Then I sagged forward against the ropes, head hanging. I refused to respond, even to threats of further torture. And my exhaustion was scarcely feigned, for I had never undergone a more trying day -- a day in which one horror followed close upon another.
Finally they cut me loose. The man carried me out of the sullen crimson light of the temple, up the narrow passage, and into the house again; I was almost too weak to walk alone. As we came out upon the snow, the distant, keening cry of the weird pack broke once more upon my startled ears.
The pale disk of the moon was rising, cold and silvery, in the east, over the illimitable plain of snow. It was night again!
I had been in the subterranean temple for more than twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER VII
WHEN I RAN FROM THE PACK
Again I was in the little room that had been Steele's, among his intimate possessions, catching an occasional suggestion of his perfume. It was a small room, clean and chaste, and I had a feeling that I was invading a sacred place. But I had no choice in the matter, for the windows were barred, and the door locked behind me.
Steele -- or, I should say, the werewoman -- had let me stop in the other room to eat and drink again. He had even let me find the medicine cabinet and get a bottle of antiseptic to use in the wound on my leg.
Now, sitting on the bed in a shaft of cold, argent moonlight, I applied the stinging liquid, and then bound the place with a bandage torn from a clean sheet.
Then I got to my feet and went to the window: I was determined to escape if escape were possible, or end my life if it were not. I had no intention of going back alive to the hellish red-lit temple.
But the quavering, dismal howling of the pack came faintly to my ears, as I reached the window, setting me trembling with horror. I gazed fearfully across the fantastic desert of silvery snow, bright in the opalescent haze of moonlight.
Then I glimpsed moving green eyes, and I cried out.
Below the window was a huge, lean gray wolf, pacing deliberately up and down, across the glistening snow. From time to time she lifted her head, stared straight at my windows with huge, malevolent eyes.
A sentinel set to watch me!
With my hopeless despair came a leaden weight of weariness. I felt suddenly exhausted, physically and mentally. I stumbled to the bed, crept under the covers without troubling to remove my clothing, and fell almost instantly asleep.
* * * *
I awoke upon a gray, cold day. A chill wind was whistling eerily about the old house, and the sky was gloomy with steel-blue clouds. I sprang out of bed, feeling much refreshed by my long sleep. For a moment, despite the dreary day, I was conscious of an extraordinary sense of relief; it seemed, for the merest instant, as if all that had happened to me was a horrible nightstallion, from which I was waking. Then recollection came, with a dull pain in my wounded leg.
I wondered why I had not been carried back into the terrible temple of blood-red gloom before the coming of day; perhaps I must have been sleeping too soundly to be roused.
Recalling the gray wolf, I looked nervously out at the window. It was gone, of course; the monsters seemed unable to endure the light of day, or any other save the terrible crimson dusk of the temple.
I wrapped a blanket about my shoulders, for it was extremely cold, and I set about at once to escape from the room. I was determined to win my liberty or die in the attempt.
First I examined the windows again. The bars outside them, though of wood, were quite strong. My utmost strength failed to break any one of them. I could find nothing in the room with which they might be cut or worn in twain, without hours of labor.
Finally I turned to the door. My kicks and blows failed to make any impression upon its sturdy panels. The lock seemed strong, and I had neither skill nor tools for picking it.
But, while I stood gazing at the lock, an idea came to me.
I still had the little automatic, and two extra clips of ammunition. My captors had shown only disdain for the little weapon, and I had rather lost faith in it after its puzzling failure to kill the gray wolf.
Now I backed to the other side of the room, drew it, and deliberately fired three shots into the lock. When I first tried the door again, it seemed as impassable as ever. I worked upon it, twisting the knob, again and again. There was a sudden snap, and the door swung open.
I was free. If only I could reach a place of safety before darkness brought out the weird pack!
* * * *
In the old dining room I paused to drink, and to eat scantily. Then I left the house by the front door, for I dared not go near the mouth of that hell-burrow behind the house, even by day. In fearful, desperate haste, I set out across the snow.
