The Best Horror Stories of

by Robert E. Howard

  "Let us eat," said he; "then we will build a great fire at the cave mouth. The fire which keeps away beasts shall also keep away fiends."

  Later Kane sat just inside the cave, chin rested on clenched fist, eyes gazing unseeingly into the fire.

  Behind in the shadows, Zunna watched him, awed.

  "God of Hosts," Kane muttered, "grant me aid! My hand it is which must lift the ancient curse from this dark land. How am I to fight these dead fiends, who yield not to mortal weapons? Fire will destroy them--a broken neck renders them helpless--the voodoo stave thrust through them crumbles them to dust--but of what avail? How may I prevail against the hundreds who haunt these hills, and to whom human life-essence is Life? Have not--as Zunna says--warriors come against them in the past, only to find them fled to their high-walled city where no man can come against them?"

  The night wore on. Zunna slept, her cheek pillowed on her round, girlish arm. The roaring of the lions shook the hills and still Kane sat and gazed broodingly into the fire. Outside, the night was alive with whispers and rustlings and stealthily soft footfalls. And at times Kane, glancing up from his meditations, seemed to catch the gleam of great red eyes beyond the flickering light of the fire.

  Gray dawn was stealing over the grasslands when Kane shook Zunna into wakefulness.

  "God have mercy on my soul for delving in barbaric magic," said he, "but demonry must be fought with demonry, mayhap. Tend ye the fire and awake me if aught untoward occur."

  Kane lay down on his back on the sand floor and laid the voodoo staff on his breast, folding his hands upon it. He fell asleep instantly. And sleeping, he dreamed. To his slumbering self it seemed that he walked through a thick fog and in this fog he met N'Longa, true to life. N'Longa spoke, and the words were clear and vivid, impressing themselves on his consciousness so deeply as to span the gap between sleeping and waking.

  "Send this girl to her village soon after sun-up when the lions have gone to their lairs," said N'Longa,

  "and bid her bring her lover to you at this cave. There make him lie down as if to slumber, holding the voodoo stave."

  The dream faded and Kane awoke suddenly, wondering. How strange and vivid had been the vision, and how strange to hear N'Longa talking in English, without the jargon! Kane shrugged his shoulders. He knew that N'Longa claimed to possess the power of sending his spirit through space, and he himself had seen the voodoo man animate a dead man's body. Still--

  "Zunna," said Kane, giving the problem up, "I will go with you as far as the edge of the jungle and you must go on to your village and return here to this cave with your lover."

  "Kran?" she asked naively.

  "Whatever his name is. Eat and we will go."

  Again the sun slanted toward the west. Kane sat in the cave, waiting. He had seen the girl safely to the place where the jungle thinned to the grasslands, and though his conscience stung him at the thought of the dangers which might confront her, he sent her on alone and returned to the cave. He sat now, wondering if he would not be damned to everlasting flames for tinkering with the magic of a black sorcerer, blood-brother or not.

  Light footfalls sounded, and as Kane reached for his musket, Zunna entered, accompanied by a tall, splendidly proportioned youth whose brown skin showed that he was of the same race as the girl. His soft dreamy eyes were fixed on Kane in a sort of awesome worship. Evidently the girl had not minimized the white god's glory in her telling.

  He bade the youth lie down as he directed and placed the voodoo stave in his hands. Zunna crouched at one side, wide-eyed. Kane stepped back, half ashamed of this mummery and wondering what, if anything, would come of it. Then to his horror, the youth gave one gasp and stiffened!

  Zunna screamed, bounding erect.

  "You have killed Kran!" she shrieked, flying at the Englishman who stood struck speechless.

  Then she halted suddenly, wavered, drew a hand languidly across her brow--she slid down to lie with her arms about the motionless body of her lover.

  And this body moved suddenly, made aimless motions with hands and feet, then sat up, disengaging itself from the clinging arms of the still senseless girl.

  Kran looked up at Kane and grinned, a sly, knowing grin which seemed out of place on his face somehow. Kane started. Those soft eyes had changed in expression and were now hard and glittering and snaky--N'Longa's eyes!

  "Ai ya," said Kran in a grotesquely familiar voice. "Blood-brother, you got no greeting for N'Longa?"

