Kane’s sinews tensed involuntarily; he gathered himself like a giant wolf about to launch himself in a death leap, but Gaston’s hand was like a rock and the pistol never trembled.
“We will have no death plunges after the shot,” said Gaston. “Stand still, m’sieu; I have seen men killed by dying men, and I wish to have distance enough between us to preclude that possibility. My faith–I will shoot, you will roar and charge, but you will die before you reach me with your bare hands. And mine host will have another skeleton in his secret niche. That is, if I do not kill him myself. The fool knows me not nor I him, moreover–”
The Frenchman was in the doorway now, sighting along the barrel. The candle, which had been stuck in a niche on the wall, shed a weird and flickering light which did not extend past the doorway. And with the suddenness of death, from the darkness behind Gaston’s back, a broad, vague form rose up and a gleaming blade swept down. The Frenchman went to his knees like a butchered ox, his brains spilling from his cleft skull. Above him towered the figure of the host, a wild and terrible spectacle, still holding the hanger with which he had slain the bandit.
“Ho! ho!” he roared. “Back!”
Kane had leaped forward as Gaston fell, but the host thrust into his very face a long pistol which he held in his left hand.
“Back!” he repeated in a tigerish roar, and Kane retreated from the menacing weapon and the insanity in the red eyes.
The Englishman stood silent, his flesh crawling as he sensed a deeper and more hideous threat than the Frenchman had offered. There was something inhuman about this man, who now swayed to and fro like some great forest beast while his mirthless laughter boomed out again.
“Gaston the Butcher!” he shouted, kicking the corpse at his feet. “Ho! ho! My fine brigand will hunt no more; I had heard of this fool who roamed the Black Forest–he wished gold and he found death! Now your gold shall be mine; and more than gold–vengeance!”
“I am no foe of yours,” Kane spoke calmly.
“All men are my foes! Look–the marks on my wrists! See–the marks on my ankles! And deep in my back–the kiss of the knout! And deep in my brain, the wounds of the years of the cold, silent cells where I lay as punishment for a crime I never committed!” The voice broke in a hideous, grotesque sob.
Kane made no answer. This man was not the first he had seen whose brain had shattered amid the horrors of the terrible Continental prisons.
“But I escaped!” the scream rose triumphantly, “and here I make war on all men…. What was that?”
Did Kane see a flash of fear in those hideous eyes?
“My sorcerer is rattling his bones!” whispered the host, then laughed wildly. “Dying, he swore his very bones would weave a net of death for me. I shackled his corpse to the floor, and now, deep in the night, I hear his bare skeleton clash and rattle as he seeks to be free, and I laugh, I laugh! Ho! ho! How he yearns to rise and stalk like old King Death along these dark corridors when I sleep, to slay me in my bed!”
Suddenly the insane eyes flared hideously: “You were in that secret room, you and this dead fool! Did he talk to you?”
Kane shuddered in spite of himself. Was it insanity or did he actually hear the faint rattle of bones, as if the skeleton had moved slightly? Kane shrugged his shoulders; rats will even tug at dusty bones.
The host was laughing again. He sidled around Kane, keeping the Englishman always covered, and with his free hand opened the door. All was darkness within, so that Kane could not even see the glimmer of the bones on the floor.
“All men are my foes!” mumbled the host, in the incoherent manner of the insane. “Why should I spare any man? Who lifted a hand to my aid when I lay for years in the vile dungeons of Karlsruhe–and for a deed never proven? Something happened to my brain, then. I became as a wolf–a brother to these of the Black Forest to which I fled when I escaped.
“They have feasted, my brothers, on all who lay in my tavern–all except this one who now clashes his bones, this magician from Russia. Lest he come stalking back through the black shadows when night is over the world, and slay me–for who may slay the dead?–I stripped his bones and shackled him. His sorcery was not powerful enough to save him from me, but all men know that a dead magician is more evil than a living one. Move not, Englishman! Your bones I shall leave in this secret room beside this one, to–”
The maniac was standing partly in the doorway of the secret room, now, his weapon still menacing Kane.
