A Mountain Walked, page 21
Bountiful, showing the way to the desert springs,
Bountiful, guarding the flocks and the harvest.
Yidhra, the Lover, needing the seed of her followers;
Lover, who must have the seed of all things,
Lover, who must have the seed of change or die,
Lover, whose consorts are changed,
infused with the seed of the past and changed
to forms not of past nor of present.
Yidhra, the Mother, bringing forth spawn of the past;
Mother, of all things that were,
Mother, of children of past and of present,
Mother, whose children remember all things
of their fathers long dead.
Yidhra, the Life-Giver, bringing long life to her followers;
Life-Giver, giving the centuries endlessly
to her children and lovers and worshippers.
Yidhra, the Restless One, needing the sons of new fathers;
Restless One, sending her followers forth
to seek new blood for her endless change,
Restless One, craving new lovers outside the blood
of her worshippers
lest she and her spawn and her followers
shrivel and wither in living death.
Yidhra, the Dream-Witch, clouding the minds of her followers;
Dream-Witch, hiding her shape in illusion,
Dream-Witch, cloaking her shape in strange beauty.
Yidhra, the Shrouder, wreathing the faithless in shadow;
Shrouder, devouring the errant and hostile ones,
Shrouder, who hides men forever …
The other stack of papers proved to be the missing notes on Harrison’s activities in Milando. In one way his experience had been the reverse of mine; the bartender had initially been cautiously encouraging, dropping cryptic hints without giving any definite information, but, after Harrison’s first encounter with Yolanda, Ed and most of the other people in town had tried to shut him out. Even Kramer had been afraid to speak openly of the cult, though Harrison had become convinced that it was active and that Yolanda was the head of it.
I came out of my rapt concentration with the feeling I had heard something through the rush of the waterfall, some barely audible and unidentifiable sound that breathed terror; perhaps it was only my imagination, stimulated by the dark hints I had been reading, but I turned out the lamp and stepped quietly to the door. I opened it a crack and peered into the cavern mouth to the right. It was darkening rapidly, but I could detect movement in the shadow. There was a large animal like a hound alternately scampering to the entrance and scuttling back into the cave in a cringing attitude. Then a dark figure seemed to rise up from the floor of the cavern as though emerging from a sunken stairway. I knew I did not want to meet either of those figures and if I waited very long I would have to find my way back in total darkness. The ledge along which I had to return was in shadow and most of the way I would be shielded from view by the waterfall and the fallen slabs of rock along the water’s edge. I decided to take the chance.
I ran wherever I was well screened, counting on the waterfall to cover the sound, and made it to the foot of the stair up the cliff without being noticed. On the stairs I was badly exposed, though the trunks and foliage of some of the tallest trees gave some scattered cover, but looking back from the top I could make out the hound and its shadowy master on the ledge and they didn’t seem to be in pursuit. I was catching my breath at the top when I heard voices on the trail ahead and ducked into the brush.
Two men I hadn’t seen before appeared and posted themselves near the head of the stair. I gathered from the scraps of conversation I could understand that they were part of a search party from town sent to find me. Their mission was to head me off if I tried to descend to the pool. They held the pool in awe and seemed to assume that if I had already gone down I would be ‘taken care of.’
I began to make my way as quietly as possible through the rain-soaked brush, moving parallel to the path. The rain was growing heavy as darkness fell, and the occasional flashes of lightning did as much to show the way as the dwindling daylight. It was slow going and progress would have been impossible without the frequent outcrops of rock to thin the vegetation. I was able to see the trail and hear voices on it much of the time and soon found that the searchers had spread out over the slope. They were all around me now, passing on both sides.
At one point two men stopped and sat down on a boulder by the trail near me so that I could overhear them clearly.
“… she says he didn’t come down there. Must have gone off the trail.”
“Don’t know why she wants him so bad. He don’t seem much different from the other one.”
“They say it’s somethin’ about his mind. The other one wasn’t as good—that’s why he didn’t help much an’ she needs fresh blood again so soon. Or we’ll all start to shrivel up like the bunch in West Texas. Did Maynard ever tell you about that? He went out there an’ saw ’em. Said it was like livin’ death.”
“Naw, I mostly stay away from Maynard. An’ Ed too. I know we’re all bound to her, we’ve all taken the Communion and accepted the eternal life, but I think some of the big shots has had s’much to do with her they’re hardly human any more. Anyway, they give me the creeps. An’ what she did to that Harrison boy! She needed him, but she hated him fer not bein’ good enough. Course that was the full Fusion, not just the Communion. But ain’t it about the same thing? She gets a little more like us and we get a little more like her?”
