Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC

by John the Balladeer (v1. 1)

  Reed Barnitt watched her go into the house. She left the door open, and the shine from the hearth gave us red light after sundown.

  "You're a lucky young rooster," Reed Barnitt said to Clay. "A fifth chunk of the Ancients' treasure would sure enough pleasure that girl."

  "Mr. Barnitt, I'm with you," Clay told him quick.

  "So am I," said Mr. Eddy, because his son had spoken.

  "I don't lag back when others go forward," I added on.

  "Count on me," finished Mr. Hoje for us. "That makes five, like you want it, sir. But you studied the thing out and got the spell. You should have more than a fifth of whatever we find."

  But the white square face shook sideways. "No. Part of the business is that each of the five takes his equal part, of the doing and of the sharing. That's how it must be. Now—we begin."

  "Right this instant?" asked Clay.

  "Yes," said Reed Barnitt. "Stand round, you all."

  He got up from the door-log and stepped into the yard, and the rest of us with him. "The first part of the spell," he said. "To learn if the Ancients truly left a treasure."

  Where the hearth's red glimmer showed on the ground in front of the door, he knelt down. He picked up a stick. He marked in the dirt.

  "Five-pointed star," he said. It was maybe four feet across. "Stand at the points, gentlemen. Yes, like that."

  Rising, he took his place at the fifth point. He flung away the stick, and put a white hand into the side pocket of his coat. "Silence," he warned us, though he didn't need to.

  He stooped and flung something down at the star's center. Maybe it was powder, though I'm not sure, for it broke out into fire quick, and shone like pure white heat yanked in a chunk from the heart of a furnace. I saw it shine sickly on the hairy faces of Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy, and Clay's young jaws and cheeks seemed dull and drawn. Reed Barnitt needed no special light to be pale.

  He began to speak. "Moloch, Lucifer," he said in a voice like praying. "Anector, Somiator, sleep ye not, awake. The strong hero Holoba, the powerful Ischiros, the mighty Manus Erohye—show us the truth! Amen."

  Again his hand in his pocket, and he brought out a slip of paper the size of a postcard, whiter than white in the glow. He handed it to Clay, who was nearest him. "Breathe on it," said Reed Barnitt, "and the others do likewise."

  Clay breathed on it, and passed it to Mr. Hoje. Then it came to me, and to Mr. Eddy, and back to Reed Barnitt. He stooped again, and held it above that sick-white heat. Back he jumped, quick, and yelled out loud, "Earth on the fire! Smother it before we lose the true word!"

  Clay and his father flung on dirt. Mr. Hoje and Reed Barnitt walked side by side to the porch, whispering together. Then Mr. Hoje called in to Sarah Ann, "Fetch out the lamp, honey."

  She did so. We gathered round to look at the paper. Writing was on it, spidery-looking and rough, the way you'd think it was written in mud instead of ink. Reed Barnitt gave it to Sarah Ann.

  "Your heart is good," he said. "Read out what it says for us."

  She held the lamp in one hand, the paper in the other.

  "Do right, and prosper," she read, soft and shaky, "and what you seek is yours. Great treasure. Obey orders. To open the way, burn the light—"

  "We put out the light," said Clay, but Reed Barnitt waved him quiet.

  "Turn the paper over, Miss Sarah Ann," said Reed Barnitt. "Looks like more to read on the other side."

  She looked at more muddy-looking scrawl on the back. She went on:

  "Aram Harnam has the light. Buy it from him, but don't tell him why. He is wicked. Pay what he asks. The power is dear and scarce."

  She looked up. "That's all it says," she told us, and gave the paper back to Reed Barnitt.

  We all sat down, the lamp on the porch floor among us. "Anybody know that man, what's-his-name?" asked Reed Barnitt.

  "Yes," answered Mr. Hoje. "We know Aram Harnam."

  At least, I'd heard what others along Rebel Creek said about Aram Harnam, and it wasn't good.

  Seems he'd gone to a college to be a preacher. But that college sent him to be tried, with a sermon to some folks in another county.

  His teachers went to hear. When he had done, as I heard it told, those teachers told Aram Harnam that from what he'd said under name of a sermon they wanted him to pack his things and leave the college before even another sun rose.

  So he came back to Rebel Creek. One night he went up on a bald hill most folks stayed away from, and put his hand on his head and said that all beneath his hand could be Satan's property. After that, he did witch-doctoring. Nobody liked him but ary man, woman and child in the Rebel Creek county feared him.

