Weird Tales volume 36 number 02

by McIlwraith, Dorothy

  T/" HAL KAN paid no attention. He was •*•** having the men stuff the small metal vases with the black powder, stopping their mouths with clay through which a fuselike wick protruded.

  "Distribute these vases to all our men along the walls," he ordered. "Tell them, that when the Bunts place their ladders, they are to light the fuses and fling the vases down among the green warriors, at my command."

  "Hell destroy all dreams!" raged Brusul. "What good will such a crazy plan do? Do you think dropping vases on the Bunts will stop them?"

  "I don't know," Khal Kan muttered. "In the dream, I thought it would. The dream-me called the powder 'gunpowder' and the vases grenades.' And in the dream they seemed a more terrible weapon even than the poisoned arrows."

  Yells from the walls and the warning blare of trumpets ripped across the sunlit city. A great cry swept through Jotan's streets.

  "The Bunts are coming!"

  "To the wall!" Khal Kan cried.

  From the parapet atop the great wall, the rising sun revealed an ominous spectacle. From all around the landward side

  of Jotan, the hordes of the Bunts were surging toward the city.

  First came a line of green bowmen whose hissing, poisoned shafts were already rattling along the top of the wall. Jotanian warriors sank groaning as the swift poison sped into their blood. Khal Kan held his shield up, and swept Golden Wings behind him as they waited.

  Behind the first line of bowmen came Bunts carrying long, rough wooden scaling-ladders. Behind these came the main masses of the stocky green men, armed with bows and short-swords, led by Egir himself.

  The ladders came up against the wall, and the blood-chilling Bunt yell broke around the city as the green warriors swarmed catlike up them. Joranians who sought to push over the ladders were smitten by arrows.

  "Over the wall and open the gates!" Egir's bull voice was yelling to his green men. "Let us into Jotan!"

  The main horde of the Bunts was already surging toward the gates of the city, while their attackers on the ladders sought to win the wall.

  "Now—light the fuses and drop the vases!" Khal Kan yelled along the parapet, through the melee.

  Torches at readiness set the wicks alight. The seemingly harmless little metal vases were tossed over into the surging mass of the Bunts.

  A series of ear-splitting crashes shook the air, like thunder. White smoke drifted away to show masses of the Bunts felled by the explosions.

  "Gods!" cried Brusul appaliedly. "Your dream-weapon is thunder of heaven itself!"

  "Magic!" yelled the Bunts, shrinking back aghast from their own dead, tumbling in panic off the ladders. "Flee, brothers!"

  The fear-maddened green warriors surged back from the walls of Jotan, breaking in panic-stricken, disorganized masses.

  DREAMER'S WORLDS

  27

  Egir's bull voice could be heard raging, trying to rally them, but in vain.

  The men of Jotan who had lighted and flung the new weapons were as horrified as their victims. Khal Kan's yell aroused them.

  "Horses, and after them!'' he cried. "Now is our chance to avenge yesterday!"

  The gates ground open—and every horsemen left in jotan galloped out after Khal Kan and Golden Wings in pursuit of the routed, green men.

  The Bunts made hardly any effort to turn and fight They were madly intent on putting as great a distance as possible between them and Jotan.

  "It's Egir I'm after!'' Khal Kan cried to Brusul. "While he lives, no safety for Jotan!"

  "See — there he rides!" cried Golden Wings' silvery voice.

  Khal Kan yelled and put spur to his horse as he saw Egir and his Bunt captains riding full tilt toward the Dragals, in an effort to escape.

  They rode right through the Seeing Bunts in pursuit of the traitor. They were overtaking him, when Egir turned and saw them coming. The Jotanian renegade uttered a yell, and he and his green captains turned.

  " 'Ware arrows!" shouted Brusul, behind Khal Kan.

  Khal Kan saw the Bunts loosing the vicious shafts, but he saw it only vaguely, for only Egir's sardonic face was clear to him as he charged.

  Sword' out, he galloped toward his uncle. Something stung his arm, and he heard a scream from Golden Wings and knew an arrow had hit him.