It was a relief when they stopped talking and sat in silence; the horrors of Milando were crowding too close and I had heard enough. I continued up the hill. I had not gone very far when I heard them speak again. I couldn’t understand them this time, but the tone was one of respect and the answering voice was Yolanda’s. I stood close to a big tree trunk to camouflage my outline and waited for her to pass on the trail. It was not completely dark yet and a moment later I could see her slender silhouette stalking up the trail. The hound was following at her heels, dashing from one side of the trail to the other. Then it gave a sort of snorting moan and ran into the brush below me. I could hear it snuffling and crashing through the bushes as it zigzagged toward me. I stood very still. Suddenly it was charging straight at me. I could make out a long muzzle, more like a crocodile than a dog, and it seemed to have a short heavy tail. Just as it rose up and ran on two legs she called to it and it turned aside. I was trembling, and it took a while for the phrase she used to sink in. She had said, “Come, Mr. Harrison.”
VI
I stood for a while under the dripping tree, trying not to think. There was a cult here, certainly, a dangerous one, but the rest was fantasy. The people of Milando had not seen a primeval abomination that dwelt in these hills, they were victims of mass hallucination or the imposture of the cult leaders. And Yolanda, with a whimsical touch of black humor, had named her dog after a troublesome intruder who had caused a local sensation by disappearing. Or being murdered. The hints of fusion and resulting physical degeneracy were ignorant superstition; a man could not exchange genetic material with an eon-old creature and thus become a beast. It was an ordinary hound. A hound that went sometimes on four legs and sometimes on two.
It was pitch-black now and I risked walking on the trail. Once I glimpsed a flashlight beam ahead, but I hid in the brush and the searchers passed without spotting me. After I crossed the top of the slope and entered Milando I had to avoid passing near the many lighted windows as well as worrying about exposure in the frequent lightning flashes. Half the town seemed to be out tramping through the rain and several times I passed within thirty yards of people, but they either didn’t see me or assumed I was one of them. By the time I approached the Kramer house I was wondering whether the search for me could account for all the activity.
I had followed the darkest route rather than the shortest and wound up approaching the house from the east side. I could see light in the kitchen windows and hear Kramer raving in an hysterical rage. I had slipped up next to an old shed on the property next door when I heard someone walk heavily up to the other side of the shed.
“Has he been here?” said a low voice.
“No, didn’t they catch him over the hill?”
“No luck. Don’t know whether he got lost in the brush or slipped back into town. How long you been watching the house?”
“About twenty minutes. Got the place surrounded. Old Kramer’s really out of his mind, threatenin’ to kill Miz’ Kimbrough an’ go out an’ tell everybody about Milando and everythin’ else. We’ll have to take care of him this time. We’re just waitin’ on her.”
“Where is she?”
“Down at the saloon with Ed. Maynard went to get her; she should be here pretty soon.”
I had blundered into a ring of watchers staked out around the house. By luck I hadn’t been seen, but in getting away I might not be so lucky. The lightning flashes were coming more often now, and though I was hidden from their light by the corner of the shed I would have to pass some long open spaces if I retreated. And I felt I had to warn Kramer that he was in danger, even though the mother-in-law’s visit had triggered an explosion I hated to face. But I did not have to make that decision, for a moment later the tension erupted in violence—the gusty boom of a shotgun blast, then a woman’s scream silenced by another blast. Then a third, and I heard small feet running across the porch. Two of the children ran into the circle of window light in front of the house; two more shots, and their still forms lay in the rain. While I stood and watched in stunned incomprehension, the lights went out all over Milando.
My only thought then was to get away. My car was in front of the house near the corner. With the lights out in the house I might be able to get to it and drive away before anyone could stop me. I moved as quietly as possible to the side of the house. I got there before the next lightning flash. The lightning was from the northwest, to the left and front of the house, so that the kitchen side was left in blackness. I moved to the front corner, took off my hat, and stood with one eye past the corner until the next flash. Kramer was standing not fifteen feet from the car, holding the shotgun. And stealthy footsteps from behind told me the watchers were moving in next to the house itself. Without thinking I opened the kitchen door next to me and entered the house. The click of the night latch behind me seemed terribly loud.
I stood there only a minute with my heart pounding and the water running off my raincoat onto the floor before I heard Yolanda’s voice outside.
“Kramer,” she said, “Kramer, you have slain the children of Yidhra.” I went to look out the small window over the sink. “You are doomed, Kramer,” she said. The lightning was flashing; I could see her hooded silhouette and Kramer fumbling with the gun. He seemed to be trying to raise it and hesitating. “You cannot defy me, Kramer.” Then in an extended burst of lightning I saw the hound thing leap at him, and the gun roared. Whatever spell she held over him was broken; he raised the gun high and fired. As the lightning flickered and died away I saw her writhing on the ground, appearing grotesquely shapeless under the sprawling cloak; then she lay still.
I stood petrified. I heard Kramer’s heavy tread on the porch, followed by an incongruous sound I could not at first identify. With quiet horror I realized that he was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, rocking gently, back and forth. He must have been quite mad.
In the long minutes before I began to think again the darkness magnified the sound horribly. The rocking chair creaked. The rain drummed on the roof, it dribbled from the eaves, it spattered into the puddles on the ground, and the rocking chair creaked. I had to get a grip on myself and think of a plan. If I could get to the car perhaps I could get out of town and hide until it was safe to swim across. I tried quietly to open the kitchen door, and my stomach knotted in panic; the night latch was of an ancient type that needed a key to be opened from the inside.
