The mark of the monster
"He doesn't matter," I told her, "Valyne darling."
It was sheer delight to be calling her that again, after seven grim and
bitter years.
"He doesn't matter, for we shall soon be gone." I caught her precious
warmth close to my heart. "Let's go--now!" I urged her, on a sudden
impulse. "We can hire a car in the village, to take us down to the
railroad."
"Clay----" she began, and hesitated doubtfully.
"I'm afraid of Creston," I told her. "I don't know why. But I've always
dreaded returning--as much as I love you, Valyne! Every minute here is
a torture to me. Let's go--today--right now!"
I could find no words for the singular dread that was seeping into me
from the town's somber antiquity, from the forbidding gloom of these
immemorial forested hills. I yearned to shake off the squalid poverty
of Creston, its desolate, haunting decrepitude. I hungered for the
lights and the bustle and the laughter of a city that was alive.
But my feeling was more than that. It was horror of the brooding evil
that lurked like an invisible spider in this vale of desolation. And
Valyne shared my dread. Her hand grew tight on mine.
"I'm glad you've come, Clay!" she whispered tremulously. "I'll be so
glad to get away. You can't realize what it has been to wait, these
last few months, in Doctor Kyle's house! The terror----"
With a little frightened gasp, she checked the words.
"But we can't go tonight, Clay. The doctor and his wife will want to
see you, after all these years----"
"We must," I said. "Doctor Kyle doesn't want us to marry, Valyne----"
Her face had grown paler, and her violet eyes looked down at the road.
"I know," she whispered. "I know! And I have promised him that I won't
marry you, until you have come and talked with him."
"If we must," I yielded. "But there can't be any sane reason, Valyne--I
know it!"
Hand in hand, we walked slowly up the steep, rutted road, toward the
old stone house; slowly, for we were laying bright plans. I told her
again of the small fortune I had brought back from the Orient, of the
good position now promised me with an importing firm. We were planning
our escape, for ever, from Creston's brooding horror. Slowly, too,
because we were both heavy with unspoken forebodings.
But at last the gray bulk of the old stone house loomed up before us
in the dying twilight. Pale yellow lights winked malevolently at us
from the narrow, squinting slits of windows. Valyne opened the heavy,
iron-studded oaken door, and we entered.
How often have I wished that we had slammed that accursed door, and
fled into the haunted night!
_2. "Fear Is Calling for You, Clay!"_
The stone house was old. It had been old when I was a child; but now it
had changed. Now it seemed to me that nameless evil had sprung, since I
had gone, from festering roots sunk deep into its grim antiquity. For
the age of it then had been mellow, aloof, austere, even kindly; now it
was a leering, gibbering horror. It was as if the house had died since
my departure, and was now a restless specter, haunting its own hollow
corpse.
Sarah Kyle met us in the hall, standing motionless under vast, grimy
roof-beams two centuries old. Seven years had changed her. Her teeth
were gone. Her face was narrowed, sharpened, shriveled. Her eyes were
sunken, curiously bright. She was stooped, until her posture suggested
some queer, bright-eyed bird.
She took my hand in her horny claw, and welcomed me with a cackling
laugh. Then she began to make apologies for the poverty of her house,
and to hint transparently for news of my business in the Orient.
"May I see the doctor?" I said.
Her bird-like eyes fixed me, with their uncanny glitter.
"You had better see him, Clay, if you have come to marry Valyne," her
cracked voice shrilled. "And ye had better take his warning. Don't walk
too near the edge of hell!"
I stepped back, startled, demanding:
"Mother Kyle! What do you mean?"
"Latham will tell you," she said, "if your own strange blood hasn't
written it on your soul!"
"Where's the doctor?"
Her white head jerked sharply.
"Latham's still at work," she told me, "in his study in the attic.
He's busy on his great book."
"His book?" I said, wondering.
"He is writing a history of the demonolatries of Creston."
"I want to talk to him right away."
"You can see him after supper." Her thin nose jerked at me
emphatically, like the beak of a bird. "He'll give you reason enough
why you can't marry Valyne, and drag her soul to hell!"
Valyne rescued me from her cackling strangeness, and led me up to my
old room.
There I met the two servants of the house. They, Eben Hand and his wife
Josepha, were setting up my bedstead.
Eben Hand was a fat, panting man. There was no color in his blond hair,
his vague pale eyes, or his pasty skin. Mute, he expressed himself very
swiftly to his wife with white, pliable fat hands.
She was a big, dark woman. Her eyes were wide and sharp and black. Her
raven hair was coiled into glistening, oily ropes. Her upper lip bore a
thick, dark fuzz. She was doing the most of the work, issuing commands
to her silent husband in a coarse, mannish voice.
She bowed to me, oddly, as I entered with Valyne and set down my light
bag. Her dark avid eyes remained fastened on my face, while she told
her husband:
"Eben, this is Clay. Ye remember little Claiborne Coe, Eben, that used
to run through the village. Well, this is him, come back to take our
Valyne away. Clay got rich, Eben, in them furrin parts!"
At that last sentence, Eben Hand's small, pale eyes shifted suddenly
from his wife to me. They searched my person, and seized upon my modest
gold ring. His white fingers made some swift, covert reply.
When they had gone, I said to Valyne:
"I don't like them--or this house! Can't we stay somewhere else,
tonight?"
