The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  Her eyes narrowed at that, and distinctly I saw her tremble. Then she dropped her eyes, and laughed: “You’re joking, Alan.”

  I said: “I am not. It was a big bluebottle that whispered and buzzed, and buzzed and whispered.”

  She asked, quietly: “What did it whisper, Alan?”

  “To beware of you, Dahut.”

  She asked, again quietly: “Were you awake?”

  Now, regaining caution, I laughed: “Do bluebottle flies whisper to people who are awake? I was sound asleep and dreaming—without doubt.”

  “Did you know the voice?” Her eyes lifted suddenly and held mine. I answered:

  “When I heard it I seemed to know it. But now, awake, I have forgotten.”

  She was silent while the blank-eyed servants placed this and that before us. Then she said, half-wearily: “Put away your sword, Alan. For today, at least, you do not need it. And today, at least, I carry no weapons. I pledge you this, and you can trust me for today. Treat me today only as one who loves you greatly. Will you do this, Alan?”

  It was said so simply, so sincerely, that my anger fled and my distrust of her weakened. For the first time I felt a stirring of pity. She said:

  “‘I will not even ask you to pretend to love me.”

  I said, slowly: “It would not be hard to love you, Dahut.”

  The violet of her eyes was misted with tears; she said: “I wonder.”

  I said: “A bargain. We meet for the first time this morning. I know nothing of you, Dahut, and today you will be to me only what you seem to be. Perhaps by tonight I will be your slave.”

  She said, sharply: “I asked you to put down your sword.”

  I had meant nothing more than what I had said. No innuendo…But now I heard again the voice that had changed to the buzzing of a fly—“Beware…beware of Dahut…Alan, beware of Dahut…” And I thought of the blank-eyed, impassive men…slaves to her will or to her father’s…

  I would not put away the sword—but I would hide it.

  I said, earnestly: “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean, Dahut. Really I haven’t. I meant precisely what I said.”

  She seemed to believe me. And on that basis, piquant enough considering what had gone before in New York and ancient Ys, our breakfast continued. It had its peculiar charm. Before it was done I found myself dangerously close several times to thinking of the Demoiselle exactly as she wanted me to think of her. We dawdled, and it was eleven when we ended. She suggested a ride around the place, and with relief I went up to change my clothes. I had to snap my gun a few times and look at the leaves in McCann’s holster to clear my mind of disarming doubts. Dahut had a way with her.

  When I came down she was in riding breeches, her hair braided around her head like a helmet. We went to the stables. There were a dozen first class horses. I looked around for the black stallion. I didn’t see it, but there was a box stall where it might have been. I picked out a sweet roan and Dahut a leggy bay. What I wanted most to see was de Keradel’s “rockery.” I didn’t see it. We trotted along a well-made bridle path which gave occasional vistas of the water, but most of the time the rocks and trees shut off the ocean. It was a peculiar lay-out and one better adapted for solitude I have never seen. We came at last to the wall, turned and rode along it. Wicked, inverted chevaux-de-frise guarded the top, and there were a couple of wires that I suspected of carrying heavy voltage. They could not have been there when ’Lias had scaled the wall. I thought that probably he had taught a lesson as well as having received one. And here and there stood one of the swarthy little men. They had clubs, but how otherwise armed I could not tell. They knelt as we passed them.

  We came to a massive gate, and there was a garrison of half a dozen. We rode past the gate and came to a wide, long meadow land dotted with stunted bushes, crouching like cowering men. It came to me that this must be where the unfortunate ’Lias had encountered the dogs that weren’t dogs. Under the sun, the brisk air and the exhilaration of riding, that story had lost many of its elements of reality. Yet the place had a frightened, forbidding aspect. I mentioned this casually to Dahut. She looked at me with a secret amusement; answered as casually: “Yes—but there is good hunting here.”

  She rode on without saying what kind of hunting. Nor did I ask; for there had been that about her answer which had abruptly restored my faith in ’Lias’s veracity.

