But he really thought it was very ancient, and, as we know, he was right about the unusual process of mummification. The tribesmen who sealed that mummy into its case knew more about such things than the ancient Egyptians, evidently. But it wouldn't have lasted over twenty years anyway, I'm sure. Then Sir Thomas came along and stole it from the tribesmen--the same tribe, by the way, who murdered Von Honmann.
"No, your theory is wrong, I feel. You have heard of the occult theory which states that a spirit, earthbound through hate or love, can only do material good or evil when animating a material body? The occultists say, reasonably enough, that to bridge the gulf which lies between the two worlds of life and death, the spirit or ghost must inhabit and animate a fleshly form--preferably its own former habitation.
This mummy had died as men die, but I believe that the hate it felt in life was sufficient to span the void of death, to cause the dead and withered body to move and act and do murder.
"Now, if this be true, there is no limit to the horror to which mankind may be heir. If this be true, men may be hovering forever on the brink of unthought oceans of supernatural terror, parted from the next world by a thin veil which may be rent, as we have just seen it rent. I would like to believe otherwise--but Slade--
"As Ganra Singh hurled the struggling mummy into the fire, I watched--the sunken features expanded in the heat for a fleeting instant, just as a toy balloon when inflated, and for one brief second took on a human and familiar likeness. Slade, that face was the face of Gustave Von Honmann! "
The Dwellers Under the Tomb
I awoke suddenly and sat up in bed, sleepily wondering who it was that was battering on the door so violently; it threatened to shatter the panels. A voice squealed, sharpened intolerably as with mad terror.
"Conrad! Conrad!" someone outside the door was screaming. "For God's sake, let me in! I've seen him!--I've seen him!"
"It sounds like Job Kiles," said Conrad, lifting his long frame off the divan where he had been sleeping, after giving up his bed to me. "Don't knock down the door!" he called, reaching for his slippers. "I'm coming."
"Well, hurry!" squalled the unseen visitor. "I've just looked into the eyes of Hell!"
Conrad turned on a light and flung open the door, and in half fell, half staggered a wild-eyed shape which I recognized as the man Conrad had named--Job Kiles, a sour, miserly old man who lived on the small estate which adjoined that of Conrad. Now a grisly change had come over the man, usually so reticent and self-possessed. His sparse hair fairly bristled; drops of perspiration beaded his grey skin, and from time to time he shook as with a violent ague.
"What in God's name is the matter, Kiles?" exclaimed Conrad, staring at him. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost!"
"A ghost!" Kiles' high pitched voice cracked and dribbled off into a shriek of hysterical laughter. "I've seen a demon from Hell! I tell you, I saw him--tonight! Just a few minutes ago! He looked in at my window and laughed at me! Oh God, that laugh!"
"Who?" snapped Conrad impatiently.
"My brother Jonas!" screamed old Kiles.
Even Conrad started. Job's twin brother Jonas had been dead for a week. Both Conrad and I had seen his corpse placed in the tomb high upon the steep slopes of Dagoth Hills. I remembered the hatred which had existed between the brothers--Job the miser, Jonas the spendthrift, dragging out his last days in poverty and loneliness, in the ruined old family mansion on the lower slopes of the Dagoth Hills, all the brooding venom in his embittered soul centering on the penurious brother who dwelt in a house of his own in the valley. This feeling had been reciprocated. Even when Jonas lay dying, Job had only grudgingly allowed himself to be persuaded to come to his brother. As it chanced, he had been alone with Jonas when the latter died, and the death scene must have been hideous, for Job had run out of the room, grey-faced and trembling, pursued by a horrible cackle of laughter, broken short by the sudden death-rattle.
Now old Job stood shaking before us, sweat pouring off his grey skin, and babbling his dead brother's name.
"I saw him! I sat up later tonight than usual. Just as I turned out the light to go to bed--his face leered at me through the window, framed in the moonlight. He's come back from Hell to drag me down, as he swore to do as he lay dying. He's not human! He hadn't been for years! I suspected it when he returned from his long wandering in the Orient. He's a fiend in human shape! A vampire! He plans my destruction, body and soul!"
