Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02

by The School of Darkness (v1. 1)

  “Let’s all have a sip or so of this,” he said, handing it to Sharon. “I’ve been told that to drink from that cup will ward off poisons and other assaults.”

  Sharon took a small mouthful. “It has a hint of perfume,” she said, handing it to Shimada.

  “It’s supposed to be made from the horn of a unicorn,” said Father Bundren.

  “Really?” said Manco, taking the cup in turn. “Not of a narwhal?”

  “It was given to me by an Italian priest,” Father Bundren said. “It came to him from a lady who said her family had owned it for hundreds of years. She said it was from a unicorn’s horn, and had great powers of protection. I can’t speak positively of that, I’ve never brought it out to drink from until this moment, but I like to carry it with me.” The cup came to Thunstone. The coffee did have a slight taste of perfume, as Sharon had said.

  “I can’t speak with assurance about unicorns, either,” he said, returning the cup to Father Bundren. “Aristotle and Pliny the Elder believed in them. So did Julius Caesar, who said they existed in Germany.”

  Father Bundren drank the last drops in the cup and stowed it away again. “Unicorns are mentioned in the Bible. And they were reported by early explorers in America, including missionary priests. Now then, I won’t admit to beliefs about them. But in a case like ours, we shouldn’t overlook a bet, anywhere along the way.”

  “Amen,” said Manco, cutting into his steak.

  The others began to eat, too. Shimada and Kyoki exclaimed over their shrimps and rice. Father Bundren and Manco ate their steaks and potatoes. Sharon toyed with her lamb chop for a while, then ate as though with a growing appetite. Thunstone carefully mixed his lettuce salad with oil and vinegar and salt and pepper. For a while, nobody talked except about the food. The Inn was a good place to eat, they agreed.

  When Thunstone had finished with his steak, he beckoned the waiter. “Bring me a cup custard,” he ordered. “Let me have lime ice cream,” said Sharon.

  “Cup custard for me, too,” said Father Bundren. “That goes with the training meal, doesn’t it?”

  Manco, too, ordered custard. Shimada and Kyoki did not ask for dessert. At last all had finished. Thunstone and Manco and Father Bundren produced pipes and Manco passed his pouch of mixed tobacco and herbs. Shimada kindled a cigarette. Sharon and Kyoki did not smoke.

  “Whatever we make ready for, we’re as ready as can be,” said Manco, from within a gray cloud.

  “Saint Paul spoke of being armed against evil,” said Father Bundren. “He mentioned the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of salvation, the sword of the spirit. I do my best to feel righteous whenever I quote that.”

  “Armed against evil,” repeated Shimada, He brought out an envelope.

  “I intended some presents to you, my friends,” he said, “and it seems a good time to give them now.”

  He opened the envelope and spilled a red glitter of objects out on the table cloth. He picked up one. It was a bright, rubylike jewel on a length of white cord. He bowed as he handed it to Thunstone.

  “Ancient Japanese charm,” he said. “The red light makes the dark threat of hidden evil retire before its brightness.” He passed out other jewels on cords to Sharon, to Manco, to Father Bundren. Sharon hung hers around her neck, along with the gold cross. Manco studied his with deep- creased eyes before he tucked it away somewhere inside his beaded shirt. Father Bundren put his jewel into a pocket of his coat, and Thunstone slid his into the side pocket that held the Long Lost Friend. “Thank you,” he said to Shimada. “I believe like you, in the power of the jewel.” “Oishi and I have them also and wear them,” said Shimada. “Belief, you say. We must believe in our defenses. If we do not believe, they are not defenses.”

  “Without defenses, I’ll be dead,” said Thunstone.

  “Yes,” said Shimada, with a little bow. “You and all of us, for we will all be together. Live or die, we will all be together.” He blinked behind his spectacles. “Or is my English not good? Should I say, we shall all be together?”

  “Together, anyway,” endorsed Manco. “And live. And win.”

  Thunstone looked at his watch. “It’s past seven a good way,” he said. “Maybe we ought to think about getting over there, moving in close to our work.”

  Their waiter passed by and Thunstone signaled for him to bring the check.

