“Walker—s’pose it’s—the—the—curse o’ Yig?”
She could feel him tremble.
“No, gal, I don’t reckon he comes that away. He’s shapen like a man, except ye look at him clost. That’s what Chief Grey Eagle says. This here’s some varmints come in outen the cold—not crickets, I calc’late, but summat like ’em. I’d orter git up and stomp ’em out afore they make much headway or git at the cupboard.”
He rose, felt for the lantern that hung within easy reach, and rattled the tin match-box nailed to the wall beside it. Audrey sat up in bed and watched the flare of the match grow into the steady glow of the lantern. Then, as their eyes began to take in the whole of the room, the crude rafters shook with the frenzy of their simultaneous shriek. For the flat, rocky floor, revealed in the new-born illumination, was one seething, brown-speckled mass of wriggling rattlesnakes, slithering toward the fire, and even now turning their loathsome heads to menace the fright-blasted lantern-bearer.
It was only for an instant that Audrey saw the things. The reptiles were of every size, of uncountable numbers, and apparently of several varieties; and even as she looked, two or three of them reared their heads as if to strike at Walker. She did not faint—it was Walker’s crash to the floor that extinguished the lantern and plunged her into blackness. He had not screamed a second time—fright had paralysed him, and he fell as if shot by a silent arrow from no mortal’s bow. To Audrey the entire world seemed to whirl about fantastically, mingling with the nightmare from which she had started.
Voluntary motion of any sort was impossible, for will and the sense of reality had left her. She fell back inertly on her pillow, hoping that she would wake soon. No actual sense of what had happened penetrated her mind for some time. Then, little by little, the suspicion that she was really awake began to dawn on her; and she was convulsed with a mounting blend of panic and grief which made her long to shriek out despite the inhibiting spell which kept her mute.
Walker was gone, and she had not been able to help him. He had died of snakes, just as the old witch-woman had predicted when he was a little boy. Poor Wolf had not been able to help, either—probably he had not even awaked from his senile stupor. And now the crawling things must be coming for her, writhing closer and closer every moment in the dark, perhaps even now twining slipperily about the bedposts and oozing up over the coarse woollen blankets. Unconsciously she crept under the clothes and trembled.
It must be the curse of Yig. He had sent his monstrous children on All-Hallows’ Night, and they had taken Walker first. Why was that—wasn’t he innocent enough? Why not come straight for her—hadn’t she killed those little rattlers alone? Then she thought of the curse’s form as told by the Indians. She wouldn’t be killed—just turned to a spotted snake. Ugh! So she would be like those things she had glimpsed on the floor—those things which Yig had sent to get her and enroll her among their number! She tried to mumble a charm that Walker had taught her, but found she could not utter a single sound.
The noisy ticking of the alarm-clock sounded above the maddening beat of the distant tom-toms. The snakes were taking a long time—did they mean to delay on purpose to play on her nerves? Every now and then she thought she felt a steady, insidious pressure on the bedclothes, but each time it turned out to be only the automatic twitchings of her overwrought nerves. The clock ticked on in the dark, and a change came slowly over her thoughts.
Those snakes couldn’t have taken so long! They couldn’t be Yig’s messengers after all, but just natural rattlers that were nested below the rock and had been drawn there by the fire. They weren’t coming for her, perhaps—perhaps they had sated themselves on poor Walker. Where were they now? Gone? Coiled by the fire? Still crawling over the prone corpse of their victim? The clock ticked, and the distant drums throbbed on.
At the thought of her husband’s body lying there in the pitch blackness a thrill of purely physical horror passed over Audrey. That story of Sally Compton’s about the man back in Scott County! He, too, had been bitten by a whole bunch of rattlesnakes, and what had happened to him? The poison had rotted the flesh and swelled the whole corpse, and in the end the bloated thing had burst horribly—burst horribly with a detestable popping noise. Was that what was happening to Walker down there on the rock floor? Instinctively she felt she had begun to listen for something too terrible even to name to herself.
