"I told you," he shrieked. "She knew--and I knew--'twas not Adam Falcon, that cold monster flung up by the mocking waves! 'Tis some demon inhabiting his corpse! Hark--I sought my bed and tried to sleep, but each time there came the thought of this soft girl sitting beside that cold inhuman thing she thought her lover, and at last I rose and came to the window. Margeret sat, drowsing, and the others, fools that they were, slept in other parts of the house. And as I watched--"
He shook as a wave of shuddering passed over him.
"As I watched, Adam's eyes opened, and the corpse rose swift and stealthy from the bed where it lay. I stood without the window, frozen, helpless, and the ghastly thing stole upon the unknowing girl, with frightful eyes burning with Hellish light and snaky arms outstretched. Then, she woke and screamed and then--oh Mother of God!--the dead man lapped her in his terrible arms and she died without a sound."
Gower's voice died out into incoherent gibberings and he rocked the dead girl gently to and fro like a mother with a child.
Tom Leary shook him:
"Where is the corpse?"
"He fled into the night," said John Gower tonelessly.
Men looked at each other bewildered.
"He lies," muttered they, deep in their beards. "He has slain Margeret himself and hidden the corpse somewhere to bear out his ghastly tale."
A sullen snarl shook the throng and as one man they turned and looked where, on Hangman's Hill overlooking the bay, Lie-lip Canool's bleached skeleton glimmered against the stars.
They took the dead girl from Gower's arms, though he clung to her, and laid her gently on the bed between the candles meant for Adam Falcon. Still she lay and white, and men and women whispered that she seemed more like one drowned than one crushed to death.
We bore John Gower through the village streets, he not resisting but seeming to walk in a daze, muttering to himself. But in the square, Tom Leary halted.
"This is a strange tale Gower told us," said he. "And doubtless a lie. Still, I am not a man to be hanging another without certainty. Therefore let us place him in the stocks for safe-keeping, while we search for Adam's corpse. Time enough for hanging afterwards."
So this was done and as we turned away I looked back upon John Gower who sat, head bowed upon his breast, like a man who is weary unto death.
So under the dim wharfs and in the attics of houses and among stranded hulls we searched for Adam Falcon's corpse. Back up into the hills behind the town our hunt led us, where we broke up into groups and couples and scattered out over the barren downs.
My companion was Michael Hansen, and we had gotten so far apart that the darkness cloaked him from me, when he gave a sudden shout. I started toward him and then the shout broke into a shriek and the shriek died off into grisly silence. Michael Hansen lay dead on the earth and a dim form slunk away in the gloom as I stood above the corpse, my flesh crawling.
Tom Leary and the rest came on the run and gathered about, swearing that John Gower had done this deed also.
"He has escaped, somehow, from the stocks," said they, and we legged it for the village at top speed.
Aye, John Gower had escaped from the stocks and from his townsmen's hate and from all the sorrows of life. He sat as we had left him, head bowed upon his breast, but One had come to him in the darkness and, though all his bones were broken, he seemed like a drowned man.
Then stark horror fell like a thick fog on Faring town. We clustered about the stocks, struck silent, till shrieks from a house on the outskirts of the village told us that the horror had struck again and, rushing there, we found red destruction and death. And a maniac woman who whimpered before she died that Adam Falcon's corpse had broken through the window, flaming-eyed and horrible, to rend and slay. A green slime fouled the room and fragments of sea-weed clung to the window sill.
Then fear, unreasoning and shameless, took possession of the men of Faring town and they fled to their separate houses where they locked and bolted doors and windows and crouched behind them, weapons trembling in their hands and black terror in their souls. For what weapon can slay the dead?
And through that deathly night, horror stalked through Faring town, and hunted the sons of men. Men shuddered and dared not even look forth when the crash of a door or window told of the entrance of the fiend into some wretch's cottage, when shrieks and gibberings told of its grisly deeds therein.
