Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (2 page)

The heavy smell of wood smoke hung in the still air. It smelled exactly like a house
that had burned up would after a long rain. Their throats became scratchy. It made
for a doleful atmosphere.

There were no soldiers, no sentries picketed in the bleak desolation. The government
of Tazan had not wished to create a provocation that might serve as a pretext for
an invasion, so it had done the next best thing. It had scorched the earth closest
to its border so that snipers and enemy forces could not creep close without being
seen.

No life was visible below. Yet Fiana Drost had seen something down here. She raced
forward, heedless of the dead nettles that tangled the shallow wash.

“Watch your step!” Simon cautioned. “Thorns abound, my rose.”

Fiana rushed on. Simon Page followed, calling, “Wait!”

Hesitating, Fiana Drost turned to face Simon Page. “I have changed my mind. Turn back,
I beg of you.”

Simon caught up. He lowered his voice. “But—why?”

“Don’t be such an American fool. I am being—grave. I—I’m afraid you will think I am—superstitious.”

“Nonsense!”

Fiana Drost paused, seeming to be debating whether to make explanations. She had become
paler still. Her lips—they were exquisite in spite of the strain—parted slightly.

“No matter what happens to-night,” she said earnestly, “don’t breathe a word to another
soul. And above all, don’t print any of it.”

Simon Page swallowed hard. He nodded his head wordlessly.

They hurried on—a strangely perturbed girl and a vastly puzzled young man. By now
Simon Page could see that Fiana Drost had become overwrought concerning something;
he didn’t know what. He couldn’t understand it. Back in his mind, striking him now
and then, was the knowledge that no one really knew anything about the girl. She was
a beautiful stranger in Cateral.

Simon asked, “Where are we going?”

“It must be around here!” Fiana said tensely.

“What?”

“The thing I saw a moment ago.”

“What thing?”

Fiana’s doe-black eyes raked the night. “I do not know what it is—but it was very
large and incredibly black,” she said distractedly.

“How could you make out something black at this hour of night?”

“The black thing,” Fiana Drost imparted, “was blacker than the night sky. Blacker
than the primordial night that preceded the world’s first dawn.” Her voice sounded
as thin and chill as the night wind blowing over Ultra-Stygia.

Simon Page had trouble finding words. His mouth felt dry. This was a superstitious
country, this disputed slice of land. Wild things were said to be abroad in the night.
Evil creatures for which science had no name. Simon Page felt suddenly cold.

The girl reached feverishly for the flashlight and he let her have it. She ran forward,
twitching the ivory beam around, searching.

“I do not understand,” she murmured. “The black thing alighted right here, on this
very spot.”

Simon Page noticed that the flash ray was shaking and saw the reason why. Fiana Drost’s
slim hands were shaking nervously. In fact, the moon-pale skin of her bare arms was
trembling like disturbed water.

Observing closely, Page studied the obvious terror which she was registering. He reached
out and gathered her close to him. This impressed him as a highly satisfactory act,
so he put his other arm around her. A delicious warmth leaping through him was the
result.

She must have known how astonishment wracked him—paralyzed him—for she went quickly
on with the blazing flashlight, still searching.

Once, she paused and lifted an arm at the heavens, changing her position slightly—as
if fixing in her mind the direction from which some object had come out of the north.
After this, she moved on, toward a stunted travesty of a tree.

There, they came upon a dying man.

THEY understood that the man was dying in the first glimmer of awareness that the
crumpled form was indeed human.

For one thing, the man was too pale. Lilies have a pallor that is pleasing to some
eyes. The man had that kind of coloration, but it was not pleasant to behold. Living
human flesh should not resemble a lily.

His lips were the same waxy color as the surrounding skin, and that was white. Ghosts
are possibly paler than the dying man, but not by very many shades. He was seated
on the ground, his back up against a dead gray husk of a tree which had been blasted
by lightning and scorched by man.

Simon Page stared, astounded. He had been with the Associated Press since leaving
college. Dealing with the unvarnished realities of life normally encountered by newspapermen
had made him very level-headed, so he was greatly startled by anything he did not
understand.

