I
He stared into a hollow that was filled with shifting forms, moving
figures that were slices of darkness before the lanterns. Faces passed
and repassed before his curious gaze, paused, bent forward, turned,
leaned toward one another, disappeared, and it was some minutes before
he could make them out, could recognize them as human faces that he
had once viewed vacantly in the quiet lanes of Marlborough. He had not
expected so much light, so much action. As his eyes adjusted themselves
to the scene before them he began to perceive the spectacle as a whole,
almost as a painting whose component parts might be observed and then
relegated to their proper order. He sensed Walden Slater creeping into
the bush beside him but he made no gesture of comprehension, merely
shifting his position a trifle so that the farmer, too, might see
what was going on in the hollow. For his own part, he was intent on
the spectacle before him, watching eagerly for the one face of all
faces and subconsciously deliberating in his mind what he should do
when he did see that face. The hollow was large and level and the
ground upon which these people walked was dark and firm. There was
no grass, no growths of any sort. It stretched like a black carpet
to the ring of bushes that hemmed it on all sides. It was a natural
amphitheater, an arena formed by chance. Circling this expanse of
black soil was a series of lanterns, perhaps twenty of them, placed
at regular intervals and lighting up the scene as though it were a
stage and they were footlights. The beams of yellow glowed upward,
striking the lower portions of faces and distorting them. Chins and
nostrils and the undersides of cheek-bones were crazily illuminated
in this unnatural light. In the center of the hollow loomed a large
flat-topped rock, perhaps five feet high. It was black stone glittering
now with moisture, with the rain that had fallen so steadily on it
all through the day and night. There was something ominous about this
stone, something unclean, and the young doctor studied it with intense
loathing. Its slimy black sides were like the skin of some great horrid
toad, smooth yet studded with offensive warts that caught the glow
of the lanterns and flung them back again to the misty night. Dreeme
wondered if it were true that crumbling bones were buried in the dark
soil beneath this rock which seemed so immovable, so placed there by
time in the center of this secret amphitheater. The rock appeared as
old as the ages. It seemed riven immutably into the earth. Yet it was
unmistakably the Devil Stone and from its moist toad-like surface the
Black Man had preached his blasphemous sermons in times past, had
conducted the orgiastic liturgies of the Witches’ Sabaoth and the
Esbat. There was no one near the stone now. It stood malevolently, a
shunned phenomenon in the hollow. “Rock of Ages.” Yes, this was the
Rock that George Burroughs meant when he hummed monotonously the old
church tune.
Dreeme’s eyes drifted over the faces that moved about in the hollow.
There were, perhaps, twenty people present, all men. The low hum
of their subdued voices reached him distinctly. They walked about
slowly, clutching their rain-coats closely to their tall bodies, their
heavy boots falling heavily on the dark soil. Something feverish and
repressed in their movements injected a tense note into the assemblage.
They seemed uncertain of themselves, a little hysteric and desperately
straining to conceal the hysteria that quickened their blood and
plucked at their nerves. There was doubt here, a doubt that sickly
denied itself. Sober faces gazed blankly at one another and sunken
fanatical eyes glittered in the lantern glow like wet beetles. The
young doctor observed one tall figure that walked round and round just
within the circle of lanterns ceaselessly, pausing before no one but
moved apparently by an interior restlessness that would not permit him
to stop. As the man passed a short distance from where the young doctor
lay hidden he recognized him as Bidwell, the farmer whose land adjoined
Westcott’s toward the Saccarac River. Bidwell’s mouth was moving
steadily as though he were talking rapidly to himself. And now as
Dreeme’s eyes became accustomed to the scene he recognized more faces.
There was Lacy, the post-master and proprietor of the general store,
a stork-like man with a carbuncular nose, and Winship, one of the
selectmen, stout, worried-looking, and somewhat at a loss, and Titubit,
the dark hawk-nosed farmer who was supposed to have Indian blood in his
veins, and Corey, the tanned white-haired owner of Corey’s Acres on the
lower road. Dreeme had attended all of these men at some time or other
for minor ailments and he viewed them now with a disbelieving wonder,
half-suspecting that any minute the whole scene would vanish in thin
air and he would wake up in bed sweating from a nightmare. Yet here
they were, and others whose faces he dimly recognized but whose names
he could not place, strolling nervously about the dark hollow, waiting
restlessly and suspiciously for some evil thing to happen, stirred by
some daemon of hereditary madness that had been wakened in their blood
and brains after sleeping for years. Dreeme crouched lower in the
bushes and watched them attentively. His few garments were saturated
with water and the cold wind blew across his back yet his pulses were
beating fast enough and the warmth of excitement shuddered along his
drenched flesh. Beside him he could feel the heavy shoulders of Walden
Slater.
