"Go back, for God's sake, Jim! I'm going on afoot."
I heard him whimper an oath, then his horse was galloping after mine,
and he was following me on foot. The thought that he must share my doom
sickened me, but I could not dissuade him; and ahead of me a supple
form was dancing in the shadows, luring me on--on--on....
I wasted no more bullets on that mocking shape. Braxton could not see
it, and I knew it was part of my enchantment, no real woman of flesh
and blood, but a hell-born will-o'-the-wisp, mocking me and leading me
through the night to a hideous death. A "sending," the people of the
Orient, who are wiser than we, call such a thing.
* * * * *
Braxton peered nervously at the black forest walls about us, and I knew
his flesh was crawling with the fear of sawed-off shotguns blasting
us suddenly from the shadows. But it was no ambush of lead or steel I
feared as we emerged into the moonlit clearing that housed the cabins
of Goshen.
The double line of log cabins faced each other across the dusty street.
One line backed against the bank of Tularoosa Creek. The back stoops
almost overhung the black waters. Nothing moved in the moonlight. No
lights showed, no smoke oozed up from the stick-and-mud chimneys. It
might have been a dead town, deserted and forgotten.
"It's a trap!" hissed Braxton, his eyes blazing slits. He bent forward
like a skulking panther, a gun in each hand. "They're layin' for us in
them huts!"
Then he cursed, but followed me as I strode down the street. I did
not hail the silent huts. I _knew_ Goshen was deserted. I felt its
emptiness. Yet there was a contradictory sensation as of spying eyes
fixed upon us. I did not try to reconcile these opposite convictions.
"They're gone," muttered Braxton, nervously. "I can't smell 'em. I can
always smell niggers, if they're a lot of 'em, or if they're right
close. You reckon they've already gone to raid Grimesville?"
"No," I muttered. "They're in the House of Damballah."
He shot a quick glance at me.
"That's a neck of land in the Tularoosa about three miles west of here.
My grandpap used to talk about it. The niggers held their heathen
palavers there back in slave times. You ain't--Kirby--you----"
"Listen!" I wiped the icy sweat from my face. "_Listen!_"
Through the black woodlands the faint throb of a drum whispered on the
wind that glided up the shadowy reaches of the Tularoosa.
Braxton shivered. "It's them, all right. But for God's sake,
Kirby--_look out!_"
With an oath he sprang toward the houses on the bank of the creek. I
was after him just in time to glimpse a dark clumsy object scrambling
or tumbling down the sloping bank into the water. Braxton threw up his
long pistol, then lowered it, with a baffled curse. A faint splash
marked the disappearance of the creature. The shiny black surface
crinkled with spreading ripples.
"What was it?" I demanded.
"A nigger on his all-fours!" swore Braxton. His face was strangely
pallid in the moonlight. "He was crouched between them cabins there,
watchin' us!"
"It must have been an alligator." What a mystery is the human mind! I
was arguing for sanity and logic, I, the blind victim of a compulsion
beyond sanity and logic. "A nigger would have to come up for air."
"He swum under the water and come up in the shadder of the bresh where
we couldn't see him," maintained Braxton. "Now he'll go warn Saul
Stark."
"Never mind!" The pulse was thrumming in my temples again, the roar of
foaming waters rising irresistibly in my brain. "I'm going--straight
through the swamp. For the last time, go back!"
"No! Sane or mad, I'm goin' with you!"
* * * * *
The pulse of the drum was fitful, growing more distinct as we advanced.
We struggled through jungle-thick growth; tangled vines tripped us; our
boots sank in scummy mire. We were entering the fringe of the swamp
which grew deeper and denser until it culminated in the uninhabitable
morass where the Tularoosa flowed into Black River, miles farther to
the west.
The moon had not yet set, but the shadows were black under the
interlacing branches with their mossy beards. We plunged into the
first creek we must cross, one of the many muddy streams flowing into
the Tularoosa. The water was only thigh-deep, the moss-clogged bottom
fairly firm. My foot felt the edge of a sheer drop, and I warned
Braxton: "Look out for a deep hole; keep right behind me."
His answer was unintelligible. He was breathing heavily, crowding close
behind me. Just as I reached the sloping bank and pulled myself up by
the slimy, projecting roots, the water was violently agitated behind
me. Braxton cried out incoherently, and hurled himself up the bank,
almost upsetting me. I wheeled, gun in hand, but saw only the black
water seething and whirling, after his thrashing rush through it.
"What the devil, Jim?"
"Somethin' grabbed me!" he panted. "Somethin' out of the deep hole.
I tore loose and busted up the bank. I tell you, Kirby, somethin's
follerin' us! Somethin' that swims under the water."
"Maybe it was that nigger you saw. These swamp people swim like fish.
Maybe he swam up under the water to try to drown you."
He shook his head, staring at the black water, gun in hand.
"It _smelt_ like a nigger, and the little I saw of it _looked_ like a
nigger. But it didn't _feel_ like any kind of a human."
"Well, it was an alligator then," I muttered absently as I turned
away. As always when I halted, even for a moment, the roar of
peremptory and imperious rivers shook the foundations of my reason.
He splashed after me without comment. Scummy puddles rose about our
ankles, and we stumbled over moss-grown cypress knees. Ahead of us
there loomed another, wider creek, and Braxton caught my arm.
