The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (54 page)

“I am no silly girl to be frightened by shadows,” old Job was chattering. “I saw his evil face at my moon-lit window. I have always secretly believed that the dead walk the night. Now–what’s that?”

He stopped short, frozen in an attitude of utter horror.

Instinctively we strained our ears. We heard the branches of the trees whipping in the gale. We heard the loud rustling of the tall grass.

“Only the wind,” muttered Conrad. “It distorts every sound–”

“No! No, I tell you! It was–”

A ghostly cry came driving down the wind–a voice sharpened with mortal fear and agony. “Help! Help!

Oh, God have mercy! Oh, God! Oh, God–”

“My brother’s voice!” screamed Job. “He is calling to me from Hell!”

“Which way did it come from?” whispered Conrad, with lips suddenly dry.

“I don’t know.” The goose-flesh stood out clammily on my limbs. “I couldn’t tell. It might have come from above–or below. It sounds strangely muffled.”

“The clutch of the grave muffles his voice!” shrieked Job. “The clinging shroud stifles his screams! I tell you he howls on the white-hot grids of Hell, and would drag me down to share his doom! On! On to the tomb!”

“The ultimate path of all mankind,” muttered Conrad, which grisly play on Job’s words did not add to my comfort. We followed old Kiles, scarcely able to keep pace with him as he loped, a gaunt, grotesque figure, across the slopes mounting towards the squat bulk the illusive moonlight disclosed like a dully glistening skull.

“Did you recognize that voice?” I muttered to Conrad.

“I don’t know. It was muffled, as you mentioned. It might have been a trick of the wind. If I said I thought it was Jonas, you’d think me mad.”

“Not now,” I muttered. “I thought it was insanity at the beginning. But the spirit of the night’s gotten into my blood. I’m ready to believe anything.”

We had mounted the slopes and stood before the massive iron door of the tomb. Above and behind it the hill rose steeply, masked by dense thickets. The grim mausoleum seemed invested with sinister portent, induced by the fantastic happenings of the night. Conrad turned the beam of an electric torch on the ponderous lock, with its antique appearance.

“This door has not been opened,” said Conrad. “The lock has not been tampered with. Look–spiders have already built their webs thickly across the sill, and the strands are unbroken. The grass before the door has not been mashed down, as would have been the case had anyone recently gone into the tomb–or come out.”

“What are doors and locks to a vampire?” whined Job. “They pass through solid walls like ghosts. I tell you, I will not rest until I have gone into that tomb and done what I have to do. I have the key–the only key there is in the world which will fit that lock.”

He drew it forth–a huge old-fashioned implement–and thrust it into the lock. There was a groan and creak of rusty tumblers, and old Job winced back, as if expecting some hyena-fanged ghost to fly at him through the opening door.

Conrad and I peered in–and I will admit I involuntarily braced myself, shaken with chaotic conjectures.

But the blackness within was Stygian. Conrad made to snap on his light, but Job stopped him. The old man seemed to have recovered a good deal of his normal composure.

“Give me the light,” he said, and there was grim determination in his voice. “I’ll go in alone. If he has returned to the tomb–if he is again in his coffin, I know how to deal with him. Wait here, and if I cry out, or if you hear the sounds of a struggle, rush in.”

“But–” Conrad began an objection.

“Don’t argue!” shrieked old Kiles, his composure beginning to crumble again. “This is my task and I’ll do it alone!”

He swore as Conrad inadvertently turned the light beam full in his face, then snatched the torch and drawing something from his coat, stalked into the tomb, shoving the ponderous door to behind him.

“More insanity,” I muttered uneasily. “Why was he so insistent that we come with him, if he meant to go inside alone? And did you notice the gleam in his eyes? Sheer madness!”

“I’m not so sure,” answered Conrad. “It looked more like an evil triumph to me. As for being alone, you’d hardly call it that, since we’re only a few feet away from him. He has some reason for not wanting us to enter that tomb with him. What was it he drew from his coat as he went in?”

“It looked like a sharpened stick, and a small hammer. Why should he take a hammer, since there is no lid to be unfastened on the coffin?”