It was all a psychological riddle, something to be unravelled at
leisure and explained after the event. Some power had frightened
these men out of their taciturn ruts of living into the mockery of an
ancient superstition. A legend had come down with uncommon vividness
through the centuries and the will of a madman had resurrected it to
terrible life. Old impulses, too powerful to resist, had been set free
and they were following these impulses suspiciously yet absolutely.
Dreeme studied the face of Corey and wondered. White-haired, almost
saintly-looking, the farmer walked slowly about in low conversation
with Lacy who lifted his round uneven knob of a nose like a wolf about
to howl at the moon. The fever was growing on these men now and their
movements became faster and jerkier. They stared about them expectantly
and as they stared their hands quivered. The yellow lanterns flung
fantastic blossoms of light into the bushes, colored blossoms that
glowed on the wet branches.
Dreeme caught his breath suddenly. Silently, almost stealthily,
Jeffrey Westcott had appeared from behind the black stone. He stood
observing the score of men with expressionless dark eyes, watching
their movements as they shifted to and fro, saying nothing, waiting for
them to see him. Immediately the group approached him, standing within
a few feet of the Devil Stone. They gathered silently, standing in a
half-circle, their backs to Dreeme and Walden Slater. Westcott observed
them coldly and when they had achieved their half-circle and were
motionless he climbed to the top of the black slimy stone. Standing
so, five feet in the air, Dreeme could see him perfectly, a stocky
figure garmented entirely in black, his cloven head bowed slightly, the
yellow glow from the lanterns catching the lower part of his face--the
blue shaven chin and heavy cheek-bones. In his hands he held a square
black book which he lifted slowly. The men before him seemed to sigh
and sway back. Westcott held this book high in the air for a full
minute. Then he looked up into the misty night air intently and cried
in a suppressed hoarse voice:
“Asmodeus! Asmodeus!”
The men stood fixedly, their heads thrust slightly forward as though
they were listening. After an instant’s silence Westcott said:
“He stands at Dagon. He enters into me.”
A shudder shook his heavy frame and the black book slipped from his
hand, falling to the surface of the stone with a dull slap.
Dreeme, listening as intently as the men, heard nothing but the
infrequent spatter of rain-drops as the tree-tops swayed and the wind
that shook them, a husky sighing wind that sounded like the hoarse
breathing of a giant. He wanted to shout, “You fool! There is nothing
to hear but night sounds!” The aspect of Jeffrey Westcott fascinated
him, however. The farmer’s face was lighted with an evil smile, his
eyes glittered and danced in the lantern-light, and his heavy hands
were clasped before him. A tenseness held his bulky body and he
seemed to grow with this tenseness, to enlarge until Dreeme could not
say whether he were six feet high or twelve. It was an illusion but
an illusion so well maintained that the young doctor automatically
understood how easily Westcott could sway these superstitious farmers
who stood before him, a strained expectancy on their weather-beaten
faces, their hands clenched, their bodies visibly quivering. It was an
evil transfiguration wrought inwardly. Nothing but the most dynamic
belief in one’s self, in one’s own powers, could cause it. The farmer
was in a rapt state now, in a moving and speaking trance. He lifted his
hands up to the night. In the same suppressed hoarse voice he cried:
“Enter in to us, Asmodeus! Enter in to your heritage! Were we not sold
to you by the bond of blood by Salem Village two hundred and thirty
years ago? In the deep forest you accepted us and made a pact with us.
We forsook all other gods but you for you were the eternal will of man.
Though we have slept for generations the ancient pact still holds.
Under this rock lies the testimonial of the bones. The bones cry out to
you, Asmodeus. We cry out to you.”
A murmur like a sigh swept through the cluster of attentive men.
“By the aching of the bones, we call upon your strength,” cried
Westcott.