  “Unusual-looking young man, that one,” said Father Bundren, following the waiter with his eye. “Might he have been somebody in Grizel Fian’s string of Shakespearean scenes?”

  “If he was, I don’t recognize him,” said Thunstone.

  The waiter came back with the bill. Thunstone signed it and laid some paper money on it. “Three dollars there for you,” he said.

  The waiter studied him with shadowed eyes. He picked up one of the dollars.

  “Let me ask a favor of you, Mr. Thunstone,” he said. “I know about you, I feel it’s a privilege to talk to you. Will you autograph this dollar for me to keep, to remember you by?”

  “No!” Manco almost barked, and all looked at him.

  “Tell me why you brought my friend this fruit he didn’t order,” Manco said, pointing at it in the ash tray.

  The waiter stared. “No, he didn’t order that. Somebody must have put it on the plate in the kitchen.”

  “Who did that?” persisted Manco.

  “There was a girl helping out there. Red-haired girl.”

  “Be easy on him, Chief,” Thunstone said to Manco, and smiled up at the waiter.

  “I won’t sign my name for you now,” he said, “but do you serve here regularly?”

  “Lunch and dinner, sir.”

  “All right, I’ll be back,” Thunstone assured him. “All of us will be back, and then I’ll sign just about anything. Why?”

  “Oh—-just—”

  The waiter did not finish. He went away furtively, almost at a trot. Manco and Shimada watched him go, with narrowed eyes.

  “Is he one of them?” asked Manco. “Did he want your name for something to use against you?”

  “I didn’t sign my name, so we can’t tell,” said Thunstone.

  They all rose. Thunstone looked toward the entrance to the lobby. For a moment, just a moment, he saw a black- clad, stocky figure there. Then it ducked out of sight, almost like a conjuring trick. As it went, he caught a glimpse of a bald head.

  Sharon saw, too. “Rowley Thome,” she whispered.

  “At least he didn’t wait to face us,” said Thunstone, and they walked into the lobby. Thome was not there, but Lee Pitt was. He came to join them. He wore a brown raincoat and a waterproof hat.

  “A storm’s coming up outside,” he said, “and you’d better get some foul weather gear to go out in. If you are going out.”

  “Naturally I’m going out,” said Thunstone. “I’m going out to make some fairly bold talk.”

  “Well, I had a strange telephone call,” said Pitt. “A woman, I don’t know who, told me to advise you against appearing tonight. She said you’d try to spoil a great step forward for Buford State University.”

  “Ah,” said Father Bundren, “might she have been Grizel Fian?”

  “I said, I don’t know who she was. But she was emphatic.”

  “Anonymous phone calls won’t stop me,” said Thunstone, “but I’m going to get my own raincoat.”

  He and Sharon and the others went up to the third floor. He visited Sharon’s room while she took a blue raincoat from the closet and a slim umbrella, also blue. Then she came to his room while he put on an English mackintosh and a hat of Irish tweed. Out in the corridor they met then- companions, variously raincoated, and went down to the lobby again. Pitt waited for them there. His face was solemn.

  “Who’d have thought a meeting like this would bring on such happenings?” he said.

  “I would, for one,” replied Manco at once. He wore a poncho over his beaded shirt with his braids hanging upon it, and a wide-brimmed black hat on his head.


  “That strange death of Exum Layton saddens me,” said Pitt. “It saddens you, too, doesn’t it? He didn’t have to die like that.”

  “He had to die like that if some enemy managed it,” said Father Bundren.

  “You don’t think it was a natural death,” Pitt almost accused.

  “I think it was a highly unnatural death,” said Father Bundren, “I think it was murder, though we may not be able to prove it. Not just yet.”

  They went together to the outer door, and into the open air that was as heavy as a smothering cloak.

  Night had fallen. Overhead, the sky was fairly swaddled with clouds. No sign of that bright moon, those spangles of stars, that had been so evident the night before. As they stood together for a moment, a great red flash of lightning crawled above, like a wriggling snake. Then thunder rolled, as loud and long as a massed ruffle of drums. Sharon clutched Thunstone’s arm, held it close against her body.