“Of course!” snapped Conrad. “What a fool I’ve been not to understand already! No wonder he wanted to go in to the tomb alone! O’Donnel, he’s serious about this vampire nonsense! Don’t you remember the hints he’s dropped about being prepared, and all that? He intends to drive that stake through his brother’s heart! Come on! I don’t intend that he shall mutilate–”

From the tomb rang a scream that will haunt me when I lie dying. The fearful timbre of it paralyzed us in our tracks, and before we could gather our wits, there was a mad rush of feet, the impact of a flying body against the door, and out of the tomb, like a bat blown out of the gates of Hell, flew the shape of Job Kiles. He fell head-long at our feet, the flashlight in his hand striking the ground and going out. Behind him the iron door stood ajar and I thought to hear a strange scrambling, sliding noise in the darkness. But all my attention was rivetted on the wretch who writhed at our feet in horrible convulsions.

We bent above him. The moon sliding from behind a dusky cloud lighted his ghastly face, and we both cried out involuntarily at the horror stamped there. From his distended eyes all light of sanity was gone–blown out as a candle is blown out in the dark. His loose lips worked, spattering forth. Conrad shook him. “Kiles! In God’s name, what happened to you?”

A horrible slavering mewling was the only answer; then among the drooling and meaningless sounds we caught human words, slobbering, and half inarticulate.

“The thing!–The thing in the coffin!” Then as Conrad cried a fierce question, the eyes rolled up and set, the hard-drawn lips froze in a ghastly mirthless grin, and the man’s whole lank frame seemed to sink and collapse upon itself.

“Dead!” muttered Conrad, appalled.

“I see no wound,” I whispered, shaken to my very soul.

“There is no wound–no drop of blood.”

“Then–then–” I scarcely dared put the grisly thought into words.

We looked fearsomely at the oblong strip of blackness framed in the partly open door of the silent tomb.

The wind shrieked suddenly across the grass, as if in a paean of demoniac triumph, and a sudden trembling took hold of me.

Conrad rose and squared his shoulders.

“Come on!” said he. “God knows what lurks in the hellish grave–but we’ve got to find out. The old man was overwrought–a prey to his own fears. His heart was none too strong. Anything might have caused his death. Are you with me?”

What terror of a tangible and understood menace can equal that of menace unseen and nameless? But I nodded consent, and Conrad picked up the flashlight, snapped it on, and grunted pleasure that it was not broken. Then we approached the tomb as men might approach the lair of a serpent. My gun was cocked in my hand as Conrad thrust open the door. His light played swiftly over the dank walls, dusty floor and vaulted roof, to come to rest on the lidless coffin which stood on its stone pedestal in the center. This we approached with drawn breath, not daring to conjecture what eldritch horror might meet our eyes. With a quick intake of breath, Conrad flashed his light into it. A cry escaped each of us; the coffin was empty.

“My God!” I whispered. “Job was right! But where is the–the vampire?”

“No empty coffin frightened the life out of Job Kiles’ body,” answered Conrad. “His last words were

‘the thing in the coffin.’
Something
was in it–something the sight of which extinguished Job Kiles’ life like a blown-out candle.”

“But where is it?” I asked uneasily, a most ghastly thrill playing up and down my spine. “It could not have emerged from the tomb without our having seen it. Was it something that can make itself invisible at will?

Is it squatting unseen in the tomb with us here at this instant?”

“Such talk is madness,” snapped Conrad, but with a quick instinctive glance over his shoulder to right and left. Then he added, “Do you notice a faint repulsive odor about this coffin?”

“Yes, but I can’t define it.”

“Nor I. It isn’t exactly a charnel-house reek. It’s an earthy, reptilian sort of smell. It reminds me faintly of scents I’ve caught in mines far below the surface of the earth. It clings to the coffin–as if some unholy being out of the deep earth had lain there.”

He ran the light over the walls again, and halted it suddenly, focusing it on the back wall, which was cut out of the sheet rock of the hill on which the tomb was built.

“Look!”

In the supposedly solid wall showed a long thin aperture! With one stride Conrad reached it, and together we examined it. He pushed cautiously on the section of the wall nearest it, and it gave inward silently, opening on such blackness as I had not dreamed existed this side of the grave. We both involuntarily recoiled, and stood tensely, as if expecting some horror of the night to spring out at us. Then Conrad’s short laugh was like a dash of icy water on taut nerves.