“By the aching of the bones, we call upon your strength,” murmured the
men.
“By the secret head of the Sacred Goat, we call upon your strength,”
the farmer cried again.
“By the secret head of the Sacred Goat, we call upon your strength,”
repeated the men.
The litany went on.
“By the Black Book that our fathers owned we call upon your strength.”
“By the Black Book that our fathers owned we call upon your strength.”
“By the Hidden Face in the rock we call upon your strength.”
“By the Hidden Face in the rock we call upon your strength.”
“By the Cloven Hoof that walks in the darkness we call upon your
strength.”
“By the Cloven Hoof that walks in the darkness we call upon your
strength.”
“By the Lost Road that our fathers followed we call upon your strength.”
“By the Lost Road that our fathers followed we call upon your strength.”
“O Asmodeus, give me my purpose.”
“O Asmodeus, give me my purpose.”
Beads of perspiration stood out on Jeffrey Westcott’s forehead. His
body shook violently. He cried loudly:
“Asmodeus! Janicot!”
A thin white froth appeared on his lips and his face writhed. The
farmers before him were swaying from side to side excitedly and
suddenly one of them, little more than a boy, screamed and fell upon
the wet ground, his talon-like hands clutching at the black soil.
“Aie! Aie!” shouted the boy, his white face tossing from side to side
and his eyes tightly closed. Westcott leaped from the rock and knelt
for a moment by the boy. Then he lifted him up and bore him to the
great stone, placing him beside the black book. The farmers surged
forward, some of them moaning, all of them shaking as though in an
intense ague. Their hands were outstretched and quivering.
Dreeme watched the ceremony with amazement, noting that Westcott by the
power of his will, apparently, had lashed these people into a mystical
fury that was close to the trance-state. They would believe whatever
he had to say implicitly now for their individualities were lost and
they were a mingled mob madness. The swiftness of the whole proceeding
was the surprising part of it to the young doctor. Then he realized
that these men had gathered here for some time, that an overpowering
realization of helplessness inborn in their blood weakened their powers
of resistance, and that Westcott’s powerful personality had sapped
their independence and reason long before this. They were a poisoned
and hysterical breed.
Westcott stood beside the possessed boy, his hand upon the heaving
chest of the victim. He stared about the half-circle with glittering
eyes, his yellow teeth--yellow as the flames of the lanterns--bared in
a smile.
“He sleeps,” he said, indicating the boy, “he sleeps in the arms of the
Master. Dagon is filled with the Master. The ground cries out and the
bones tremble.”
Even as he spoke the scene darkened and a gust of wind blew so heavily
that the lantern-flames behind their heavy glass protectors slanted
sideways. It was like the descent of a sudden cloud, an abrupt eclipse
in answer to Westcott’s solemn speech. For an instant it paralyzed the
watching doctor and trembling chills, icy-cold, ran up and down his
spine. He felt the surge of something huge and shapeless and black and
irremediably evil, a presence that was beyond description and vision
filling the hollow. A soft hand seemed to tap tentatively at his face
and then, without warning, sharp talons clutched at the back of his
neck. For an instant he dared not move. He fought fiercely with an
intense desire to scream. Then, summoning every iota of his will power,
he cautiously raised his hand and thrust back the thorny branch of
the bush that the gust of wind had blown against his neck. A flood of
relief poured through his tired wet body and as he felt the released
blood throbbing through his arteries the gust of wind died away and
the lantern-flames lifted their flattened spears of yellow. He thought
to himself how easily the imagination could drive the nerves before it
in riotous debacle. It was fear that was the great enemy, fear of the
unknown, fear of the stronger will, fear of the old wife’s tales that
thousands of years of self-preservation against mysterious phenomena
had planted in the feeble mortal body. There was no safety in life
except by the deliberate massacre of one’s fears. Well, he would
throttle these unworthy spasms and surmount the horror of these cruel
tricks. He fastened his entire intelligence again upon the scene before
him.
The inanimate boy on the Devil’s Stone had ceased to breathe
frantically. His bosom no longer rose and fell furiously. Instead
of this he seemed to be quietly sleeping. Westcott, placing his arm
beneath the boy’s head, raised the body to a sitting posture and the
pale unconscious face with its closed eyes gazed out blindly upon the
assembled farmers. For an instant Westcott’s hand rested lightly upon
the boy’s white forehead. Then he said:
“Are you one with the Name?”