The dying man had thin yellow hair atop his head and blood was running in scarlet
strings from between the fingers of his left hand. The hand was clamped to the side
of a chalk-white neck, trying to hold the corpuscular fluids in his body.

It was too late. A great deal of it had obviously leaked out. What remained was a
turgid desultory bubbling, like a fresh-water spring gurgling up its last moisture.

Oddly, there was not much scarlet on the surrounding ground. And only a cupful on
the victim’s clothes. He made Simon think of a hapless fly after it had fallen out
of a spider’s web.

“He’s badly hurt,” Simon Page whispered. “Must have crawled here.”

The flashlight’s questing beam, however, disproved this notion. There was no trail
of red drops leading away from the dying man. Nor were there drag marks. The charred
earth was of a texture to take footprints, but there were none. It was impossible
to imagine the man having walked to this spot where he had sat down to die under his
own power.

He might have been deposited there by a great winged…something.

“Who are you?” Simon asked the bloodless one. “How did you come here?”

The dying man showed his teeth in agony. That simple act seemed to be an effort.

Fiana splashed light into his face. Her eyes grew very wide for a minute, then narrowed.

“You are Zoltan, who disappeared,” she breathed.

The crimson trickle from the dying man’s neck seemed to be slowing.

“I thought—I thought the thing was carrying me off to Hell itself,” he muttered, his
words thick spaced sounds.

“What thing?”

“The black winged thing that stole my—eyes.”

The man’s eyes were still in his head. They were half rolled upward now. If he could
see—which was doubtful—it was only dimly. The natural light that gives the human eye
the impression of life was fading.

“Can you see?” Fiana demanded.

“It slaked its thirst after it devoured my eyes,” the man went on, “and I could feel
my veins grow thin and flat as the vital fluids were sucked away. When it had enough,
it dropped me here… to die….”

That last word escaped him with a leaky creaking.

A CHILLY silence descended. Other than the skeletal rattle of spindly tree branches,
no noise disturbed the night air.

Simon Page moved his head slowly, as if cudgeling his brain to accommodate such notions
as a strange man falling out of the night sky, and telling the fantastic story that
he had been carried here by a black creature that stole his sight and drank his body
dry of its natural supply of blood.

It was, of course, utterly on the ridiculous side. Level-headed Simon Page sniffed
loudly, skeptically, then turned to the girl—only to observe in the flashlight glare
that Fiana Drost was stark, with rigidity seemingly fixed all through her.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“Look—on the ground!”

Simon shifted his gaze. Her pointing finger helped him. It indicated a disturbed patch
of earth.

“Looks like something took a scoop out of the ground with a shovel,” he observed.

“No shovel did that,” said Fiana. “A pitchfork, perhaps.” Her voice was very queer.

It was true. The markings suggested pointed tines—or the mark of a claw clutching
at the earth. Simon appropriated the flashlight and searched for more.

“Over here,” Fiana cried suddenly. “Another of the awful marks.”

Simon followed her about three yards, where there was a nearly identical earth disturbance.
He swept the flash ray about, but failed to locate a third mark. Or more ominously,
any sign of footprints belonging to the hypothetical pitchfork wielder.

“If—” Fiana started, swallowing twice, “if a great creature had deposited him here,
it would have alighted on this very spot.”

“No bird grows so large,” Simon pointed out.

“The black thing I saw—thought I saw—was large enough to leave such marks,” Fiana
said hollowly. “With its talons.”

“Talons?”

Fiana shook off her queer mood and stamped back to the wretched one they had discovered
under the lightning-blasted tree.

The dying man had been huddled, and now he slackened weakly. The crimson seepage from
his neck had ceased. His staunching hand fell away. He moaned a little, then his moan
became words.

“Tell them—tell them Ultra-Stygia is accursed!” he shrieked. “It is the roof of the
pit of Hell itself! I know. The roof opened and I looked—into—the—pit.”

“What did you see?” Fiana gasped. “What did you see—in the pit?”

“I saw,” the dying man rasped, “the eyes of the damned ones.”

“Eyes?”

