"Now," I pressed him, "you've got to tell me!"
His fleshless head jerked toward the steps.
"Come to my room." And when we were on the stairs, his hollow voice
added: "Try to keep a grip on yourself, Clay, when you know. And pray
to God that no other demon may ever be born into this accursed house!"
* * * * *
The bare and ancient rafters were low upon his locked attic room. It
was cold, and his two lamps could not dispel its sinister gloom. There
were chairs, and an antique writing-desk. The shelves were heavy with
dark and massive volumes in age-discolored bindings, whose titles,
a glance told me, had all to do with the history of witchcraft,
occultism, lycanthropy, demonology, and darker lore. A tall glass
cabinet held crystal globes, grotesque little idols and figurines of
wood and wax, parcels of dried herbs, and a few stained and rusted
weapons.
"My study and museum," Doctor Kyle boomed, as I shivered from the
musty chill. "Here I have carried on my research into the evil
practises that have festered in the hills of Creston. Knowing these
people, I have gained access to precious material. Clay, even now there
are hideous forbidden rites of demon-worship being----"
"Doctor," I broke in, "if you really have anything to say, say it."
"Sit down, Clay," he said.
But I was too much concerned to sit. I stood behind a chair, gripping
the back of it with my hands. Doctor Kyle paced up and down before me,
two or three times, running his lank fingers nervously across his bare
yellow scalp, as if to flatten invisible hair.
"I suppose you don't remember your mother, Clay?" he asked at length,
as if seeking an easy way into a difficult subject.
"No," I told him. "She died, and you brought me here, before I was two
years old."
"We told you that she died," his voice rumbled, suddenly hoarse and
low. "And you never knew of your twin?"
"You told me I was the last one of my family."
His flaming eyes stared at me, and his voice pealed solemnly:
"Your mother died only a few months ago, Clay. And your twin brother is
still living."
Questions thronged my mind. But the stinging dust of horror had
suddenly filled my throat. I could only listen, as that hollow voice
went on, like a booming chant of doom.
"I shall begin, Clay, with the early history of your family." His lean
hand gestured at the dark, heavy volumes on the shelves. "I have here
the library of your grandfather, Eliakim Coe. From his private papers
I have learned a great deal of the secret history of Creston--and of
your people.
"The first Coe in America came with a cloud upon his name--the Church
had almost obtained his conviction on charges of demonolatry. The Henry
Coe who founded Creston was a fugitive from the witchcraft trials of
Salem, and in this inaccessible wilderness he carried on the evil
worship that had roused the Puritan ire.
"These dark forests have hidden fearful things, Clay! It may shock you
to learn that for four hundred years every generation of your family
has dealt in every manner of Satanism, black magic, and demon-worship.
"Your grandfather, Eliakim Coe, was the last and the most powerful of a
line of wizards. But he paid a fearful price for his power. He paid his
daughter, Elizabeth, who was your mother."
"My mother!" I was bewildered and shocked.
"Your true father, Clay," continued that ringing, hypnotic chant, "was
not the distant cousin, Esmond Coe, who married your mother over your
grandfather's protests, and was found stabbed to death beside her on
the morning of the bridal night. No! That crime was but the beginning
of a frightful ceremony. And Eliakim Coe took his daughter, on the
night following, to a circle of stones about an ancient altar on the
summit of the mountain----"
"Once," the shuddering whisper was wrung from me, "I saw that altar!"
"And there," that dread, compelling voice throbbed on, "that diabolical
ceremony was carried to its blasphemous completion. Stripped and bound,
the virginal body of your mother was laid across the blackened altar.
In response to the esoteric forbidden rituals of the wizard, a Dark
Power came to claim the offering.
"And Eliakim Coe brought his daughter back, crippled and maddened, to
give birth to you, Clay--and to your twin!"
"What"--I forced out the faint whisper--"what do you mean?"
Doctor Latham Kyle snapped his jaws together. His yellow lips were
tight and hard as a mummy's. His deep eyes flamed at me. The boom of
his hollow voice was startling.