“With the Name,” answered the boy. His voice was high and clear.
“Is the Master with you?” went on Westcott.
“With me,” responded the boy.
“Is he saying things?” proceeded the farmer.
“Saying things,” repeated the boy.
The farmers listened avidly although they still swayed slowly from side
to side and now and then one of them would whimper softly as though he
were in pain.
“What do you see?” inquired Westcott. His own eyes were shut and he
appeared to be undergoing a fierce mental reaction.
“See,” said the boy.
There was a pause while the wind soughed softly in the trees and bushes
and the infrequent spatter of great rain-drops fell in the shadows. The
boy’s mouth opened and closed speechlessly. He half-raised one arm. His
throat throbbed. Then, in the same clear tone in which he had spoken
throughout, he said:
“The bones move together. The dust assembles. I see a skeleton. Flesh
comes out of darkness like an army of white ants and clusters upon the
bones. A body lies beneath the rock. It opens its eyes and lifts its
hands. It is the body that is speaking to me.”
He paused. The farmers waited expectantly. The boy’s lips moved again.
This time the startling voice of a deep-chested man issued from his
mouth. It was like a great voice calling from a tomb and it struck upon
Dreeme’s ears with dismay.
“At Dagon we set the Rock for our children’s children’s children. We
marched through deep trees and the feathered men watched our fires from
the darkness beyond the rings of light. We caroused and danced through
the virgin land and the Master walked before us with a smiling face. We
raised our rooftrees in the valley without doors and our fires went up
to an alien sky. When the moon walked on the farthest hills we traveled
the long path to the Rock and danced before the Master. We beat upon
cymbals and drums. We whistled and cried lewd words to the naked women
who laughed in the bushes. We felt the fever of life in our veins
and knew that it was well with us. We were unhumbled and proud and
possessors of time. We devoured our enemies for the Master’s will was
our will. We set no bounds to life for all life was within our bounds.
We bowed only to one law and that was the law of the Master and though
the pale faced priests harried us we existed beyond them in a free land
of the Master’s conceiving. The Master took us up to the mountain top
and showed us the riches of the world and the cities of the plain and
we said ‘yes’ to him and all those things became our own. Our farms
prospered in the valley without doors and the rain came and we saw that
it was well with us. And we knew the Master to be the living god of the
free will, the voice that spoke in the darkness to us and said, ‘do so
and so,’ and we did these things and we prospered and lived long years
and the sun shone upon us.”
The great voice died away and the boy fell back limply upon the stone,
his head resting upon the black book. Westcott lifted him quickly and
bore him to a side of the circle where he placed him upon the wet
ground. The farmers stood motionless now. They were like figures in a
trance. They made no gestures as Westcott walked slowly back to the
rock and mounted to it. His dark eyes swept over the gathering and from
where Dreeme lay he thought that he could see the thin ghost of a smile
flit across the farmer’s determined mouth.
“You have heard,” he said. “You have heard the voice from the bones,
the voice of your ancestor, speaking. You have heard how good life was
when the children of the Master first came into this valley. And how
have you fallen away from that high estate! How have you lost that
greatness when you walked like the sons of the morning! The years have
come between you and the Master and you have fallen away from that
source of all power. You bend weary backs over meager farms and live
from hand to mouth and your heritage is just beyond you in the shadow
of Time. You have but to reach out your hands and take it. Instead of
this, you deny the impulses that are in your blood and avoid the final
gestures that would liberate you from the entangling bonds of fear and
superstition and false gods. There is no other god but the Master! He,
alone, exists and he, alone, is the tower of your strength. The Master
sums up all things in himself. He is the will, the invulnerable will,
the will to power, the will to happiness, the will to self-realization.
It is only by symbols and liturgies and ceremonies that you may induce
the Master to enter into you. I bring the Master to you. I bring the
key to the door, the lantern to the darkness, the will to the deed.
