The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by Michael McDowell

  I put out an arm, pushed him off – I dare say I cursed. MacDonald returned to his own side of the fire, quoted Scripture at me, expressed a wish for a Bible that he might quote some more, and the last thing I heard as he settled down for sleep was a fervent whisper, ‘Man, I’d give a year of my life for a wee bottle o’ Glenlivet.’

  Our luck improved when we made a start in the morning. The bad country was soon left behind, and we scudded over a level bed at high speed, covering a large area of country that day; but we saw no game, only a few snow-­birds with a wolf slinking away here and there. It was indeed a barren season. Nor did we discover any tracks of the band of trappers we had come out to look for, so we attributed the story to the imagination of the native brain, although it transpired later that the report was true. The men were never caught; but they quarrelled when nearing the flats of Hudson’s Bay, and the result was that two men, both Russians and not Germans, were picked up by the Indians fearfully hacked with knives about face and body.

  About four o’clock that afternoon we were gliding along briskly in the mysterious semi-­darkness, when I found that my eyes troubled me. They smarted, and the lids twitched continually. Hanging my arm over the side of the sleigh, I caught up some snow to rub on my face. While raising my hand I happened to glance towards stolid old MacDonald, and to my amazement discovered a pink halo round his grizzled head. Turning my throbbing eyes towards the dogs, I noticed a soft pink radiance glowing round their bodies, while the steam-­like breath pouring from their mouths floated away in roseate clouds, which to a poetical mind might have suggested an effect of sunrise.

  While I was wondering at the meaning of this phenomenon, MacDonald turned his head, and gazed at me solemnly with eyes that blinked and twitched like mine.

  ‘Hello, Angel!’ he exclaimed, without a vestige of humour in his voice.

  I stared at him, and he continued, ‘I don’t want to flatter ye, but you’d make a good Catholic idol just now. There’s a red ring round your head any saint might envy.’

  ‘You’ve got one too,’ I said.

  ‘Darn the lights, anyway,’ he muttered. ‘’Tis bad enough to see ’em when you’re snug at home. When they strike ye out here ’tis death for somebody. He’s going.’

  ‘Keep off that,’ I muttered.

  ‘If Sinapis isn’t going off, one of us is. I guess it’s better him than you or me.’

  The long lash curled savagely over the brightly coloured backs of the dogs, and we bounded along in silence, while I fixed my eyes upon a thick clump of firs which looked as though they were on fire. Presently a gruff exclamation at my shoulder made me start.

  ‘Here they come – the devil’s lights!’

  I put my head back and glanced at the sky. Lurid tongues were creeping up from the magnetic north, and advancing with slow movements across the sky. They resembled flames of fire seen indistinctly through a cloud of smoke. On the opposite side flaming spindles shot upward in a clear sky, as though striking at invisible foes with their spear-­like tips; and at the same time I heard a low moaning, like wind round a street corner on a wintry night. Otherwise there was silence, awful silence. Gradually the red hue became more pronounced, the air grew ghastly, figures seemed to creep by, the snow around might have marked the scene of a great carnage. MacDonald’s face looked livid and awesome. I glanced once at the still countenance of Sinapis, but recoiled at the sight.

  Few words passed, and presently we reached the pine bluff we had long been heading for. A cloud of fire crested the summit. We began to prepare our camp, between the slender columns stretching in lengthy corridors on each side, faintly illumined, as if to receive us, with the lambent lights.

  We examined Sinapis, and one look passed between us. Amateur doctor that I was, a glance was enough to convince me the man was worse. His limbs were hot and covered with red spots. With his feeble arms he endeavoured to toss off the furs; and if he could suffer from an excess of heat in that atmosphere, I knew he must be sick indeed. I looked at the thermometer, feeling that the temperature must be nearing an exceptional point. The spirits were skulking away at the bottom, and the index marked sixty-­one. I returned with the intelligence to my companion.

  ‘Ninety-­three degrees of frost, Mac.’

  He raised his shaggy head. ‘Well, Angel, that’s about the limit. A few more degrees and we shall be smothered. I knew it was something low. The air strikes like fire.’

  ‘A steady blow of wind now – ’

  ‘And we should be shrivelled up like dead leaves.’

