That same June evening, without having heard a word from the sea,
Malone was very busy among the alleys of Red Hook. A sudden stir
seemed to permeate the place, and as if apprized by "grapevine
telegraph" of something singular, the denizens clustered expectantly
around the dance-hall church and the houses in Parker Place. Three
children had just disappeared--blue-eyed Norwegians from the streets
toward Gowanus--and there were rumors of a mob forming among the
sturdy Viking of that section. Malone had for weeks been urging his
colleagues to attempt a general clean-up; and at last, moved by
conditions more obvious to their common sense than the conjectures of
a Dublin dreamer, they had agreed upon a final stroke. The unrest
and menace of this evening had been the deciding factor, and just
about midnight a raiding party recruited from three stations
descended upon Parker Place and its environs. Doors were battered
in, stragglers arrested, and candle-lighted rooms forced to disgorge
unbelievable throngs of mixed foreigners in figured robes, miters and
other inexplicable devices. Much was lost in the mêlée for objects
were thrown hastily down unexpected shafts, and betraying odors
deadened by the sudden kindling of pungent incense. But spattered
blood was everywhere, and Malone shuddered whenever he saw a brazier
or altar from which the smoke was still rising.
He wanted to be in several places at once, and decided on Suydam's
basement flat only after a messenger had reported the complete
emptiness of the dilapidated dance-hall church. The flat, he
thought, must hold some clue to a cult of which the occult scholar
had so obviously become the center and leader; and it was with real
expectancy that he ransacked the musty rooms, noted their vaguely
charnal odor, and examined the curious books, instruments, gold
ingots, and glass-stoppered bottles scattered carelessly here and
there. Once a lean, black-and-white cat edged between his feet and
tripped him, overturning at the same time a beaker half full of red
liquid. The shock was severe, and to this day Malone is not certain
of what he saw; but in dreams he still pictures that cat as it
scuttled away with certain monstrous alterations and peculiarities.
Then came the locked cellar door, and the search for something to
break it down. A heavy stool stood near, and its tough seat was more
than enough for the antique panels. A crack formed and enlarged, and
the whole door gave way--but from the other side; whence poured a
howling tumult of ice-cold wind with all the stenches of the
bottomless pit, and whence reached a sucking force not of earth or
heaven, which, coiling sentiently about the paralyzed detective,
dragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured spaces filled
with whispers and wails, and gusts of mocking laughter.
Of course it was a dream. All the specialists have told him so, and
he has nothing tangible to prove the contrary. Indeed, he would
rather have it thus; for then the sight of old brick slums and dark
foreign faces would not eat so deeply into his soul. But at the time
it was all horribly real, and nothing can ever efface the memory of
those nighted crypts, those titan arcades, and those half-formed
shapes of hell that strode gigantically in silence holding half-eaten
things whose still surviving portions screamed for mercy or laughed
with madness. Odors of incense and corruption joined in sickening
concert, and the black air was alive with the cloudy, semi-visible
bulk of shapeless elemental things with eyes. Somewhere dark sticky
water was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of
raucous little bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked
phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and
climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the
black ground.
Avenues of limitless night seemed to radiate in every direction, till
one might fancy that here lay the root of a contagion destined to
sicken and swallow cities, and engulf nations in the fetor of hybrid
pestilence. Here cosmic sin had entered, and festered by unhallowed
rites had commenced the grinning march of death that was to rot us
all to fungus abnormalities too hideous for the grave's holding.
Satan here held his Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless
childhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved.
Incubi and succubae howled praise to Hecate, and headless mooncalves
bleated to the Magna Mater. Goats leaped to the sound of thin
accursed flutes, and AEgipans chased endlessly after misshapen fauns
over rocks twisted like swollen toads. Moloch and Ashtaroth were not
absent; for in this quintessence of all damnation the bounds of
consciousness were let down, and man's fancy lay open to vistas of
every realm of horror and every forbidden dimension that evil had
power to mold. The world and nature were helpless against such
assaults from unsealed wells of night, nor could any sign or prayer
check the Walpurgissage of horror which had come when a sage with the
hateful locked and brimming coffer of transmitted demon-lore.