The little town of Hebron, I knew, lay ten miles away, directly north. Few landmarks were visible above the thick snow, and the gray clouds hid the sun. But I plodded along beside a barbed wire fence, which I knew would guide me.
Slowly the time-yellowed ranch house, an ugly, rambling structure with a gray shingle roof, dwindled upon the white waste behind me. The outbuildings, resembling the house, though looking smaller, more ancient and more dilapidated, drew toward it to form a single brown speck upon the endless desolation of the snow-covered plain.
The crust upon the snow, though frozen harder than upon the ill-fated night of my coming, was still too thin to support my weight. It broke beneath my feet at every step, and I sank ankle-deep in the soft snow beneath.
My progress was a grim, heart-breaking struggle. My strength had been drained by the nerve-racking horrors and exhausting exertions of the past few days. Soon I was gasping for breath, and my feet felt leaden-heavy. There was a dull, intolerable ache in the wound on my leg.
If the snow had been hard enough to support my weight, so that I could run, I might have reached Hebron before dark. But, sinking deep into it at every step, it was impossible for me to move rapidly.
I must not have covered over half the distance to Hebron, when the gloom of the gray, cheerless day seemed to settle upon me. I realized, with a chill of fatal horror, that it had not been early morning when I set out; my watch had stopped, and since the leaden clouds had obscured the sun, I had no gauge of time.
I must have slept through half the day or more, exhausted as I had been by the day and night of torture in the dark temple. Night was upon me, when I was still far short of my destination.
Nearly dead with fatigue, I had more than once been almost on the point of stopping to rest. But terror lent me fresh strength. I plodded on as fast as I could, but forcing myself to keep from running, which would burn up my energy too soon.
* * * *
Another mile, perhaps, I had covered, when I heard the weird, blood-congealing voice of the pack.
The darkness, for a time, had been intense, very faintly relieved by the ghostly gleam of the snow. But the clouds had lightened somewhat, and the light of the rising moon shone through them, casting eldritch shadows of silver on the level snow.
At first the dreadful baying was very distant, low and moaning and hideous with the human vocal note it carried. But it grew louder. And there was something in it of sharp, eager yelping.
I knew that the pack which had run down Judson and me had been set upon my trail.
The terror, the stark, maddening, soul-searing horror that seized me, is beyond imagination. I shrieked uncontrollably. My hands and body felt alternately hot and fevered, and chilled with a cold sweat. A harsh dryness roughened my throat. I reeled dizzily, and felt the pounding of my pulse in all my body.
And I ran.
Madly, wildly. Ran with all my strength. Ran through the thick snow faster than I had thought possible. But in a few moments, it seemed I had used up all my strength.
I was suddenly sick with fatigue, swaying, almost unable to stand. Red mists, shot with white fire, danced in front of my eyes. The vast plain of snow whirled about me fantastically.
And on and on I staggered. When each step took all my will. W
hen I felt that I must collapse in the snow, and fought with all my mind for the strength to raise my foot again.
All the time, the fearful baying was drawing nearer, until the wailing, throbbing sound of it drummed and rang in my brain.
Finally, unable to take another step, I turned and looked back.
* * * *
For a few moments I stood there, swaying, gasping for breath. The weird, nerve-blasting cry of the pack sounded very near, but I could see nothing. Then, through the clouds, a broad, ghostly shaft of moonlight fell athwart the snow behind me. And I saw the pack.
I saw them! The pinnacle of horror!
Gray wolves, leaping, green-eyed and gaunt. And strange human figures among them, racing with them. Chill, soulless emerald orbs staring. Bodies ghastly pallid, clad only in tattered rags. Steele, bounding at the head of the pack.
My mother, following. And other women. All green-orbed, leprously white. Some of them frightfully mutilated.
Some so torn they should have been dead!
Judson, the woman who had brought me out from Hebron, was among them. Her livid flesh hung in ribbons. One eye was gone, and a green fire seemed to sear the empty socket. Her breast was fearfully lacerated. And the woman was -- eviscerated!