Yet there was one man who did not shut himself behind doors to be there slaughtered like a sheep. I was never a brave man, nor was it courage that sent me out into the ghastly night. No, it was the driving power of a Thought, a Thought which had birth in my brain as I looked on the dead face of Michael Hansen. A vague and illusive thing it was, a hovering and an almost-being, but not quite. Somewhere at the back of my skull It lurked and I could not rest until I had proved or disproved that which I could not even formulate into a concrete theory.
So with my brain in strange and chaotic condition I stole through the shadows, warily. Mayhap the sea, strange and fickle even to her chosen, had whispered something to my inner mind, had betrayed her own.
I know not.
But all through the dark hours I prowled along the beach and when, in the first grey light of the early dawn, a fiendish shape came striding down to the shore, I was waiting there.
To all seeming it was Adam Falcon's corpse, animated by some horrid life, which fronted me there in the grey gloom. The eyes were open now and they glimmered with a cold light, like the reflections of some deep-sea Hell.
And I knew that it was not Adam Falcon who faced me.
"Sea fiend," I said in an unsteady voice, "I know not how you came by Adam Falcon's apparel. I know not whether his ship went upon the rocks, or whether he fell overboard, or whether you climbed up the strake and over the rail and dragged him from his own deck. Nor do I know by what foul ocean magic you twisted your devil's features into a likeness of his.
"But this I know: Adam Falcon sleeps in peace beneath the blue tides. You are not he. That I suspected--now I know. This horror has come upon the earth of yore--so long ago that all men have forgotten the tales--all except such as I, whom men name fool. I know, and knowing, I fear you not, and here I slay you, for though you are not human, you may be slain by a man who does not fear you--even though that man be only a youth and considered strange and foolish. You have left your demon's mark upon the land; God alone knows how many souls you have reft, how many brains you have shattered this night. The ancients said your kind could do harm only in the form of men, on land. Aye, you tricked the sons of men--were borne into their midst by kind and gentle hands--by men who knew not they carried a monster from the abysses.
"Now, you have worked your will, and the sun will soon rise. Before that time you must be far below the green waters, basking in the accursed caverns that human eye has never looked upon save in death.
There lies the sea and safety; I bar the way alone."
He came upon me like a towering wave and his arms were like green serpents about me. I knew they were crushing me, yet I felt as if I were drowning instead, and even then understood the expression that had puzzled me on Michael Hansen's face--that of a drowned man.
I was looking into the inhuman eyes of the monster and it was as if I gazed into untold depths of oceans--depths into which I should presently tumble and drown. And I felt scales--
Neck, arm and shoulder he gripped me, bending me back to break my spine, and I drove my knife into his body again--and again--and again. He roared once, the only sound I ever heard him make, and it was like the roar of the tides among the shoals. Like the pressure of a hundred fathoms of green water was the grasp upon my body and limbs and then, as I thrust again, he gave way and crumpled to the beach.
He lay there writhing and then was still, and already he had begun to change. Mermen, the ancients named his kind, knowing they were endowed with strange attributes, one of which was the ability to take the full form of a man if lifted from the ocean by the hands of men. I
bent and tore the human clothing from the thing. And the first gleams of the sun fell upon a slimy and moldering mass of sea-weed, from which stared two hideous dead eyes--a formless bulk that lay at the water's edge, where the first high wave would bear it back to that from which it came, the cold jade ocean deeps.
A Legend of Faring Town
Her house, a moulting buzzard on the Hill
Loomed gaunt and brooding over Faring town;
Behind, there sloped away the barren down
And at its foot an ancient, crumbling mill.
And often in the evening bleak and still,
With withered limbs wrapped in a sombre gown
And leathery face set in a sombre frown,
She sat in silence on her silent sill.
She came to Faring town long years ago--
With her a winsome child, the ancients said,
She vanished, where, the people did not know--
Meg mended ropes for ocean vessels' sails
And let the people think the child was dead--
She did not speak, but there were darksome tales.
One night the village flamed with sudden red--
From off Meg's roof we saw the cinders stream.
She came not forth--we entered--and in the gleam,
Saw her crouching, like a thing of dread,
Above a skeleton within her bed.
"Child slayer!" I still hear the women scream--
High a red and cinder spitting beam;
We hanged her and the flames consumed the dead.
