Collected Short Fiction, page 400
There had been insects, enemies terrible beyond the comprehension of one who has not traversed the jungle, and snakes, and the wild men. The blackened, swollen bodies of four of the Indian paddlers had been weighted and sunk in the stream. While Collins, the fourth white man of the party, had been gone from his place one morning, leaving not a clue to his fate.
And twice, we had been compelled to resort to our weapons to suppress a mutiny of the surviving paddlers.
The strangeness and fear of the jungle was beginning to get me. Sometimes, in my nervousness, I saw imaginary reptiles, and screamed aloud, alarming the others. And when I tried to sleep, in the terror of the sultry, black, and insect-ridden nights, with the dreadful something hovering about, I tossed fitfully, and my dreams were things of fear and horror.
Yes, I would have liked to turn back. But O’Brien and Hemmingway were set in their determination to proceed. We had heard, among the Indians, a persistent legend of a cup-shaped mountain, in a hitherto unexplored region of the jungle, with a ruined city within. And we had set out to find it. A mad expedition perhaps; certainly if it be judged by its end.
Now there was a rift in the jungle. A welcome bit of blue sky showed above us. Hemmingway pointed. I looked and saw, far toward the zenith, the summit of a great mountain, red and blue in the sunshine and clad in impenetrable mystery.
“Hollow mountain. Go him today,” said Tagloa, the guide.
We went on with renewed effort, back into the dull and deadening gloom. I found myself recoiling involuntarily from the repulsive “forms of the grotesque plants that grew by the edge of the steaming, sluggish stream. A little later the watercourse straightened, and the banks grew higher. Soon we saw that we had entered a canal, which must have been hewn by the hand of man! But it was water-worn, and the solid stone of its walls was crumbling. If it was a canal it had been cut countless ages past. Suddenly a stone arch loomed before us. The canal entered the mountain!
“We’re on the right track,” said O’brien. “Some job to cut a tunnel like that! Those old fellows must have known more than we think. Probably done for drainage. And before the Pyramids were built!” His tone changed to astonishment. “Look at that!”
Above the arch, cut upon the blue face of the keystone, was a strange scene. A great Death’s-head was depicted, resting on a pedestal. And about its foot was a host of figures, groveling in the dust. I made out the shape of one of the latter. It was reptilian—covered with scales and armed with great claws. And it had a human head!
We entered the tunnel. The darkness was terrible. O’Brien’s flashlight made hardly an impression in the gloom; showed us but faintly the moss-covered roof and the water-eaten walls. Hours later, it seemed, we emerged into daylight. The stream widened and disappeared in a desolate morass, surrounded on all sides by grim, unscalable mountain walls. And at the mouth of the tunnel was a granite pier, so time-worn that it tired the mind to think of all the centuries that must have passed since human feet had trod it.
We clambered out, unloaded the baggage, and moored the canoes. Hemmingway and I, with two of the Indians, set out to reconnoiter, leaving the other natives to set up a more or less permanent camp. O’Brien stayed to prevent their slipping off and leaving us stranded.
For perhaps fifty yards the men had to clear the way with their heavy jungle knives, but we skirted the cliff and soon came to a bank of talus that was so scantily overgrown that we could push our way through it with ease. After half an hour we emerged on a level treeless highland that had, somehow, a dead, deserted aspect. Then I saw, here and there, broken columns, colossal blocks of crumbling stone and great heaps of fallen masonry that were the ruins of buildings. Here was the city of our quest!
It gives one a strange sensation to enter thus a city dead and buried in its dust. I felt that the untold millions of spirits who must have lived and toiled here in their fleshly garb were watching us apart, resentful of our intrusion and hungry for revenge upon those who disturbed them.
I started. Staring at us from the brush nearby was a strange, intent, black face. I jerked out my gun but before I had time to fire I realized that it was not alive. I approached it. I could see the head and shoulders of what seemed to be a marvelously lifelike statue, half buried in the sand. I took a spade from one of the Indians and moved the soil from about it.