  “Let’s go, then,” said Pitt.

  He led the way. Behind him walked Shimada and Kyoki. Then came Thunstone and Sharon, and at the rear Father Bundren and Manco, The streetlight at the crossing seemed caught up in a sort of filthy fog. They crossed the pavement and entered the campus. They could barely make out the buildings in the murk,

  They passed a heavy-trunked tree, an oak. Thunstone had barely noticed it before. But now it was evident; it almost leaned at them. In its rough bark seemed to be set a face, with deep, staring eyes and a gash of mouth below them. It stared, and Thunstone stared back as he walked by.

  Another glare of lighting, which for a moment lighted their way luridly. And then the accompanying thunder, louder than a drum now, loud as the explosion of a bomb. A snuffling wind had begun to rise. Sharon caught her breath, she clung to Thunstone’s arm.

  They came to where lights showed the entrance to the auditorium. People were streaming in, despite the threat of the storm. As Pitt led the way up the steps, rain came down abruptly, streams and splashes of rain, and again lightning and thunder as they went in. The tempest strove loudly against the roof of the auditorium.

  XV

  As they paused in the lobby, the massive building seemed to tremble, like a ship on a high sea. Lee Pitt looked around at them, his face very sober,

  “I’d suggest that you others go ahead if you want to be backstage,” he said. “I haven’t asked why you’re doing that, but I figure it’s all right. Go ahead.”

  Father Bundren and Manco went down the aisle, Sharon close behind them, then Shimada and Kyoki. Pitt stood with Thunstone. He nodded to a dripping couple, probably man and wife, who came in and entered the auditorium. Finally he said, “Now we’ll go down together.”

  The carpeted floor of the aisle seemed to tremble under Thunstone’s feet, The vaulted roof overhead rasped and rattled as though the rain would tear it open. People along the aisle seats spoke to Pitt, and several spoke to Thunstone. Almost in the front row sat Rowley Thome wrapped in something black, and Grizel Fian in the red dress she liked so much, Thunstone paused beside them.

  “Good evening,” he said, “Your orchestra outside is in good tune.”

  Thome glowered, red-eyed, “You were warned not to come and speak here tonight.”

  “I know,” said Thunstone, “But here I am, I’m going to speak, and these people can hear me.”

  He and Pitt headed for the entrance to the stage. The others were grouped there. Manco smoked his elephant pipe, and Shimada and Kyoki watched the curl of vapor rise from it.

  “I don’t know what you people intend to do, but I’ll hang around out here and see,” said Pitt. “Where do you want to wait and listen?”

  “Back of the dark hangings,” said Father Bundren. “Professor Shimada and his young friend there at the far side, where the entry is. The countess and I will be upstage, where there’s a way to come on if we need to. And Chief Manco here.”

  “All right, and when I’ve introduced Mr. Thunstone I’ll come back and stand here with Chief Manco. It’s about eight o’clock now. Are you ready?”

  “Wait.” Thunstone draped his mackintosh on a chair and put his hat on it. He drew his silver blade and leaned the shank of the cane against the chair. Pitt stared but said nothing.

  The houselights had dimmed; the overhead stage lights and the footlights had come up. Pitt walked onstage and to the lectern. Thunstone straightened his necktie and followed at his side. He carried his drawn blade. Pitt faced the audience, which ceased its usual patter of conversation. Rain poured outside.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Pitt, “a great many of you have braved a considerable spell of ugly weather to come here tonight. You have come to where you can hear Mr. John Thunstone. I need not remind you further of his distinguished career as an explorer of strange occurrences, sometimes chancy occurrences. It wouldn’t be proper of me to name these matters over to you. There are too many of them. Let me only introduce you to Mr. Thunstone himself.”

  He walked off swiftly. Thunstone came to the lectern and laid his blade across it and bracketed his big hands upon it. He looked down at Thome and Grizel Fian, and saw the glitter of their eyes as they looked back at him. A great crash of thunder sounded outside, and the lights above him dimmed for a moment, then came on again.

