There will be a queer noise on the stairs, where the boards are loose,
and the latch of my room will rattle as if with an inward pressure. I
always keep my door locked, of course. Then there are certain mornings
when I seem to catch a sickish musty odor in the corridors, and notice
a faint, ropy trail through the dust of the floors. I know I must
guard the hair in the picture, for if anything were to happen to it,
there are entities in this house which would take a sure and terrible
revenge. I don't even dare to die; for life and death are all one to
those in the clutch of what came out of R'lyeh. Something would be on
hand to punish my neglect. Medusa's coil has got me, and it will always
be the same. Never mix up with secret and ultimate horror, young man,
if you value your immortal soul."
* * * * *
As the old man finished his story I saw that the small lamp had long
since burned dry, and that the large one was nearly empty. It must, I
knew, be near dawn; and my ears told me that the storm was over. The
tale had held me in a half-daze, and I almost feared to glance at the
door lest it reveal an inward pressure from some unnameable source. It
would be hard to say which had the greatest hold on me--stark horror,
incredulity, or a kind of morbid fantastic curiosity. I was wholly
beyond speech and had to wait for my strange host to break the spell.
"Do you want to see--the thing?"
His voice was very low and hesitant, and I saw he was tremendously in
earnest. Of my various emotions, curiosity gained the upper hand, and
I nodded silently. He rose, lighting a candle on a near-by table and
holding it high before him as he opened the door.
"Come with me--upstairs."
I dreaded to brave those musty corridors again, but fascination downed
all my qualms. The boards creaked beneath our feet, and I trembled once
when I thought I saw a faint, rope-like line traced in the dust near
the staircase.
The steps of the attic were noisy and rickety, with several of the
treads missing. I was glad of the need of looking sharply to my
footing, for it gave me an excuse not to glance about. The attic
corridor was pitch-black and heavily cobwebbed, and inch-deep with dust
except where a beaten trail led to a door on the left at the farther
end. As I noticed the rotting remains of a thick carpet, I thought of
the other feet which had pressed it in bygone decades--of these, and of
one thing which did not have feet.
The old man took me straight to the door at the end of the beaten path,
and fumbled a second with the rusty latch. I was acutely frightened now
that I knew the picture was so close, yet dared not retreat at this
stage. In another moment my host was ushering me into the deserted
studio.
The candlelight was very faint, yet served to show most of the
principal features. I noticed the low, slanting roof, the huge enlarged
dormer, the curios and trophies hung on the walls, and most of all, the
great shrouded easel in the center of the floor. To that easel de Russy
now walked, drawing aside the dusty velvet hangings on the side turned
away from me, and motioning me silently to approach. It took a good
deal of courage to make me obey, especially when I saw how my guide's
eyes dilated in the wavering candlelight as he looked at the unveiled
canvas. But again curiosity conquered everything, and I walked around
to where de Russy stood. Then I saw the damnable thing.
I did not faint, though no reader can possibly realize the effort it
took to keep me from doing so. I did cry out, but stopped short when
I saw the frightened look on the old man's face. As I had expected,
the canvas was warped, moldy, and scabrous from dampness and neglect;
but for all that I could trace the monstrous hints of evil cosmic
outsideness that lurked all through the nameless scene's morbid content
and perverted geometry.
It was as the old man had said: a vaulted, columned hell of mingled
Black Masses and witches' sabbats, and what perfect completion could
have added to it was beyond my power to guess. Decay had only increased
the utter hideousness of its wicked symbolism and diseased suggestion;
for the parts most affected by time were just these parts of the
picture which in nature--or in that extra-cosmic realm that mocked
nature--would be likely to decay or disintegrate.
The utmost horror of all, of course, was Marceline; and as I saw the
bloated, discolored flesh I formed the odd fancy that perhaps the
figure on the canvas had some obscure, occult linkage with the figure
which lay in quicklime under the cellar floor. Perhaps the lime had
preserved the corpse instead of destroying it--but could it have
preserved those black, malign eyes that glared and mocked at me from
their painted hell?
And there was something else about the creature which I could not fail
to notice--something which de Russy had not been able to put into
words, but which perhaps had something to do with Denis' wish to kill
all those of his blood who had dwelt under the same roof with her.
Whether Marsh knew, or whether the genius in him painted it without his
knowing, none could say. But Denis and his father could not have known
till they saw the picture.
Surpassing all in horror was the streaming black hair, which covered
the rotting body, _but which was itself not even slightly decayed_.
All I had heard of it was amply verified. It was nothing human, this
ropy, sinuous, half-oily, half-crinkly flood of serpent darkness.