Hemmingway gazed at it.
“That is no statue!” he exclaimed. “It’s a petrified man! Notice the perfect detail of the pores of the skin and hirsute growth. Possibly it’s a sort of mummy. This race seems to have had a knowledge of the sciences of architecture and engineering far beyond comparison with that of the ancient Mayans or Incas.”
I saw a glistening bit of blue crystal in the cold stone fingers and managed to dislodge it with a sharp rap of the spade. It was a little oblong piece of blue stone, brilliant and translucent. One side bore a Death’s-head, carved in relief. And on the other, in a design of gold, wonderfully inlaid, was a monstrous reptilian creature, with a human head. And it is singular, that when I touched the stone I felt an odd thrill analogous to a shock of electricity. Somehow the current gave me confidence, tended to lift the weight of foreboding that had descended upon me.
It was almost night when we got back to camp. The tents were pitched, and an open fire was going, as well as one in our folding camp-stove. O’Brien had arranged for us to take a much-needed bath. He was elated at the news of our discovery of the petrified man and what it might imply of the accomplishments of the lost race, in a scientific way.
That night I dreamed that I was running through a swamp, clutched in the soul-killing fear that is experienced only in nightmares, while hideous, malignant monstrosities, half human, half lizard, pursued me, trying to tear from my hand the little blue crystal, which I clutched as a talisman of safety. Of course my knowledge of dream psychology tells me that it was a result only of my nervous condition and of the incidents of the day, and yet—I don’t know.
The nightmare was shattered by a real scream so laden with horror that I sat bolt upright in bed, wet with the perspiration of terror. Hemmingway had been sleeping in the other tent, alone. The cry had come, evidently, from him. In a moment I heard his voice, shaking uncertainly.
“O’Brien—Carter—are you there?—A thing came and took one of the men—dragged it past the tents! I saw—I saw it in the moonlight—and I couldn’t move—couldn’t speak! It was like a lizard—a monster lizard—with a man’s head! It dragged the Indian with its teeth!”
By that time O’Brien and I had pulled on our boots and rushed from the tent with weapons in hand. And one of the natives was gone! I saw the drag and we heard a dull splashing from the dead waters of the slough. We roused the other men and attempted pursuit, but soon the quagmire became so deep that we were compelled to desist.
When we had come back, O’Brien remarked, “You remember the so called ‘Dragon Lizards,’ fifteen feet long, of the East Indian Island of Komodo, huge carnivorous reptiles surviving from the Eocene. It is not impossible that there are similar creatures here. The resemblance of the cranium to a human head may be more imagined than real.”
“If you had seen it, you wouldn’t take it so lightly,” Hemmingway retorted. “God! It was hideous! You can’t imagine!”
We did not return to bed, but spent the remainder of the night on guard. The next day we moved the camp to the upland, next to the cliffs and behind the ruins of the city. Here we would be more distant from the jungle. O’Brien spent some time digging about and found an exquisite vase of cut crystal and an odd piece of white metal that looked like a crucible, as well as several clay cylinders that were covered with what we took for inscriptions.
I scrambled up on a great block of hewn granite to get a better view of our surroundings.
Some distance out in the jungle I saw a great dome of shining blue that rose above the vivid green of a vegetation that seemed weird and unnatural. I showed it to the others and naturally we set out to examine it at once. We left two Indians to guard the camp and took the others along to cut the way. We carried the rifles in case of an encounter with one of the reptiles.
After an hour, guided by the compass, we came to a titanic block of blue stone, ten feet high. So dense was the undergrowth that we were unable to see what was above. We made our way around to the side and came unexpectedly into an open, miry place where the vegetation had been kept down, apparently by much trampling.
“A congregation spot for the monsters,” O’Brien muttered.
And then the sight of the thing upon the pedestal burst upon us. It was a gigantic Death’s-head, a colossal human skull set in a hard blue stone that, strangely bore no trace of decay. It was fully forty feet from the bare chin bone to the top of the naked dome. And it had eyes—immense eyes of some crystal that glowed with an awful blood-congealing fire of red. A soul-chilling symbol of Death, this, of a death that was terribly alive.