The clock ticked on, keeping a kind of mocking, sardonic time with the far-off drumming that the night-wind brought. She wished it were a striking clock, so that she could know how long this eldritch vigil must last. She cursed the toughness of fibre that kept her from fainting, and wondered what sort of relief the dawn could bring, after all. Probably neighbours would pass—no doubt somebody would call—would they find her still sane? Was she still sane now?
Morbidly listening, Audrey all at once became aware of something which she had to verify with every effort of her will before she could believe it; and which, once verified, she did not know whether to welcome or dread. The distant beating of the Indian tom-toms had ceased. They had always maddened her—but had not Walker regarded them as a bulwark against nameless evil from outside the universe? What were some of those things he had repeated to her in whispers after talking with Grey Eagle and the Wichita medicine-men?
She did not relish this new and sudden silence, after all! There was something sinister about it. The loud-ticking clock seemed abnormal in its new loneliness. Capable at last of conscious motion, she shook the covers from her face and looked into the darkness toward the window. It must have cleared after the moon set, for she saw the square aperture distinctly against the background of stars.
Then without warning came that shocking, unutterable sound—ugh!—that dull, putrid pop of cleft skin and escaping poison in the dark. God!—Sally’s story—that obscene stench, and this gnawing, clawing silence! It was too much. The bonds of muteness snapped, and the black night waxed reverberant with Audrey’s screams of stark, unbridled frenzy.
Consciousness did not pass away with the shock. How merciful if only it had! Amidst the echoes of her shrieking Audrey still saw the star-sprinkled square of window ahead, and heard the doom-boding ticking of that frightful clock. Did she hear another sound? Was that square window still a perfect square? She was in no condition to weigh the evidence of her senses or distinguish between fact and hallucination.
No—that window was not a perfect square. Something had encroached on the lower edge. Nor was the ticking of the clock the only sound in the room. There was, beyond dispute, a heavy breathing neither her own nor poor Wolf’s. Wolf slept very silently, and his wakeful wheezing was unmistakable. Then Audrey saw against the stars the black, daemoniac silhouette of something anthropoid—the undulant bulk of a gigantic head and shoulders fumbling slowly toward her.
“Y’aaaah! Y’aaaah! Go away! Go away! Go away, snake-devil! Go ’way, Yig! I didn’t mean to kill ’em—I was feared he’d be scairt of ’em. Don’t, Yig, don’t! I didn’t go for to hurt yore chillen—don’t come nigh me—don’t change me into no spotted snake!”
But the half-formless head and shoulders only lurched onward toward the bed, very silently.
Everything snapped at once inside Audrey’s head, and in a second she had turned from a cowering child to a raging madwoman. She knew where the axe was—hung against the wall on those pegs near the lantern. It was within easy reach, and she could find it in the dark. Before she was conscious of anything further it was in her hands, and she was creeping toward the foot of the bed—toward the monstrous head and shoulders that every moment groped their way nearer. Had there been any light, the look on her face would not have been pleasant to see.
“Take that, you! And that, and that, and that!”
She was laughing shrilly now, and her cackles mounted higher as she saw that the starlight beyond the window was yielding to the dim prophetic pallor of coming dawn.
* * * *
Dr. McNeill wiped the perspiration
from his forehead and put on his glasses again. I waited for him to resume, and as he kept silent I spoke softly.
“She lived? She was found? Was it ever explained?”
The doctor cleared his throat.
“Yes—she lived, in a way. And it was explained. I told you there was no bewitchment—only cruel, pitiful, material horror.”
It was Sally Compton who had made the discovery. She had ridden over to the Davis cabin the next afternoon to talk over the party with Audrey, and had seen no smoke from the chimney. That was queer. It had turned very warm again, yet Audrey was usually cooking something at that hour. The mules were making hungry-sounding noises in the barn, and there was no sign of old Wolf sunning himself in the accustomed spot by the door.