“Eyes without faces. Eyes floating in the darkness without bodies to support them.
But that is not the most horrible part. The disembodied eyes stared at me—as if there
were a malign intelligence behind them.”

“He’s raving,” Simon scoffed. “He needs a doctor.”

“Hush,” Fiana breathed, kneeling before the wretch. She had the flashlight now and
was spraying it liberally on the man’s face. “Tell me more, Zoltan. What was the black
thing?”

“It was—
black.
There is no other description for it than
black.
It was composed of a blackness more hideous than mortal mind could conceive. Hell
is paved in cobbles of such unholy material.”

“This is not rational talk,” Simon interposed.

Abruptly, the man expired. He gave a series of rattling jerks, and seemed to collapse
within himself. One hand, clenched, fell open and something tumbled to the ground
with a clatter.

Fiana scooped the object up. She straightened, holding the thing up to the rays of
her flash.

“Oh!” This, from the girl, was a gasp.

“What is it, Fiana?” Simon demanded. Then he saw what it was. A black bat—not real.
A small emblem of enamel, not unlike a brooch—not that any woman would wear such a
ghoulish bit of adornment. The wings were not fully spread, and curled inward, as
if the creature were using its claw-tipped membranous wings to fend off a predator.
Noticing this, Simon Page tried to think of what could be so terrible that it struck
fear into a bat, itself a nocturnal predator.

Then he noticed the bat’s eyes. Or lack of them, rather. They had been obliterated.
Gouged, he saw, by some sharp tool.

“Blind—as a bat….” Fiana murmured.

“What?”

“There is an expression—to be as blind as a bat. This bat had been blinded in a horrible
way.” Fiana shuddered. “Come—quickly.”

Fiana Drost did not wait for him to respond. She started back. Simon leaped after
her, casting frequent glances over his shoulder at the brooding darkness of Ultra-Stygia.

CATCHING up with the hurrying girl, Simon noticed that she walked with the flashlight
lighting her way. The other hand was open and empty. He wondered vaguely what she
had done with the tiny black bat without eyes. He got in front of her.

“But—I don’t understand, Fiana darling. What about that poor man?”

“There is nothing that can be done for him now,” Fiana snapped. “He is dead.”

The coldness of her tone so stunned Simon Page that he stood rooted and speechless,
staring at the lunar-white countenance of bewitching Fiana Drost.

Impatiently, she pulled his arm. “Come. We cannot stay here.”

And because she was so anxious, so insistent, he followed her. They reached the top
of a rise, heading back toward the inn, before Simon spoke again.

“I can’t—I don’t believe what just happened. Was it—as strange to you as to me?”

The girl walked faster. “Remember. You mustn’t mention this. Ever!”

Simon Page gripped the girl’s arm and stopped her. “Look here! I think you should
give an explanation. Who was that man? How did you know his name?”

The girl did not answer immediately. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“What do you mean—sorry?”

“I mean that I am sorry that I dragged you into this!” she said sharply. “You, of
all people.”

“I don’t—”

Her doe-dark eyes regarded him sternly. “Simon, you must forget this! Forget everything
you have witnessed. Do you understand?”

Simon Page seized his flashlight and directed cold glare upon Fiana Drost’s stark
features.

“I don’t see why I should forget this,” he complained. “You seemed to know that—man.”

Fiana fixed him with her intense gaze. “You saw Zoltan, saw how he looked. He witnessed
something once, and failed to forget. Let that be a lesson to you.”

The memory of the lily-white man was distinct enough to make Simon Page’s epidermis
feel as if it were crawling.

Simon mumbled, “He must have been mad—that stuff about a black, blood-sucking creature
as big as a house.”

The girl shook her head. “There is much you would not understand, more you would not
believe. Trust me. Forget all that you saw.”

She started to hurry on.

“Doc Savage!” Simon Page called suddenly after her.

Mention of the name “Doc Savage” brought the girl to a halt and around to face the
flashlight. Her lips parted. Her eyes grew very wide. Their color was a fathomless
black.

“Why did you say that?” she demanded.

“You’re acting very strangely, Fiana,” Simon accused. “There’s some kind of infernal
mystery here that’s more than a little incredible.”