“Alan, do you mind—I’d rather talk commonplaces tonight.”
Inwardly, I smiled at that. The situation was somewhat more than piquant. There was so little we could talk about other than commonplaces that wasn’t loaded with high explosive. I approved of the suggestion, feeling in no mood for explosions. Nevertheless, there was something wrong with the Demoiselle or she would never have made it. Was she afraid I might bring up that matter of the sacrificial bowl, perhaps—or was it that my talk with de Keradel had upset her. Certainly, she had not liked it.
“Commonplaces it is,” I said. “If brains were sparks, mine tonight wouldn’t even light a match. Discussion of the weather is about the limit of my intelligence.”
She laughed: “Well, what do you think of the weather, Alan?”
I said: “It ought to be abolished by Constitutional amendment.”
“And what makes the weather?”
“Just now,” I answered, “you do—for me.”
She looked at me, somberly: “I wish that were true—but take care, Alan.”
“My mistake, Dahut,” I said. “Back to the commonplace.”
She sighed, then smiled—and it was hard to think of her as the Dahut I had known, or thought I had known, in her towers of Ys and New York…or with the golden sickle red in her hand…
We stuck to commonplaces, although now and then perilous pits gaped. The perfect servants served us with a perfect dinner. De Keradel, whether scientist or sorcerer, did himself well with his wines. But the Demoiselle ate little and drank hardly at all, and steadily her languor grew. I pushed aside the coffee, and said:
“The tide must be on the ebb, Dahut.”
She straightened, and asked, sharply:
“Why do you say that?”
“I do not know. But always you have seemed to me of the sea, Dahut. I told you so that night I met you. So why should your spirit not rise and fall with the rise and fall of the tides?”
She arose, abruptly, and her face was colorless: “Good-night, Alan. I am very tired. Sleep—without dreams.”
She was out of the room before I could answer her. Why had that mention of the tides brought about such change in her, forced her to flight—for flight that swift departure had been? I could find no answer. A clock struck nine. I sat at the table for a quarter-hour more, the blank-eyed servants watching me. I stood up, yawning. I smiled drowsily at the butler and said to him in the Breton:
“Tonight I sleep.”
He had been among the van of those who with their flambeaux had herded the sacrifices. He bowed low, no slightest change of expression to betray that he sensed the true significance of what I had said. He held the curtains open for me, and I felt his gaze upon me as I slowly went up the stairs to my room.
I paused for a moment in the hall and looked out the window. There was a rack of thin clouds over the sky, half-veiling the moon, now a few nights past its full. It was a dimly luminous night, and a very silent one. There were no shadows in the wide, old-fashioned hall—whispering and rustling. I entered my room, undressed and went to bed. It was close to ten.
An hour went by while I lay there feigning sleep. Then that for which I had been waiting happened. Someone was in the room, and by the faint strange fragrance I knew it was Dahut, and that she stood close beside my bed. I felt her bend over me and listen to my breathing; then her fingers, light as the touch of a moth, upon the pulse in my neck and upon the pulse in my wrist. I sighed, and turned, and seemed to sink again in deepest slumber. And I heard her sigh, and felt a touch upon my cheek that was not of fingers. The fragrance stole away, soundlessly. Yet I knew Dahut had paused before the tapestry, listening. For long minutes she stood there, and then there was the faintest of clicks, and I knew that she had gone.
Nevertheless, I waited until the hands upon my watch-face pointed to eleven before I slipped out of bed, and drew on breeches, shirt, dark sweater, and sneakers.
The driveway to the house ran straight to the guarded gates, a mile and a half away. I did not believe this was patroled, and I purposed to follow it to within half a mile of the gates, strike off to the left, reach the wall and skirt it to the rock where McCann would be awaiting me. True, the keeper of the inn had said the breast could not be scaled from the water, but I had no doubt McCann would find a way. I should make it in half an hour, easily.