Altogether, Sally did not like the look of the place, so was very timid and hesitant as she dismounted and knocked. She got no answer but waited some time before trying the crude door of split logs. The lock, it appeared, was unfastened; and she slowly pushed her way in. Then, perceiving what was there, she reeled back, gasped, and clung to the jamb to preserve her balance.
A terrible odour had welled out as she opened the door, but that was not what had stunned her. It was what she had seen. For within that shadowy cabin monstrous things had happened and three shocking objects remained on the floor to awe and baffle the beholder.
Near the burned-out fireplace was the great dog—purple decay on the skin left bare by mange and old age, and the whole carcass burst by the puffing effect of rattlesnake poison. It must have been bitten by a veritable legion of the reptiles.
To the right of the door was the axe-hacked remnant of what had been a man—clad in a nightshirt, and with the shattered bulk of a lantern clenched in one hand. He was totally free from any sign of snake-bite. Near him lay the ensanguined axe, carelessly discarded.
And wriggling flat on the floor was a loathsome, vacant-eyed thing that had been a woman, but was now only a mute mad caricature. All that this thing could do was to hiss, and hiss, and hiss.
Both the doctor and I were brushing cold drops from our foreheads by this time. He poured something from a flask on his desk, took a nip, and handed another glass to me. I could only suggest tremulously and stupidly:
“So Walker had only fainted that first time—the screams roused him, and the axe did the rest?”
“Yes.” Dr. McNeill’s voice was low. “But he met his death from snakes just the same. It was his fear working in two ways—it made him faint, and it made him fill his wife with the wild stories that caused her to strike out when she thought she saw the snake-devil.”
I thought for a moment.
“And Audrey—wasn’t it queer how the curse of Yig seemed to work itself out on her? I suppose the impression of hissing snakes had been fairly ground into her.”
“Yes. There were lucid spells at first, but they got to be fewer and fewer. Her hair came white at the roots as it grew, and later began to fall out. The skin grew blotchy, and when she died—”
I interrupted with a start.
“Died? Then what was that—that thing downstairs?”
McNeill spoke gravely.
“That is what was born to her three-quarters of a year afterward. There were three more of them—two were even worse—but this is the only one that lived.”
THE HAUNTER OF THE RING, by Robert E. Howard
As I entered John Kirowan’s study I was too much engrossed in my own thoughts to notice, at first, the haggard appearance of his visitor, a big, handsome young fellow well known to me.
“Hello, Kirowan,” I greeted. “Hello, Gordon. Haven’t seen you for quite a while. How’s Evelyn?” And before he could answer, still on the crest of the enthusiasm which had brought me there, I exclaimed: “Look here, you fellows, I’ve got something that will make you stare! I got it from that robber Ahmed Mektub, and I paid high for it, but it’s worth it. Look!” From under my coat I drew the jewel-hilted Afghan dagger which had fascinated me as a collector of rare weapons.
Kirowan, familiar with my passion, showed only polite interest, but the effect on Gordon was shocking.
With a strangled cry he sprang up and backward, knocking the chair clattering to the floor. Fists clenched and countenance livid he faced me, crying: “Keep back! Get away from me, or—”
I was frozen in my tracks.
“What in the—” I began bewilderedly, when Gordon, with another amazing change of attitude, dropped into a chair and sank his head in his hands. I saw his heavy shoulders quiver. I stared helplessly from him to Kirowan, who seemed equally dumbfounded.
“Is he drunk?” I asked.
Kirowan shook his head, and filling a brandy glass, offered it to the man. Gordon looked up with haggard eyes, seized the drink and gulped it down like a man half famished. Then he straightened up and looked at us shamefacedly.
“I’m sorry I went off my handle, O’Donnel,” he said. “It was the unexpected shock of you drawing that knife.”
“Well,” I retorted, with some disgust, “I suppose you thought I was going to stab you with it!”
“Yes, I did!” Then, at the utterly blank expression on my face, he added: “Oh, I didn’t actually think that; at least, I didn’t reach that conclusion by any process of reasoning. It was just the blind primitive instinct of a hunted man, against whom anyone’s hand may be turned.”