Suddenly he seemed to topple backward, and vanished in the darkness; and at the same instant a vagrant gust of wind swept down the outer corridor and slammed the door shut behind him. The candle on the wall flickered and went out. Kane’s groping hands, sweeping over the floor, found a pistol, and he straightened, facing the door where the maniac had vanished. He stood in the utter darkness, his blood freezing, while a hideous muffled screaming came from the secret room, intermingled with the dry, grisly rattle of fleshless bones. Then silence fell.
Kane found flint and steel and lighted the candle. Then, holding it in one hand and the pistol in the other, he opened the secret door.
“Great God!” he muttered as cold sweat formed on his body. “This thing is beyond all reason, yet with mine own eyes I see it! Two vows have here been kept, for Gaston the Butcher swore that even in death he would avenge his slaying, and his was the hand which set yon fleshless monster free. And he–”
The host of the Cleft Skull lay lifeless on the floor of the secret room, his bestial face set in lines of terrible fear; and deep in his broken neck were sunk the bare fingerbones of the sorcerer’s skeleton.
The Fear That Follows
The smile of a child was on her lips–oh, smile of a last long rest.
My arm went up and my arm went down and the dagger pierced her breast.
Silent she lay–oh still, oh still!–with the breast of her gown turned red.
Then fear rose up in my soul like death and I fled from the face of the dead.
The hangings rustled upon the walls, velvet and black they shook, And I thought to see strange shadows flash from the dark of each door and nook.
Tapestries swayed on the ghostly walls as if in a wind that blew; Yet never a breeze stole through the rooms and my black fear grew and grew.
Moonlight dappled the pallid sward as I climbed o’er the window sill; I looked not back at the darkened house which lay so grim and still.
The trees reached phantom hands to me, their branches brushed my hair, Footfalls whispered amid the grass, yet never a man was there.
The shades loomed black in the forest deeps, black as the doom of death; Amid the whispers of shapes unseen I stole with bated breath,
Till I came at last to a ghostly mere bordered with silver sands; A faint mist rose from its shimmering breast as I knelt to lave my hands.
The waters mirrored my haggard face, I bent close down to see–
Oh, Mother of God! A grinning skull leered up from the mere at me!
With a gibbering scream I rose and fled till I came to a mountain dim And a great black crag in the blood-red moon loomed up like a gibbet grim.
Then down from the great red stars above, each like a misty plume, There fell on my face long drops of blood and I knew at last my doom.
Then I turned me slow to the only trail that was left upon earth for me, The trail that leads to the hangman’s cell and the grip of the gallows tree.
The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux
Many fights are won and lost by the living, but this is a tale of one which was won by a man dead over a hundred years. John Taverel, manager of ring champions, sitting in the old East Side A.C. one cold wintry day, told me this story of the ghost that won the fight and the man who worshipped the ghost. Let John Taverel tell the tale in his own words, as he told it to me: You remember Ace Jessel, the great negro boxer whom I managed. An ebony giant he was, four inches over six feet in height, his fighting weight two hundred and thirty pounds. He moved with the smooth ea
se of a gigantic leopard and his pliant steel muscles rippled under his shiny skin. A clever boxer for so large a man, he carried the smashing jolt of a trip hammer in each huge black fist.
Yet for all that, the road over which I, as his manager, steered him, was far from smooth and at times I despaired, for Ace seemed to lack a fighting heart. Courage he had plenty, courage to stand up to a vicious beating and to keep on going after his face had been pounded and battered to a bloody mass, as he proved in that terrible battle with Maul Finnegan, which became almost mythical in boxing annals.
Courage he had, but not the aggressiveness which drives the perfect fighter ever to the attack, nor the killer instinct which sends him plunging after the reeling, bloody and beaten foe. And a boxer who lacks these qualities is likely to fail when put to the supreme test.
Ace was content to box mostly, outpointing his opponents and piling up just enough lead to keep from losing. And the public was never fond of these tactics. Therefore they jeered and booed him every so often, but though their taunts angered me, they only broadened Ace’s good-natured grin. And his fights still drew great crowds because on the rare occasions when he was stung out of his defensive role, or when he was matched with a clever man whom he had to knock out in order to win, the fans saw a real battle that thrilled their blood. And even so, time and again he stepped away from a sagging foe, giving the beaten man time to recover and return to the attack, instead of finishing him–while the crowd raved and I tore my hair.