Vile, independent life proclaimed itself at every unnatural twist and
convolution, and the suggestion of numberless _reptilian_ heads at the
out-turned ends was far too marked to be illusory or accidental.
* * * * *
The blasphemous thing held me like a magnet. I was helpless, and
did not wonder at the myth of the gorgon's glance which turned all
beholders to stone. Then I thought I saw a change come over the thing.
The leering features perceptibly moved, so that the rotting jaw fell,
allowing the thick, beast-like lips to disclose a row of pointed yellow
fangs. The pupils of the fiendish eyes dilated, and the eyes themselves
seemed to bulge outward. And the hair--that accursed hair! _It had
begun to rustle and wave perceptibly, the snake-heads all turning
toward de Russy and vibrating as if to strike!_
Reason deserted me altogether, and before I knew what I was doing
I drew my revolver and sent a shower of six steel-jacketed bullets
through the shocking canvas. The whole thing at once fell to pieces,
even the frame toppling from the easel and clattering to the
dust-covered floor. But though this horror was shattered, another had
risen before me in the form of de Russy himself, whose maddened shrieks
as he saw the picture vanish were almost as terrible as the picture
itself had been.
With a half-articulate scream of "God, now you've done it!" the frantic
old man seized me violently by the arm and commenced to drag me out of
the room and down the rickety stairs. He had dropped the candle in his
panic, but dawn was near, and some faint gray light was filtering in
through the dust-covered windows. I tripped and stumbled repeatedly,
but never for a moment would my guide slacken his pace.
"Run!" he shrieked, "run for your life! You don't know what you've
done! I never told you the whole thing! There were things I had to
do--_the picture talked to me and told me_. I had to guard and keep
it--now the worst will happen! _She and that hair will come up out of
their graves, for God knows what purpose!_
"Hurry, man! For God's sake let's get out of here while there's time.
If you have a car, take me along to Cape Girardeau with you. It may get
me in the end, anywhere, but I'll give it a run for its money. Out of
here--quick!"
As we reached the ground floor I became aware of a slow, curious
thumping from the rear of the house, followed by the sound of a door
shutting. De Russy had not heard the thumping, but the other noise
caught his ear and drew from him the most terrible shriek that ever
sounded in human throat.
"_Oh, God--great God--that was the cellar door--she's coming_----"
By this time I was desperately wrestling with the rusty latch and
sagging hinges of the great front door--almost as frantic as my host,
now that I heard the slow, thumping tread approaching from the unknown
rear rooms of the accursed mansion. The night's rain had warped the
oaken planks, and the heavy door stuck and resisted even more strongly
than it had when I forced an entrance the evening before.
Somewhere a plank creaked beneath the foot of whatever was walking, and
the sound seemed to snap the last cord of sanity in the poor old man.
With a roar like that of a maddened bull he released his grip on me
and made a plunge to the right, through the open door of a room which
I judged had been a parlor. A second later, just as I got the front
door open and was making my own escape, I heard the tinkling clatter of
broken glass and knew he had leapt through a window. And as I bounded
off the sagging porch to commence my mad race down the long, weed-grown
drive I thought I could catch the thud of dead, dogged footfalls which
did not follow me, but which kept leadenly on through the door of the
cobwebbed parlor.
I looked backward only twice as I plunged heedlessly through the
burrs and briars of that abandoned drive, past the dying lindens and
grotesque scrub-oaks, in the gray pallor of a cloudy November dawn.
The first time was when an acrid smell overtook me, and I thought of
the candle de Russy had dropped in the attic studio. By then I was
comfortably near the road, on the high place from which the roof of
the distant house was clearly visible above its encircling trees; and
just as I expected, thick clouds of smoke were billowing out of the
attic dormers and curling upward into the leaden heavens. I thanked the
powers of creation that an immemorial curse was about to be purged by
fire and blotted from the earth.
But in the next instant came that second backward look in which I
glimpsed two other things--things that canceled most of the relief
and gave me a supreme shock from which I shall never recover. I have
said that I was on a high part of the drive, from which much of the
plantation behind me was visible. This vista included not only the
house and its trees but some of the abandoned and partly flooded flat
land beside the river, and several bends of the weed-choked drive I
had been so hastily traversing. In both of these latter places I now
beheld sights--or suspicions of sights--which I wish devoutly I could
deny.
It was a faint, distant scream which made me turn back again, and as I
did so I caught a trace of motion on the dull gray marshy plain behind
the house. At that distance human figures are very small; yet I thought
the motion resolved itself into two of these, pursuer and pursued. I
even thought I saw the dark-clothed leading figure overtaken and seized
by the bald, naked figure in the rear--overtaken, seized, and dragged
violently in the direction of the now burning house.