I am the Black Man. I am the prophet possessed by the Master. I do
not bring you a god that you may see, a god that you may touch. I
bring you an essence, an invulnerable essence that speaks through the
mouths of living people, that rises in trances, that permeates time,
that joins the dead with the living, that is called evil but is yet
beyond evil, a god that is strength and food and determination and
skill and craft and understanding and self-realization and power. This
is the god I bring you and because he has no other name you may call
him what you will, Asmodeus, Janicot, Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, any
name that stands for the opposite of the cold power that destroys the
eternal will within you. He is a jealous god and he will endure no
other rivals. He speaks in thunder and he walks upon the mountaintops
by night. His face is hidden in darkness and his hands hover over the
cities of the plain. The brightness of his face is turned only to
the adept. If you desire that complete emancipation from obligations
and hardships and the domination of alien things you will turn
whole-heartedly to him. Your fathers did it before you and they lived
in a Paradisal valley and fulfilled themselves completely. But you must
cleanse yourselves of old weaknesses if you would be like your fathers.
The will is buried in you but you must excavate it, must dig it out of
the dross of many days and many years. To do this you must pass through
rituals and ceremonies, must give yourselves whole-heartedly to the
Master. Then, and not till then, will you feel the dark flower growing
in you, the intense inward ecstasy that lifts you through deliriums to
that plane where the Master walks and controls the events of the ages.
The rituals are but the outward symbols of the interior miracles. The
flesh is a weak and uncertain thing and it must be driven upward into
the mystical regions by visible signs and ceremonies. It is for this
that I have called you here, calling each one by the sign of the Goat’s
Head which your father used before you, that we may establish, or
rather renew, the coven of Marlborough, the coven that was driven from
Salem Village in 1692 and which has slept with all its symbols beneath
this rock for so many years.”
He paused and gazed about him. A few muttered words passed between
the farmers, who, while Westcott was talking so persuasively, had
recovered in great part from their emotional excitement. Dreeme, from
his secret place of vantage, had listened with a reluctant admiration.
He could understand that, given the blood impulses of these men and the
dark shadow of ancestral urges and one-sided fanaticism, the speech
just delivered would seem reasonable and convincing. This was what
they had been fighting against half-heartedly for so many decades.
The young doctor instinctively thought of all the crazy cults that
permeated American life, the free love colonies, the Holy Rollers, the
theosophical circles, the Rosicrucians, the Spiritualists, the esoteric
societies, and he understood how easy it was to lead the secret wish
into the deed. Westcott controlled these men now and he could do with
them what he willed. They were ripe for a fanatical outbreak. As the
young doctor observed the farmers he noted that there was no opposition
whatsoever, no desire to question the truth of what Westcott was
saying, no antagonistic rationalism. Even the white-haired Corey
seemed to grow in stature to the farmer’s words, to take into himself,
as it were, the essence of will of which Westcott spoke. As for the
dominating farmer he stood upon the Devil Stone with sparkling eyes,
an image of self-contained power, gazing down at the men before him.
Bidwell’s nasal voice rose in the stillness.
“What must we do?” he asked.
Westcott shut his eyes. He appeared to be communing with invisible
powers. Then he picked up the black book and held it against his
breast. He said:
“We must throw all our strength into a sacrifice. Into this sacrifice
we must wish all our weaknesses and when the ceremony is accomplished
we shall be cleansed and bound together by an awful and secret
knowledge.”
He paused and glanced about him as the men gazed fearfully at one
another. Then he said:
“We must abolish fear. We must destroy the conscience. We may only do
this by a terrible sacrifice.”
He shut his eyes and turned his face upward to the night.
“Asmodeus!” he cried. “Is this well?”
Suddenly from the recumbent body of the boy which lay near the circle
of lanterns came the deep voice that they had heard before.
“A sacrifice!” he cried. “A sacrifice!”
At the same instant the bushes opposite Dreeme’s haven of concealment
parted and the Reverend George Burroughs, tall, sallow, serious,
stepped into the light of the lanterns. He walked slowly toward the
rock, his eyes expressionless wells of darkness. Dreeme’s pulses beat
faster at the sight of him for he understood that the presence of
the preacher meant also the presence of Deborah. Beside him he felt
Walden Slater cautiously move. The farmer seemed to be extricating
something from beneath his coat. Burroughs paused by the rock, his
long yellow hand resting lightly on the toad-like surface. He gazed
about him calmly. Dreeme, as far away as he was, could sense the
impalpable atmosphere of malevolence that emanated from the preacher.