  We made four large fires at a slight distance from each other. For a couple of hours we toiled with axe and saw, felling wood to keep us in fuel for the night; but every other minute we had to pause and gasp for breath. Meantime the heavens were growing scarlet; the snow might have been soaked in blood; my companion’s face grew more corpse-­like. Load after load of resinous wood we carried to the camp, then settled down to nibble at what food we could manage to thaw. After an altogether insufficient meal, we sat down opposite each other to enjoy our only pleasure, a good pipeful of tobacco. The dogs gathered round, snapping at one another, lying so close to the fires that the air soon became filled with the odour of singeing fur, and we had to drive them back, lest they should place us in a quandary by committing suicide. Hard by lay Sinapis, wrapped up in the sleigh, never moving nor speaking.

  Nature has especially ordained that when the temperature reaches an extremely low point two things may not happen: a fire cannot burn dully, nor may the wind blow. Were it otherwise human existence in the far north would often be impossible­.

  We smoked silently for an hour or more, only rising at intervals for fresh supplies of wood. The mysterious atmosphere bathed us in its red waves; the fiery cones and spindles above kept on darting and flashing; the shuddering shadows crept upon the trees. It was a remarkable night indeed.

  Presently MacDonald drew the last mouthful of smoke from his pipe. As he drew the little canvas bag out of his pocket – in winter he always carried his tobacco cut – he eyed me in a solemn fashion, and said, ‘Do ye see, Angel?’

  ‘I’m not blind,’ I answered a bit testily, for I looked upon him as a superstitious old fool.

  ‘Do ye hear, Angel?’ he continued in the same monotonous voice.

  ‘Quit calling me Angel!’ I shouted. ‘And talk of something else. It’s nothing but the aurora.’

  ‘That’s what they say. What makes the sounds? What makes the red lights jump around in the sky? What makes the shadows we see crawling around? Men whose heads are too big for their bodies talk about electricity and terrestrial magnetism, and clever enough they think themselves I have no doubt. But get ’em together, drive ’em in a bunch, and ask ’em straight what is electricity an’ what is terrestrial magnetism? You’ll see them sit down and suck their thumbs.’

  ‘There are wiser men than us, Mac.’

  ‘There’s a clever and common-­sense way of looking at things,’ he said stubbornly. ‘One man wants to find the height of a wall. He takes a sheet of paper and a lot of fiddling tools, draws pictures, and decorates them with half the letters in the alphabet. At last he works out a sort of answer, mostly wrong. Another man slips to the top of the wall, drops a plumb-­line down, makes a knot in the line, and measures it. One’s the clever way of finding the height of that wall and the other is the natural way. Give me the last.’

  ‘What’s your idea, then, about the red lights?’

  ‘The devil fixes ’em up to scare us lonely fellows, and to warn us there’s trouble coming.’

  ‘Why do we only see them out here? Why only in the extreme cold?’

  ‘Don’t you try and corner the devil. He uses different methods to scare folk in other places. The red lights do show further south, and harm always comes with them. Sinapis will die.’

  ‘Because the aurora happens to be red once in a way, it’s no reason why a man should die.’

  ‘Two years ago there was just such another nig
ht, the sky on fire and the snow bloody,’ went on MacDonald, in his unhappiest voice. ‘Factor Robinson went out on the ice of the bay to look for his little dog, which had strayed from the fort. We picked him up next morning, smashed by a bear, so that his own mother wouldn’t ha’ known him. I helped to carry him back, took the shoulders, I did, and his head was like a rotten apple some one had set their foot on. Kept touching my legs, too. Man, I had to shut my eyes.’

  I tried to laugh his words away, but only a dry sound came from my throat. No man could have been light-­hearted amid such weird surroundings.

  ‘This night, further south, no electric instruments will obey the hand of any man,’ my cheerful comrade rambled on. ‘Telephones, telegraphs, all the rest of ’em, won’t work, or will perform on their own account. Aye, on nights of this sort messages come along the wires, and the operators are called up by hands which have no flesh on ’em.’

  ‘Free electricity has powers of which we know little,’ I said.