"There's no hotel in Creston," she told me. "And it would look strange
if we went away tonight. Besides, you must stay to talk with Doctor
Kyle. I promised him."
But even the electric warmth of her kiss couldn't thaw out the chill of
my forebodings.
* * * * *
Doctor Kyle came down at last from his attic room.
He was a big man. Although his body and his limbs remained massively
powerful, his head had become curiously fleshless. His yellow cheeks
were hollow, his dark flaming eyes were very deeply sunken. His head
had become almost completely bald, so that it gave the disconcerting
impression of a yellowed skull.
We met at the foot of the stairs. His hand was very cold, as if he had
been working too long without a fire in his attic study.
No smile broke the solemn preoccupation of his cadaverous face.
"You are welcome to your old home, Clay," said his deep, hollow
voice. "I'm very glad to see you, but"--his shrunken face changed
curiously--"I had hoped that you would heed the warning of my letter,
and never come for Valyne."
"I have come for her," I told him bluntly. "And I'm going to take her
away, in spite of anything you tell me."
His gaunt head shook.
"Clay," he said, "you were always queer and reckless. But I know that
you aren't reckless, madly selfish, enough to drag Valyne away to a
living hell! Not after you have heard; for there must be one drop of
human blood left in your veins!"
"Of course I wouldn't hurt Valyne," I told him. "Go ahead and tell me;
I've had enough vague hints."
But Josepha Hand was setting supper on the table, and Valyne came
toward us at the foot of the stair.
"Doctor," she said, smiling, "you've worked too late again! You know
you shouldn't----"
Her light voice was swept away by his hissing whisper:
"Later, Clay. But it is a crime that God forbids!"
Valyne caught his arm, and mine, and drew us toward the table.
Sitting beside Valyne, so that sometimes my arm touched the firm warmth
of hers, I wondered vainly what he could have to say. What demoniac
purpose sought to bar me from her? What eldritch madness lurked in this
ancient house?
As we ate, the man Eben Hand appeared suddenly in a doorway. He looked
disturbed, his white hands fluttered agitatedly at his wife. And she
called in a tone of startled dread:
"Doctor! You must go, Doctor! He can't get it quiet!"
Doctor Kyle's yellow, tight-skinned face grew a little paler. He rose
hastily and followed Eben Hand through the doorway which, I remembered,
led to the cellar stair.
Silently, the doctor's toothless, wrinkled wife watched the door with
her too-bright eyes. She listened. Presently we heard a sound from
below. It was a low scream--of tortured, animal agony.
When she heard it, Sarah Kyle relaxed as if with relief. Her bright
eyes came back to the table; her brown, claw-like hands buttered a
piece of bread. Her thin voice asked me:
"Clay, what business was ye in, in China?"
"One and another," I told her, absently. "The last was copper and tin,
in the province of Szechwan."
I was looking at Valyne.
Her violet eyes were on her plate; her face was very pale. She was
trembling; her even teeth were sunk deep into her full red lip.
"Valyne!" I whispered. "What is it, darling?"
She merely shook her head a little. She didn't speak or lift her eyes.
"Copper and tin?" Sarah Kyle's cracked voice was repeating. "And ye
found it profitable?"
Doctor Kyle silently resumed his place.
His wife asked some inaudible question, and I caught his whispered
reply:
"It's restless--hungry, perhaps. Jud is late, today."
His dark, brilliant eyes looked across at me.
"I must beg your pardon for this mystery, Clay. Please finish your
supper. Later you will understand." Then he asked, as if to launch a
conversation, "Have you any collection of Chinese art?"
"No," I said jerkily. "Yes, a few pieces of good jade."
I had too much else to think about.
* * * * *
Before the meal was done, there was a rapping at the back door.
Answering it, Josepha Hand called:
"Doctor, it's Jud."
His haggard face was relieved.
"Let him in," he called. "Let him take it down to Eben."
The man Jud Geer passed across the end of the room, carrying a milk
can. There was more fresh blood on his overalls. A stained bandage was
wrapped around his head, to cover his lips where my fist had pulped
them.
His glassy, bulging eyes rolled toward me. They rested for a moment
upon Valyne's still-bowed head, and I caught a lewd glitter in them.
He went out toward the cellar. The doctor and his wife listened
anxiously. I heard an eager, bestial whining, and the sound of thickly
splashing liquid.
Jud Geer came back into the room. He stopped by Doctor Kyle's chair,
so close to me that I could hear the tick of his cheap watch. He held
out his great, reddened hand, and muttered something through his
bandage. But his filmed eyes were looking not at the doctor, but at
Valyne.
Doctor Kyle dropped some coins into his palm, and he put them into his
pocket, without taking his eyes off the girl.
Josepha Hand had opened the back door. At her impatient word, the
gigantic butcher abruptly jerked his eyes away. He picked up his milk
can, and went out.
It was after he had gone that I looked at the floor where the can had
rested. On the bare pine boards was a circle of dark red. I knew that
its contents had been blood.
Before I had time to digest that disturbing discovery, Eben Hand
appeared again. His puffy face was strained and ashen; his colorless
lips were twitching; his fat fingers nervously spelled out some hasty
message.
"What is it?" Doctor Kyle's hollow voice was apprehensive.
"He says it won't touch it," said Josepha Hand. "It won't taste it. And