The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (9 page)

Kulrek and his crony sailed at dawn for a long voyage, and Moll went back to her hut and her clam gathering. She seemed to grow leaner and more grim than ever and her eyes smoldered with a light not sane. The days glided by and people whispered among themselves that Moll’s days were numbered, for she faded to a ghost of a woman; but she went her way, refusing all aid.

That was a short, cold summer and the snow on the barren inland hills never melted; a thing very unusual, which caused much comment among the villagers. At dusk and at dawn Moll would come up on the beach, gaze up at the snow which glittered on the hills, then out to sea with a fierce intensity in her gaze.

Then the days grew shorter, the nights longer and darker, and the cold gray tides came sweeping along the bleak strands, bearing the rain and sleet of the sharp east breezes.

And upon a bleak day a trading-vessel sailed into the bay and anchored. And all the idlers and the wastrels flocked to the wharfs, for that was the ship upon which John Kulrek and Lie-lip Canool had sailed. Down the gang-plank came Lie-lip, more furtive than ever, but John Kulrek was not there. To shouted queries, Canool shook his head. “Kulrek deserted ship at a port of Sumatra,” said he. “He had a row with the skipper, lads; wanted me to desert, too, but no! I had to see you fine lads again, eh, boys?”

Almost cringing was Lie-lip Canool, and suddenly he recoiled as Moll Farrell came through the throng. A moment they stood eyeing each other; then Moll’s grim lips bent in a terrible smile.

“There’s blood on your hand, Canool!” she lashed out suddenly–so suddenly that Lie-lip started and rubbed his right hand across his left sleeve.

“Stand aside, witch!” he snarled in sudden anger, striding through the crowd which gave back for him.

His admirers followed him to the tavern.

Now, I mind that the next day was even colder; gray fogs came drifting out of the east and veiled the sea and the beaches. There would be no sailing that day, and so all the villagers were in their snug houses or matching tales at the tavern. So it came about that Joe, my friend, a lad of my own age, and I, were the ones who saw the first of the strange thing that happened.

Being harum-scarum lads of no wisdom, we were sitting in a small rowboat, floating at the end of the wharfs, each shivering and wishing the other would suggest leaving, there being no reason whatever for our being there, save that it was a good place to build air-castles undisturbed.

Suddenly Joe raised his hand. “Say,” he said, “d’ye hear? Who can be out on the bay upon a day like this?”

“Nobody. What d’ye hear?”

“Oars. Or I’m a lubber. Listen.”

There was no seeing anything in that fog, and I heard nothing. Yet Joe swore he did, and suddenly his face assumed a strange look.

“Somebody rowing out there, I tell you! The bay is alive with oars from the sound! A score of boats at the least! Ye dolt, can ye not hear?”

Then, as I shook my head, he leaped and began to undo the painter.

“I’m off to see. Name me liar if the bay is not full of boats, all together like a close fleet. Are you with me?”

Yes, I was with him, though I heard nothing. Then out in the grayness we went, and the fog closed behind and before so that we drifted in a vague world of smoke, seeing naught and hearing naught. We were lost in no time, and I cursed Joe for leading us upon a wild goose chase that was like to end with our being swept out to sea. I thought of Moll Farrell’s girl and shuddered.

How long we drifted I know not. Minutes faded into hours, hours into centuries. Still Joe swore he heard the oars, now close at hand, now far away, and for hours we followed them, steering our course toward the sound, as the noise grew or receded. This I later thought of, and could not understand.

Then, when my hands were so numb that I could no longer hold the oar, and the forerunning drowsiness of cold and exhaustion was stealing over me, bleak white stars broke through the fog which glided suddenly away, fading like a ghost of smoke, and we found ourselves afloat just outside the mouth of the bay. The waters lay smooth as a pond, all dark green and silver in the starlight, and the cold came crisper than ever. I was swinging the boat about, to put back into the bay, when Joe gave a shout, and for the first time I heard the clack of oar-locks. I glanced over my shoulder and my blood went cold.

