The Essential Robert Bloch, Volume 2, page 15
Zaroff watched me with an enigmatic smile. Did he suspect? “I will see you at rehearsal tomorrow,” he said. “Good day.”
I stumbled out into the menagerie. As I passed the last cage the panther raised its head and moaned.
I often wonder how I got through the rest of that day. The morbid suspicions that preyed on my mind had come to a harrowing climax. I kept thinking of Zaroff, and the strange rumors I had heard about the man. His leopards were strange, his act was strange, his whole history was shrouded in a cloak of nebulous dread. His wife knew, and she had disappeared. I must find out the truth.
But perhaps I was wrong. Imagination, once unleashed, can distort facts im- measurably. Possibly his wife had left. True, he had beaten her, but they do such things on the Continent. The leopards were oddly trained, but Zaroff was an eccentric man. Was I unduly suspicious?
These two conflicting trains of thought ran riot through my brain. The afternoon was a dream. I performed my routine functions automatically, but I could not forget. I neglected to inform the boss that Captain Zaroff had a new black panther, and I said nothing about the rehearsal on the following day.
That night was the beginning of the end.
What impelled me I cannot say, but I felt that I must learn the truth. So at midnight I rose from my restless cot and staggered off to Zaroff’s quarters. The lot was black and deserted, save for the looming shadows that lurked and capered in the corners beneath a leering yellow moon. There was a light in Zaroff’s tent when I entered. How I meant to excuse myself or what I intended to say I did not know. But Zaroff took the situation into his own hands.
He was quite drunk. There was a bottle on the table before him, and another on the floor. He sat there sprawled back so that he resembled a seated corpse in the dim light, and his face was equally pale. He had discarded his uniform, but the ever-present whip still rested on the ground beside him.
“Sit down, my friend,” he mumbled. His foreign accent became more noticeable under the influence of liquor.
I seated myself beside him and haltingly began to talk. But his libations had made him loquacious, and he interrupted. I cannot say to this day what got him started, or whether he was too drunk to understand, but he told me plenty. Somehow he launched out on the story of his career during the war. He had, it seems, been an officer in the “Belgische Congo.” Later, he had become an animal trader in Senegal, and served as guide to several expeditions on the Sierra Leone coast.
I let him ramble, occasionally prompting him to refill his glass. Sooner or later, I believed, something would slip out. It did.
As the shadows about us deepened, his voice became lower and more confidential. He was speaking of the Blacks now — the furtive, sinister blacks of Sierra Leone, who practised voodoo and obeah rites in the hidden swamps. He told me of the witch-doctors who invoked the Crocodile God to the beat of jungle drums; spoke of the snake-gods of secret, inner Africa. And he whispered of the Leopard-men.
I had heard of them before — the human leopards of Sierra Leone, whose cult was dedicated to the beasts of the forest. They were said to be vampires, possessing the power of anthropomorphism; that is, they could, by means of secret spells, be- come leopards themselves. This they were reputed to do, at certain times. As leopards they lay in wait for their enemies and destroyed them, or else invoked their rites to transform their foes into animals. I had read newspaper stories about the British police and their futile efforts to stamp out the dreaded clan.
Zaroff, mumbling incoherently, told me of these things again; spoke of how he himself had been initiated into the Leopard Cult one night beneath the waning autumn moon that gloats over Africa when the devil drums boom in nighted swamps. He told me of the spells he had learned from the shriveled arch-priests, and of the powers he could invoke by chants and rituals. “Remember the legend of Circe?” he whispered, and his eyes were alight with unnatural flame. “Man into beast, Man into beast.”
Abruptly he recovered himself once more and changed the subject. By now he was so drunk that his voice slurred unintelligibly as he droned on. All I could catch were occasional phrases, but that was enough. “I decided to show the fools a real act…knew the proper spells…rest was easy…nobody suspected…Came to Europe with me…Wish to God I’d never met and married that slut… spying on me at night…found out…spoiled the act…that damned child…They wanted blood…scandal…Looked all right here, but those Ubangis knew…her stubbornness... had to do it…was the only way...”