I stepped out into the hall, crept to the head of the stairs, and looked down. A faint light was burning, but there was no sign of servants. I stole down the stairs and reached the front door. It was unlocked and unbolted. I closed it behind me and merged into the shadow of a rhododendron, getting my bearings.
Here the driveway made a wide curve, unprotected by shrubbery. The scud had thinned and the moon was far too bright, but once the loop was crossed, there would be cover from the trees that bordered the road. I walked across the loop and gained the shelter of the trees. I waited a good five minutes, watching. The house remained dark, no lights from any window; no stir nor sound. I set off along the roadway.
I had covered a trifle under my mile when I came to a narrow lane angling to the left. It was fairly straight, what I could see of it in the watery moonlight. It struck in the general direction of the rock, and promised not only a shorter cut but a safer way. I took it. A few score yards and the trees ended. The lane continued, but bordered with scrub and bushes just too high for me to look over and far too dense for me to see through.
A half mile of this, and I began to have an acutely disagreeable feeling of being followed. It was an extraordinary unpleasant feeling—as though that which followed was peculiarly loathsome. And suddenly it was at my back—reaching out to me? I wheeled, snatching the gun from the holster.
There was nothing behind me. The lane stretched dimly back, and empty.
My heart was pumping as though I had been running, the backs of my hands and my forehead wet with sweat and I felt a stirring of nausea. I fought it down and went on, gun in hand. A dozen steps, and again I felt the stealthy approach—coming closer, closer, closer…faster and faster…sweeping upon me. I mastered panic impulse to run, and wheeled again—and again saw only empty lane.
I pressed my back against the bushes, and sidled along, watching the path I had traversed.
Now there was furtive movement in the scrub that lined the lane; movement as of things flitting through the bushes to the measure of my steps, watching me, gloating upon me; and there were rustlings and whisperings and thin obscene pipings as though they talked of me as I sidled on and on, legs trembling, nausea growing, and fighting, fighting at every step that panic desire to fling away my gun, cover my eyes with my arms lest I see the things—and run and run.
The lane ended. Step by step I backed away from it until I could no longer hear the rustlings and the pipings. But still there was movement in the bushes and I knew the things watched me from them. I turned and saw that I was on the edge of the haunted meadow. Sinister enough it had seemed by day, but it had been gay to what it was now, by night, under the scud-veiled, waning moon. It was desolate, unutterably desolate, and the bushes that had seemed like crouching men were now bent souls chained for eternity to that desolation, in irrevocable despair.
I could not cross that meadow unless I did it quickly. I could not go back through the piping things. I began to run straight across the meadow, toward the wall.
I was a third over it when I heard the baying of the hounds. It came from the direction of the house, and involuntarily I stopped, listening. It was not like the cry of any pack I had ever heard. It was sustained, wailing, ineffably mournful; with the thin unearthly quality of the obscene pipings. It was the desolation of the meadow given voice.
I stood, throat dry, every hair prickling, unable to move. And nearer drew the howling, and nearer.
The lane spewed shadow shapes. They were black under the moon and they were like the shadows of men, but of men deformed, distorted, changed into abominable grotesques within a workshop in Hell. They were—foul.
They spread fan-wise from the mouth of the lane and came leaping, skipping, flittering over the meadow; squattering in the crouching bushes, then flinging themselves out again, and as they ran they mewed and squeaked and piped. There was one with bloated body like a monstrous frog that came hopping toward me and leaped croaking over my head. There was another that touched me as it passed—a shadowy thing with long and twisted ape-like arms, dwarfed legs and head the size of an orange set upon a thin and writhing neck. It was not all shadow, for I felt its touch, gossamer as the wing of a moth, thin as mist—but palpable. It was unclean, a defilement, a horror.
The baying of the dogs was close, and with it a tattoo of hoofs, the drumming of a strong horse, galloping.
Out of the lane burst a great black stallion, neck outstretched, mane flying. Upon his back rode Dahut, ash-gold hair streaming loose in the wind, eyes flaming with the violet witch-fire. She saw me, and raised her whip and screamed, reining in the stallion so that he danced, fore-feet high in air. Again she screamed, and pointed to me. From behind the stallion poured a pack of huge dogs, a dozen or more of them, like staghounds…like the great hounds of the Druids.