"Clay," he said, "there are forces, powers, entities, that science
has never glimpsed--because they are too colossal. But you must sense
the tremendous shadows that fall upon our tiny earth from the frigid
voids of space. Clay, you must know the fearful rulers of the fourth
dimension! Your own dark blood must whisper to you----"
I had to nod, in spite of the outraged protest clamoring in my brain.
For in the mystic Orient, as well as in my strange childhood, I had
seen things that science and sanity could not account for.
"Then----"
The dry, husky whisper crept like an odious reptile past my lips.
"Then--my father was not a man? And I'm not entirely--human?"
The yellow skull nodded solemnly; the hollow voice intoned:
"That is the hideous truth, Clay, that I have feared to tell you."
Panic was rushing through my heart, like a black and frozen wind.
"So that's why," I breathed, "I've always felt--different! That's why
I've always been a stranger among men! It's that evil blood that seizes
my body when I fight, like a destroying demon----"
"Yes," the low, booming voice caught the word. "The demon in you." The
flaming eyes lifted. "Through some accident of inheritance, the dark
blood is recessive in you, Clay. Physically, you appear quite human.
Psychically, you are also, save for the shadow of strangeness that you
feel, and for the waking of the demon when you fight.
"But I'm afraid for you, Clay!"
The terrible voice sank lower.
"Passion will awake that slumbering demon. It will transmute that
shadow into reality. You must walk with care, my son, or you will lose
all humanity, in a hideous reversion to the dark blood!
"If you married, you might become as monstrous as your brother. The
strange blood was dominant in him. Tonight, in wishing to see you,
he--or it--was displaying a fit of human emotion as rare as your fits
of evil. For the most part, your twin is a mad monstrosity----"
* * * * *
"Tonight!"
My mounting terror seized the word, and I reeled under an avalanche of
dread. Icy sweat drenched me. Sick, quivering, I sank against the back
of the chair. It was a little time before my lips could form the faint
query:
"Tonight? The thing in the cellar--that wanted me? That is my--my
_brother_?"
Doctor Kyle nodded. His dark eyes looked quickly away, as if with pity.
His voice throbbed to me faintly through the gray mist of dread:
"Your own brother, Clay. Its blood is your blood. Passion will cause
your reversion to its form. What is equally dreadful, if you should
marry Valyne, or any other woman, your children would probably be such
things as it is!"
The chill gloom of the musty attic chamber was spinning around me.
Fainter, ever receding, still I heard the booming tones:
"I attended your mother when you and your twin were born. I wanted to
destroy the other, but neither she nor her father would allow. There
was a strange perversity in her love. And Eliakim Coe desired the
monster in the practise of the dark art that was overwhelming him.
"As the strange being grew, your mother saw that it could never be
reared in the world of men. When you were two years old--when Eliakim
Coe died, a victim of the fearful powers he had summoned out of
space--she left you in this household, and took the other into the
forest.
"Clay, it was a dreadful, secret life that your mother led, for the
next twenty years and more, in these dark mountains above Creston! She
sacrificed herself for her monstrous son. She kept it in a cave, on
Blue Squaw Mountain.
"She had no contact with the world, save for her infrequent midnight
visits to me. But many a time, Clay, until the year when you left
Creston, she stood beside your bed at night, and even touched your
hair. But always she went back.
"A few months ago she came to me, ill. I told her that she was going
to die. On the last night of her life, she coaxed your strange brother
down from the cave, and gave it into my keeping. Since then we have
kept it in the cellar.
"I still feel that it should be destroyed--as I wanted to destroy it
when it was born. But I have preserved its life because of my promise
to your mother, and because it will be a living exhibit to prove the
authenticity of my book: _A History of the Sorceries and Demonolatries
of Creston_."
Fast in a frozen sea of dread, I dimly knew that Doctor Kyle was
turning toward the door. I could scarcely hear him say:
"You may go back to your room, Clay. You see why you can never marry
Valyne."
_4. At the Mercy of--Monstrosity!_
Back in my own frosty room, I collapsed on the bed. I tried to think.
But red chaos ruled my brain. Only one clear thought emerged: If I
couldn't marry Valyne Kirk, then I must die.