As his voice droned on, his body slid flaccidly to the floor. I left, but I had not found the satisfaction I sought. Instead, my heart was filled with a greater and more hideous unease.
The man’s drunken tales had disturbed me. Of course all that rot about Leopard-men was childish, but still I felt afraid. There were those who believed it, and some of his furtive hints had smacked of the truth. Funny, what liquor will do to a man. But I could not dismiss the incident so easily. There was a strange and terrible mystery here.
As I stalked off to my quarters I saw the blazing eyes of the black panther staring silently at me in the darkness. A Cray thought assailed me — perhaps it knew the truth! With a shaky smile I turned away. Of course I should have reported all this to the boss. A drunken trainer who abuses his animals is never to be tolerated in a show. But something held me back. I would at least wait until the final rehearsal the following afternoon. Zaroff would work the new panther then, and there would be a showdown.
There was a showdown, but not the kind I expected.
I can see it now, in my mind’s eye — that bare arena, with the great steel cage in the center. The boss and I were sitting in the box, just as we had sat that first day. The clown number had just ended, and now four men took their places about the grim, barred barrier.
Zaroff swaggered into view. Despite his debauchery of the previous evening he was as cool and erect as ever. As he entered the little, green-grilled door, his hand clenched tightly about the butt of his whip. The runway into the arena jerked into place between the bars. The wooden gates opened.
Claws and fangs clicking, growls and coughs rumbling, tongues lolling and tails ladling, the leopards entered. Tawny bodies and green eyes, red throats arid white teeth. Nine leopards, and then — the panther.
The leopards had raced in, roaring their defiance. The panther sidled down the runway with stealthy tread. It uttered no sound but entered the arena like a silent black shadow. Zaroff cracked his whip. But today the leopards did not move. Instead, they held their places, a note of menace rumbling low in their great throats. They gave the curious impression that they were waiting for something. Zaroff cracked his whip again, impatiently.
The blade panther padded over to the group of giant cats, then turned and stared at Zaroff.
Captain Zaroff stared back. There was a strange look on his face; he actually appeared to be nervous. He cracked his whip again and swore. The growling in the leopards’ throats rose in a thundering crescendo, but they did not move. The panther lashed its tail and continued to stare hypnotically at the tamer with evil, lambent eyes.
Sweat broke out on Zaroff’s brow. I could have sworn that I saw a look of positive hate on that black beast’s face as it gazed at the man. The trainers, guns ready, moved closer to the bars outside. They sensed something. Why didn’t the man do something?
The leopards roared louder. They were grouped behind the panther now, and the panther, step by step, was slowly inching forward. Its tail shot erect, but it never took its eyes from Zaroff’s tormented white face. Suddenly, with a shriek of almost human fury, the black body of the beast rose in the air and sprang for Zaroff’s neck. The leopards closed in, and the man went down beneath the fangs of ten jungle cats. There were shrieks crimson-dabbled lips, then all sound was blotted out, as the four trainers shot blindly, pumping lead into that knot of blazing yellow bodies, shooting and shooting and shooting..
The end came quickly, and only dead bodies remained about the mangled ruins of the thing that had once been Captain Zaroff.
Nobody ever speaks of that scene anymore, but the tragedy itself was not the greatest horror. For I found the truth in Zaroff’s private papers and learned those things that had been hidden. Now I know why Zaroff left Africa, and what he had really learned about the Cult of the Leopard-men. I know now why he boasted that he was going to have the greatest animal act in the world, and why he took such unusual precautions to guard and care for the beasts himself. I know how he was able to train them so well, and why the Ubangis thought he was talking to the creatures.
And I know just how his wife went away, too, and what she would have tried to tell the boss. It’s not pleasant knowledge — those things in the papers and diaries of the dead trainer. But it is infinitely more endurable than the memory of that last terrible sight — that dreadful glimpse of what lay in the arena when Zaroff, the leopards and the panther died. I can never forget that, because it is the final proof of all I dreaded to believe.