A book we found, and written piteously
In Meg's sad scrawl: "Today my darling died
"But she shall sleep forever by my side--
"They shall not give her to the cruel sea."
We cringed and gazed in terror and in shame
Where still a form swung black against the flame.
Restless Waters
As if it were yesterday, I remember that terrible night in the Silver Slipper, in the late fall of 1845.
Outside, the wind roared in an icy gale and the sleet drove with it, till it rattled against the windows like the knucklebones of a skeleton. As we sat about the tavern fire, we could hear, booming above the wind and the sleet, the thunder of the white surges that beat frenziedly against the stark New England coast.
The ships in the harbor of the little seaport town lay double anchored, and the captains sought the warmth and companionship to be found in the wharf-side taverns.
There in the Silver Slipper that night were four men and I, the tap boy. There was Ezra Harper, the host; John Gower, captain of the Sea-Woman; Jonas Hopkins, a lawyer out of Salem; and Captain Starkey of The Vulture. These four men sat about the heavy oaken table in front of the great fire which roared in the fireplace, and I scurried about the tavern attending to their wants, filling mugs, and heating spiced drinks.
Captain Starkey sat with his back to the fire facing a window whereon the sleet beat and rattled. Ezra Harper sat at his right, at the end of the table, Captain Gower sat at the other end, and the lawyer, Jonas Hopkins, sat directly opposite Starkey, with his back to the window and facing the fire.
"More brandy!" Starkey roared, hammering the table with his great knotty fist. He was a rough giant of a man in middle life, with a short thick black beard and eyes that gleamed from beneath heavy black brows.
"A cold night for them that sail the sea," said Ezra Harper.
"A colder night for the men that sleep below the sea," said John Gower moodily. He was a tall rangy man, dark and saturnine of countenance, a strange wayward man of whom dark tales were told.
Starkey laughed savagely. "If you're thinking of Tom Siler, you'd best save your sympathy. Earth is the gainer for his going, and the sea is no better for it. A vile, murdering mutineer!" he roared the last in a sudden fury and smote the table resoundingly, glaring about as if to challenge any to dispute him.
A mocking smile flitted across the sinister countenance of John Gower, and Jonas Hopkins leaned forward, his keen eyes boring into Starkey's. Like all of us, he knew the story of Tom Siler, as told by Captain Starkey: how Siler, first mate aboard The Vulture, had sought to incite the crew to mutiny and piracy, had been tricked by Starkey and hanged at sea. Those were hard days and the captain's word was law at sea.
"Strange," said Jonas Hopkins, with his thin colorless face thrust at Captain Starkey. "Strange that Tom Siler should turn out bad, and him such a law abiding lad before this."
Starkey merely grunted disdainfully and emptied his cup. He was already drunk.
"When does your niece, Betty, marry Joseph Harmer, captain?" asked Ezra Harper, seeking to change the subject into safer channels. Jonas Hopkins sank back in his seat and turned his attention to his rum.
"Tomorrow," snarled Starkey.
Gower laughed shortly. "Is it a wife or a daughter Joe Harmer wants that he's marrying a girl so much younger than he?"
"John Gower, you'll oblige me by attending to your own cursed business!" roared Starkey. "The hussy should be overjoyed to be marrying a man like Harmer, who is one of the wealthiest ship owners in New England."
"But Betty doesn't think so, does she?" persisted John Gower, as if intent on stirring up trouble. "She's still sorrowing for Dick Hansen, isn't she?"
Captain Starkey's hairy hands clenched into fists and he glared at Gower as if this questioning of his private affairs was too much. Then he gulped down his rum and slammed the mug down on the board.
"There's no accounting for the whims of a girl," he said moodily. "If she wants to waste her life lamenting a wastrel who ran away and got himself drowned, that's her business. But it's my affair to see she marries properly."
"And how much is Joe Harmer paying you, Starkey?" asked John Gower bluntly.
This passed the point of civility and discretion. Starkey's huge body heaved up out of his seat and, with a bellow, he leaned across the table, eyes red with drink and fury, and his iron fist lifted. Gower did not move, but sat smiling up at him slit-eyed and dangerous.