Suddenly a ray of physical light shot through these fantasms, and
Malone heard the sound of oars amidst the blasphemies of things that
should be dead. A boat with a lantern in its prow darted into sight,
made fast to an iron ring in the slimy stone pier, and vomited forth
several dark men bearing a long burden swathed in bedding. They took
it to the naked phosphorescent thing on the carved gold pedestal, and
the thing tittered and pawed the bedding. Then they unswathed it,
and propped upright before the pedestal the gangrenous corpse of a
corpulent old man with stubby beard and unkempt white hair. The
phosphorescent thing tittered again, and the men produced bottles
from their pockets and anointed its feet with red, whilst they
afterward gave the bottles to the thing to drink from.
All at once, from an arcaded avenue leading endlessly away, there
came the demoniac rattle and wheeze of a blasphemous organ, choking
and rumbling out of the mockeries of hell in cracked, sardonic bass.
In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at
once into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away
in quiet of the sound--goat, satyr, and AEgipan, incubus, succuba,
and lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and
silent strutter in darkness--all led by the abominable naked
phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne;
and that now strode insolently bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed
corpse of the corpulent old man. The strange dark man danced in the
rear, and the whole column skipped and leaped with Dionysiac fury.
Malone staggered after them a few steps, delirious and hazy, and
doubtful of his place in this or any world. Then he turned,
faltered, and sank down on the cold damp stone, gasping and shivering
as the demon organ croaked on, and the howling and drumming and
tinkling of the mad procession grew fainter and fainter.
Vaguely he was conscious of chanted horrors, and shocking croakings
afar off. Now and then a wail or whine of ceremonial devotion would
float to him through the black arcade, whilst eventually there rose
the dreadful Greek incantation whose text he had read above the
pulpit of that dance-hall church.
"O friend and companion of night thou who rejoicest in the baying of
dogs (here a hideous howl burst forth) and spilt blood (here nameless
sounds vied with morbid shriekings), who wanderest in the midst of
shades among the tombs (here a whistling sigh occurred), who longest
for blood and bringest terror to mortals (short, sharp cries from
myriad throats), Gorgo (repeated as response), Mormo (repeated with
ecstasy), thousand-faced moon (sighs and flute notes), look favorably
on our sacrifices!"
As the chant closed, a general shout went up, and hissing sounds
nearly drowned the croaking of the cracked bass organ. Then a gasp
as from many throats, and a babel of barked and bleated
words--"Lilith, Great Lilith, behold the Bridegroom!" More cries, a
clamor of rioting, and the sharp, clicking footfalls of a running
figure. The footfalls approached, and Malone raised himself to his
elbow to look.
The luminosity of the crypt, lately diminished, had now slightly
increased; and in that devil-light there appeared the fleeing form of
that which should not flee or feel or breathe--the glassy-eyed,
gangrenous corpse of the corpulent old man, now needing no support,
but animated by some infernal sorcery of the rite just closed. After
it raced the naked, tittering, phosphorescent thing that belonged on
the carven pedestal, and still farther behind panted the dark men,
and all the dread crew of sentient loathsomenesses. The corpse was
gaining on its pursuers, and seemed bent on a definite object,
straining with every rotting muscle toward the carved golden
pedestal, whose necromantic importance was evidently so great.
Another moment and it had reached its goal, whilst the trailing
throng labored on with more frantic speed. But they were too late,
for in one final spurt of strength which ripped tendon from tendon
and sent its noisome bulk floundering to the floor in a state of
jellyish dissolution, the staring corpse which had been Robert Suydam
achieved its object and its triumph. The push had been tremendous,
but the force had held out; and as the pusher collapsed to a muddy
blotch of corruption the pedestal he had pushed tottered, tipped, and
finally careened from its onyx base into the thick waters below,
sending up a parting gleam of carven gold as it sank heavily to
undreamable gulfs of lower Tartarus. In that instant, too, the whole
scene of horror faded to nothingness before Malone's eyes; and he
fainted amidst a thunderous crash which seemed to blot out all the
evil universe.