  "My dear nephew, you've two minutes to live!" panted JEgir, his eyes blazing hate and triumph as they met and their swords clashed. "You're a dead man now—"

  Khal Kan felt a cold, deadly numbness creeping through his arm with incredible

  rapidity. He summoned all his fa! ing strength to swing his sword up.

  It left his guard open and Egir stabbed viciously as their horses wheeled. Then Khal Kan's nerveless arm brought his blade-down.

  "This for my father, Egir!"

  The sword shore the traitor's shoulder and neck half through. And a moment after Egir dropped from the saddle, Khal Kan felt his own numb body falling. He could not feel the impact with the ground.

  His mind was darkening and everything was spinning around. It was as though he whirled in a black funnel, and was being sucked down into its depths, yet he could still hear voices of those bending over him.

  "Khal Kan!" That was Golden Wings, he knew.

  He tried to speak up to them out of the roaring darkness that was engulfing him.

  "Jotan—safe now, with Egir gone. The kingship to Brusul. Golden Wings—"

  He could not form more words. Khal Kan knew that he was dying. But he knew, at last, that Thar was not a dream, for even though his own life was passing, nothing around him was vanishing. But, his dark-enirfg brain wondered, if That had been real all the time—

  But then, in a flash of light on the very verge of darkness, Khal Kan saw the truth that neither he nor the other had ever imagined. . . .

  HENRY STEVENS lay dead upon his bed in the neat bedroom of his little suburban cottage. And in the room, his sobbing wife was trying to tell her story to the physician and the psychiatrist.

  "It was all so sudden," she sobbed. "I awoke, and found that Herry was clenching his fists as though in a convulsion and was shouting—something about Jotan being safe now. And then—he was dead—"

  The physician was soothing her as he

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  led her to another room. When he came back, his face was keen as he looked at Doctor Thorn.

  "You heard her story?" he said to the psychiatrist. "I telephoned you because I understood he'd been consulting you. I can't understand this thing at all."

  He pointed to Henry's motionless figure. "The man had nothing organically wrong with him, as I happen to know. Yet he died in his sleep—as though from terrible mental shock."

  "You've hit it, Doctor," nodded Doctor Thorn thoughtfully. "If my guess is right, he was dreaming, and when his dream-self was killed, Henry Stevens died, also."

  He went on to tell the physician of the case.

  The practitioner's face became incredulous as he heard.

  "The poor devil!" he ejaculated. "He had that dream and dream-life all his life long, and when his dream-self died, he died too by mental suggestion."

  "I am not sure that that other life of his, that world of Thar, was a dream," Doctor Thorn replied soberly.

  "Oh, come, Doctor," protested the other. "If Henry Stevens and Earth were real, and we know they were, Thar and Khal Kan must have been only his dream."

  "I wonder," replied the psychiatrist. "Did you ever hear of mental rapport?

  Cases where two people's minds are so tuned that one experiences the other's feelings and thoughts, when his own mind is relaxed and quiescent? There have been a good many such provable cases.

  "Suppose," Thorn went on, "that Henry Stevens was a unique case of that. Suppose that his mind happened to be in rapport, from the time of his birth, with the mind of another man—another man, who was not of Earth but of some world far across the universe from ours? Suppose that each man's subconscious was able to experience the other man's thoughts and feelings, when his o
wn consciousness was relaxed and sleeping? So that each man, all his life, seemed each night to dream the other man's life?"

  "Good Lord!" exclaimed the practitioner. "If that were true, both Henry Stevens and Khal Kan were real, on far-separated worlds?"

  Doctor Thorn nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, and the two men would be so much in rapport that the death of one would kill the other. It's only a theory, and we can never know if it's true. Probably he knows, now—"

  Henry Stevens, lying there, seemed to be smiling at their speculations. But it was not his own smile that lay upon his face. It was the reckless, gay, triumphant smile of Khal Kan.

  "Great Gitche Manitou . . - punish — punish — punisn!"

  From THE WiTCH'S TALE—that highly popular radio broadcast which thrilled you so often over the air — comes a story specially adapted for the magazine by that famous program's author and director, Alonzo Deen Cole.