A great beaked prow loomed above us, a weird, unfamiliar shape against the stars, and as I caught my breath, sheered sharply and swept by us, with a curious swishing I never heard any other craft make. Joe screamed and backed oars frantically, and the boat walled out of the way just in time; for though the prow had missed us, still otherwise we had died. For from the sides of the ship stood long oars, bank upon bank which swept her along. Though I had never seen such a craft, I knew her for a galley. But what was she doing upon our coasts? They said, the far-farers, that such ships were still in use among the heathens of Barbary; but it was many a long, heaving mile to Barbary, and even so she did not resemble the ships described by those who had sailed far.

We started in pursuit, and this was strange, for though the waters broke about her prow, and she seemed fairly to fly through the waves, yet she was making little speed, and it was no time before we caught up with her. Making our painter fast to a chain far back beyond the reach of the swishing oars, we hailed those on deck. But there came no answer, and at last, conquering our fears, we clambered up the chain and found ourselves upon the strangest deck man has trod for many a long, roaring century.

“This is no Barbary rover!” muttered Joe fearsomely. “Look, how old it seems! Almost ready to fall to pieces. Why, ’tis fairly rotten!”

There was no one on deck, no one at the long sweep with which the craft was steered. We stole to the hold and looked down the stair. Then and there, if ever men were on the verge of insanity, it was we. For there were rowers there, it is true; they sat upon the rowers’ benches and drove the creaking oars through the gray waters.
And they that rowed were skeletons!

Shrieking, we plunged across the deck, to fling ourselves into the sea. But at the rail I tripped upon something and fell headlong, and as I lay, I saw a thing which vanquished my fear of the horrors below for an instant. The thing upon which I had tripped was a human body, and in the dim gray light that was beginning to steal across the eastern waves I saw a dagger hilt standing up between his shoulders. Joe was at the rail, urging me to haste, and together we slid down the chain and cut the painter.

Then we stood off into the bay. Straight on kept the grim galley, and we followed, slowly, wondering.

She seemed to be heading straight for the beach beside the wharfs, and as we approached, we saw the wharfs thronged with people. They had missed us, no doubt, and now they stood, there in the early dawn light, struck dumb by the apparition which had come up out of the night and the grim ocean.

Straight on swept the galley, her oars a-swish; then ere she reached the shallow water–crash!–a terrific reverberation shook the bay. Before our eyes the grim craft seemed to melt away; then she vanished, and the green waters seethed where she had ridden, but there floated no driftwood there, nor did there ever float any ashore. Aye, something floated ashore, but it was grim driftwood!

We made the landing amid a hum of excited conversation that stopped suddenly. Moll Farrell stood before her hut, limned gauntly against the ghostly dawn, her lean hand pointing seaward. And across the sighing wet sands, borne by the gray tide, something came floating; something that the waves dropped at Moll Farrell’s feet. And there looked up at us, as we crowded about, a pair of unseeing eyes set in a still, white face. John Kulrek had come home.

Still and grim he lay, rocked by the tide, and as he lurched sideways, all saw the dagger hilt that stood from his back–the dagger all of us had seen a thousand times at the belt of Lie-lip Canool.

“Aye, I killed him!” came Canool’s shriek, as he writhed and groveled before our gaze. “At sea on a still night in a drunken brawl I slew him and hurled him overboard! And from the far seas he has followed me”–his voice sank to a hideous whisper–“because–of–the–curse–the–sea–would–not–keep–his–body!”

And the wretch sank down, trembling, the shadow of the gallows already in his eyes.

“Aye!” Strong, deep and exultant was Moll Farrell’s voice. “From the hell of lost craft Satan sent a ship of bygone ages! A ship red with gore and stained with the memory of horrid crimes! None other would bear such a vile carcass! The sea has taken vengeance and has given me mine. See now, how I spit upon the face of John Kulrek.”

And with a ghastly laugh, she pitched forward, the blood starting to her lips. And the sun came up across the restless sea.

The Moor Ghost

They haled him to the crossroads

As day was at its close;

They hung him to the gallows

And left him for the crows.

His hands in life were bloody,

His ghost will not be still;

He haunts the naked moorlands

About the gibbet hill.