I touched the blue pedestal and jerked back my hand. It struck me with a palpable shock of sheer horror, comparable to nothing I know save the diametrically opposite, strangely reassuring current of the blue crystal. I sweated and trembled from the thrill of it and my heart grew sick with a terror unnamable and indescribable.
I wonder how long the thing had stood since its evil creators were gone, unchanged in its malign power, there in the reeking jungle with the foul mists of decay drifting up about it.
Presently we went back, and, after supper, arranged to take turns in the guarding of the camp. Mine was the first. Carrying my flashlight and rifle, I walked slowly back and forth in the darkness, feeling all the hostile power of the strange unknown about me. Sometimes my straining eyes caught a shadow that made me pause with a stifled heart, but the light showed nothing.
Then a brief weird glow suffused itself over the mountains and the great orb of the moon rose, turning the valley fantastic with its flood of eerie light. And as it rose higher so its rays struck the earth less obliquely, I felt a strange force overpower me. I felt a tide of Evil rising higher—ever higher—in the pit; a demoniac spirit, feeding on the rays of the moon, gaining strength of volition until presently all must bow to it.
Then I knew that the dread something was coming from the blue death’s head; that its builders had given it a terrible power for a purpose incredibly vile. It was calling, drawing, urging me to it. Incredible horror gripped me, but I was powerless to resist. With my rifle in hand I set off at a run down through the dead city, and along the path we had cut in the jungle.
A length I emerged before the figure. What a hideous surprise awaited me! Under the rays of the moon (I am sure it was the result of moonlight) the head had changed. The skull glowed a green fire—a living green, throbbing and pulsating with alien maliflc life. And the blood-red beams from the demoniac burning eyes lit the scene before them with a lurid flood of scarlet horror indescribable. With unnatural terror searing my soul, I looked into the depths of those fiery eyes and saw there a will of malevolence supernal.
And under the spell of those eyes, I know not how I managed it, but I clambered up the side of the pedestal and stood on the blue stone platform before that awful face of living, Eternal Death.
I heard strange sounds from the foul, loathsome jungle around me—semihuman cries of terror and pain—screams of agony unutterable. And then monstrous things—lizards with the heads of men—crawled out into the open space and wallowed about in the mud, uttering weird, unearthly cries.
Then came the sound of human footsteps. O’Brien and Hemmingway and the Indians came racing down the passage, drawn as relentlessly as I had been. They reached the pedestal and struggled until they had climbed up beyond the reach of the worshipping monsters.
They crowded on the platform, their faces masks of living horror. I wondered that they did not seem to recognize me, or each other, that they fell on the stone in the ghastly red glare and groveled as did the things below, crying incoherently.
And then, the incredibly fearful occurred. Those men changed! Their skins grew black and scaly; their finger nails developed into murderous talons. They tore off their clothing. Their heads—their faces—changed, but still bore the human stamp! They were metamorphosed into reptilian things like those below! Their jaws protruded, their teeth were long and terrible, and they foamed at the mouth.
Then the things attacked me! I fought a nightmare battle for my life. Three I killed. I know it was a mercy. Yet my conscience smote me for it. All the others I was able to stun with my clubbed rifle and drag off the platform.
At last day came and the evil power lulled. The lights of horror died and the beasts slunk away. Then it was that I found that my hand gripped the little blue crystal. I must have taken it unconsciously from my pocket as I ran across the plateau. To its strange emanation, I am sure, I owe my immunity from the effect of the Head. The men of the old city had made it for self-protection.
I left that accursed land as fast as feet and canoe could carry me. Two weeks later I passed into the river and five days after reached Manaos. But I shall never be able to forget the horror of that night as long as I live . . .
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That is all, except for the scanty explanation that science can suggest for the fearful effect of the Head.