  "I take it that Aram Harnam's a bad man," Reed Barnitt suggested.

  "You take it right, sir," allowed Mr. Eddy. "So does whoever wrote on that paper."

  "Wrote on the paper?" Reed Barnitt said after him, and held it out to the light. It was white and empty; so was the other side when he turned that up.

  "The writing's been taken back," he said, nodding his pale face above it. "But we all remember what it said. We must buy the light, and not let Aram Harnam know why we want it."

  "When do we go see him?" asked Mr. Hoje.

  "Why not now?" said Reed Barnitt, but Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy spoke against that. Neither of them wanted to be trucking round Aram Harnam's place in the dark of night. We made it up to meet tomorrow morning for breakfast at Mr. Eddy's, then go.

  Mr. Eddy and Clay left. Mr. Hoje and Sarah Ann made up pallets for Reed Barnitt and me just inside the front door. Reed Barnitt slept right off quick, but I lay awake a good spell. There was a sight of hoot owls hooting in the trees round the cabin, and a sight of thoughts in my head.

  Way I've told it so far, you might wonder why we came in so quick on Reed Barnitt's spell and scheme. Lying there, I was wondering the same thing. It came to mind that Clay had first said he'd join. That was for Sarah Ann, and Clay without land or money, wanting to marry her and have enough to make her happy. After Clay spoke, Mr. Eddy and Mr. Hoje felt bound to do the same, for with them the kingdom and the power and the glory tied up to their young ones, and they wanted to see them wed and happy. Mr. Hoje special. He worked hard on a little place, with corn patches on terraces up slope you had to hang on with one hand while you chopped weeds with the other, and just one cow and two hogs in his pens.

  I reckoned it was hope, more than belief, that caused them to say yes to Reed Barnitt. And me—well, I'd gone a many miles and seen a right much more things than any of my friends, and some of the things not what you'd call everyday things. I reckon I was hoping, too, for a good piece of luck for Clay and Sarah Ann. Never having had anything myself, or expecting to, I could anyhow see how he and she wanted something. So why not help out? Maybe, one or two things I'd watched happen, I could know to help out more than either of their fathers.

  Figuring like that, I slept at last, and at the dawn gray we up to meet at Mr. Eddy's.

  My first look at Aram Harnam, sitting in front of his low-built little shanty, I reckoned I'd never seen a hairier man, and mighty few hairier creatures. He had a juniper-bark basket betwixt his patched knees, and he was picking over a mess of narrow-leafed plants in it. His hands crawled in the basket like black-furred spiders. Out between his shaggy hair and his shaggy beard looked only his bright eyes and his thin brown nose, and if he smiled or frowned at us, none could say. He spoke up with a boom, and I recollected how once he'd studied to preach.

  "Hoje Cowand," he said, "y°u're welcome, and your friends, too. I knew you all was coming."

  "Who done told you that?" asked Mr. Hoje.

  "Little bird done told me," said Aram Harnam. "Little black bird with green eyes, that tells me a many things."

  It minded me of the Ugly Bird, that once I killed and freed a whole district of folks from the scare of it.

  "Maybe your little bird told you what we want," said Mr. Eddy, standing close to Clay, but Aram Harnam shook his head.

  "No sir
, didn't say that." He set down the basket. "I'm a-waiting to hear."

  Mr. Hoje introduced Reed Barnitt and me, and neither of us nor yet Aram Harnam made offer to shake hands.

  "It's a light we want of you, Aram Harnam," said Mr. Hoje then. "A special kind of light."

  "Oh." Aram Harnam leaned back against the logs of his shanty.

  "The light that shows you what you'd miss else? I can fix you such a light."

  "How much?" asked Clay.

  Aram Harnam's furry hand fiddled in his beard. "It's a scarce thing, that light. Cost you five hundred dollars."

  "Five hundred dollars!" whooped out Mr. Eddy.

  The eyes among all Aram Harnam's hair came to me. "Hear that echo, son?" he asked me. "Right clear today—these hills and mountains sure enough give you back echoes." Then, to Mr. Eddy. "Yes, sir. Five hundred dollars."

  Mr. Hoje gulped. "We ain't got that kind of money."

  "Got to have that kind of money for that land of light," said Aram Harnam.

