Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (20 page)

Simon Page sobbed, gave a low, despairing cry. “I have become a beast….”

DOC SAVAGE’S EERIE trilling saturated the gloomy dungeon cell interior, an evanescent
thing permeated with a quality of wonder. His corded hands began exploring the formless
figure before him. He found no clothes, only a natural coat of something that reminded
him of boar bristles. He located the man’s head, brought it to the grille, where a
little light leaked in. The looming green orbs appeared to be encased in an unseen
tangle of fur.

“Close your eyes,” directed Doc.

The staring green eyes winked out.

“Now open them again.”

The uncanny emerald orbs reappeared.

Doc found the top of the man’s head. What he encountered was not human hair, but something
coarse and bestial. He turned the man’s head this way and that. Each time he turned
it, the twin eyeballs moved. The whites showed almost all the way around. It was a
grisly thing to behold, even to the bronze man, who had performed autopsies in the
past.

Curiously, when the head was turned more than a quarter of the way around, the eyeballs
ceased to be visible. It defied understanding.

Doc released the head. He asked sharply, “What happened to you, Page?”

“I was out in the Ultra-Stygia when everything went black. Everything! The entire
world was doused.”

“Go on,” encouraged Doc.

“Something huge and winged descended upon me. I felt a great claw catch me up. I guess
I blacked out. When I came to, I encountered men with eyes—but no bodies. They told
me that I was dead. Am I?”

“No.”

A sigh of relief filled the malodorous atmosphere of the dungeon cell. Page resumed
his account, his voice ragged.

“I fled, returning to my hotel. When I got to my room I discovered that I had become
like
them.
A pair of eyes in an empty void. They came again, dragged me away, claiming that
I had fallen victim to a marauding vampire bat. They kept insisting that I—and they—were
lately deceased. It was all too much for me, I’m afraid. I passed out, waking up here.
I have been a prisoner for many days. I lost all count. But with each day that passed,
I grow hairier and more bestial.”

“Who brought you here?” demanded Doc.

“I do not know,” Page admitted. “I have no idea where this is. Am—am I in Hell?”

“No, you are in the dungeon of Jagellon Castle, outside of Pristav.”

“Why would the Tazan government imprison me?” bleated Simon Page.

The polished voice of General Consadinos came through the door grille. “My dear man,
do you not recall the series of slanderous articles you once wrote, denigrating our
late king?”

Page’s voice grew startled. “But—that was years ago.”

“And his late majesty has never forgotten. This is his revenge. From the grave, if
you prefer.” The polite clicking of heels came again.

Doc Savage went to the latticework door grille. “Holding an American citizen prisoner
will get you in a lot of international hot water,” he advised.

The War Minister of Tazan laughed shortly. “I quite imagine so. However, I promised
King Vladislav that should Simon Page ever fall into our clutches, the royal dungeon
would be his fate.”

Doc Savage said, “This man is almost completely invisible.”

“Yes. That is the condition in which he came to us. It is very sad.”

“He is also covered in a growth of hair that is more animal than human.”

“Perhaps,” clucked Consadinos, “Simon Page encountered—how you say—a werewolf in the
wilds of Ultra-Stygia. Some of our own citizens have been severely infected by such
beasts, becoming beasts themselves.”

“You will release us at once,” Doc Savage ordered.

“I am afraid that is not in our national interest. For you see, you know about Mr.
Simon’s unfortunate condition. I cannot have you telling the world of this. And you
have stirred my interest with your talk of a new Egallan war weapon. I must look into
this.”

Doc Savage lunged for the door. He put his massive shoulder into it. The hinges groaned,
creaked, but they held.

One by one, the lights began going out behind the grille. They were accompanied by
retreating footsteps.

Doc Savage waited for the corridor door to bang shut. A long silence followed.

“You are trapped here, with me,” Simon Page said dispiritedly.

“Never mind that,” said Doc. “Is it true that you antagonized the late king?”

“Yes. He was called the playboy prince in those days. He was quite the rogue, and
a hand with the ladies. I gathered a lot of data on him and wrote it up for the international
press.”