Yet her hideous body leaped beside the wolves.
And others were as dreadful. One had no head. A black mist seemed gathered above the jutting, lividly white stump of her neck, and in it glowed malevolently -- two green eyes!
A man ran with them. One arm was torn off, his naked pectorals were in ribbons. He ran with the rest, green eyes glowing, mouth wide open, baying with other members of the pack.
And now I saw a horse in that grotesque company. A powerful, gray animal, she was, and she came with tremendous leaps. Its eyes, too, were glowing green-glowing with the malignant fire of an evil intelligence not normally of this earth. This was one of Judson's animals, changed as dreadfully as she and all the others had been. Its mouth yawned open, with yellow teeth glistening, and it howled madly with the pack.
Swiftly, hideously, they closed in upon me. The weird host sprang toward me from all directions -- gray wolves, women, and horse. Eyes glaring, teeth bared, snarling, the hellish horde came closer.
The horror of it was too much for my mind. A merciful wave of darkness overcame me as I felt myself reeling to fall upon the snow.
CHAPTER VIII
THROUGH THE DISK OF DARKNESS
I awoke within the utter stillness of a tomb. For a little time I lay with eyes closed, analyzing the sensations of my chilled, aching body, conscious of the dull, throbbing pain from my wounded leg. I shuddered at recollection of the fearful experiences of the past few days, endured again the overwhelming horror of the moment when the pack -- wolves and women and horse, frightfully mutilated, eyes demoniacally green -- had closed in upon me on the moonlit snow. For some time I did not dare to open my eyes.
At last, nerving myself against the new horrors that might surround me, I raised my lids.
I looked into the somber, crimson radiance of the ebon-pillared temple. Beside a dull jet wall I lay, upon a pile of rags, with a blanket thrown carelessly over me. Beyond the row of massive, black, cylindrical pillars, I saw the great, strange machine, with the huge copper ring glistening queerly in the dim, bloody light. The polished mirror behind it seemed flushed with a living glow of molten rubies, and the many electron tubes, now mounted in their sockets, gleamed redly. The mechanism appeared to be near completion; livid, green-orbed figures were busy about it, moving with a swift, mechanical efficiency. It struck me abruptly that they moved more like machines than like living beings. My mother, Steele, the two mechanics.
For many minutes I lay very still, watching them covertly. Evidently they had brought me down into this subterranean chamber, so that I would have no chance to repeat my escape. I speculated upon the possibility of creeping along the wall to the ascending passage, dashing through it. But there was little hope that I could do it unseen. And I had no way of knowing whether it might be night or day; it would be folly to run out into the darkness. I felt the little automatic still under my arm; they had not troubled to remove a weapon which they did not fear.
Suddenly, before I had dared to move, I saw my mother coming across the black floor toward me. I could not repress a tremor, at closer sight of her deathly pallid body and sinister, baleful greenish eyes. I lay still, trying to pretend sleep.
* * * *
I felt her ice-cold fingers close upon my shoulder; roughly I was drawn to my feet.
'Further assistance from you must be ours,' whined her wolfish voice. 'And not again will you be brought back living, should you be the fool to run!' Her whine ended with an ugly snarl.
She dragged me across toward the fantastic mechanism that glistened in the grim, bloody radiance.
I quailed at the thought of being bound to the black pillar again.
'I'll help!' I cried. 'Do anything you want. Don't tie me up, for God's sake! Don't let his gnaw me!' My voice must have become a hysterical scream. I fought to calm it, cudgeled my brain for arguments.
'It would kill me to be tied again,' I pleaded wildly. 'And if you leave me free, I can help you with my hands!'
'Be free of bonds, then,' my mother whined. 'But also remember! You go, and we bring you back not alive!'
She led me up beside the great machine. One of the mechanics, at a shrill, wolfish whine from her, unrolled a blue print before me. She began to ask questions regarding the wiring to connect the many electron tubes, the coils and helixes and magnets, all ranged about the huge copper ring.