  "Step aside with me, gentlemen," said Reed Barnitt, and Aram Harnam sat and watched us pull back a dozen or twenty steps to talk with our heads together.

  "He knows something," Reed Barnitt whispered, "but not everything, or I judge he'd put his price higher still. Anyway, our spell last night told us there's treasure, and we need the light to find it."

  "I ain't got but forty dollars," said Mr. Eddy. "Anybody else got enough to put with my forty dollars to make five hundred?"

  "Twenty's all I have," Reed Barnitt told us, and breathed long and worried. "That's sixty so far. John?"

  "Maybe the change in my pockets would add up to a dollar," I said. "I'm not right sure."

  Aram Harnam laughed, or coughed, one. "You all make a big thing out of five hundred dollars," he called to us.

  Mr. Hoje faced around and walked back toward him. "We don't have it."

  "Cash," said Aram Harnam after him. "I might credit you, Hoje Cowand."

  "Five hundred dollars' worth?" asked Mr. Hoje. "What on?"

  "We-ell . . ." The word came slow out of the hair and whiskers. "You've got a piece of land, and a house, and a cow and a pig or two . . ."

  "I can't give you those," Mr. Hoje put in.

  "You could put them up. And Mr. Eddy could put up his place, too."

  "The two places are worth plenty more than five hundred dollars," Mr. Eddy started to argue.

  "Not on the tax bills, the way I hear from my little green-eyed black bird."

  Reed Barnitt beckoned us round him again. "Isn't there any way to raise the money?" he whispered. "We're just before finding a fortune."

  Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy shook their heads.

  "Gentlemen, we've as good as got that Ancients' treasure," Reed Barnitt said, and rummaged money from his pocket—a wadded ten, a five and some ones. "I'll risk my last cent, and take it back from off the top of whatever find. You others can do the same."

  "Wait," said Mr. Hoje.

  He put his arm around Mr. Eddy's neck, and the two of them mumbled together a while, and we others watched. Then they turned, both of them, and went back to Aram Harnam.

  "We'd want a guarantee," said Mr. Hoje.

  "Guarantee?" repeated Aram Harnam. "Oh, I'll guarantee the light. Put it in writing that it'll show you what you seek."

  "Draw us up some loan papers," said Mr. Eddy. "Two hundred and fifty dollars credit to each of us, against our places, and a guarantee the light will work, and sixty days of time."

  Mr. Eddy spoke sharp and deeply. Aram Harnam looked at him, then went into the shanty. He brought out a tablet of paper and an ink bottle and an old stump of a pen. He wrote two pages, and when Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy read them over they signed their names.

  Then Aram Harnam bade us wait. He carried the papers back inside. What he did in there took time, and I watched part of it through the open door. He mixed stuff in a pot—I thought I smelled burning sulphur, and once something sweet and spicy, like what incense must smell like. There was other stuff. He heated it so it smoked, then worked it with those furry hands. After while he fetched out what he'd made. It was a big rough candle, as big around as your wrist and as long as your arm to the elbow. Its wick looked like gray yarn, and the candle wax was dirty black.

  "Light it at midnight," he said, "and carry it forward. It'll go out at the place where you'll find your wish. Understand?"

  We said we understood.

  "Then good day to you all," said Aram Harnam.

  Nobody felt the need of sleep that night. At eleven o'clock by Mr. Hoje's big silver turnip watch, we started out to cross the ridge to Black Pine Hollow. Clay went first, with a lantern. Reed Barnitt followed, with the candle. Then me, with my guitar slung on my back because I had a notion to carry it along, and a grubbing hoe in my hand. Then Mr. Hoje with a spade, and Mr. Eddy last of all with a crowbar. Sarah Ann watched us from the door, until we got out of her sight.

  Not much of a trail led to Black Pine Hollow, for folks don't go there much. Last night's hoot owls were at it again, and once or twice we heard rattlings to right and left, like things keeping pace with us among the bushes. Down into the hollow we went, while a breeze blew down on us, chill for that time of year. I thought, but didn't sing out loud:

  In the pines, in the pines,

  Where the sun never shines,

  And I shiver when the wind blows cold. . . .

  "Where's this mine?" asked Reed Barnitt.

  "I can find it better than Clay," called Mr. Hoje. He pushed ahead and took the lantern. The light showed duller and duller, the deeper we went into the hollow; it showed a sort of dim brown, the way you'd think that moonless night was trying to smother it. Around us crowded the black pines the hollow was named after. For my own comfort I reached back and tweaked a silver guitar-string, and it rang so loud we all jumped.

