The mark of the monster
struck me. The others had seemed unaware of the odor; perhaps I had an
abnormal sensitivity to it. If I could follow the trail----
Faintly, then, I heard Valyne's scream.
I ran up the two flights of stairs to her room, vainly cursing the
blind folly that had left her alone. Sarah Kyle came clattering along
behind, carrying the lamp.
"Valyne!" I gasped, at the door. "Valyne, are you all right?"
The answer was the bang of a loose shutter.
The door was still locked. I kicked it twice, thrust my arm through the
hole to twist the key that she had left in the lock. The yellow flicker
of Sarah Kyle's lamp showed that the room was empty. The bed was turned
down; a filmy pink night-dress was laid across the pillow.
The window was open; the unfastened shutter banged again.
Ashen-faced, Sarah Kyle was staring out into the frosty dark.
"It was outside," she whispered. "It climbed over the tool shed, and
broke through the window. It has carried the poor darling out into the
forest."
Her voice became a thin, fervid scream.
"I wish to God my husband had killed that fiend when it was born!"
"Where"--the wild whisper leapt from my lips--"where are the others?"
I heard her say, "Searching----"
Then my frantic voice was ringing through the gloomy halls:
"Doctor Kyle! It has taken Valyne!"
Ghastly echoes gibbered at me.
"Where could they all be?"
"Searching," said Sarah Kyle. "They must be outside."
"God! I can't stand here wasting time! Where could it have taken her?"
The stooped old hag came suddenly toward me and thrust the sputtering
lamp into my face. The skeletal fingers of one claw-like hand sank
savagely into my arm. Her piercing eyes transfixed me. Her high voice
sank to a strained and husky whisper.
"Don't ye know, Clay? Doesn't your own sleeping demon whisper it to
your own stained soul? Won't your own dark blood draw ye there?"
Instinctively jerking back, I demanded:
"What do you mean?"
Her fingers clung to my arm with a terrible strength, and her voice
rasped on with its unthinkable accusation:
"Have ye never felt the call of the elder dark beings that are your
kin, Clay? Are ye never drawn to the black altar on the mountain, where
your evil father came to your mother? Have ye no sense of the secret
power of that circle of stones----"
"You mean"--the gasp broke from my lips--"you mean it has taken
her--there?"
Her shriveled head jerked to a quick, sinister nod.
"It knows the place," she said, "for your mother often took it there.
She told me it was ever most content in the occult power of that mystic
circle. It must have taken Valyne there. And may she die before the
demon-child is born!"
_5. The Beast in the Beast_
I think that Sarah Kyle tried to follow me up Blue Squaw Mountain. But
desperation had lent me frantic wings. Her shrill voice fell behind,
screaming:
"Wait for me, Clay! I can calm it! It always understood----"
The night was moonless and frosty and still. It was very dark beneath
the gnarled and ancient trees, upon that rugged mountain slope. And
it was many years since I had trod it. Again and again I sprawled and
fell in the thorny tangles of undergrowth, or blundered heavily into
the boles of gigantic trees. And once I rose, fingering my lacerated,
bleeding face, to realize that I was lost. But grim urgency brought
back youthful memories with the effect of preternatural vision. And
obscure instincts brought me at last, breathless and fearful, to
the leafy edge of that forbidden glade that since childhood I had
apprehensively shunned.
There horror struck me motionless.
Red tongues of malevolent flame set lurid shadows into a fantastic
demon dance against the surrounding dark wall of forest. Glowing
sinister scarlet outlined the circle of rough-hewn monolithic stones,
standing twice a man's height. Within that cabalistic circle I could
see the low, blood-darkened altar--burdened with madness and terror!
Valyne Kirk lay across it, on her back, between two wan and ghastly
fires. She was stripped nearly nude; her alabaster loveliness was bare
to the red, mounting flames. Her wrists and ankles were bound with
rope. She was motionless, and, I thought, unconscious.
Crouching over her, looming colossal and grotesque and hideous in the
sinister gleam of the altar fires, was the monster I had glimpsed
in the cellar dungeon--that dread creature of my own dark blood. It
brought back those haunting lines from Poe:
They are neither man nor woman--
They are neither brute nor human--
It was gigantic, yet vaguely man-like in outline. It was horned. Its
long, angular legs ended in cloven hoofs. Its body was heavy, bulging,
hideously gross. It was covered with coarse, dark hair.
The stench of it came to me where I stood, an odor overwhelmingly
nauseating as that of a reptile's den.
The red flames burst higher, on either side of Valyne's helpless body,
and suddenly I saw its face. To my mind came that other line:
They are Ghouls.
There are things that words cannot describe, even by suggestion. I
can say that its face was grossly broad, and yet made savage with an
angular gauntness; that it was noseless, queerly hairy, livid; that its
eyes were crimson lakes of flaming hell.
But the demon that glared from it escapes the words.
It is enough to say that when I looked into that creature's face, and
knew that its blood was mine--then I realized that my promise to Valyne
had been mad folly. If the blood of that beast was in my veins, then it
must be spilled before its pollution touched another human soul.
It was curiously just, I thought, that one fiend should destroy
another. For once I was conscious of no shrinking from combat. I was
frankly glad of the red and dreadful rage that swept me into the fury
of destruction.