It was a still icy restrained power confident of itself and supremely
indifferent. For the first time the young doctor saw the preacher
as he was, a creature of vindictive strength and sly calculation, a
quiet creeping madness that permeated Marlborough. If Jeffrey Westcott
was the self-appointed god of this impossible fanaticism then George
Burroughs was the high priest, the militant Satanist, the tactician who
hid behind a veil of holiness. The man’s sallow horse-like countenance
dominated the assembly although he had not spoken a word. Even the
repressed hysteria of Jeffrey Westcott faded before this still horrible
strength that poised lightly by the Devil’s Stone and with a single
glance read the minds of the perturbed and chaotic farmers before him.
Dreeme crouched lower in his place of concealment. Beside him he could
feel the tense form of Walden Slater coiled like a heavy steel spring,
ready to dart forth at the slightest gesture. There was strength in
Walden Slater and it seemed to seep mercifully into the cold body of
the young doctor. Burroughs opened his wide mouth and his neighing
voice broke the shifting silence. He said:
“In the beginning there was nothing. But the Will moved on the face
of the flickering gases and the Will established the earth and the
vegetation on the face of the earth and the beasts and men who walked
upon the face of the earth. And there were two gods. And one was the
god of that weakness called good and the other was the god of that
strength called evil. But the god of goodness was an invisible god who
lived in a mist. The god of evil made the world and all the things that
are in the world. He fashioned all our pleasures and placed the seed of
his eternal Will within us. It is that god who calls us to the place
called Dagon that we may worship him and enter into our heritage.”
He paused and stared before him. For an instant Dreeme thought that
the piercing black eyes of the preacher threaded the heavy leaves
of the bush behind which the young doctor lay and he tightened his
muscles, preparing to spring forward at the first word. Burroughs made
no gesture, however. His eyes reverted to the farmers before him. He
was patently searching for new words, for further demonstration of his
Manichean doctrine of an evil god controlling an evil world. Apparently
he found the words for his neighing voice rose again in the stillness.
“We have been chosen out of all the people in this land for we are the
children of our fathers. I am the child of my fathers and if you will
read the withered records you will find that my name is not unknown
among the disciples who followed the Master. I have lived and died many
times. I have walked through many centuries. I have listened to the
Voice in many lands and the Voice has told me many things. I carry the
wisdom of the decades within me. I have told you these things before,
in your houses, in the fields, in the dark places of the forest. You
have listened to me. You are here. Together we shall discipline our
wills until they become a part of the major Will that controls all
things. We shall persecute our enemies in the darkness. We shall
achieve our ends, our desires, through the malefic intensity of our
wills. We shall dance at the full of the moon and sink into divine
trances where we shall discover all things. The Past and the Future
will become like open books to us. To reach this desirable plane we
must murder the pale sick consciences, inheritances of the god of mist,
that murmur weakly within us. We shall cleanse ourselves by charms and
sacrifices.”
His voice changed to a deeper tone and he gazed significantly at the
absorbed farmers.
“The one sin in our decalogue is weakness,” he said. “There was a
man amongst us who was weak. He was shaken by qualms. Through his
stupid brain crept the faint messages of conscience. He listened to a
woman and became her willing tool. He drew into our secret circle a
stranger, an obtuse fool from the outer world whose curiosity was like
that of a gossiping woman. What became of that man?”
He glanced savagely about him.
“The will of the Master came into me,” he cried, “and I struck him down
by the river. With my own hands I drove the pegs into the eyes that had
seen too much!”
Dreeme heard Walden Slater’s suddenly indrawn breath.
“And the obtuse fool!” neighed Burroughs, “What about the obtuse fool?”
“Let him leave the valley,” said Jeffrey Westcott suddenly. “Let him
leave the valley and forget us.”
“Too late!” cried Burroughs, still facing the farmers and paying no
attention to Westcott. “He must not leave the valley. He must be buried
in the valley.”
Dreeme’s mouth was a sharply drawn line. They would have to catch their
bird first.
“The will of the Master is ruthless,” declared the preacher, stretching
out a long skinny hand toward the silent group of farmers. The men
mumbled and muttered among themselves. Dreeme could see that they were
still crazed, that they were like men in a trance half-knowing what
they were doing but without the power of asserting themselves. Both
Westcott and Burroughs had these victims semi-mesmerized. They had
ceased to be rational men but were fanatics oblivious of consequences
and moved by a common spirit.