  We came to the end of the wall, and it was built in the rock as McCann had said. There was a big breast of the rock which shut off view of what lay beyond. I said:

  “I’d like to take a look from here.” And before she could answer, had dismounted and climbed the rock. From the top, it was open ocean. A couple of hundred yards from shore were two men in a small fishing boat. They raised their heads as they saw me, and one drew out a hand net and began dipping with it. Well, McCann was on the job.

  I scrambled down and joined Dahut. I asked: “How about riding back and going out the gate for a canter. I’d like to see more of the countryside.”

  She hesitated, then nodded; we rode back and through the garrison and out upon a country road. In a little while we sighted a fine old house, set well back among big trees. A stone wall protected it from the road, and lounging beside one of its gates was McCann.

  He watched us come imperturbably. Dahut passed without a glance. I had hung back a few paces, and as I went by McCann I dropped a card. I had hoped for just this encounter, and I had managed to scribble on it:

  “Something very wrong but no definite evidence yet. About thirty men, think all well-armed. Barbed and charged wires behind wall.”

  I drew up beside the Demoiselle and we rode on a mile or so. She halted, and asked: “Have you seen enough?”

  I said, yes; and we turned back. When we went by McCann he was still lounging beside the gate as though he had not moved. But there was no paper on the road.

  The garrison had seen us coming, and the postern was swinging open. We returned to the house the same way we had gone. I had gotten not a glimpse of the “rockery.”

  Dahut was flushed with the ride, full of gayety. She said: “I’ll bathe. Then we’ll have lunch on the boat—go for a little cruise.”

  “Fine,” I said. “And I hope it doesn’t make me as sleepy as it did yesterday.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but my face was entirely innocent. She smiled: “It won’t, I’m sure. You’re getting acclimated.”

  I said, morosely: “I hope so. I must have been pretty dull company at dinner last night.”

  She smiled again: “But you weren’t. You pleased my father immensely.”

  She went into the house laughing.

  I was very glad I had pleased her father.

  It had been a thoroughly delightful sail with a thoroughly charming girl. Only when one of the tranced crew knelt as he passed did I feel the sinister hidden undertow. And now I sat at dinner with de Keradel and the Demoiselle. De Keradel’s conversation was so fascinating that he had made me forget that I was a prisoner. I had discussed with him much that I had wished to on the night Bill had persuaded me to be so objectionable. If at times his manner was irritatingly too much like that of a hierophant instructing a neophyte in elementary mysteries, or if he calmly advanced as fact matters which modern science holds to be the darkest of superstitions, investing them with all the authenticity of proven experience—it made no difference to me. The man’s learning was as extraordinary as his mind, and I wondered how in one short life he could have acquired it. He spoke of the rites of Osiris, the black worship of Typhon whom the Egyptians also named Set of the Red Hair, the Eleusinian and the Delphic mysteries as though he had witnessed them. Described them in minutest detail—and others more ancient and darker, long buried in age-rotten shrouds of Time. The evil secrets of the Sabbat were open to him, and once he spoke of the worship of Kore, the Daughter, who was known also as Persephone, and in another form as Hecate, and by other names back, back through the endless vistas of the ages—the wife of Hades, the Q
ueen of the Shades whose daughters were the Furies.

  It was then I told him of what I had beheld in the Delphian cave when the Greek priest with the pagan soul had evoked Kore…and I had watched that majestic—that dreadful—form taking shape in the swirls of smoke from what was being consumed upon her thrice ancient altar…

  He listened intently, without interrupting, as one to whom the story held no surprise. He asked: “And had She come to him before?”

  I answered: “I do not know.”

  He said directly to the Demoiselle: “But even if so, the fact that She appeared to—to Dr. Caranac—is most significant. It is proof that he—”

  Dahut interrupted him, and I thought there was some warning in the glance she gave him: “That he is acceptable. Yes, my father.”

  De Keradel considered me: “An illuminating experience, indeed. I am wondering, in the light of it, and of other things you have told me—I am wondering why you were so—so hostile—to such ideas the night we met.”