“At least the occupant of the tomb uses an un-supernatural means of entrance and exit,” he said. “This secret door was constructed with extreme care, evidently. See, it is merely a large upright block of stone that turns on a pivot. And the silence with which it works shows that the pivot and sockets have been oiled recently.”

He directed his beam into the pit behind the door, and it disclosed a narrow tunnel running parallel to the door-sill, plainly cut into the solid rock of the hill. The sides and floor were smooth and even, the roof arched.

Conrad drew back, turning to me.

“O’Donnel, I seem to sense something dark and sinister indeed, here, and I feel sure it possesses a human agency. I feel as if we had stumbled upon a black, hidden river, running under our very feet.

Whither it leads, I can not say, but I believe the power behind it all is Jonas Kiles. I believe that old Job
did
see his brother at the window tonight.”

“But empty tomb or not, Conrad, Jonas Kiles is dead.”

“I think not. I believe he was in a self-induced state of catalepsy, such as is practiced by Hindu Fakirs. I have seen a few cases, and would have sworn they were really dead. They have discovered the secret of suspended animation at will, despite scientists and skeptics. Jonas Kiles lived several years in India, and he must have learned that secret, somehow.

“The open coffin, the tunnel leading from the tomb–all point to the belief that he was alive when he was placed here. For some reason he wished people to believe him to be dead. It may be the whim of a disordered mind. It may have a deeper and darker significance. In the light of his appearance to his brother and Job’s death, I lean to the latter view, but just now my suspicions are too horrible and fantastic to put into words. But I intend to explore this tunnel. Jonas may be hiding in it somewhere. Are you with me? Remember, the man may be a homicidal maniac, or if not, he may be more dangerous even than a madman.”

“I’m with you,” I grunted, though my flesh crawled at the prospect of plunging into that nighted pit. “But what about that scream we heard as we passed the Point? That was no feigning of agony! And what was the thing Job saw in the coffin?”

“I don’t know. It might have been Jonas, garbed in some hellish disguise. I’ll admit there is much mystery attached to this matter, even if we accept the theory that Jonas is alive and behind it all. But we’ll look into that tunnel. Help me lift Job. We can’t leave him lying here like this. We’ll put him in the coffin.”

And so we lifted Job Kiles and laid him in the coffin of the brother he had hated, where he lay with his glassy eyes staring from his frozen grey features. As I looked at him, the dirge of the wind seemed to echo his words in my ears: “On! On to the tomb!” And his path had indeed led him to the tomb.

Conrad led the way through the secret door, which we left open. As we moved into that black tunnel I had a moment of sheer panic, and I was glad that the heavy outer door of the tomb was not furnished with a spring-lock, and that Conrad had in his pocket the only key with which the ponderous lock could be fastened. I had an uneasy feeling that the demoniac Jonas might make fast the door, leaving us sealed in the tomb until Judgment Day.

The tunnel seemed to run, roughly, east and west, following the outer line of the hill. We took the left-hand turn–toward the east–and moved along cautiously, shining the light ahead of us.

“This tunnel was never cut by Jonas Kiles,” whispered Conrad. “It has a very air of antiquity about it–look!”

Another dark doorway appeared on our right. Conrad directed his beam through it, disclosing another, narrower passage. Other doorways opened into it on both sides.

“It’s a regular network,” I muttered. “Parallel corridors connected by smaller tunnels. Who’d have guessed such a thing lay under the Dagoth Hills?”

“How did Jonas Kiles discover it?” wondered Conrad. “Look, there’s another doorway on our right–and another–and another! You’re right–it’s a veritable network of tunnels. Who in heaven’s name dug them? They must be the work of some unknown prehistoric race. But this particular corridor has been used recently. See how the dust is disturbed on the floor? All the doorways are on the right, none on the left. This corridor follows the outer line of the hill, and there must be an outlet somewhere along it.

Look!”

We were passing the opening of one of the dark intersecting tunnels, and Conrad had flashed his light on the wall beside it. There we saw a crude arrow marked in red chalk, pointed down the smaller corridor.

“That can’t lead to the outside,” I muttered. “It plunges deeper into the guts of the hill.”

“Let’s follow it, anyway,” answered Conrad. “We can find our way back to this outer tunnel easily.”