But I could not watch the outcome, for at once a nearer sight obtruded
itself--a suggestion of motion among the underbrush at a point some
distance back along the deserted drive. _Unmistakably, the weeds and
bushes and briars were swaying as no wind could sway them; swaying as
if some large, swift serpent were wriggling purposefully along on the
ground in pursuit of me._
* * * * *
That was all I could stand. I scrambled along madly for the gate,
heedless of torn clothing and bleeding scratches, and jumped into the
roadster parked under the great evergreen tree. It was a bedraggled,
rain-drenched sight, but the works were unharmed and I had no trouble
in starting the thing. I went on blindly in the direction the car was
headed for. Nothing was in my mind but to get away from that frightful
region of nightmares and cacodemons--to get away as quickly and as far
as gasoline could take me.
About three or four miles along the road a farmer hailed me--a kindly,
drawling fellow of middle age and considerable native intelligence.
I was glad to slow down and ask directions, though I knew I must
present a strange enough aspect. The man readily told me the way to
Cape Girardeau, and inquired where I had come from in such a state at
such an early hour. Thinking it best to say little, I merely mentioned
that I had been caught in the night's rain and had taken shelter at a
near-by farmhouse, afterward losing my way in the underbrush trying to
find my car.
"At a farmhouse, eh? Wonder whose it coulda ben. Ain't nothin' standin'
this side o' Jim Ferris' place acrost Barker's Crick, an' that's all o'
twenty miles by the rud."
I gave a start, and wondered what fresh mystery this portended, then
asked my informant if he had overlooked the large ruined plantation
house whose ancient gate bordered the road not far back.
"Funny ye sh'd recolleck that, stranger! Musta ben here afore sometime.
But that house ain't there now. Burnt down five or six years ago--and
they did tell some queer stories about it."
I shuddered.
"You mean Riverside--ol' man de Russy's place. Queer goin's on there
fifteen or twenty years ago. Ol' man's boy married a gal from abroad,
and some folks thought she was a mighty odd sort. Didn't like the
looks of her. Then she and the boy went off sudden, and later on the
ol' man said he was kilt in the war. But some o' the niggers hinted
queer things. Got around at last that the ol' fellow fell in love with
the gal himself and kilt her and the boy. That place was sure enough
ha'nted by a black snake, mean that what it may.
"Then five or six years ago the ol' man disappeared and the house
burned down. Some do say he was burnt up in it. It was a mornin'
after a rainy night just like this, when lots o' folks heard an awful
yellin' acrost the fields in ol' de Russy's voice. When they stopped
and looked, they see the house goin' up in smoke quick as a wink--that
place was all like tinder anyhow, rain or no rain. Nobody never seen
the ol' man agin, but onct in a while they tell of the ghost of that
big black snake glidin' aroun'.
"What d'you make of it, anyhow? You seem to hev knowed the place.
Didn't ye ever hear tell of the de Russys? What d'ye reckon was the
trouble with that gal young Denis married? She kinder made everybody
shiver and feel hateful, though ye couldn't never tell why."
I was trying to think, but that process was almost beyond me now. The
house burned years ago? Then where, and under what conditions, had I
passed the night? And why did I know what I knew of these things? Even
as I pondered I saw a hair on my coat sleeve--the short, gray hair of
an old man.
In the end I drove on without telling anything. But I did hint that
gossip was wronging the poor old planter who had suffered so much. I
made it clear--as if from distant but authentic reports wafted among
friends--that if anyone was to blame for the trouble at Riverside it
was the woman, Marceline. She was not suited to Missouri ways, I said,
and it was too bad that Denis had ever married her.
More I did not intimate, for I felt that the de Russys, with their
proudly cherished honor and high, sensitive spirits, would not wish me
to say more. They had borne enough, God knows, without the countryside
guessing what a demon of the pit, what a gorgon of the Elder
blasphemies, had come to flaunt their ancient and stainless name.
Nor was it right that the neighbors should know that other horror which
my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me--that
horror which he must have learned as I learned it, from details in the
lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh.
It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of
Riverside--the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful crinkly coil
of serpent-hair must even now be brooding and twining vampirically
around an artist's skeleton in a lime-packed grave beneath a charred
foundation--was faintly, subtly, yet unmistakably the scion of
Zimbabwe's most primal grovelers. No wonder she owned a link with
the old witchwoman Sophonisba--for, though in deceitfully slight
proportion, Marceline was a loathsome, bestial thing, and her forebears
had come from Africa.