  Kane was silent. His flesh crawled in spite of himself. Kran rose and stretched his arms in an unfamiliar sort of way, as if his limbs were new to him. He slapped his breast approvingly.

  "Me N'Longa!" said he in the old boastful manner. "Mighty ju-ju man! Blood-brother, not you know me, eh?"

  "You are Satan," said Kane sincerely. "Are you Kran or are you N'Longa?"

  "Me N'Longa," assured the other. "My body sleep in ju-ju hut on Coast many treks from here. I borrow Kran's body for while. My ghost travel ten days' march in one breath; twenty days' march in same time.

  My ghost go out from my body and drive out Kran's."

  "And Kran is dead?"

  "No, he no dead. I send his ghost to shadowland for a while--send the girl's ghost too, to keep him company; bimeby come back."

  "This is the work of the Devil," said Kane frankly, "but I have seen you do even fouler magic--shall I call you N'Longa or Kran?"

  "Kran--kah! Me N'Longa--bodies like clothes! Me N'Longa, in here now!" He rapped his breast.

  "Bimeby Kran live along here--then he be Kran and I be N'Longa, same like before. Kran no live along now; N'Longa live along this one fellow body. Blood-brother, I am N'Longa!"

  Kane nodded. This was in truth a land of horror and enchantment; anything was possible, even that the thin voice of N'Longa should speak to him from the great chest of Kran, and the snaky eyes of N'Longa should blink at him from the handsome young face of Kran.

  "This land I know long time," said N'Longa, getting down to business. "Mighty ju-ju, these dead people!

  No, no need to waste one fellow time--I know--I talk to you in sleep. My blood-brother want to kill out these dead black fellows, eh?"

  "'Tis a thing opposed to nature," said Kane somberly. "They are known in my land as vampires--I never expected to come upon a whole nation of them."

  IV

  THE SILENT CITY

  "Now we find this stone city," said N'Longa.

  "Yes? Why not send your ghost out to kill these vampires?" Kane asked idly.

  "Ghost got to have one fellow body to work in," N'Longa answered. "Sleep now. Tomorrow we start."

  The sun had set; the fire glowed and flickered in the cave mouth. Kane glanced at the still form of the girl, who lay where she had fallen, and prepared himself for slumber.

  "Awake me at midnight," he admonished, "and I will watch from then until dawn."

  But when N'Longa finally shook his arm, Kane awoke to see the first light of dawn reddening the land.

  "Time we start," said the fetish-man.

  "But the girl--are you sure she lives?"

  "She live, blood-brother."

  "Then in God's name, we can not leave her here at the mercy of any prowling fiend who might chance upon her. Or some lion might--"

  "No lion come. Vampire scent still linger, mixed with man scent. One fellow lion he no like man scent and he fear the walking dead men. No beast come; and"--lifting the voodoo stave and laying it across the cave entrance--"no dead man come now."

  Kane watched him somberly and without enthusiasm.

  "How will that rod safeguard her?"

  "That mighty ju-ju," said N'Longa. "You see how one fellow vampire go along dust alongside that stave!

  No vampire dare touch or come near it. I gave it to you, because outside Vampire Hills one fellow man sometimes meet a corpse walking in jungle when shadows be black. Not all walking dead man be here.

  And all must suck Life from men--if not, they rot like dead wood."

/>   "Then make many of these rods and arm the people with them."

  "No can do!" N'Longa's skull shook violently. "That ju-ju rod be mighty magic! Old, old! No man live today can tell how old that fellow ju-ju stave be. I make my blood-brother sleep and do magic with it to guard him, that time we make palaver in Coast village. Today we scout and run; no need it. Leave it here to guard girl."

  Kane shrugged his shoulders and followed the fetish-man, after glancing back at the still shape which lay in the cave. He would never have agreed to leave her so casually, had he not believed in his heart that she was dead. He had touched her, and her flesh was cold.

  They went up among the barren hills as the sun was rising. Higher they climbed, up steep clay slopes, winding their way through ravines and between great boulders. The hills were honeycombed with dark, forbidding caves, and these they passed warily, and Kane's flesh crawled as he thought of the grisly occupants therein. For N'Longa said:

  "Them vampires, he sleep in caves most all day till sunset. Them caves, he be full of one fellow dead man."