The kitchen door was locked, and getting past Kramer would be impossible. I could open a window, but Kramer would surely hear and come before I could climb out. And besides I was pretty sure someone was out there now. I remembered a back door by the room where I had slept. I would try for that. I began to feel my way toward the door to the living room, moving in slow motion to avoid hitting anything that might make a sound. The lightning through the small window wasn’t much help, the light falling mainly on the side of the room away from the door. I was near the door slowly lowering my foot when it touched something soft. Instinct told me what it was before reason could operate, and I almost lost my balance as my foot jerked back. I tried to find a way around the corpse and touched it again. I couldn’t face the possibility of touching it another time; I would have to risk the flashlight. Kramer was facing the other way and I waited for the lightning before flicking the flashlight for the briefest instant.
The lightning must have been very near, for the thunder followed it closely enough to cover the involuntary sound I made when I saw the thing and knew why Kramer had gone mad and slaughtered his wife and children. It was the mother-in-law, the daughter of Old Kimbrough’s son who had been ‘the worst of the lot,’ the mother of Kramer’s wife, the grandmother of those who lay still in the rain. Wearing ample clothing and the wig that lay beside her I suppose she could have passed as fully human, though incredibly ugly and deformed, but now there could be no doubt of the alien taint. No fully human being has such wide cheekbones, or such bulging lidless eyes set so far to the side. The ears were vestigial and there was no hair; the back of the head and neck were scaled. The tongue protruded and was perceptibly forked.
I forced myself to step over the thing in the dark. I remember being obsessed with the thought that I might step on the tongue. I was also terrified of bumping into another corpse in the hall between the living room and the rear of the house and moved even more slowly than before. I kept looking back and seeing Kramer silhouetted by the lightning against a window that opened onto the porch.
I hadn’t gotten far into the hall when I felt a presence, a numbing sensation both calming and weirdly evil. It reminded me of the enchantment I had felt in Yolanda’s presence, but it was different, less warm and human, more savage, more powerful. I realized the rocking chair had stopped. Every nerve was alert as I turned to watch the open door and window. The lightning flickered, and in a hideous stop-motion effect I saw the monstrous caped figure move toward Kramer as he whimpered and clicked two firing pins on empty chambers. He shrieked twice as the thing spread its arms wide and shrouded him in the vast folds of its cloak; then he was silent.
I knew I should try to get away, but I was incapable of motion as the thing crept slowly across the porch and through the door toward me. It drew itself up six feet in front of me and said, “Hello, Peter,” in a voice hauntingly, damnably like Yolanda’s, but deeper, hollower, indistinct, with an alien intonation like the children’s hissing whispers. I shone the flashlight on the face a full seven feet above the floor—it was her, but larger, with hollow cheeks and sunken, burning eyes and teeth grinning in a rigid travesty of a smile. Kramer’s shotgun had shattered the fragment of protean Yidhra that projected the beauty of Yolanda; in its place Yidhra had sent another multiform fragment of herself creeping over the hill, a fragment that had not yet perfected the illusion.
The realization had weakened the spell and I fought for control of my consciousness. For an instant her outline wavered, the face blurred, and in mortal fear of what I might see I turned and ran down the hall and into the first bedroom, slamming the door behind me. I found a window in the dark, threw it up, and fumbled with the screen latch; in a second was over the sill.
I heard someone running toward me along the side of the house, but jumped aside and felt him rush past. Then I ran for the car. I hit the fender running full speed, knocking the wind out of myself, but managed to feel my way to the keyhole, find the key, and get in even before I caught my breath. I backed onto the road, slammed it into first, and started swerving down the muddy hill. A group of men tried to block the road, but when I bore down on them they jumped out of the way. I think I hit one of them. At the bottom of the hill I tried to turn right and slid off into the ditch on the left. It wasn’t deep enough to flood the engine, but I thought surely I was stuck. I kept spinning the wheels and sliding till the wheels found something solid and pulled me up onto the road. I came out heading to the left and continued that way out of town.
The side roads were fewer in that direction and I kept letting them go by, wanting to get further from town. Before I knew it I was over the hill at the flooded creek. I hit the brakes and nothing happened—they must have gotten soaked in the ditch. The car plowed into the water with a tremendous splash, the engine died, and I felt the car being pulled sideways by the current. I felt the car lose contact with the bottom and start floating downstream. Water was leaking in slowly but steadily, and when the car rolled over on its side I knew it would soon turn upside down and I would be trapped. I got out of my boots and coat, opened the door above me, and climbed out.
There was no question of swimming purposefully in that torrent; I could only struggle to stay afloat and grasp at anything solid I bumped into. Eventually I grabbed something that held me against the current. It was a tree trunk sticking out of a brush jam, and I was able to pull myself slowly and painfully to the bank. As I lay panting face down with my feet still in the water I felt the current running from my right to my left. I was on the far side. I had escaped from Milando.