Captain Zaroff’s chewed and lacerated form lay in a great pool of blood. Around him were the bodies of what the men with the guns had slain — nine bodies, not of leopards, but of Black men. Black Leopard-men, from Africa. And the tenth — the dreadful thing that was tearing at Zaroff’s throat; the new black panther with the human eyes — was his wife, Camille!
The Brood of Bubastis
I wish I did not have to write these lines. Ordinary suicide notes are morbid enough, and the tale which I must tell is infinitely more ghastly. Still, before I seek forgetfulness in the black boon of death, I feel impelled to leave this final testament.
I owe it to my friends, who have never understood the frightening, unexplained metamorphosis of personality I underwent upon my return from England. Perhaps this will serve to explain my abhorrent and unnatural zoophobia—ailurophobia, rather. My quite inexplicable fear of cats caused them much anguish, I know, and for a while there was talk of a “nervous breakdown.” Now they shall hear the truth. I trust it clears up other points which may have puzzled them: my voluntary retirement to the country, the breaking off of all personal contacts and correspondence, and my brusque rejection of all their sympathetic advances. Here, then, is my final explanation to those I once knew and loved.
Here, too, I trust, is material of value to students of archeology and ethnology; perhaps the first example of ancient legends substantiated by the testimony of an eyewitness. I hope that it will prove useful.
It is quite possible, however, that both my friends and scientific authorities will dismiss this entire screed as the work of a crazed and degenerate mind. It does not really matter, though. By the time it reaches other eyes I shall have gone on to find the nepenthe that lies in death. Maybe it is for the best if these words are not believed, since the memories behind them are filled with a haunting horror that drives me to doom.
But be it called truth, raving, or warning—here is the tale.
On November twelfth of this last year, I sailed for England. My friends knew that I planned to visit my old college companion, Malcolm Kent, at his Cornwall estate. Malcolm had been a fellow student of mine, and we had formed a close bond of friendship, cemented by our mutual interests in psychology, philosophy, and metaphysics.
I had a pleasant crossing, spiced with eager anticipation of the visit to come, for I had heard much of Malcolm’s fine old home. He had often spoken in detail of the ancient manor in which he dwelt and reminisced at length upon his ancestral heritage. His was an old family, steeped in the archaic traditions of the past—a past filled with Celtic myths, Pictish legends, and still more remote fables of antique days. The countryside about his estate was deeply imbued with hoary and fantastic lore. He had recounted olden whispers of goblin-folk, the dark dwarves and gnomes that burrowed in the bogs and swamps. Ghost tales and stories of furtive wizardries seemed to spring from the very twilight land itself. I looked forward to an interesting experience.
So, at first, it seemed to be. I was enchanted with the Cornish countryside: a region of mystic mountains, cloud-haunted hilltops, and purple peaks that towered above wild forest glens and green-grottoed swamplands. Here was a region rich in romance—the dark land of Irish, Saxon, Roman, and primitive pagan gods. Witches could walk in these woods; sorcerers sweep across these sullen skies on their satanic steeds. I was well pleased with the place.
I found in Malcolm an agreeable host. He had not changed; the tall, fair-haired youth had become a mature man whose cultured tastes still coincided harmoniously with my own. There was a world of wisdom in his pale blue eyes, and a warmth of welcome in his smile when first we met at the gate of his estate.
Together we walked up the long tree-spanned pathway which led to the door of his dwelling. Here I stopped for a moment to survey the imposing structure. The Kent manor was a fine example of good old English architecture. It was large, with low, ivy-covered wings that jutted out on the sides; typically British solidness seemed to exude from the place. Now I can think of it only with repulsion, because everything connected with that place is tinged with dread for me.
The interior was, I suppose, beautiful. Now I detest the thought of long, shadowed halls. I don’t like to let my mind dwell on the stone study, for it was there that the affair started. We had dined well, and Malcolm suggested we retire and chat before the fire. After perfunctorily discussing trivial matters of our recent years, our conversation ebbed.