  ‘There ye are again. You’re welcome to your notion and all you can make of it. Here’s a little story, and if it isn’t true, may my tongue be frost-­bitten. In a small town, a year or two agone, the red lights came along, and all the telegraph stations were closed. Late at night one of the operators went into the office for something, and while there the signal sounded. He stepped up and prepared to take down the message. The needle ticked away, only one word was transmitted, only one word, Angel. They say he fainted right off.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Death. Just that one word. Three months later it came for him.’

  ‘You’ve got queer notions, Mac.’

  ‘Maybe, Angel. There are queerer round us. I remember a fellow telling me once how, when the lights were bad, he switched on his telephone and listened. He wasn’t a chap of powerful imagination, but he fairly made me shiver when he described how he heard the things twisting and turning round the wire outside, whispering and chattering, and groaning – ’

  ‘Quit it, Mac,’ I interrupted. ‘If you haven’t got anything better to talk about, let’s sit quiet.’

  He bent to tuck the buffalo robe beneath his knees. That moment I heard a sound, a movement. We looked up together, and saw Sinapis leap out of the sleigh and dash across the snow with the wild motions of a maniac: this man whom we supposed was unconscious and too weak to lift his head – here he was running like an athlete, a man hunted by death, and looking for a place to hide himself. He had been a trapper of beasts, a hunter, all his life, and now he was running with the strength lent him by madness, running from the grisly trapper who sought his life.

  ‘Man!’ groaned MacDonald. ‘I wish it warn’t so lonesome.’

  ‘You’re scared, Mac?’ I said hoarsely.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’ve got it down my back. Same with you,’ he shouted. ‘If it warn’t for the red lights, your face would be as white as pudding. You ha’ your eyes shut.’

  ‘If I could shut them, I would,’ was my answer. ‘He’ll never get out o’ sight. He’ll run and run all night, and we’ll sit and watch. Man, I’d like a good black British night.’

  Sinapis ran on, and as I gazed, unable to remove my eyes, his direction changed, and his motion became parallel with us; he seemed to be coming back, but it was not so; he passed, giving us a wide berth, and sped on, old MacDonald’s head following his course, sheep-­like. We perceived he was running in a circle of which we formed the centre.

  ‘Run out and catch hold of him. I’ll see him running to the end of my days,’ MacDonald whispered.

  I shuddered, but did not move.

  ‘We were angels a while ago, church-­window paintings wi’ holy colours round our heads. Now we’re devils. Who was that fellow who went to hell and saw the papists burn?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I muttered, never having heard of Dante in those days; and I was also angry, being myself a Catholic – as was Sinapis – and I did not like MacDonald’s sneers at my religion.

  ‘Bunyan or Gulliver; some such name,’ he rambled on. ‘If ever I go back to Tobermorey, I’ll tell ’em I’ve been there, too.’

  Again the Indian approached us, on another and smaller circle, and again he passed, but his speed was decreasing. We thought his strength was failing, but it was not that altogether. He went on describing circles, each drawing him nearer to us, and presently he fell on the snow and began to crawl.

  ‘Played out,’ muttered MacDonald.

  ‘Come on, Mac,’ I said, when I saw the poor wretch beginning to describe another circle on his hands and knees.

  ‘Bide a wee. My breath ain’t easy.’

  A few more minutes passed, then I shook off the cold and the terror of the ghastly lights, crossed to MacDonald’s side, and heaved him up. He came to his feet with as many groans as a dying man; together we crossed the snow and secured the Indian; but we let him go again and gasped.

  Before leaving the sleigh, some mood of madness had provoked him to tear off his socks and moccasins; and he had been running over that red snow – I do not know how long – with bare feet.

  He made no resistance. We carried him to the sleigh and wrapped him up, averting our eyes from those wax-­like feet, then returned to our sleeping-­bags by the fire, glancing across at each other, afraid to speak for some time; but I heard a lot of gulping going on, and at last a queer hoarse voice, ‘Man, you’re a Christian, and I used to be. Shall we put a bullet through his head? What’s the sin, when ’tis a kindness?’

  ‘Quit it, Mac,’ I said; and he put his head down and took to his pipe again.