  The sun rose higher, baking down on the bare slopes with an intolerable heat. Silence brooded like an evil monster over the land. They had seen nothing, but Kane could have sworn at times that a black shadow drifted behind a boulder at their approach.

  "Them vampires, they stay hid in daytime," said N'Longa with a low laugh. "They be afraid of one fellow vulture! No fool vulture! He know death when he see it! He pounce on one fellow dead man and tear and eat if he be lying or walking!"

  A strong shudder shook his companion.

  "Great God!" Kane cried, striking his thigh with his hat; "is there no end to the horror of this hideous land? Truly this land is dedicated to the powers of darkness!"

  Kane's eyes burned with a dangerous light. The terrible heat, the solitude and the knowledge of the horrors lurking on either hand were shaking even his steely nerves.

  "Keep on one fellow hat, blood-brother," admonished N'Longa with a low gurgle of amusement. "That fellow sun, he knock you dead, suppose you no look out."

  Kane shifted the musket he had insisted on bringing and made no reply. They mounted an eminence at last and looked down on a sort of plateau. And in the center of this plateau was a silent city of gray and crumbling stone. Kane was smitten by a sense of incredible age as he looked. The walls and houses were of great stone blocks, yet they were falling into ruin. Grass grew on the plateau, and high in the streets of that dead city. Kane saw no movement among the ruins.

  "That is their city--why do they choose to sleep in caves?"

  "Maybe-so one fellow stone fall on them from roof and crush. Them stone huts, he fall down bimeby.

  Maybe-so they no like to stay together--maybe-so they eat each other, too."

  "Silence!" whispered Kane; "how it hangs over all!"

  "Them vampires no talk nor yell; they dead. They sleep in caves, wander at sunset and at night.

  Maybe-so them black fellow bush tribes come with spears, them vampires go to stone kraal and fight behind walls."

  Kane nodded. The crumbling walls which surrounded that dead city were still high and solid enough to resist the attack of spearmen--especially when defended by these snout-nosed fiends.

  "Blood-brother," said N'Longa solemnly, "I have mighty magic thought! Be silent a little while."

  Kane seated himself on a boulder and gazed broodingly at the bare crags and slopes which surrounded them. Far away to the south he saw the leafy green ocean that was the jungle. Distance lent a certain enchantment to the scene. Closer at hand loomed the dark blotches that were the mouths of the caves of horror.

  N'Longa was squatting, tracing some strange pattern in the clay with a dagger point. Kane watched him, thinking how easily they might fall victim to the vampires if even three or four of the fiends should come out of their caverns. And even as he thought it, a black and horrific shadow fell across the crouching fetish-man.

  Kane acted without conscious thought. He shot from the boulder where he sat like a stone hurled from a catapult, and his musket stock shattered the face of the hideous black thing who had stolen upon them.

  Back and back Kane drove his inhuman foe staggering, never giving him time to halt or launch an offensive, battering him with the onslaught of a frenzied tiger.

  At the very edge of the cliff the vampire wavered, then pitched back over, to fall for a hundred feet and lie writhing on the rocks of the plateau below. N'Longa was on his feet pointing; the hills were giving up their dead.

  Out of the caves they were swarming, the terrible black silent shapes; up the slopes they came charging and over the boulders they came clambering, and their red eyes all turned toward the two humans who stood above the silent city. The caves belched them forth in an unholy judgment day.

  N'Longa pointed to a crag some distance away and with a shout started running fleetly toward it. Kane followed. From behind boulders black-taloned hands clawed at them, tearing their garments. They raced past caves, and mummied monsters came lurching out of the dark, gibbering silently, to join in the pursuit.

  The dead hands were close at their back when they scrambled up the last slope and stood on a ledge which was the top of the crag. The fiends halted silently a moment, then came clambering after them.

  Kane clubbed his musket and smashed down into the red-eyed faces, knocking aside the upleaping hands. They surged up like a black wave; he swung his musket in a silent fury that matched theirs. The black wave broke and wavered back; came on again.

