit of paper," Lamoran said stiffly, "was dropped on the table less than five minutes ago. Have you ever seen it before?"

  He jabbed the paper abruptly into the Chinaman's hand. The Oriental glanced at it, nodded, and passed it back.