  "Now," said Mr. Hoje, after a long, long while, "I think this must be it."

  He turned off among a thick bunch of the blackest-looking pines, and held the lantern high. Hidden there behind the trees rose a rock face like a wall, and in the rock was a hole the size of a door, but uneven. Vines hung down around it, but they looked dead and burnt out. As we stood still and looked, there was a little timid foot-patter inside.

  "Let's pray that's no rat," said Clay. "Rats in mines are plumb bad luck."

  "Shoo," said his daddy, "let's hope it's nothing worse than just a rat."

  Reed Barnitt shoved forward. "I'm going in," he said through his teeth, "and I sure enough don't want to go in alone."

  We went in together. Gentlemen, it was so black in that mine, you'd think a hunk of coal would show white. Maybe the lantern was smoking; it made just a pool of dim glow for us. Reed Barnitt struck a match on the seat of his pants and set it to the yarny wick of that five hundred dollar candle. It blazed up clean and strong, like the light Reed Barnitt had made in the middle of the star when it cast the spell. We saw where we were.

  Seemed as if once there'd been a long hallway cut in the brown rock, but rocks had fallen down. They lay one on top of the other before us, shutting us away from the hall, so that we stood in a little space not much bigger than Mr. Hoje's front room. To either side the walls were of brown stone, marked by cutting tools—those Ancients had made their way through solid rock—and underfoot were pebbles. Some were quartz, like Mr. Hoje had said. Everything was quiet as the inside of a coffin the night before judgment.

  "The flame's pointing," Reed Barnitt called to us. It did point, like a burning finger, straight into the place. He stepped toward those piled rocks, that made something like steps to go up, and we moved with him. I don't think anybody wanted to go over the rocks and beyond. The blackness there made you feel that not only nobody had ever been in there, but likewise nobody could ever go; the blackness would shove him back like a hand.

  I moved behind Reed Barnitt with the others. The light of the candle shone past his blocky body and wide hat, making him look like something cut out of black cloth. Two-three st
eps, and he stopped, so quick we almost bumped him. "The light flutters," he said.

  It did flutter, and it didn't point to the piled rocks, but to the wall at their right. When Reed Barnitt made a pace that way, it winked out. We all stood close together in the dim lantern light.

  Reed Barnitt put his hand on the rock wall. It showed ghost white on the brown. His finger crawled along a seamy crack.

  "Dig there," he said to us.

  By what light the lantern showed, I shoved the pick end of the grubbing hoe into the crack and gouged. Seemed to me the whole wall fought me, but I heaved hard and the crack widened. It made a heavy spiteful noise somewhere. Mr. Eddy drove in the point of his bar and pulled down.

  "Come help me, Clay," he called. "Put your man on this."

  The two pulled down with their long tall bodies, then together they pushed up. My heart jumped inside me, for a piece of rock the size of a table top was moving. I shoved on the hoe handle. Reed Barnitt grabbed the free edge of the moving piece, and we laid into it —then jumped back just in time.

  The big loose chunk dropped like the lid of a box. Underneath was dark dirt. Mr. Eddy drove the bar point into it.

  "Light that candle thing again," he asked Reed Barnitt.

  Reed Barnitt struck another match and tried. "Won't light," he said. "We've got our hand right on the treasure."

  I reckoned that's the moment we all believed we had it. So far we'd worried and bothered, but now we stopped, and just worked. Clay took the spade from Mr. Hoje, and I swung my hoe. He scooped out the dirt I loosened. We breathed hard, watching or working. Suddenly:

  "John," said Clay, "didn't I hear that hoe-blade hit metal?"

  I slammed it into the dirt again, hard as I could. Clay scooped out a big spadeful. Bright yellow glimmered up out of the dark dirt. Clay grabbed into it, and so did his daddy. I had my mouth open to yell, but Reed Barnitt yelled first.

  "God in the bushes! Look up there!"

  We looked. Reed Barnitt had turned away from our work, and he pointed up those step-piled rocks. On the top rock of them stood something against the choking blackness.

  It stood up the height of a man, that thing, but you couldn't make sure of its shape. Because it was strung and swaddled over with webby rags. They stirred and fluttered around it like gray smoke. And it had a hand, and the hand held a skull, with white grinning teeth and eyes that shone.