  7ke pirits of the Lake

  By ALONZO DEEN COLE

  Was it at the bidding of the "Old Ones" that slime — loathsome, hideously green — rose from the lake's dreadful depths to

  vengeance . . . ?

  exact monstrous

  ROGER BENTON slammed the bungalow door behind him and to stamped down the path to the shore. Another month in this wilderness and Bernice would be going about dressed in a blanket and beads, he angrily told himself—for she acted and thought more like a damned Indian every day. He'd been a fool to let her buy this island a

  stone's throw from the reservation on the advice of these dumb doctors. Her lungs hadn't shown any improvement here; her condition was worse, if anything—and as for the effects of this "Back to Nature" stuff on him —.' He cursed aloud, bitterly. From across the placid lake a monotonous Indian chant beat at his eardrums, and weak tears of self pity welled into his eyes.

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  Back in Chicago, his marriage to the semi-invalid Bernice had seemed a good bargain, foe she was wealthy, very generous, and had never attempted to pry too deeply into his outside affairs. But here, where he saw no one but her and a handful of stinking red-skins; where he heard nothing but that savage caterwauling and her incessant coughing—! He flung himself into the canoe and paddled furiously toward the mainland—and Hilda Johannson. What a difference that Swedish farmer's daughter could make in his exile, if she would only cast aside her backwoods scruples! He railed inwardly at her now, for her frigid aloofness had long since fired him with a consuming infatuation. Nothing was right on this damn Michigan peninsula!

  Floating across the slimy lake in ceaseless, maddening rhythm, the savage chant intruded itself upon his mind again and drove out thoughts of Hilda. He laid aside the paddle for a moment to stop his cars, so unbearable had the sound become. It had begun early this evening when the pale new moon cast its first reflection on the waters, and it would continue every night until this moon had waned. It had been Bernice's infantile delight in its crazy significance that precipitated his furious departure from the house. She had said: "It's a ceremony the tribe holds every year 'at this time to appease the Spirits of the Lake—the Neebanawbaigs, they call them. This is a holy lake to the Indians, you know; and they say if anyone affronts it, or harms its friends, the Neebanawbaigs take terrible vengeance!" Here she had laughed self-consciously — as well she might!—before she went on:

  "Two Horses—that's our old housekeeper's cousin, you know—spoke so convincingly of its terrors that I made it a peace offering this afternoon. I cast a bouquet of garden flowers on the waters, and said a prayer Two Horses taught me. Now,

  no one may harm me, for fear the Spirits of the Lake will punish them."

  That last bit of addle-brained nonsense had marked the limit of Roger's endurance. - What civilized man wouldn't have blown up and flown out of the house in disgust after that? And, because Bernice's silliness had driven him away so early in the evening, he would arrive at his rendezvous with Hilda half an hour too soon. Roger Benton felt terribly abused.

  Hilda, following the custom of her sex, did not appear until much later than the waiting man expected.

  When she finally came in sight, she presented a striking contrast to the thin, dark, ailing woman he had left in anger. Tall, strong, blonde as her Viking forebears, she strode with lithe grace along the forest path.

  Eyes that were too cold, and a thin lipped mouth too firmly set, marred the beauty of her face. But Roger Benton had never noted these imperfections. His long wait had sharpened his desire. Forgetting past rebuffs, he rushed to meet her and clasped her in his arms.

  She coolly disengaged herself and sat down upon a fallen tree.

  Irritably, he threw himself beside her. "Hilda, why do you hold me off like this?" he pouted. "You know I'm mad—insane about you."

  Her thin lips curled in a faint smile. "You have no right to be mad about me —you're a married man."

  "We're not children! You know how little I care about my wife! Besides, it's only a question of time before—" He paused.

  "Before she will die, you mean," she finished simply.

  He turned his head away. "Yes. She thinks she's getting better; but the doctors don't tell her what they tell me." His arms clasped her again, "And the moment I'm free, I'll marry you—I swear it! But I

  THE SPIRITS OF THE LAKE

  31

  can't wait for you till then—I've got to have you!"

  She thrust him away, roughly this time. "You will have me only as your wife. I have told you that before."

  His hands fell helplessly to his sides. Petulantly, resentfully, he complained, "If you really mean that, why don't you stop making a fool of me? Why do you meet me here by the lake each night, playing with me as a cat does with a mouse?"