They raced down upon me like a black wave…and I saw that they were shadowy, but in the blackness of their shadows red eyes gleamed with the same hell-fires that were in Dahut’s. And behind them thundered the stallion with Dahut—no longer screaming, her mouth twisted into a square of fury and her face no woman’s but a fiend’s.
They were almost upon me before my paralysis broke. I raised the automatic and shot straight at her. Before I could press trigger again, the shadow pack was on me.
Like the thing that had touched me, they, too, had substance, these shadow hounds of Dahut. Tenuous, misty—but material. I staggered under their onslaught. It was as though I fought against bodies made of black cobwebs, and I saw the moon as though it were shining through a black veil; and Dahut upon the stallion and the desolate meadow were dimmed and blurred as though I looked through black cobwebs. I had dropped my gun and I fought with bare hands. Their touch had not the vileness of the ape-armed thing, but from them came a strange and numbing cold. They tore at me with shadowy fangs, tore at my throat with red eyes burning into mine, and it was as though the cold poured into me through their fangs. I was weakening. It was growing harder to breathe. The numbness of the cold had my arms and hands so that now I could only feebly struggle against the black cobwebs. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath…
Dahut was down from the stallion and I was free from hounds. I stared up at her and tried to stagger to my feet. The fury had gone from her face, but in it was no mercy and out of its whiteness the violet flames of her eyes flared. She brought her whip down across my face: “A brand for your first treachery!” She lashed. “A brand for your second!” A third time again. “A brand for this time!”
I wondered, dazedly, why I did not feel the blows.
I felt nothing; all my body was numb, as though the cold had condensed within it. Slowly it was creeping into my brain, chilling my mind, freezing my thought. She said: “Stand up.”
Slowly, I arose. She leaped upon the stallion’s back. She said: “Raise your left arm.” I lifted it, and she noosed the lash of the quirt around my wrist like a fetter.
She said: “Look. My dogs feed.”
I looked. The shadow hounds were coursing over the meadow and the shadow things were running, hopping from bush to bush, squeaking, piping in terror. The hounds were chasing them, pulling them down, tearing at them.
She said: “You, too, shall feed!”
She called to her dogs and they left their kills and came coursing to her.
The cold had crept into my brain. I could not think. I could see, but what I saw had little meaning. I had no will, except hers.
The stallion trotted away, into the lane. I trotted at its side, held by the fetter of Dahut’s lash, like a runaway slave. Once I looked behind. At my heels was the shadow pack, red eyes glinting in their bodies’ murk. It did not matter.
And the numbness grew until all I knew was that I was trotting, trotting.
Then even that last faint fragment of consciousness faded away.
CHAPTER XIX
“CREEP, SHADOW!”
There was no feeling in my body, but my mind was awake and alert. It was as though I had no body. The icy venom from the fangs of the shadow hounds still numbed me, I thought. But it had cleared from my brain. I could see and I could hear.
All that I could see was a green twilight, as though I lay deep in some ocean abyss looking upward through immense spaces of motionless, crystal-clear green water. I floated deep within this motionless sea, yet I could hear, far above me, its waves whispering and singing.
I began to rise, floating up through the depths toward the whispering, singing waves. Their voices became clearer. They were singing a strange old song, a sea-song old before ever man was…singing it to the measured chime of tiny bells struck slowly far beneath the sea…to measured tap, tap, tap on drums of red royal coral deep beneath the sea…to chords struck softly on harps of sea-fans whose strings were mauve and violet and crocus yellow.
Up I floated and up, until song and drum beat, chimes and sighing harp chords blended into one…The voice of Dahut.
She was close to me, and she was singing, but I could not see her. I could see nothing but the green twilight, and that was fast darkening. Sweet was her voice and pitiless…and wordless was her song except for its burden…
“Thirst, Shadow! Hunger, Shadow! Creep, Shadow—creep!”