I tried to doubt what Doctor Kyle had told me. It was hideously
incredible, and belief in it meant death. But the sober, convincing
manner of his telling, the strangeness that had shadowed all my life,
the lurking dread that festered in Creston, the hideous monster in the
cellar--these combined to bring me maddening conviction.
I tried to think it a lie. But what reason had Doctor Kyle to lie to
me, to whom he had always been a second father? What motive could he
have for a deception calculated only to drive me away from Creston,
a crazed and hopeless fugitive, for ever? And what lie could have
darkened all my life, and set me apart from men, even in the distant
East?
No! I could not escape the clutching intuition of horror. Strange and
fearful blood burned through my body. In all the world was no being of
my own kind--none save that chained monstrosity! And my love for Valyne
could give birth only to terror, madness, and death.
Distantly, from below, I heard a sound like howling, and a chain
clanking, and wood splintering. The monster--my twin----
Cold, trembling, I sat up on the edge of the bed. It was struggling;
perhaps it would escape. A terrible resolve steadied me. I would never
see it again.
I strode grimly to the window. Outside was night; the silent,
immemorial forests of Creston; the gloomy, tangled slope of Blue
Squaw Mountain, whose summit was crowned with that altar of frightful
sacrifice.
Shrinking from the darkness and the horror of it, I was suddenly
conscious of the weight sagging against my chest. There was a surer
way....
With a hand now steady, I slipped the automatic out of its holster. It
was heavy and cold and black. Its grim steel efficiency was a match for
all the festering evil of ancient Creston. I snapped back the slide and
watched the bright, blunt cartridge leap into the chamber.
I thrust the hard muzzle resolutely against my temple, hardly conscious
of the quiet, swift rapping upon my door. But it was flung open, and
Valyne rushed to me. Her urgent hand jerked my arm away.
"Clay! Clay!" gasped her terrified whisper. "I came because I was
afraid you would!"
She stood before me. Her trembling hand still held down the gun. Her
breast was fluttering to her quick breathing. Her violet eyes, wide,
glistening with tears, held my face. The live, pulsating beauty of
her slim body stung my own eyes with tears. Every soft line of it was
infinitely precious. My resolution found new steel.
"Why shouldn't I?" I rasped the hoarse demand. "You know what I am! You
know why we can't marry! And that the sooner I die the less likely I am
to revert to--to something hideous!"
"I know what Doctor Kyle says." Her eyes probed to the back of my
brain. "And you believe it, Clay?"
"I--I do. I tried not to. But my whole life points to the truth of
it--even to the rage that struck down Jud Geer!
"You must go away, Valyne," I said. I pushed her toward the door. "You
must let me kill that fiend in me before it injures you."
Her body stood tremulously firm against the pressure of my hands.
"You don't understand, Clay," she told me, and a ringing strength was
in her voice. "Even if it's true, I can't let you die--alone! For I
love you, Clay."
I returned the gun to its holster, and caught her hands in mine. For I
had been touched and elated by the sudden conviction that our love was
a pure flame that could burn all the tainting horror from my blood.
Her warm hands clasped mine, and she whispered:
"Clay, promise me that you will live as long as I do! Promise me that
you will never again surrender to that horror! Just promise. And we
will go away from Creston, in the morning, as we planned. Perhaps
we can find a way to happiness. At least we can be together for a
while--and together when we die!"
I promised. I thought we might consult some psychiatrist or
occultist....
* * * * *
The glory of her love seemed for a little time to banish the sinister
chill of evil from the room. I begged her to stay with me; for the
dread that still haunted me was stronger than my regard for convention.
And perhaps she would have stayed; for she too was strained and white
with unuttered forebodings.
But there was a light, hurried knocking on the door, and old Sarah Kyle
hobbled into the room. Her dark, pointed face was bloodless. Her small,
bright eyes darted about the room, and a thin, anxious whisper lisped
from her toothless mouth:
"Have ye seen it, Clay? Have ye heard it?"
"You mean----" I wet my lips. "You mean the thing in the cellar?"
Her glittering eyes met mine, veiled with unspeakable dread.
"Your brother," shrilled her tremulous whisper, "has broken his chains
and gone."