  I answered, bluntly: “I was more than half drunk and ready to fight anybody.”

  He bared his teeth at that, then laughed outright: “You do not fear to speak the truth.”

  “Neither when drunk nor sober,” I said.

  He scrutinized me silently, for moments. He spoke, more as though to himself than to me: “I do not know…she may be right…if I could wholly trust him it would mean much to us…he has curiosity…he does not shrink from the dark wisdom…but has he courage…?”

  I laughed at that, and said, baldly: “If I did not have—would I be here?”

  “Quite true, my father.” Dahut was smiling maliciously.

  De Keradel struck down his hand like one who has come at last to a decision: “Carnac, I spoke to you of an experiment in which I am deeply interested. Instead of being a spectator, willing or unwilling…or no spectator, whichever I might decide…” he paused as though to let the covert menace of this sink in… “I invite you to participate with me in this experiment. I have good reason to believe that its rewards, if successful, will be incalculably great. My invitation is not disinterested. I will admit to you that my experiment has not as yet met with full success. I have had results—but they have not been what I hoped. But what you have told me of Kore proves that you are no barrier to the materialization of these Beings—Powers or Presences, or if you prefer, discarnate, unknown energies which can take shape, become substance, in accordance with laws discoverable to man—and discovered. Also, you have within you the ancient blood of Carnac, and the ancient memories of your race. It may be that I have missed some slight detail that your stimulated-memory will recall. It may be that with you beside us this Being I desire to evoke will appear in all its power—and with all that implies of power for us.”

  I asked: “What is that Being?”

  He said: “You, yourself, named it. That which in one of its manifold shapes came to the Alkar-Az of ancient Carnac as it came to the temples of my own people ages before Ys was built or the stones of Carnac raised—the Gatherer in the Cairn—the Blackness…”

  If I felt cold creep along my skin he did not know it. It was the answer I had been expecting and I was prepared.

  I looked long at Dahut, and he, at least, misinterpreted that look, as I had hoped he would. I struck my own hand down upon the table: “De Keradel, I am with you.”

  After all, wasn’t that why I had come there?

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE MAEL BENNIQUE

  De Keradel said: “We drink to that!”

  He dismissed the servants, unlocked a closet and took from it a decanter half-filled with a green liqueur. The stopper was clamped and difficult to withdraw. He poured three small glasses and quickly clamped the stopper down. I raised my glass.

  He checked me: “Wait!”

  There were little bubbles rising through the green drink; like atoms of diamonds; like splintered sun rays shot back by crystals bottoming still shallows. They rose more and more quickly, and suddenly the green drink fumed; then became quiescent, pellucid.

  De Keradel lifted his glass: “Carnac, you join us of your own will?”

  The Demoiselle said, her glass close to mine: “It is of your own will you join us, Alain de Carnac?”

  I answered: “Of my own will.”

  We touched glasses and drank.

  That was a strange drink. It tingled through brain and nerve, and immediately there was born of it an extraordinary sense of freedom; swift sloughing of inhibitions; a blowing away of old ideas as though they had crumbled to dust and, like dust, had been puffed from the surface of consciousness. As though I were a serpent which had, abruptly, shed an outworn skin. Memories grew dim, faded away, readjusted themselves. I had an indescribable sense of liberation…I could do anything, since, like God, there existed for me neither good nor evil. Whatever I willed to do that I could do, since there was neither evil nor good but only my will…

  De Keradel said: “You are one with us.”

  The Demoiselle whispered: “You are one with us, Alain.”

  Her eyes were closed, or seemed to be; the long lashes low upon her cheeks. Yet I thought that beneath them I saw a glint of purple flame. And de Keradel’s hands covered his eyes, as though to shield them, but between his fingers I thought I saw them gleaming. He said:

  “Carnac—you have not asked me what is this Gatherer—this Being I would evoke in Its completeness. Is it because you know?”