  She looked at him silently for a moment; then quietly, "Because I hope you will not always be a mouse. If you are as mad about me as you say, you will not let a woman you hate stand between us much longer.'

  "What can I do? Divorce is out of the question."

  "Of course—then her money would be taken from you."

  He was annoyed. "I'm not thinking only of moa.

  She leaned close to him, "I'm not thinking only of divorce."

  He stared at her for a long moment, and her cold, unwavering eyes returned his gaze. His eyes fell and she began to talk rapidly in her low, compelling voice.

  THE pathetic little cough rasped out again. At the sound, the man in the stern dipped his paddle more deeply into the faint shimmer of the scum-covered water.

  After a struggling, breathless moment, the coughing spell abated and its victim spoke:

  "It's wonderful to be on the lake with you again, Roger—it's been so Jong since we've been in the canoe together." She laughed happily. "I feel as though we were beginning a second honeymoon."

  Roger Benton glanced briefly at his frail wife, grunted, and returned his attention to the paddle. In the silence that followed the throbbing hum of th; Indian

  chant slid steadily over the water — a brooding monotone of endless cadence.

  Finally Bernice spoke again.

  "How solemn the chant sounds tonight: Like the hymn it really is—a prayer for the dying."

  "For the—dying?" His voice held a sharp, uncertain quality.

  "Yes. This is Indian Summer, you know —the Moon of Falling Leaves, of dying things. That song is a tribute to fading nature. Rather beautiful, don't you think?"

  The paddle trailed unheeded, as he repeated abstractedly: "The Moon of Falling Leaves—of dying things."

  She leaned forward a little, her dark eyes searching his face anxiously. "Roger —you act so strangely tonight. Aren't you well, dear?"

  He straightened, recovered himself. "I'm quite all right." He resumed his jerky, erratic stroke, as she readied to place a small hand tenderly on his knee.

  "I know how unhappy you are here. But I'll be well again soon, and we'll go back to the city." She laughed self-consciously, "I would like to return here for just one day each year, though—to r
enew my offering to the Spirits of the Lake. I've taken their protection very seriously, you see."

  The muscles of his jaw working spasmodically under the tanned skin, and he opened his mouth as though to speak.

  Quickly, placatingly, she forestalled him.

  "Please don't be annoyed, dear, it's such a pretty legend."

  He turned his head abruptly away; as though in anger or to avoid her eyes. His strokes grew faster, clumsier; stabbing angry slashes that sent the frail craft forward in plunging leaps. The woman, a little fearfully, looked behind her to see where this mad race was heading. Then she spoke again, with patently assumed unconcern:

  "Roger, sharp rocks are just ahead—

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  those the Indians call the "Spirits Talons'." She continued, as though to herself, "They say the Road to the Villages of the Happy Dead leads over such rocks as those—rocks with a knife-like edge, upon which only the Good can keep their footing; the Bad fall off into an abyss of eternal torment."

  His hysterical snarl brought her rudely to a stop.

  "Stop talking that filthy savage rot! It can't frighten me!"

  Her eyes grew wide in amazement. His voice rose in a crazy yell:

  "I'm not afraid of "spirits'! They can't hurt me—and men will say it was an accident! An accident!"

  Madly he continued, repeating again and again, "An accident!"

  Her hands mounted in futile gesture to her throat and she began to cough; gasping, terror laden words tumbling out between the spasms.

  "You're making for the rocks on purpose—you know I can't swim—you mean to drown me—Roger—don't—Turn back —turn back—"

  His voice and stroke beat on. "Accident—accid ent—"

  The blood drained from her face, she clawed frantically at the gunwales—tried terribly to scream.

  With a rending crash, the canoe splintered to matchwood on the razor-edged rocks.

  Rogfcr Benton swam to shore and fell, sobbing, to the ground. From far away, the savage chant in honor of the Moon of Falling Leaves—of dying things—still rose and fell. But he didn't hear it now. The sound of a canoe ripping upon sharp rocks was repeating over and over inside his mind. He was hearing again the horrible, choking struggles of a drowning woman. He was hearing again the words she'd cried before the waters closed about her—words that would reverberate within his brain for-