The insensible boy lying near the circle of lanterns moaned. He lifted
a hand weakly and it fell with a wet thud to the dark trampled soil.
“Sacrifice!” he cried, “Sacrifice!”
The glittering-eyed farmers surged about the rock. They lifted up
their hands to the night and bayed like lost hounds. Bidwell began to
shake rapidly and then to perform an awkward dance before the Devil
Stone. His eyes were closed. Suddenly Lacy lifted his snout up and
laughed, a long high-pitched mad laugh that sounded like a scream.
The white-haired Corey was clapping his hands together rhythmically.
Neither Westcott nor Burroughs moved. They stood by the rock watching
the insane farmers and once Dreeme thought he caught a significant
glance that passed between the two men. It was impossible to tell how
sincere these two leaders were, how much faith they placed in the
crazy doctrine they enunciated. Dreeme was certain that Westcott was
driven by his theory of the omnipotent will, that it had unhinged him,
that one half of his brain was diseased, but Burroughs was different.
He might just be a great charlatan, a born criminal who saw a way of
controlling the community by urging it into crime. Ostensibly he was
a minister of the gospel but inwardly he was a ferocious beast, a
furious figure all the more to be feared because of his saintly mask so
well worn in public. There was a blood-lust in him but whether or not
this blood-lust was propped up by the knowledge that he was a direct
descendant of the Salem witches was a mystery. Perhaps one would never
know. As Dreeme watched the swaying madness of the farmers he recalled
how, for two years, he had sat at a common table with the Reverend
George Burroughs and given him no more attention than he had the back
of the chair against which he had leaned. It was amazing, something
that either gave proof of the preacher’s skill at self-concealment
or his own stupidity as an observer. However, it was too late now
to wonder at these things or to berate one’s self for failing to
read character as it loomed before one’s nose. As Dreeme watched the
gyrations of the farmers his glance traveled beyond them to the line
of bushes opposite him, drawn, as it were, by some invisible power and
there, hanging bodiless on the wet green leaves, he saw the white face
of Martha Westcott peering into the circle. He was not surprised to
see her, indeed, he had expected her to put in an appearance sooner
or later. Just what her status was among these men, however, he could
not say. He did not believe that either Westcott or Burroughs trusted
her too far or permitted her to go any great distance beyond their
scrutiny. Her appearance seemed to be a signal for Burroughs walked
rapidly toward her and disappeared into the bushes with her. Dreeme’s
attention now concentrated upon that spot in the bushes for he was sure
that behind it was the woman he loved, the woman for whom he would
fight until the last drop of blood in his body had been spilled. The
farmers, too, were watching this spot in the bushes through which
Burroughs had disappeared. But they were watching with a mad laughing
expectancy, their tanned hands stretched out, their faces twisted and
their eyes glittering.
The bushes parted and Martha Westcott walked through them very slowly.
Her eyes were shut and she seemed to be in a trance. Holding her arms
straight before her she held in her hands a long thin-bladed knife.
Gazing neither to right nor left she proceeded straight to the Devil
Stone and stood by it holding the knife outstretched. Jeffrey Westcott
took the shining blade from her and placed it upon the rock. An awful
silence had fallen upon the hollow. The rain-drops had ceased and even
the wind, that had soughed so hoarsely through the leaves, had died
away. The farmers stood like wax figures, their faces frozen into
twisted smiles, their arms stiffly outheld. Dreeme felt the flesh
crawling upon his body. He stared fixedly at Martha Westcott, noting
how like some strange priestess she stood in her long black garment,
her white insensitive face an oval of clear luster in the light of
the lanterns, her heavy eyelids partially lowered over the great wide
eyes, her archaic mouth a mystic hieroglyph. She was like a being from
another world, a spectre from some pagan land. Though her smooth white
shoulder was garmented in black he could sense the blue goat’s head
burning upon it, shining through the close fabric, the goat’s head
that made her one with these maniacs who gathered in the darkness of
Nigger Swamp. Conflicting thoughts rushed through the young doctor’s
head. This woman had desired him. This evil goddess had come to him in
the middle of the night and she had shaken his will. If they were both
in another world perhaps.... He swiftly put the thought from him. No!