As I leapt past the circle of tall stones, I saw that the twin fires
were burning close to Valyne. Their crimson tongues would soon be
licking her naked flesh--unless I won.
The monstrosity saw me. With an uncouth, bestial snarl of surprize and
rage, it lumbered toward me. Its hairy, taloned, foul-smelling hand
slapped at me. The blow flung me to the frosty ground, at the foot of
the black altar.
I stumbled back to my feet, plunging blindly toward it.... The gun
under my coat was forgotten. And all the details of the fight have been
fogged with that red madness. I know that I fought that being, body
to body. I know that I staggered with the sickness of its nauseating
effluvium. I remember being crushed in its powerful, hairy arms, being
flung to the ground and kicked with its cloven hooves. I dimly recall
that it battered at my head, with a great black stone from the altar....
But when the shock of returning sanity struck me, it was slumping to
the ground. I reeled over it, swinging a last desperate blow. It went
wild; I stumbled groggily to my knees.
* * * * *
The gross, hairy bulk lay before the black altar. It quivered a little,
and ceased to move. The mad horror of its face was hidden, for which
I was thankful. I saw a little dark hole in the side of its long,
flattened head, saw dark blood gushing out. That surprized me, for it
was a bullet wound, and I didn't remember having drawn my gun. But in
that crimson chaos----
Valyne moaned. I lurched to the low black altar, and lifted her from
between the two licking fires. I untied the ropes. She was shivering.
Her violet eyes looked at me, and it sickened me to see their mute and
shrinking terror.
"The thing"--she choked--"the thing----"
"It will never frighten you again," I promised, "Valyne darling."
I carried her a little away from the inert horror by the altar, and
wrapped my coat around her. My arms clung to her. The last embrace....
From the moment I glimpsed that hideous face, my purpose had been
clear. Hope and doubt alike had died before the grim resolve that never
should another such demon be born into the world. Not if my death could
prevent it....
I was glad when Valyne seemed to drop again into unconsciousness--from
shock and fear, I was certain, rather than from any injury. It was
better that she shouldn't see me go.
I left her, and reluctantly touched the gray, motionless bulk of the
monster. Its limp weight and the rush of blood from the little wound
assured me that it was truly dead.
Resolutely, then, I strode toward the dark wall of forest that would
hide my body, fumbling under my coat for the automatic.
"Clay!"
The strong hollow voice boomed from beyond the circle of stones, and
gaunt Doctor Kyle stalked into the crimson light. His powerful hand
gripped a hunting-rifle. Gray smoke was curling from its muzzle. He
stood for a moment between two red-lit pillars, and in the scarlet
flickering his head looked more than ever like a skull.
He nodded to my voiceless question.
"Yes," he said, "I shot your brother, Clay--I should have killed him
the day he was born. You were unarmed; he was getting the better of
you. Sarah," he explained, "told us where you had come.--Valyne! is she
all right?"
I turned for a moment to look at her motionless body. It wavered and
faded with my tears, and my voice was husky when I said:
"She isn't harmed, Doctor. And you needn't fear that I shall wreck
her life, or that there shall be born another of my blood. For I'm
going--after my brother."
The sunken eyes that flamed from that gaunt, skeletal head were
abruptly crimson in the firelight. Through thin lips came the ghastly
rasp:
"Perhaps--perhaps that is best."
And I strode on, away from the twin red fires of the blood-stained
altar, through the tall silent stones, toward the dark forest waiting
to drink my blood. I was reaching again for the cold, comforting grip
of the automatic. Its swift flame would burn all the horror and the
madness from my brain. When I was dead, I thought with dim gratitude, I
should be at last like other men....
"Clay----"
It was Valyne's voice, faint, but urgent, frantic.
But I dared not stop, lest my love and her tenderness should sweep me
into the black pit of a crime too hideous to name. I strode on, into
the shadows that would hide and comfort me for ever.
"Clay!" It was a terrified gasp. "Come back to me. Remember your
promise----"
But rasping against my brain was Doctor Kyle's fearful warning:
"Passion will wake your slumbering demon, Clay. You must walk with
care, my son, or you will lose all humanity, in a hideous reversion. If
you married, you might become as monstrous as your brother."
I heard his hollow tones addressing Valyne:
"Peace, my child. God has ordered it. I will care for you----"
I hastened on, lest my purpose fail too soon....
The faint, desperate appeal came again:
"Clay--listen! It's all a trick. A ghastly hoax! _Listen!_"
A hoax! That word brought me back at a run. My outraged sanity had
fought grimly against belief. But there had seemed no escape. What
could have been the motive for so frightful a deception?
"My child!" Amazement boomed in the voice of Doctor Kyle. "What are you
saying?"
"Listen!" repeated Valyne. "To that!"
She struggled to sit up, pointing at the dead monster. Wonderingly, I
moved toward it, stooped. And abruptly, in the still, frosty air, I
heard a familiar sound: the jangling tick of a cheap watch.
"It's Jud!" her faint voice said. "I heard his watch, when he was
carrying me."
I flung back the hideous head, and tore at its ghastly face. It came
away in my hands, a painted mask of wax and soft rubber adhesive.
Beneath, dark with oozing blood, was the broad, bearded face of Jud
Geer. The glazed, protruding eyes, still open, leered up with the
fearful grin of death.