“He became a laughing stock for a time,” stated Doc Savage.

“The king seemed to enjoy his sordid reputation. I saw no harm in building it up.”
Page sobbed loudly. “Now look at me.”

Doc Savage made a circuit of the dungeon. The walls were wet with groundwater seepage.
No doubt recent rains had filtered into the ground and made their way through the
great stone blocks of the castle foundation.

Emerald eyes followed Doc’s every move.

“This place is a fortress,” Simon Page said flatly. “You are wasting your time. I
have been through every square inch of this space.”

Doc Savage said nothing. He was not particularly interested in the walls. He merely
wished to ascertain how the dungeon was constructed.

Next, Doc went to the door. This he began feeling with his sensitive fingertips. The
door was composed, he discovered, of stout timbers. Very old, rather dry in spots,
but also wet in others. The combined age and dampness had made the wood punky in several
places.

The hinges were of iron, or felt like iron. There was the inevitable rust, but they
were firmly screwed into the wood, Doc’s metallic fingers told him.

The peephole grille appeared modern and was the weakest portion of the portal. It
could be forced out of its frame, but to no useful end, Doc decided. The lattice frame
was too small to permit escape.

Doc Savage sat down to rest.

“Page, tell me about the disembodied eyes,” he said. “Did they appear human?”

“They came in pairs, like normal eyes.”

“Did you gain the impression that the beings supporting those eyes were of normal
proportions?” pressed Doc.

Simon Page gave this some thought before replying. “I imagine so. I hadn’t thought
of it before. Why do you ask?”

Doc Savage did not reply. His flake-gold eyes studied the door by what little light
trickled in. He was thinking.

Finally, the bronze man imparted, “In another hour or so, we will be leaving.”

“How?”

“By the door,” explained Doc. And that is all he would say until the hour elapsed.

ABRUPTLY, the bronze man stood up and faced the portal. Once more his strong fingers
moved over the rough-grained wood. He found a spot where the wood was dry and began
excavating it. The wood gave way before his metallic fingertips. A normal man might
have made some progress, but Doc Savage was no ordinary individual. Fingers dug and
probed, picking and wrenching the wood like steel chisels. Piles of debris began collecting
on the floor.

“I can hear you working,” Page gasped. “What are you doing?”

Doc Savage said, “The wood on the edge of the door by the upper hinge is bad. It is
crumbing to the touch.”

“Touch! It sounds like you’ve taken a crowbar to the door!”

Doc continued working, until he had the moist part of the door around the upper hinge
dug away. Then came a weird sharp squeal of metal.

“What was that?” Page asked, alarmed.

“The hinge,” returned Doc.

It could be heard falling to the dirt floor.

Simon Page sat up. A thread of light picked out one solitary eyeball hanging in space
like a detached stare. “Can you get the other hinge loose?”

“Not likely. That portion of the wood is in better shape.”

“Then what—?”

Then came an ungodly noise. A combination wrenching, squealing and splintering.

Sufficient light existed for Simon Page to get an idea of what was happening.

Doc Savage was tearing the portal off its remaining hinge! The lock proved stubborn.
The metal tongue did not want to give way. But the mighty bronze man persisted and
turned the door in both hands, as if extracting a gigantic tooth. Finally, it surrendered.

Doc set the portal to one side. Reaching back for Simon Page, he pulled him along.

“Free!” Page exulted.

“Quiet,” said Doc, moving along the corridor in darkness, nostrils working, eyes trying
to see where little light shone.

Soon, Doc led Page to the corridor door. It proved to be unlocked. Carefully, the
bronze man eased it open.

A tiny squeak came. Reaching into his coat, Doc removed something small and brassy,
applied it to the hinges. The smell of lubricating oil came. Doc emptied the tiny
oilcan and tossed it aside.

Finishing his opening of the door, Doc Savage stepped out into a corridor that was
lit by hanging lights. Weak as they were, they stabbed the optic nerves blindingly
after the hour or so of enforced darkness.

Doc looked both ways and picked a direction. He paused to glance behind him and as
trained as his senses were, he almost gave a start.