  “No,” I answered; and would have followed by saying that I did not care except that suddenly I knew I did care; that of all things that was what I thirsted to know. He said:

  “A brilliant Englishman once formulated perfectly the materialistic credo. He said that the existence of man is an accident; his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of the meanest of planets. He pointed out that of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science as yet knows nothing. Nor would it matter if science did know. The wet-nurses of famine, disease, and mutual slaughter had gradually evolved creatures with consciousness and intelligence enough to know that they were insignificant. The history of the past was that of blood and tears, stupid acquiescence, helpless blunderings, wild revolt, and empty aspirations. And at last, the energies of our system will decay, the sun be dimmed, the inert and tideless earth be barren. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. Matter will know itself no longer. Everything will be as though it never had been. And nothing will be either better or worse for all the labor, devotion, pity, love, and suffering of man.”

  I said, the God-like sense of power stronger within me: “It is not true.”

  “It is partly true,” he answered. “What is not true is that life is an accident. What we call accident is only a happening of whose causes we are ignorant. Life must have come from life. Not necessarily such life as we know—but from some Thing, acting deliberately, whose essence was—and is—life. It is true that pain, agony, sorrow, hate, and discord are the foundations of humanity. It is true that famine, disease, and slaughter have been our nurses. Yet it is equally true that there are such things as peace, happiness, pity, perception of beauty, wisdom…although these may be only of the thickness of the film on the surface of a woodland pool which mirrors its flowered rim—yet, these things do exist…peace and beauty, happiness and wisdom. They are.”

  “And therefore—” de Keradel’s hands were still over his eyes, but through the masking fingers I felt his gaze sharpen upon me, penetrate me “—therefore I hold that these desirable things must be in That which breathed life into the primeval slime. It must be so, since that which is created cannot possess attributes other than those possessed by what creates it.”

  Of course, I knew all that. Why should he waste effort to convince me of the obvious. I said, tolerantly: “It is self-evident.”

  He said: “And therefore it must also be self-evident that since it was the dark, the malevolent, the cruel side of
this—Being—which created us, our only approach to It, our only path to Its other self, must be through agony and suffering, cruelty and malevolence.”

  He paused, then said, violently:

  “Is it not what every religion has taught? That man can approach his Creator only through suffering and sorrow? Sacrifice…Crucifixion!”

  I answered: “It is true. The baptism of blood. The purification through tears. Rebirth through sorrow.”

  The Demoiselle murmured: “Chords that must be struck before we may attain the supreme harmonies.”

  There was a mocking note to that; I turned to her quickly. She had not opened her eyes, but I caught the derisive curving of her lips.

  De Keradel said: “The sacrifices are ready.”

  I said: “Then let us sacrifice!”

  De Keradel dropped his hands. The pupils of his eyes were phosphorescent, his face seemed to retreat until nothing could be seen but those two orbs of pale blue fire. The Demoiselle raised her eyes, and they were two deep pools of violet flame, her face a blur beyond them. I did not think that strange—then.

  There was a mirror at the back of the sideboard. I looked into it and my own eyes were shining with the same feral fires, golden, my face a blurred setting from which yellow gleaming eyes stared back at me…

  Nor did that seem as strange, either—not then.

  De Keradel repeated: “The sacrifices are ready.”

  I said, rising: “Let us use them!”

  We went out of the dining room and up the stairs. The inhuman exaltation did not wane; it grew stronger; more ruthless. Life was to be taken, but what was the life of one or the lives of many if they were rungs of a ladder up which I could climb out of the pit into the sun? Force recognition from That which had lived before life…command It…the Creator?

  With de Keradel’s hand upon my arm I passed into my room. He bade me strip and bathe, and left me, I stripped, and my hand touched something hanging to my left armpit. It was a holster in which was an automatic. I had forgotten who had given it to me, but whoever it was had told me it was important…most important; not to be lost nor given up…essential. I laughed. This toy essential to one about to summon the Creator of life? I tossed it into a corner of the room…