I sat speechless, utterly bewildered, and even Conrad found no words. Confronted by the apparent evidence of complete lunacy what is a man to say or do? My only thought was the obvious one that Job Kiles was insane. Now he seized Conrad by the breast of his dressing gown and shook him violently in the agony of his terror.
"There's but one thing to do!" he cried, the light of desperation in his eyes. "I must go to his tomb! I must see with my own eyes if he still lies there where we laid him! And you must go with me! I dare not go through the darkness alone! He might be waiting for me--lying in wait behind any hedge or tree!"
"This is madness, Kiles," expostulated Conrad. "Jonas is dead--you had a nightmare--"
"Nightmare!" his voice rose in a cracked scream. "I've had plenty since I stood beside his evil death-bed and heard the blasphemous threats pour like a black river from his foaming lips; but this was no dream! I was wide awake, and I tell you--I tell you I saw my demon-brother Jonas leering hideously through the window at me!"
He wrung his hands, moaning in terror, all pride, self-possession and poise swept away by stark, primitive, animal terror. Conrad glanced at me, but I had no suggestion to offer. The matter seemed so utterly insane that the only thing obvious seemed to summon the police and have old Job sent to the nearest madhouse. Yet there was in his manner a fundamental terror which seemed to strike even deeper than madness, and which, I will admit, caused a creepy sensation along my spine.
As if sensing our doubt, he broke out again, "I know! You think I'm crazy! I'm sane as you! But I'm going to that tomb, if I have to go alone! And if you let me go alone, my blood will be on your heads!
Are you going?"
"Wait!" Conrad began to dress hurriedly. "We'll go with you. I suppose the only thing that will destroy this hallucination is the sight of your brother in his coffin."
"Aye!" old Job laughed terribly. "In his tomb, in the lidless coffin! Why did he prepare that open coffin before his death and leave orders that no lid of any sort be placed upon it?"
"He was always eccentric," answered Conrad.
"He was always a devil," snarled old Job. "We hated each other from our youth. When he squandered his inheritance and came crawling back, penniless, he resented it because I would not share my hard-gotten wealth with him. The black dog! The fiend from Purgatory's pits!"
"Well, we'll soon see if he's safe in his tomb," said Conrad. "Ready, O'Donnel?"
"Ready," I answered, strapping on my holstered .45. Conrad laughed.
"Can't forget your Texas raising, can you?" he bantered. "Think you might be called on to shoot a ghost?"
"Well, you can't tell," I answered. "I don't like to go out at night without it."
"Guns are useless against a vampire," said Job, fidgeting with impatience. "There is only one thing which will prevail against them--a stake driven through the fiend's black heart."
"Great heavens, Job!" Conrad laughed shortly. "You can't be serious about this thing?"
"Why not?" A flame of madness rose in his eyes. "There were vampires in days past--there still are in Eastern Europe and the Orient. I've heard him boast about his knowledge of secret cults and black magic. I suspected it--then when he lay dying, he divulged his ghastly secret to me--swore he'd come back from the grave and drag me down to Hell with him!"
We emerged from the house and crossed the lawn. That part of the valley was sparsely settled, though a few miles to the southeast shone the lights of the city. Adjoining Conrad's grounds on the west lay Job's estate, the dark house looming gaunt and silent among the
trees. That house was the one luxury the miserly old man allowed himself. A mile to the north flowed the river, and to the south rose the sullen black outlines of those low, rolling hills--barren-crowned, with long bush-clad slopes--which men call the Dagoth Hills--a curious name, not allied to any known Indian language, yet used first by the red man to designate this stunted range. They were practically uninhabited. There were farms on the outer slopes, toward the river, but the inner valleys were too shallow of soil, the hills themselves too rocky, for cultivation. Somewhat less than half a mile from Conrad's estate stood the rambling structure that had housed the Kiles family for some three centuries--at least, the stone foundations dated that far back, though the rest of the house was more modern. I thought old Job shuddered as he looked at it, perched there like a vulture on a roost, against the black undulating background of the Dagoth Hills.