I strove to speak and could not; strove to move and could not. And still her song went on…only its burden plain…
“Hunger, Shadow, feed only where and when I bid you! Thirst, Shadow…drink only where and when I bid you! Creep, Shadow creep!”
Suddenly I felt my body. First as a tingling, and then as a leaden weight, and then as a wrenching agony. I was out of my body. It lay upon a wide, low bed in a tapestried room filled with rosy light. The light did not penetrate the space in which I was, crouching at my body’s feet. On my body’s face were three crimson welts, the marks of Dahut’s whip, and Dahut stood at my body’s head, naked, two thick braids of her pale gold hair crossed between white breasts. I knew that my body was not dead, but Dahut was not looking at it. She was looking at me…whatever I was…crouched at my body’s feet…
“Creep, Shadow…creep…creep…creep, Shadow…creep…”
The room, my body, and Dahut faded—in that precise order. I was creeping, creeping, through darkness. It was like creeping through a tunnel, for solidity was above and below and on each side of me; and at last, as though reaching a tunnel’s end, the blackness before me began to gray. I crept out of the darkness.
I was at the edge of the standing stones, on the threshold of the monoliths. The moon was low, and they stood black against it.
There was an eddy of wind, and like a leaf it blew me among the monoliths. I thought: What am I to be blown like a leaf in the wind! I felt resentment, rage. I thought: A shadow’s rage!
I was beside one of the standing stones. Dark as it was, a darker shadow leaned against it. It was the shadow of a man, although there was no man’s body to cast it. It was the shadow of a man buried to the knees. There were other monoliths near, and against each of them leaned a man’s shadow…buried to the knees. The shadow closest to me wavered, like the shadow cast by a wind-shaken candle flame. It bent to me and whispered: “You have life! Live, Shadow and save us!”
I whispered: “I am shadow…shadow like you…how can I save you?”
The shadow against the standing stone swayed and shook: “You have life…kill…kill her…kill him…”
The shadow on the stone behind me whispered: “Kill…her…first.”
From all the monoliths rose a whisper: “Kill…kill…kill…”
There was a stronger eddy of the wind, and on it I was whirled like a leaf almost to the threshold of the Cairn. The whispering of the shadows fette
red to the circling monoliths grew locust shrill, beating back the wind that was whirling me into the Cairn…shrilling a barrier between the Cairn and me…driving me back, out of the field of the monoliths…
The Cairn and the monoliths were gone. The moon was gone and gone was the familiar earth. I was a shadow…in a land of shadows…
There were no stars, no moon, no sun. There was only a faintly luminous dusk which shrouded a world all wan and ashen and black. I stood alone, on a wide plain. There were no perspectives, and no horizons. Everywhere it was as though I looked upon vast screens. Yet I knew there were depths and distances in this strange land. I was a shadow, vague and unsubstantial. Yet I could see and hear, feel and taste, I knew that because I clasped my hands and felt them, and in my mouth and throat was the bitter taste of ashes.
Ahead of me were shadow mountains, stacked against each other like gigantic slices of black jade; lamellar; distinguishable from each other only by their varying darknesses. It seemed that I could reach out a hand and touch them, yet I knew they were far and far away. My eyes—my sight—whatever it was that functioned as sight in this shadow that was I, sharpened. I was ankle deep in somber, shadowy grass starred by small flowers that should have been gay blue instead of mournful gray. And shadowy livid lilies that should have been golden and scarlet swayed in a wind I could not feel.
I beard above me a thin trilling, plaintively sweet. Shadowy birds were winging over me toward the distant mountains. They passed…but the trilling lingered…shaped itself into words into the voice of Dahut.
…Hunger Thirst!
My way was toward the mountains—the shadowy birds had pointed it. I had a swift moment of rebellion, I thought: I will not take it. This is illusion. Here I stay…
The voice of Dahut, pitiless: Learn whether it is not real!
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 197