His strange words and the despairing way he said them sent a queer shiver of nameless apprehension down my spine.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded uneasily. “Hunted? For what? You never committed a crime in your life.”
“Not in this life, perhaps,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“What if retribution for a black crime committed in a previous life were hounding me?” he muttered.
“That’s nonsense,” I snorted.
“Oh, is it?” he exclaimed, stung. “Did you ever hear of my great-grandfather, Sir Richard Gordon of Argyle?”
“Sure; but what’s that got to do with—”
“You’ve seen his portrait: doesn’t it resemble me?”
“Well, yes,” I admitted, “except that your expression is frank and wholesome whereas his is crafty and cruel.”
“He murdered his wife,” answered Gordon. “Suppose the theory of reincarnation were true? Why shouldn’t a man suffer in one life for a crime committed in another?”
“You mean you think you are the reincarnation of your great-grandfather? Of all the fantastic—well, since he killed his wife, I suppose you’ll be expecting Evelyn to murder you!” This last was delivered in searing sarcasm, as I thought of the sweet, gentle girl Gordon had married. His answer stunned me.
“My wife,” he said slowly, “has tried to kill me three times in the past week.”
There was no reply to that. I glanced helplessly at John Kirowan. He sat in his customary position, chin resting on his strong, slim hands; his white face was immobile, but his dark eyes gleamed with interest. In the silence I heard a clock ticking like a death-watch.
“Tell us the full story, Gordon,” suggested Kirowan, and his calm, even voice was like a knife that cut a strangling, relieving the unreal tension.
* * * *
“You know we’ve been married less than a year,” Gordon began, plunging into the tale as though he were bursting for utterance; his words stumbled and tripped over one another. “All couples have spats, of course, but we’ve never had any real quarrels. Evelyn is the best-natured girl in the world.
“The first thing out of the ordinary occurred about a week ago. We had driven up in the mountains, left the car, and were wandering around picking wild flowers. At last we came to a steep slope, some thirty feet in height, and Evelyn called my attention to the flowers which grew thickly at the foot. I was looking over the edge and wondering if I could climb down without tearing my clothes to ribbons, when I felt a violent shove from behind that toppled me over.
“If it had been a sheer cliff, I’d have
broken my neck. As it was, I went tumbling down, rolling and sliding, and brought up at the bottom scratched and bruised, with my garments in rags. I looked up and saw Evelyn staring down, apparently frightened half out of her wits.
“‘Oh Jim!’ she cried. ‘Are you hurt? How came you to fall?’
“It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that there was such a thing as carrying a joke too far, but these words checked me. I decided that she must have stumbled against me unintentionally, and actually didn’t know it was she who precipitated me down the slope.
“So I laughed it off, and went home. She made a great fuss over me, insisted on swabbing my scratches with iodine, and lectured me for my carelessness! I hadn’t the heart to tell her it was her fault.
“But four days later, the next thing happened. I was walking along our driveway, when I saw her coming up it in the automobile. I stepped out on the grass to let her by, as there isn’t any curb along the driveway. She was smiling as she approached me, and slowed down the car, as if to speak to me. Then, just before she reached me, a most horrible change came over her expression. Without warning the car leaped at me like a living thing as she drove her foot down on the accelerator. Only a frantic leap backward saved me from being ground under the wheels. The car shot across the lawn and crashed into a tree. I ran to it and found Evelyn dazed and hysterical, but unhurt. She babbled of losing control of the machine.
“I carried her into the house and sent for Doctor Donnelly. He found nothing seriously wrong with her, and attributed her dazed condition to fright and shock. Within half an hour she regained her normal senses, but she’s refused to touch the wheel since. Strange to say, she seemed less frightened on her own account than on mine. She seemed vaguely to know that she’d nearly run me down, and grew hysterical again when she spoke of it. Yet she seemed to take it for granted that I knew the machine had got out of her control. But I distinctly saw her wrench the wheel around, and I know she deliberately tried to hit me—why, God alone knows.
The Weird Fiction Megapack Page 41