Her strange brain seemed to have no conception of the nature of electricity; I had to explain the fundamentals. But she grasped each new fact with astounding quickness, seemed to see the applications instinctively.
It soon developed that the great mechanism was practically finished; in an hour, perhaps, the wiring was completed.
'Now what yet is to be constructed?' my mother whined.
I realized that no provision had been made for electricity to light the tubes and energize the magnets. These beings apparently did not even know that a source of power was necessary. This, I thought, was another chance to stop the execution of their hellish plan.
'I don't know,' I said. 'So far as I can see, the machine now fits the specifications. I know nothing else to do.'
* * * *
She snarled something to one of the mechanics, who produced the bloody rope with which I had previously been bound. Steele sprang toward me, his lips curled in a leering animal snarl, his white teeth gleaming.
Uncontrollable terror shook me, weakened my knees until I reeled.
'Wait! Stop!' I screamed. 'I'll tell if you won't tie me!' They halted.
'Speak!' my mother barked. 'Quickly describe!' 'The machine must have power. Electricity?' 'From what place comes electricity.'
'There is a motor generator up in the cellar, where the other machine is. That might do.'
She and the monster that had been Steele hurried me down the black-pillared hall, and up the inclined passage to the old cellar.
She carried the red-glowing electric lantern. In the cellar I showed them the generator and attempted a rough explanation of its operation.
Then she and the man bent and caught the metal base of the unit. With their incredible strength, they lifted it quite easily and carried it toward the passage. They made me walk ahead of them as we returned to the machine in the black hall-blasting another hope for a chance to make a dash for the open.
Just as they were placing the heavy machine -- gasoline engine and dynamo, which together weighed several hundred pounds -- on the black platform beside the strange, gigantic mechanism, there came an interruption that, to me, was terrifying.
From the passage came the rustle of feet, and mingled whining, snarling sounds such as the monsters seemed to use for communication. And in the vague, blood-red light, between the tall rows of great black pillars, appeared the
pack!
Huge, gaunt wolves there were. Frightfully mutilated women -- Judson, and the others that I had seen. The gray horse. All their eyes were luminously green -- alight with a dreadful, malevolent fire.
Human lips were crimsoned. Scarlet smeared the gray wolves' muzzles, and even the long nose and gray jaws of the horse. And they carried -- the catch!
* * * *
Over Judson's livid, lacerated shoulders was hung the torn, limp, bleeding body of a man -- her wife! One of the gaunt gray wolves had the hideously mangled body of a woman across her back, holding it in place with jaws turned sidewise. Another had the body of a spotted calf. Two more carried in red-dripping jaws the lax gray bodies of coyotes. And one of the women bore upon her shoulder the remains of a huge gray wolf.
The dead, torn, mutilated specimens were dropped in a horrible heap in the wide central aisle of the jet-pillared temple, near the strange machine, like an altar of death. Dark blood flowed from it over the black floor, congealing in thick, viscid clots.
'To these we bring life,' my mother snarled at me, jerking her head toward the dreadful, mangled heap.
Shuddering and dazed with horror, I sank on the floor, covering my eyes. I was nauseated, sick. My brain was reeling, fogged, confused. It refused to dwell upon the meaning of this dreadful scene.
The mad, fearful, demoniac thing that had been my mother jerked me roughly to my feet, dragged me toward the motor generator, and began plying me with questions about its operation, about how to connect it with the strange mechanism of the copper ring.
I struggled to answer her questions, trying vainly to forget my horror in the work.
Soon the connection was completed. Under my mother's directions, I examined the gasoline engine, saw that it was supplied with fuel and oil. Then she attempted to start it, but failed to mistress the technique of choking the carburetor. Under constant threat of the blood-darkened rope and the werewoman's gnawing fangs, I labored with the little motor until it coughed a few times, and fell to firing steadily.
Wolves of Darkness Rerun Page 5