I swayed, and caught Valyne to me, as if an icy dark wind had sought to
drag her away.
The cracked whisper insisted:
"Have ye heard it?"
"Half an hour ago I heard the chain rattling, and the sound of
breaking wood."
The thin lips came together, like strips of dried leather.
"That must have been when it escaped. God knows where it went!"
Valyne whispered, into the fearful silence:
"What will it do, Mother Kyle?" Her big violet eyes came to me, with a
naked horror pleading in them. "One day," she whispered, "I went down
into the cellar, and it saw me through the bars. It wanted me, Clay! It
tried to break out. For days it howled, and wouldn't touch its food.
"I'm afraid, Clay."
Her tense, trembling arms slipped around my neck, and her frightened
eyes went back to Sarah Kyle.
Her thin lips still were pursed.
"I don't know what it will do," her thin voice said slowly. "It is
cunning, and aflame with demon lusts. You're in danger, Valyne. Go back
to your room, and lock the door. The rest of us must try to find it.
The doctor and the servants are searching, now.
"And you must be careful for yourself, Clay. It was friendly, a while
ago--it knew its own blood. But if it learns that you love Valyne, its
affection will turn to jealous rage....
"_Listen!_"
The whispered warning fell suddenly, and for a moment we were silent in
the frosty room.
"I thought I heard it," said Sarah Kyle. "We must hasten. You must keep
with me, Clay. The doctor thinks it will come to you."
In a shivering voice, Valyne said:
"Let me go with you."
"No, darling," protested the old woman; "you must keep out of its
sight. Remember, once it went mad at sight of you. If it saw you again,
we could never quiet it. And it might harm you."
Valyne acquiesced, and we took her to her room. She kissed me, and her
lips were cold.
"Remember your promise, Clay," she whispered. "And tomorrow we shall go
away together. Don't let it harm you!"
We heard the lock snap in her door, and went down the stairs.
Sarah Kyle took a kerosene lamp from the dining-table.
"We shall go to the cellar to begin." Her bright, sunken eyes darted at
me suddenly. "Have ye any sense for it, Clay? Any intuition from the
common blood? Do ye think that ye could trail it?"
"I don't know."
My dazed brain was still spinning blindly along the black, swift river
of horror.
"The doctor says it will come to you," she was saying. "And when it
comes, I can calm it. It ever heeded me----"
"It won't come to nobody," put in the flat, mannish voice of big
Josepha Hand, who had just appeared out of the dark hall. "It wants
that girl! It smelled the odor of her on _him_, when he came to speak
to it. It broke out to git her, and it won't come to nobody----"
* * * * *
Sarah Kyle led the way down the steps, and I carried the lamp into the
walled-off cell. The heavy door had been crushed outward, torn from its
hinges as if by some terrific projectile. A broken length of rusty iron
chain lay across the threshold. Beyond was a rude wooden trough, which
had been overturned, to spill dark, clotted blood across the foul stone
floor.
Suffocatingly strong in the room was that acrid, animal stench. Reeling
with its nausea, I stumbled back toward the door. But an idea had
struck me. The others had seemed unaware of the odor; perhaps I had an
abnormal sensitivity to it. If I could follow the trail----
Faintly, then, I heard Valyne's scream.
I ran up the two flights of stairs to her room, vainly cursing the
blind folly that had left her alone. Sarah Kyle came clattering along
behind, carrying the lamp.
"Valyne!" I gasped, at the door. "Valyne, are you all right?"
The answer was the bang of a loose shutter.
The door was still locked. I kicked it twice, thrust my arm through the
hole to twist the key that she had left in the lock. The yellow flicker
of Sarah Kyle's lamp showed that the room was empty. The bed was turned
down; a filmy pink night-dress was laid across the pillow.
The window was open; the unfastened shutter banged again.
Ashen-faced, Sarah Kyle was staring out into the frosty dark.
"It was outside," she whispered. "It climbed over the tool shed, and
broke through the window. It has carried the poor darling out into the
forest."
Her voice became a thin, fervid scream.
"I wish to God my husband had killed that fiend when it was born!"
"Where"--the wild whisper leapt from my lips--"where are the others?"