And oft a lonely traveler

Is found upon the fen

Whose dead eyes hold a horror

Beyond the world of men.

The villagers then whisper,

With accents grim and dour:

“This man has met at midnight

The phantom of the moor.”

Moon Mockery

I walked in Tara’s Wood one summer night,

And saw, amid the still, star-haunted skies,

A slender moon in silver mist arise,

And hover on the hill as if in fright.

Burning, I seized her veil and held her tight:

An instant all her glow was in my eyes;

Then she was gone, swift as a white bird flies,

And I went down the hill in opal light.

And soon I was aware, as down I came,

That all was strange and new on every side;

Strange people went about me to and fro,

And when I spoke with trembling mine own name

They turned away, but one man said: “He died

In Tara Wood, a hundred years ago.”

The Little People

My sister threw down the book she was reading. To be exact, she threw it at me.

“Foolishness!” said she. “Fairy tales! Hand me that copy of Michael Arlen.”

I did so mechanically, glancing at the volume which had incurred her youthful displeasure. The story was

“The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen.

“My dear girl,” said I, “this is a masterpiece of outre literature.”

“Yes, but the idea!” she answered. “I outgrew fairy tales when I was ten.”

“This tale is not intended as an exponent of common-day realism,” I explained patiently.

“Too far-fetched,” she said with the finality of seventeen. “I like to read about things that could happen–who were ‘The Little People’ he speaks of, the same old elf and troll business?”

“All legends have a base of fact,” I said. “There is a reason–”

“You mean to tell me such things actually existed?” she exclaimed. “Rot!”

“Not so fast, young lady,” I admonished, slightly nettled. “I mean that all myths had a concrete beginning which was later changed and twisted so as to take on a supernatural significance. Young people,” I continued, bending a brotherly frown on her pouting lips, “have a way of either accepting entirely or rejecting entirely such things as they do not understand. The ‘Little People’ spoken of by Machen are supposed to be descendants of the prehistoric people who inhabited Europe before the Celts came down out of the North.

“They are known variously as Turanians, Picts, Mediterraneans, and Garlic-eaters. A race of small, dark people, traces of their type may be found in primitive sections of Europe and Asia today, among the Basques of Spain, the Scotch of Galloway and the Lapps.

“They were workers in flint and are known to anthropologists as men of the Neolithic or polished stone age. Relics of their age show plainly that they had reached a comparatively high stage of primitive culture by the beginning of the bronze age, which was ushered in by the ancestors of the Celts–our prehistoric tribesmen, young lady.

“These destroyed or enslaved the Mediterranean peoples and were in turn ousted by the Teutonic tribes.

All over Europe, and especially in Britain, the legend is that these Picts, whom the Celts looked upon as scarcely human, fled to caverns under the earth and lived there, coming out only at night, when they would burn, murder, and carry off children for their bloody rites of worship. Doubtless there was much in this theory. Descendants of cave people, these fleeing dwarfs would no doubt take refuge in caverns and no doubt managed to live undiscovered for generations.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said with slight interest. “If there ever were any of those people they’re dead now. Why, we’re right in the country where they’re supposed to perform and haven’t seen any signs of them.”

I nodded. My sister Joan did not react to the weird West country as I did. The immense menhirs and cromlechs which rose starkly upon the moors seemed to bring back vague, racial memories, stirring my Celtic imagination.

“Maybe,” I said, adding unwisely, “You heard what that old villager said–the warning about walking on the fen at night. No one does it. You’re very sophisticated, young lady, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t spend a night alone in that stone ruin we can see from my window.”

Down came her book and her eyes sparkled with interest and combat.

“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed. “I’ll show you! He did say no one would go near those old rocks at night, didn’t he? I will, and stay there the rest of the night!”

She was on her feet instantly and I saw I had made a mistake.

“No, you won’t, either,” I vetoed. “What would people think?”

“What do I care what they think?” she retorted in the up to date spirit of the Younger Generation.

“You haven’t any business out on the moors at night,” I answered. “Granting that these old myths are so much empty wind, there are plenty of shady characters who wouldn’t hesitate to harm a helpless girl. It’s not safe for a girl like you to be out unprotected.”