Now Ace Jessel, indifferent drifter, happy-go-lucky wastrel though he seemed, had one deep and abiding emotion, and that was a fanatical worship for one Tom Molyneaux, first champion of America and sturdy fighting man of color–according to some authorities, the greatest black ringman that ever lived.
Tom Molyneaux died in Ireland a hundred years ago but the memory of his valiant deeds in America and Europe was Ace Jessel’s direct incentive to action. Reading an account of Tom’s life and battles was what started Ace on the fistic trail which led from the wharves where he toiled as a young boy, to–but listen to the story.
Ace’s most highly prized possession was a painted portrait of the old battler. He had discovered this–a rare find indeed, since even woodcuts of Molyneaux are rare–among the collections of a London sportsman, and had prevailed on the owner to sell it. Paying for it had taken every cent that Ace made in four fights but he counted it cheap at the price. He removed the original frame and replaced it with a frame of solid silver, a slim elegant work of art which, considering that the portrait was full length and life size, was rather more than extravagant. But no honor was too expensive for “Misto Tom” and Ace simply tripled the number of his bouts to meet the cost.
So finally my brains and Ace’s mallet fists had cleared us a road to the top of the game. Ace loomed up as a heavyweight menace and the champion’s manager was ready to sign with us when an interruption came.
A form hove into view on the fistic horizon which dwarfed and overshadowed all other contenders, including my man. This was Mankiller Gomez. He was all which his name implies. Gomez was his ring name, given him by the Spaniard who discovered him and brought him to America. His real name was Balanga Guma and he was a full-blooded Senegalese from the West Coast of Africa.
Once in a century ring fans see a man like Gomez in action. Once in a hundred years there rises a fighter like the Senegalese–a born killer who crashes through the general ruck of fighters as a buffalo crashes through a thicket of dead wood. He was a savage, a tiger. What he lacked in actual skill, he made up by ferocity of attack, by ruggedness of body and smashing power of arm. From the time he landed in New York, with a long list of European victories behind him, it was inevitable that he should batter down all opposition, and at last the white champion looked to see the black savage looming above the broken forms of his victims. The champion saw the writing on the wall, but the public was clamoring for a match and whatever else his faults, the title holder was a fighting champion.
Ace Jessel, who alone of all the foremost challengers had not met Gomez, was shoved into discard, and as early summer dawned on New York, a title was lost and won, and Mankiller Gomez, son of the black jungle, rose up king of all fighting men.
The sporting world and the public at large hated and feared the new champion. Boxing fans like savagery in the ring, but Gomez did not confine his ferocity to the ring. His soul was abysmal. He was ape-like, primordial–the very spirit of that morass of barbarism from which mankind has so tortuously climbed, and toward which men look with so much suspicion.
There went forth a search for a White Hope, but the result was always the same. Challenger after challenger went down before the terrible onslaught of the Mankiller and at last only one man remained who had not crossed gloves with Gomez–Ace Jessel.
I hesitated in throwing my man in with a battler like Gomez, for my fondness for the great good-natured negro was more than the friendship of manager for fighter. Ace was something more than a meal-ticket to me for I knew the real nobility underlying Ace’s black skin, and I hated to see him battered into a senseless ruin by a man I knew in my heart to be more than Jessel’s match. I wanted to wait awhile, to let Gomez wear himself out with his terrific battles and the dissipations that were sure to follow the savage’s success. These super-sluggers never last long, any more than a jungle native can withstand the temptations of civilization.
But the slump that follows a really great title holder’s gaining the belt was on, and matches were scarce.
The public was clamoring for a title fight, sports writers were raising Cain and accusing Ace of cowardice, promoters were offering alluring purses, and at last I signed for a fifteen round go between Mankiller Gomez and Ace Jessel.
At the training quarters I turned to Ace.
“Ace, do you think you can whip him?”