  He--could--not--kill--them! These words beat on his brain like a sledge on an anvil as he shattered wood-like flesh and dead bone with his smashing swings. He knocked them down, hurled them back, but they rose and came on again. This could not last--what in God's name was N'Longa doing? Kane spared one swift, tortured glance over his shoulder. The fetish-man stood on the highest part of the ledge, head thrown back, arms lifted as if in invocation.

  Kane's vision blurred to the sweep of hideous black faces with red, staring eyes. Those in front were horrible to see now, for their skulls were shattered, their faces caved in and their limbs broken. But still they came on and those behind reached across their shoulders to clutch at the man who defied them.

  Kane was red but the blood was all his. From the long-withered veins of those monsters no single drop of warm red blood trickled. Suddenly from behind him came a long piercing wail--N'Longa! Over the crash of the flying musket-stock and the shattering of bones it sounded high and clear--the only voice lifted in that hideous fight.

  The black wave washed about Kane's feet, dragging him down. Keen talons tore at him, flaccid lips sucked at his wounds. He reeled up again, disheveled and bloody, clearing a space with a shattering sweep of his splintered musket. Then they closed in again and he went down.

  "This is the end!" he thought, but even at that instant the press slackened and the sky was suddenly filled with the beat of great wings.

  Then he was free and staggered up, blindly and dizzily, ready to renew the strife. He halted, frozen.

  Down the slope the black horde was fleeing and over their heads and close at their shoulders flew huge vultures, tearing and rending avidly, sinking their beaks in the dead black flesh, devouring the vampires as they fled.

  Kane laughed, almost insanely.

  "Defy man and God, but you may not deceive the vultures, sons of Satan! They know whether a man be alive or dead!"

  N'Longa stood like a prophet on the pinnacle and the great black birds soared and wheeled about him.

  His arms still waved and his voice still wailed out across the hills. And over the skylines they came, hordes on endless hordes--vultures, vultures, vultures! come to the feast so long denied them. They blackened the sky with their numbers, blotted out the sun; a strange darkness fell on the land. They settled in long dusky lines, diving into the caverns with a whir of wings and a clash of beaks. Their talons tore at the black horrors which these caves disgorged.

  Now all the vampires were fl
eeing to their city. The vengeance held back for ages had come down on them and their last hope was the heavy walls which had kept back the desperate human foes. Under those crumbling roofs they might find shelter. And N'Longa watched them stream into the city, and he laughed until the crags re-echoed.

  Now all were in and the birds settled like a cloud over the doomed city, perching in solid rows along the walls, sharpening their beaks and claws on the towers.

  And N'Longa struck flint and steel to a bundle of dry leaves he had brought with him. The bundle leaped into instant flame and he straightened and flung the blazing thing far out over the cliffs. It fell like a meteor to the plateau beneath, showering sparks. The tall grass of the plateau leaped aflame.

  From the silent city beneath them Fear flowed in unseen waves, like a white fog. Kane smiled grimly.

  "The grass is sere and brittle from the drouth," he said; "there has been even less rain than usual this season; it will burn swiftly."

  Like a crimson serpent the fire ran through the high dead grass. It spread and it spread and Kane, standing high above, yet felt the fearful intensity of the hundreds of red eyes which watched from the stone city.

  Now the scarlet snake had reached the walls and was rearing as if to coil and writhe over them. The vultures rose on heavily flapping wings and soared reluctantly. A vagrant gust of wind whipped the blaze about and drove it in a long red sheet around the wall. Now the city was hemmed in on all sides by a solid barricade of flame. The roar came up to the two men on the high crag.

  Sparks flew across the wall, lighting in the high grass in the streets. A score of flames leaped up and grew with terrifying speed. A veil of red cloaked streets and buildings, and through this crimson, whirling mist Kane and N'Longa saw hundreds of black shapes scamper and writhe, to vanish suddenly in red bursts of flame. There rose an intolerable scent of decaying flesh burning.

  Kane gazed, awed. This was truly a hell on earth. As in a nightmare he looked into the roaring red cauldron where black insects fought against their doom and perished. The flames leaped a hundred feet in air, and suddenly above their roar sounded one bestial, inhuman scream like a shriek from across nameless gulfs of cosmic space, as one vampire, dying, broke the chains of silence which had held him for untold centuries. High and haunting it rose, the death cry of a vanishing race.