  “Good evening,” he said into the microphone. ‘Tm here to say some specific things, and to say that I’ve been told not to talk here at all. I was told that in threatening terms, but I’m not taking any such orders tonight. I’m going to make statements, and some of those statements will be accusations.”

  Something like a groan of derision rose among the listeners. No doubt but that he had enemies there. Peering, he could spot the bearded giant he had met in the cemetery, he saw the red-haired girl, and plainly he could see Thome and Grizel Fian, sitting forward and glaring.

  “Let’s briefly consider devil worship as part of our American history and culture,” Thunstone said. “In colonial times it was everywhere, not just in Salem. The first to be hanged for a witch in New England went to the gallows almost half a century before the Salem trials. There were accusations and frequent executions among people of all social classes, in New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, everywhere. Laws against witchcraft were rescinded, but charges were made up to the very time of the Revolution and beyond. Today the worshipers of devils, the dealers in black magic, aren’t brought into court for their performances and claims. They advertise themselves, they attend their meetings without fear or concealment. In the 1940s groups of conjurors were photographed as they tried, by magic, to kill Adolf Hitler. Maybe they couldn’t. By some reports, Hilter himself was caught up in pagan rites. It took invading Russian armies to drive him to suicide.”

  Everyone was listening.

  “Here and there today we have thriving colleges of witchcraft, very frank and public in offering their beliefs and instructions. In California we have the so-called Church of Satan, complete with a highly picturesque pope and branch establishments throughout the United States and overseas in Europe, In England there is another Black Church of the same sort that claims more than a hundred covens of members. And I repeat what you heard, earlier today, from Professor Tashiro Shimada—these beliefs are balefully active here in your town of Buford, where their followers hope to make use of Buford State University, make here a school of darkness.”

  Loud thunder then. The lights dimmed but did not quite go out, then shone again. The auditorium quivered; the floor under Thunstone’s feet seemed to tilt for a moment.

  “Am I recognized?” asked Thunstone. “Is all this attention directed at me? I don’t know if I should feel worthy. As it says in Tom Sawyer why this massed artillery bombardment to destroy one bug? Maybe I’m to be frightened into silence, into retreat. I promise you, I won’t be frightened into either,”

  “Bawww!” rose a voice in the audience, like the bellow of a bull.

  “And barnyard imitations won’t stampede me,” said Thunstone. “And at least, that furious storm ou
tside will discourage any protesting souls from going out into it. I’ve promised you some information on the devil’s disciples in Buford, and the information I’ll give is firsthand.”

  “Liar!” screamed someone. It may have been Grizel Fian.

  “No, I’m a truth teller and a truth seeker,” said Thunstone. “It’s been my life’s work to seek the nature of reality. Even when that nature seems to be beyond nature, beyond the nature we know and recognize, Here goes.”

  Several voices in the auditorium seemed to be humming, crooning. It might have been a song, and not a pleasant song.

  “The founding of the college that has become this Buford State University partakes of the supernormal,” pursued Thunstone. “I’ve heard only semilegendary reports of the early days of enchantment here, and of how they got support, financial backing, at the time the college was founded. As I say, I’ve only heard those things, and maybe you’ll object to hearsay evidence. But I’ve witnessed a ceremony, and a baleful one, myself. It happened in the basement of Grizel Fian’s house.

  “That’s another of your lies!” This time it was manifestly Grizel Fian who shouted the accusation.

  “No, ma’am, it’s another of my truths,” Thunstone fairly snapped back at her. “The truth hurts you, doesn’t it? You know that I was there. You know that you and your followers tried to put a deadly curse on me, and that it didn’t work. I watched what you tried with an effigy and an enchanted spear, I broke up your meeting, and there was nothing you could do about that.”

  Here and there in the gathering, people began to hoot and howl. Plainly Thorne and Grizel Fian had brought a considerable group with them.

  Mighty thunder again, and the lights went out above Thunstone’s head. At the same moment, other lights blinked into view, glowing red points. They were like embers. They revealed the faces of those who bore them, tense, distorted faces. The faces turned up and glared at Thunstone.

  “Thanks for that illumination,” Thunstone said, raising his voice to be heard. “It’s to light a way to destruction, isn’t it? Whose destruction?”