There are strange things about moonlight. For one. it is polarized. It evidently excited new rays in the Head—in the crystal eyes that seemed the focus of its power. The theory of vibratory mental currents is pretty well confirmed. It is possible that the eyes produced mental vibration by mechanical or chemical means, which, pouring out in a beam of terrible intensity, possessed a fixed hypnotic effect, controlling not only the motions of the victims, but were able to alter or aid the alteration of its physical shape.
The science of embryology has shown that in the development from oosperm to adult, an animal undergoes a series of changes which are usually a brief epitome of all the changes that it has passed through in the long history of evolution. So every man bears in him the mark of all his ancestry—even of the reptiles typified by the worshipers of the Head. The control of body growth is thought to be but a matter of glandular chemistry. By manipulation of embryonic life, science has succeeded in the creation of strange monstrosities. And it is possible that the rays from the Head, by photochemical means, reversed the process of development and produced a degeneration of horrible rapidity. The human characteristics of the result are due no doubt because ossiferous structure offers greater resistance to a rapid change than does flesh.
I have had the blue crystal examined and it seems to be of a new radioactive compound. Its radiations must have neutralized the emanations of the Head.
The End.
The Girl in the Bottle
Austin Trent was an old man, seventy-nine years. But even the oldest man is capable of surprising efforts, when upon him depends the fate of two worlds—and the life of the girl he loves.
CHAPTER I
The Copper Box
THE freight car was cold. The dank mists of the winter-bound lowlands seeped through every crack. Dressed in the shoddy rags of a German laborer, Trent shivered on his hard bed of copper bars.
At the border there was an endless delay. Frontier guards opened the car. Biting his tongue to silence his teeth, Trent crouched behind the stacked ingots. A flashlight flickered, and his heart stopped.
“Ja, ja, das kupfer.”
The door slammed again. At last the train lurched ahead. Through a knothole that he had carefully enlarged, Trent tried to follow the route of the car. The black-out, however, left him few hints.
After midnight, the car was slammed and bunted about some vast dim-lit railroad yard—probably, he supposed, at Cologne. Before dawn it was coupled into another train.
Listening to the click of wheels on steel, to the labored chuffing of the engine and the shriek of the whistle, Trent began to wonder if he would ever hear anything else. For the cold was a deadly drug.
He was bruised in the lurching car, but the cold numbed his pain. He forgot his hunger and thirst and fatigue. Perhaps the President was right. Perhaps seventy-nine was the time to give up.
But not until his job was done.
The icy dawn came, and he was still alive. The winter sky was lowering, and the train climbed through woods of bare-limbed oak and beech into white-powdered fir. Above a river’s broad bend, he glimpsed red sandstone bluffs.
The Rhine, he knew; this must be the Schwarzwald.
The car was set out on a snowy siding. Another locomotive slammed into it, reversed, and pulled it up a spur track. Trent glimpsed barbed wire fences, a concealed machine gun pillbox, a brush-camouflaged anti-aircraft gun. Then darkness covered his peephole.
The track had run underground.
But into no common tunnel. There was light again—the gleam of electrics on a forest of steel pillars that supported a vast roof, on dark looming masses of machinery. Amazement stiffened Trent’s shivering body. Here, beneath the Black Forest, was a huge modern industrial plant!
What could be its purpose?
His cold-drugged brain groped in vain for the answer.
The engine puffed away. A squad of workmen approached, pushing barrows. The door rattled open. Grimy half-naked men began passing out the heavy bars. Trent stripped to the waist in the darkness. Already he was hungry and grimy enough. He stumbled out of the car, straining to the weight of a long ingot.
Yes, the President had been right—seventy-nine was old. Blind and reeling, Trent leaned against the end of the car. Sharp pain stabbed his chest. Slowly, his breath came back.
Beyond, against the gray concrete wall, he saw a wooden tool locker. The door was swinging open. He walked to it briskly, as if on some errand. Gasping again, in the darkness, he peered out.
One false step—a single curious glance—might betray him to the bullets of the Gestapo. But he had to learn what was becoming of the copper.