“Misto John,” Ace answered, meeting my eye with a straight gaze, “Ah’ll do mah best, but Ah’s mighty afeard Ah cain’t do it. Dat man ain’t human.” I knew this was bad; a man is more than half whipped when he goes into the ring in that frame of mind.
Later I came into Ace’s room for something and halted in the doorway in amazement. I had heard the battler talking in a low voice as I came up, but had supposed one of the handlers or sparring partners was in the room with him. Now I saw that he was alone. He was standing before his idol–the portrait of Tom Molyneaux.
“Misto Tom,” he was saying humbly, “Ah ain’t nevah met no man yet what could even knock me off mah feet, but Ah reckon dat nigguh can. Ah’s gwine to need help mighty bad, Misto Tom.”
I felt almost as if I had interrupted a religious rite. It was uncanny–had it not been for Ace’s evident deep sincerity, I would have felt it to be unholy. But to Ace, Tom Molyneaux was something more than a saint.
I stood in the doorway in silence, watching the strange tableau. The artist who painted the picture so long ago had wrought with remarkable skill. The short black figure seemed to stand out boldly from the faded canvas. A breath of bygone days, it seemed, clad in the long tights of that other day, the powerful legs braced far apart, the knotted arms held stiffly and high, just as Molyneaux had appeared when he fought Tom Cribb of England so long ago.
Ace Jessel stood before the painted figure, head sunk upon his mighty chest as if listening to some dim whisper inside his own soul. And as I watched, a curious and fantastic thought came into my brain–the memory of an age-old superstition. You know it has been said by delvers into the occult that the carving of statues or the painting of pictures has power to draw back from the void of Eternity souls long flown, and to recreate them in shadowy semblance. I wondered if Ace had ever heard of this superstition and thought by doing obeisance to Molyneaux’s portrait to conjure the dead man’s spirit out of the realms of the dead for advice and aid. I shrugged my shoulders at this ridiculous idea and turned away. As I did, I glanced again at the picture before which Ace still stood like a great image of black basalt, and was aware of a peculiar
illusion; the canvas seemed to ripple slightly, like the surface of a lake across which a faint breeze is blowing.
However I forgot all this as the day of the fight drew near.
The great crowd cheered Ace to the echo as he climbed in the ring; cheered again, not so heartily, as Gomez appeared. They afforded a strange contrast, those two negroes, alike in color but how different in all other aspects!
Ace was tall, clean-limbed and rangy, long and smooth of muscle, clear of eye and broad of forehead.
Gomez seemed stocky by comparison, though he stood a good six feet two. Where Jessel’s sinews were long and smooth like great cables, his were knotty and bulging. His calves, thighs, arms and shoulders stood out in great bunches of muscles. His small bullet head was set squarely between gigantic shoulders, and his forehead was so low that his kinky wool seemed to lower over his small bestial and bloodshot eyes. On his chest was a thick grizzle of matted black hair.
He grinned cavernously, thumped his breast and flexed his mighty arms with the insolent assurance of the savage. Ace, in his corner, grinned at the crowd, but an ashy tint was on his dusky face and his knees trembled.
The usual remarks were made, instructions given by the referee, weights announced–230 for Ace, 248
for Gomez–then over the great stadium the lights went off save for those over the ring where two black giants faced each other like men alone on the ridge of the world.
At the gong Gomez whirled in his corner and came out with a breath-taking roar of pure ferocity. Ace, frightened though he must have been, rushed to meet him with the courage of a cave man charging a gorilla, and they met headlong in the center of the ring.
The first blow was the Mankiller’s, a left swing that glanced Ace’s ribs. Jessel came back with a long left to the face and a straight right to the body that stung. Gomez bulled in, swinging both hands and Ace, after one futile attempt to mix it with him, gave back. The champion drove him across the ring, sending in a savage left to the body as Ace clinched. As they broke Gomez shot a terrible right to the chin and Ace reeled into the ropes. A great “Ahhh!” went up from the crowd as the champion plunged after him like a famished wolf, but Ace managed to dive between the lashing arms and clinch, shaking his head to clear it.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard Page 9