It was a wild windy night through which we went on our mad quest. Clouds drove endlessly across the moon and the wind howled through the trees, bringing strange night noises and playing curious tricks with our voices. Our goal was the tomb which squatted on an upper slope of a hill which projected from the rest of the range, running behind and above the high tableland on which the old Kiles house stood. It was as if the occupant of the sepulcher looked out over the ancestral home and the valley his people had once owned from ridge to river. Now all the ground remaining to the old estate was the strip running up the slopes into the hills, the house at one end and the tomb at the other.
The hill upon which the tomb was built diverged from the others, as I have said, and in going to the tomb, we passed close by its steep, thicket-clad extremity, which fell off sharply in a rocky, bush-covered cliff.
We were nearing the point of this ridge when Conrad remarked, "What possessed Jonas to build his tomb so far from the family vaults?"
"He did not build it," snarled Job. "It was built long ago by our ancestor, old Captain Jacob Kiles, for whom this particular projection is still called Pirate Hill--for he was a buccaneer and a smuggler. Some strange whim caused him to build his tomb up there, and in his lifetime he spent much time there alone, especially at night. But he never occupied it for he was lost at sea in a fight with a man-of-war. He used to watch for enemies or soldiers from that very bluff there ahead of us, and that's why people call it Smuggler's Point to this day.
"The tomb was in ruins when Jonas began living at the old house, and he had it repaired to receive his bones. Well he knew he dared not sleep in consecrated ground! Before he died he had made full arrangements--the tomb had been rebuilt, the lidless coffin placed in it to receive him--"
I shuddered in spite of myself. The darkness, the wild clouds scudding across the leprous moon, the shrieking wind-noises, the grim dark hills looming above us, the wild words of our companion, all worked upon my imagination to people the night with shapes of horror and nightmare. I glanced nervously at the thicket-masked slopes, black and repellent in the shifting light, and found myself wishing we were not passing so close to the bush-grown, legend-haunted cliffs of Smuggler's Point, jutting out like the prow of a ship from the sinister range.
"I am no silly girl to be frightened by shadows," old Job was chattering. "I saw his evil face at my moon-lit window. I have always secretly believed that the dead walk the night. Now--what's that?"
He stopped short, frozen in an attitude of utter horror.
Instinctively we strained our ears. We heard the branches of the trees whipping in the gale. We heard the loud rustling of the tall grass.
"Only the wind," muttered Conrad. "It distorts every sound--"
"No! No, I tell you! It was--"
A ghostly cry came driving down the wind--a voice sharpened with mortal fear and agony. "Help! Help!
Oh, God have mercy! Oh, God! Oh, God--"
"My brother's voice!" screamed Job. "He is calling to me from Hell!"
"Which way did it come from?" whispered Conrad, with lips suddenly dry.
"I don't know." The goose-flesh stood out clammily on my limbs. "I couldn't tell. It might have come from above--or below. It sounds strangely muffled."
"The clutch of the grave muffles his voice!" shrieked Job. "The clinging shroud stifles his screams! I tell you he howls on the white-hot grids of Hell, and would drag me down to share his doom! On! On to the tomb!"
"The ultimate path of all mankind," muttered Conrad, which grisly play on Job's words did not add to my comfort. We followed old Kiles, scarcely able to keep pace with him as he loped, a gaunt, grotesque figure, across the slopes mounting towards the squat bulk the illusive moonlight disclosed like a dully glistening skull.
"Did you recognize that voice?" I muttered to Conrad.
"I don't know. It was muffled, as you mentioned. It might have been a trick of the wind. If I said I thought it was Jonas, you'd think me mad."
"Not now," I muttered. "I thought it was insanity at the beginning. But the spirit of the night's gotten into my blood. I'm ready to believe anything."
We had mounted the slopes and stood before the massive iron door of the tomb. Above and behind it the hill rose steeply, masked by dense thickets. The grim mausoleum seemed invested with sinister portent, induced by the fantastic happenings of the night. Conrad turned the beam of an electric torch on the ponderous lock, with its antique appearance.