  We could do nothing for Sinapis; only sit there and doze and wait for him to die. My eyes closed after a time, and I felt myself nodding, almost overbalancing. Suddenly I became wide awake, with a wild shudder, for I imagined something was leaning over, reaching out great hands to strangle me. I saw the red lights, and my excited imagination made me believe I saw also luminous faces revolving in one of those hideous circles, gradually advancing towards me with hollow eyes and bleeding jaws. I thought of Indian legends which I had laughed at when the sun was shining and Nature had been normal; and then I heard a low, dull, scraping sound which woke me up.

  MacDonald had heard it too, but was not frightened. He wagged his head and grinned across the fire. He was nearer the sleigh than I was, and I supposed he could see what was going on.

  ‘When a man’s dying he gets a child again,’ he muttered. ‘The boy’s having a game. He’s sawing a bit of wood.’

  Neither of us wondered what was taking place in that wild, unhappy mind, struggling against its destiny of death, what agony was there, what love of life and home. He was only an Indian; we looked upon him rather as a dog, and were sorry he was about to die, chiefly because it would inconvenience us.

  ‘I was fond of sawing a bit of wood when I was a youngster,’ MacDonald murmured lazily. ‘Specially if ’twas the Sabbath. I’d get father’s hand-­saw and scrape for an hour at some log, and call myself a mighty fine carpenter when I saw what a pile of sawdust I was making. Eh, man, it was good to be a kiddie.’

  He went on murmuring a little, and as I watched his lips something appeared to cross my eyesight and strike MacDonald on the head. It was not my fancy, for he shouted, ‘The boy’s thrown a chunk of wood at me.’ Then he yelled, ‘It’s a moccasin’; and the next instant started up and lurched towards me blubbering.

  ‘Man!’ he panted. ‘Take it away. It moves! Eh, man, it’s a dead lump. He threw it away like an old boot. Take it away – my stomach’s gone. Eh, man, man!’

  I saw the thing lying in the light of the fire with the toes pointing towards it. Sinapis could have felt nothing while he sawed, because all feeling had been frozen out, and yet it was horrible – there. I could not move with MacDonald hanging to me; I dreaded the idea of touching the thing; but two of the dogs made for it, sniffing, one quicker than the other carried it away, and – we saw it no more.

  MacDonald was like an hysterical girl. I made him lie
down, covered him over, then went to the side of the sleigh, looking down upon the sick man, but not at his feet. He had fallen back, the mad strength had given out at last, he was breathing with difficulty, and still struggling, not only against madness and disease, but, as I could not help thinking, for I was more than a little upset, he was still striving to avoid the clutches of some invisible power, other than death, which hovered above his resting-­­place.

  I sat down again, while MacDonald’s groans died gradually away. I never slept. I nodded dreamily, all the time conscious of my companion’s terrified eyes peering at me over the bowl of his pipe, through a continually rising cloud of smoke. Nothing could have frightened MacDonald from his pipe. He was a hard smoker, and used to say the only thing he had against sleep was that it deprived a man of his tobacco. I remained conscious of what was taking place around, and I perceived that whiteness was gradually returning to the snow and the fire was dying out of the sky. Luminous clouds, with swords of light flashing round the edges, moved slowly up; streamers quivered in the north, lengthening or shortening as the whim seized them. Falling back and resting my head against a pile of wood, I watched the strange forms, which were never for a moment at rest, hurrying always from one side to another, until it occurred to me that the prevailing movement was that of descent. These cloud spirits in their diaphanous robes of light, were inclined to leave the sky vault, to drop down towards us, to wrap us in their fleecy raiment, and carry us away to that land beyond the ice mountains, towards which men are always struggling, which they never have reached.

  I had laughed, before that night, at the foolishness of the Indians. When these lights are bright, they will creep from their tents, uplift their arms towards the descending masses, cry aloud, then hurriedly re-­seek the partial shelter of their homes. Why? Because at the sound of the human voice the descending motion ceases. The lights break up, scatter and flee away to all parts of the heavens, removing themselves until the atmosphere ceases to vibrate with the echo of the voice. Then they steal down once more, flock together in a ghostly band, and begin again to drop towards the brown tents.