No! He must not weaken. He must not think of her in any way except as
an ominous reality that would steal his soul from him.
The bushes parted again and Burroughs strode forward swiftly carrying
in his arms a limp form. Dreeme recognized the preacher’s burden as
soon as he appeared with it and sprang up from the ground. It was
Deborah. She hung limply from the long black arm of Burroughs, like
some fragile white bird that had been shot down but not killed. Even as
Dreeme sprang to his feet Walden Slater’s resistless arm, the muscular
arm of a giant, dragged him down again and held him in the shadow of
the bush with a clutch like iron. “Wait!” the farmer whispered. “Wait!”
Burroughs advanced rapidly to the Devil Stone and laid Deborah’s body
upon it. The head of the girl fell sideways and Dreeme could see her
thin face and the blue circles of her closed eyes. Her bosom was rising
softly and regularly. She appeared to be in a calm sleep. Burroughs,
his black eyes fixed on the recumbent figure of the girl, reached for
the long knife and took it up. He climbed slowly to the top of the
Devil Stone and stood towering above the assemblage. He opened his
mouth to speak. He raised the knife. It glittered wanly in the light of
the flickering lanterns.
“Asmo...” he began.
A thunderous report over Dreeme’s head pitched him forward. In the
single instant when he sprang down the bank he saw the preacher’s eyes
wide with amazement and the dark gush of blood out of his neck. Then
the Reverend George Burroughs fell forward as a log falls, the knife
clattering from his hand upon the Devil Stone, and landed with a heavy
thud upon the dark soil. His skull crashed against an iron lantern
with the sound of a bursting cocoanut. Dreeme, already in the circle,
leaped over the body and rushed toward the rock. Behind him he heard
Walden Slater kicking the lanterns over as he stumbled forward, the
smoking revolver in his hand. The amazed farmers had scattered in all
directions and as Dreeme gathered Deborah up in his arms he caught a
moment’s glimpse of Westcott, the black book clutched to his breast,
darting through the bushes. The farmer was heading straight into Nigger
Swamp. All of this was observed automatically for the young doctor’s
sole concern was for the girl who had lain so helplessly upon the Devil
Stone. As he staggered along with her he gazed anxiously into her face
and listened to her breathing. She stirred a trifle and moaned and a
second later one thin arm slid over his shoulder blindly. He understood
that she was slowly coming out of an hypnotic sleep. He wanted to
shout, to laugh, to burst into tears. He clutched her all the tighter
to him in his delirium of joy and hurried forward striving to find the
narrow ribbon of road that would lead him back to the Westcott farm
and the highway to Marlborough. He had forgotten the maniac farmers,
Westcott and Burroughs, Martha Westcott, even Walden Slater. It was not
until he had plunged one leg up to the knee in the slime of the marsh
and knew that he was off the road that he reconsidered his predicament
and knew that only Slater could guide him through the swamp. He turned
and looked directly into the farmer’s face. There was a light of
victory in Walden Slater’s countenance and his eyes glistened. In his
hand he still held the revolver.
“Here,” said the farmer. He reached down a burly arm and hauled both
Dreeme and the girl back to the road. Then, without a word, he took
Deborah from the young doctor’s arms and stepped ahead. They circled
the hollow partially without gazing through the bushes and soon struck
the path by which they had come. Then, at a dog-trot, the sturdy farmer
started back to town with Dreeme at his heels.
“What ... happened?” inquired the young doctor breathlessly and
bewilderedly.
“Judgment Day,” replied Walden Slater. His voice was grim.
Behind them they could hear confused voices.
“Will there ... be more ... fighting?” panted Dreeme.
Walden Slater cleared his throat.
“Nope,” he said.
He coughed loudly and spat into the darkness.
“Nothing to fight about,” he added. “Nothing to make these fool farmers
mad now. It’s all over.”
They went on in silence after that. It was not until they had left the
swamp, climbed the open stretch into Briony Wood, and were once more
among the trees that Walden Slater spoke again.
“Westcott got away,” he said significantly. His voice was the voice
of a trial judge. He was the law personified. Dreeme understood him
perfectly.
“You’ve got five shells left,” he said.
“We’ll stop at the Westcott farm,” replied the farmer.