"This door has not been opened," said Conrad. "The lock has not been tampered with. Look--spiders have already built their webs thickly across the sill, and the strands are unbroken. The grass before the door has not been mashed down, as would have been the case had anyone recently gone into the tomb--or come out."
"What are doors and locks to a vampire?" whined Job. "They pass through solid walls like ghosts. I tell you, I will not rest until I have gone into that tomb and done what I have to do. I have the key--the only key there is in the world which will fit that lock."
He drew it forth--a huge old-fashioned implement--and thrust it into the lock. There was a groan and creak of rusty tumblers, and old Job winced back, as if expecting some hyena-fanged ghost to fly at him through the opening door.
Conrad and I peered in--and I will admit I involuntarily braced myself, shaken with chaotic conjectures.
But the blackness within was Stygian. Conrad made to snap on his light, but Job stopped him. The old man seemed to have recovered a good deal of his normal composure.
"Give me the light," he said, and there was grim determination in his voice. "I'll go in alone. If he has returned to the tomb--if he is again in his coffin, I know how to deal with him. Wait here, and if I cry out, or if you hear the sounds of a struggle, rush in."
"But--" Conrad began an objection.
"Don't argue!" shrieked old Kiles, his composure beginning to crumble again. "This is my task and I'll do it alone!"
He swore as Conrad inadvertently turned the light beam full in his face, then snatched the torch and drawing something from his coat, stalked into the tomb, shoving the ponderous door to behind him.
"More insanity," I muttered uneasily. "Why was he so insistent that we come with him, if he meant to go inside alone? And did you notice the gleam in his eyes? Sheer madness!"
"I'm not so sure," answered Conrad. "It looked more like an evil triumph to me. As for being alone, you'd hardly call it that, since we're only a few feet away from him. He has some reason for not wanting us to enter that tomb with him. What was it he drew from his coat as he went in?"
"It looked like a sharpened stick, and a small hammer. Why should he take a hammer, since there is no lid to be unfastened on the coffin?"
"Of course!" snapped Conrad. "What a fool I've been not to understand already! No wonder he wanted to go in to the tomb alone! O'Donnel, he's serious about this vampire nonsense! Don't you remember the hints he's dropped about being prepared, and all that? He intends to drive that stake through his brother's heart! Come on! I don't intend that he shall mutilate--"
From the tomb rang a scream that will haunt me when I lie dying. The fearful
timbre of it paralyzed us in our tracks, and before we could gather our wits, there was a mad rush of feet, the impact of a flying body against the door, and out of the tomb, like a bat blown out of the gates of Hell, flew the shape of Job Kiles. He fell head-long at our feet, the flashlight in his hand striking the ground and going out. Behind him the iron door stood ajar and I thought to hear a strange scrambling, sliding noise in the darkness. But all my attention was rivetted on the wretch who writhed at our feet in horrible convulsions.
We bent above him. The moon sliding from behind a dusky cloud lighted his ghastly face, and we both cried out involuntarily at the horror stamped there. From his distended eyes all light of sanity was gone--blown out as a candle is blown out in the dark. His loose lips worked, spattering forth. Conrad shook him. "Kiles! In God's name, what happened to you?"
A horrible slavering mewling was the only answer; then among the drooling and meaningless sounds we caught human words, slobbering, and half inarticulate.
"The thing!--The thing in the coffin!" Then as Conrad cried a fierce question, the eyes rolled up and set, the hard-drawn lips froze in a ghastly mirthless grin, and the man's whole lank frame seemed to sink and collapse upon itself.
"Dead!" muttered Conrad, appalled.
"I see no wound," I whispered, shaken to my very soul.
"There is no wound--no drop of blood."
"Then--then--" I scarcely dared put the grisly thought into words.
We looked fearsomely at the oblong strip of blackness framed in the partly open door of the silent tomb.
The wind shrieked suddenly across the grass, as if in a paean of demoniac triumph, and a sudden trembling took hold of me.
Conrad rose and squared his shoulders.
The Best Horror Stories of Page 41