For Simon Page was only a set of green eyes hovering at the height of a normal man.
There was nothing more of him to be gleaned!

“Stay close,” Doc cautioned.

“Right.”

They passed along the ancient passageway, which turned left twice. The bronze man
moved with calm assurance. Retracing the way that led him into the dungeon area, he
knew that a flight of stone steps lay just ahead.

In the wan light, Doc almost missed the sentry.

A scent came to him first—rank and skunky—like a dog that had rolled in something
foul.

Doc halted. Page followed suit, but not before bumping into the bronze man. Page felt
unnervingly like a cactus on legs.

The sentry consisted of two disembodied eyeballs—a yellow one and a brown one. They
floated in the air directly ahead, staring unblinkingly.

Doc’s trilling seeped out, but he caught it in time.

Doc studied the orbs. They stood approximately three feet apart—far too wide to belong
to a human head. But they occupied the same plane, suggesting they belonged to a single
invisible cranium. The mismatched eyes regarded him with a stark roundness that was
unnerving.

The shocking sight brought to the bronze man’s retentive mind stories of the many-eyed
Argus of Greek myth—a guardian giant who possessed so many orbs that four peered in
every direction. This creature seemed to have only two, however.

Carefully, Doc Savage advanced.

The weird orbs drifted toward him, moving in unison. The noise of hairy feet shuffling
on stone accompanied the steady approach.

Lifting his fists, Doc set himself. He aimed for the spot where a chin would be in
a human face, between and below the eyes. Doc Savage shot out a bronze fist.

His knuckles failed to connect with anything!

Doc pumped out the other fist. It, too, passed through empty air. It was uncanny.
It was as if the floating orbs were detached from any mortal mounting.

Abruptly, the eyeballs separated!

Worse yet, they were veering at him from opposite flanks.

Behind him, Simon Page choked back a groan of horror and retreated to a wall.

A set of hairy hands clutched at the bronze man’s forearms.

Doc shook one off. Then it returned. It felt strong. Humanly strong, not inhumanly
so.

Testing its strength showed that the bristling beast was no match for his own trained
muscles, so Doc began twisting, broke the thing’s grip.

Out of nowhere a third hand seized him. Then a fourth. They were coarse-haired, like
bear paws.

A growling voice spoke up in the language of Tazan.

“Another human for the pit.”

“Yes,” said a second voice. “He will make a good serf.”

Doc Savage listened to the two voices, placed them in space and wrestled free.

This time, bronze knuckles cracked out and found fur and bone.

Strange sounds came. Gurglings. A heavy body hit the floor with a mushy thud. The
brown eye fell like dropped marble. It failed to bounce.

Now only one eyeball floated in sight. The yellow one. It glared hideously.

Doc Savage made for that, reached out with both hands and took firm hold on what seemed
to be a thick-haired neck.

His usual trick of pressing nerve centers in order to produce unconsciousness rarely
failed him. But the thick bristles defeated that part of the operation that required
sensitive feeling for the correct nerve. No matter how he probed, Doc could not recognize
the spot.

Coarse-coated fists began hitting him in the face. Prudence demanded a retreat. One
cannot effectively fend off fists that cannot be seen.

Doc retired to a corner, sheltering Simon Page. He lifted his great arms, held them
before his face, in case the thing advanced.

The single yellow eye closed, vanishing utterly.

Realizing that this meant an imminent attack, Doc Savage propelled himself out the
corner, in the general direction of the vanished eyeball.

A bronze battering ram, he encountered an upright form and bore it to the ground.

The thing went “Oof!” in a sick voice that told that it weighed considerably less
than Doc Savage’s more than two hundred pounds.

Doc held the thing down, feeling along the bristles—it appeared to be nude and encased
in thick, wiry hair—until he encountered a head. No time to find a jaw for cracking.
Doc instead grabbed at the top of the thing’s rough scalp and rocked the head back
and forth until repeated pummeling against the stone floor elicited a groan. The thing
collapsed, losing all animation. The yellow eyeball popped open, then slowly closed
again, signifying unconsciousness had set in.

Doc Savage stood up, metallic expression slightly odd.