It was then that I sensed in Malcolm a peculiar hesitancy of manner. At first I ascribed it to a vague embarrassment on his part. I admit that I was gazing about me with great curiosity. I noted that his library on occultism had been greatly augmented since his first interest in it, during college. The walls were solidly shelved with books bearing unmistakable earmarks of the mantic arts. The skull on the mantel was a rather affected touch, I thought, though there was a genuine note of weirdness in some of the paintings and tapestries. But my intent scrutiny of these things, I felt, could not wholly explain his air of eagerness. He was nervous, his eyes ever on the floor as I gazed about the room. It was almost as though he wanted me to see certain things without his telling me; as though this place had some secret to impart of which he dared not speak.
At length I grew impatient. The silence, the dim luminance of candles and fire, all affected my nerves. “Something wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, easily. Too easily!
“Aren’t hiding any bodies around here, are you?” I forced jocularity.
“No, of course not.” He smiled, then leaned forward, earnestly. “Are you still as interested in the occult as you used to be?” he asked.
Something in the intent tone of his voice warned me. “Well, to tell the truth, I haven’t studied much lately. Writing, you know, takes up pretty near all my time. And then, too, we got to a certain stage where ordinary work must cease. I can’t get the use of the more advanced books.”
“I have them,” Malcolm said, carelessly indicating his shelves. “But that’s not the point. Are you still interested?”
“Yes,” I replied.
Was it fancy, or did his eyes light up with a disturbing gleam? Did a look of triumph cross his face? “I think that I have something of importance to tell you,” he began, slowly. “But I warn you, it may prove shocking. So if you’d rather we talked of something else-”
“Go ahead,” I murmured. “Let’s have it.”
For a long moment he averted his head. He seemed to be nerving himself to speak; his glance avoided mine again, as though attempting to conceal some hidden fear. It may have been a trick of the candlelight, but when he looked up, that odd glitter again shone in his eyes. When at last he spoke, his voice was very low. “Very well, then. I shall tell you the truth—all of it. It will be wise for me to do this, perhaps. I don’t like to bear the knowledge alone any longer.”
Then, as I sat silent, he began his tale, and for the next hour I was transported to a world of mad imagination. While he spoke, it seemed as though the very shadows on the wall crept closer to listen, while the wind wailed a dirge beneath the windows, piping a threnody to his hints of hidden horrors.
I heard him out. Afterward the words seemed to blur in my brain, so that I forgot many of his statements and remembered only their loathsome effect on me. Perhaps it is just as well, for at the time those stark, shuddery sentences moved me overmuch. The general details of his story, however, remain clear.
For the past two years Malcolm had become intensely interested in neighborhood folklore. Time hung heavy on his hands, and his obscure studies impelled him to seek practical explanations of local legends. His questioning of the country rustics had brought to light much that was fascinating. He corroborated what he heard from them by reading archeological treatises, and there was much in ethnology and anthropology regarding the ancient days and the peoples then settled here. He read of Druidic times and correlated his readings with certain still-current fables telling of olden rites in the glades of oak. He rode across the countryside to view remains of menhirs and partly-standing altars ascribed to the priests of this primal cult.
He learned of Roman invasions and Roman gods and had repeated to him the fable of Maximus Lupus, whom a dragon devoured on the midnight moor. The fantastic stories of Little People were substantiated in country folklore, and from then on he delved deeply into the demonology of many races and a score of centuries. Sea-serpents haunted the gloomy coasts, and mermaids shrilled a siren song above the storm. Kelpies and leprechauns croaked from bog and tarn, while certain peaks and hillside caves were reputed to be the abode of the dread trolls, dwarfs, and unfriendly small dark folk of pre-Pictish days. Witch rites, the Black Mass, the Damned Coven —all seemed to have their place in the history of the countryside. Such myths offered a wide field for investigation.