"Sit down, Starkey!" Ezra Harper interposed. "John, the devil's in you tonight. Why can't we all take our liquor together friendly-like--"
This philosophical discourse was cut short abruptly. The heavy door was suddenly thrown open, a rush of wind made the candle dance and flicker wildly, and in the swirl of sleet that burst in, we saw a girl standing. I sprang forward and shut the door behind her.
"Betty!"
The girl was slim, almost frail. Her large dark eyes stared wildly, and her pretty pale face was streaked with tears. Her hair fell loose about her slender shoulders and her garments were soaked and battered by the gale through which she had battled her way.
"Betty!" roared Captain Starkey. "I thought you were at home in bed! What are you doing here--and on a night like this?"
"Oh, uncle!" she cried, holding her arms out to him blindly, oblivious to the rest of us. "I came to tell you again! I can't marry Joseph Harmer tomorrow! I can't! It's Dick Hansen! He's calling to me through the wind and the night and the black waters! Alive or dead, I'm his till I die, and I can't--I can't--"
"Get out!" roared Starkey, stamping and brandishing his arms like a maniac. "Out with you and back to your room! I'll attend to you later! Be silent! You'll marry Joe Harmer tomorrow or I'll beat you to death!"
With a whimper she sank to her knees before him, and with a bellow he raised his huge fist as if to strike her. But with one cat-like movement John Gower was out of his seat and had hurled the enraged captain back upon the table.
"Keep your hands off me, you damned pirate!" shouted Starkey furiously.
Gower grinned bleakly. "That's yet to be proven," said he. "But lay a finger on this child and we'll see how quick a 'damned pirate' can cut the heart out of an honest merchantman who's selling his own blood and kin to a miser."
"Let be, John," Ezra Harper interposed. "Starkey, don't you see the girl's in a fair way to collapse?
Here, honey," he bent an
d lifted her gently, "come with old Ezra. There's a warm fire in an upper room, and my wife shall give you some dry clothes. It's a bitter night for a girl to be out in. You'll stay with us till morning, dearie."
He went up the stair, half carrying the girl; and Starkey, after staring after them for a moment, returned to the table. There was silence awhile, and then Jonas Hopkins, who had not moved out of his seat, said:
"Strange tales making the rounds, Captain Starkey."
"And what might they be?" asked Starkey defiantly.
Jonas Hopkins stuffed his long slim-stemmed pipe with Virginia tobacco before he answered.
"I talked with some of your crew today."
"Huh!" Starkey spat out an oath. "My ship makes port this morning and before night the gossips are at work."
Hopkins beckoned me for a coal for his pipe. I obliged, and he took several long puffs.
"Mayhap they have something to work on this time, Captain Starkey."
"Speak up, man!" said Starkey angrily. "What are you driving at?"
"They say on board The Vulture that Tom Siler was never guilty of mutiny. They say that you trumped up the charges and hanged him out of hand in spite of the protests of the crew."
Starkey laughed savagely but hollowly. "And what basis for this wild tale?"
"They say that as he stood on the threshold of Eternity, Tom Siler swore that you were murdering him because he had learned what became of Dick Hansen. But before he could say more, the noose shut off his words and his life."
"Dick Hansen!" Starkey's face was pale, but his tone still defiant. "Dick Hansen was last seen on the wharfs of Salem one night over a year ago. What have I to do with him?"
"You wanted Betty to marry Joe Harmer, who was ready to buy her like a slave from you," answered Jonas Hopkins calmly. "This much is known by all."
John Gower nodded agreement.
"She was to marry Dick Hansen, though, and you had him shanghaied on board a British whaler bound on a four year cruise. Then you spread the report that he had been drowned and tried to rush Betty into marrying Harmer against her will, before Hansen could return. When you learned that Siler knew and would tell Betty, you became desperate. I know that you are on the verge of bankruptcy. Your only chance was the money Harmer had promised you. You murdered Tom Siler to still his mouth."
The Best Horror Stories of Page 12