"Don't do it, Kirby!" he gasped. "If we go into that water, it'll git
us sure!"
"What?"
"I don't know. Whatever it was that flopped down that bank back there
in Goshen. The same thing that grabbed me in that creek back yonder.
Kirby, let's go back."
"Go back?" I laughed in bitter agony. "I wish to God I could! I've got
to go on. Either Saul Stark or I must die before dawn."
He licked dry lips and whispered. "Go on, then; I'm with you, come
heaven or hell." He thrust his pistol back into its scabbard, and drew
a long keen knife from his boot. "Go ahead!"
I climbed down the sloping bank and splashed into the water that rose
to my hips. The cypress branches bent a gloomy, moss-trailing arch over
the creek. The water was black as midnight. Braxton was a blur, toiling
behind me. I gained the first shelf of the opposite bank and paused, in
water knee-deep, to turn and look back at him.
Everything happened at once, then. I saw Braxton halt short, staring at
something on the bank behind me. He cried out, whipped out a gun and
fired, just as I turned. In the flash of the gun I glimpsed a supple
form reeling backward, a brown face fiendishly contorted. Then in the
momentary blindness that followed the flash, I heard Jim Braxton scream.
Sight and brain cleared in time to show me a sudden swirl of the murky
water, a round, black object breaking the surface behind Jim--and then
Braxton gave a strangled cry and went under with a frantic thrashing
and splashing. With an incoherent yell I sprang into the creek,
stumbled and went to my knees, almost submerging myself. As I struggled
up I saw Braxton's head, now streaming blood, break the surface
for an instant, and I lunged toward it. It went under and another
head appeared in its place, a shadowy black head. I stabbed at it
ferociously, and my knife cut only the blank water as the thing dipped
out of sight.
I staggered from the wasted force of the blow, and when I righted
myself, the water lay unbroken about me. I called Jim's name, but there
was no answer. Then panic laid a cold hand on me, and I splashed to the
bank, sweating and trembling. With the water no higher than my knees I
halted and waited, for I knew not what. But presently, down the creek
a short distance, I made out a vague object lying in the shallow water
near the shore.
I waded to it, through the clinging mud and crawling vines. It was Jim
Braxton, and he was dead. It was not the wound in his head which had
killed him. Probably he had struck a submerged rock when he was dragged
under. But the marks of strangling fingers showed black on his throat.
At the sight a nameless horror oozed out of that black swamp water and
coiled itself clammily about my soul; for no human fingers ever left
such marks as those.
I had seen a head rise in the water, a head that looked like that of a
negro, though the features had been indistinct in the darkness. But no
man, white or black, ever possessed the fingers that had crushed the
life out of Jim Braxton. The distant drum grunted as if in mockery.
* * * * *
I dragged the body up on the bank and left it. I could not linger
longer, for the madness was foaming in my brain again, driving me
with white-hot spurs. But as I climbed the bank, I found blood on the
bushes, and was shaken by the implication.
I remembered the figure I had seen staggering in the flash of Braxton's
gun. _She_ had been there, waiting for me on the bank, then--not a
spectral illusion, but the woman herself, in flesh and blood! Braxton
had fired at her, and wounded her. But the wound could not have been
mortal; for no corpse lay among the bushes, and the grim hypnosis that
dragged me onward was unweakened. Dizzily I wondered if she could be
killed by mortal weapons.
The moon had set. The starlight scarcely penetrated the interwoven
branches. No more creeks barred my way, only shallow streams, through
which I splashed with sweating haste. Yet I did not expect to be
attacked. Twice the dweller in the depths had passed me by to attack
my companion. In icy despair I knew I was being saved for a grimmer
fate. Each stream I crossed might be hiding the monster that killed
Jim Braxton. Those creeks were all connected in a network of winding
waterways. It could follow me easily. But my horror of it was less than
the horror of the jungle-born magnetism that lurked in a witch-woman's
eyes.
And as I stumbled through the tangled vegetation, I heard the drum
rumbling ahead of me, louder and louder, in demoniacal mockery. Then
a human voice mingled with its mutter, in a long-drawn cry of horror
and agony that set every fiber of me quivering with sympathy. Sweat
coursed down my clammy flesh; soon my own voice might be lifted like
that, under unnamable torture. But on I went, my feet moving like
automatons, apart from my body, motivated by a will not my own.
The drum grew loud, and a fire glowed among the black trees. Presently,
crouching among the bushes, I stared across the stretch of black water
that separated me from a nightmare scene. My halting there was as
compulsory as the rest of my actions had been. Vaguely I knew the stage
for horror had been set, but the time for my entry upon it was not yet.
When the time had come, I would receive my summons.
A low, wooded island split the black creek, connected with the shore
opposite me by a narrow neck of land. At its lower end the creek split
into a network of channels threading their way among hummocks and
rotting logs and moss-grown, vine-tangled clumps of trees. Directly
across from my refuge the shore of the island was deeply indented by an
arm of open, deep black water. Bearded trees walled a small clearing,
and partly hid a hut. Between the hut and the shore burned a fire that
sent up weird twisting snake-tongues of green flames. Scores of black
people squatted under the shadows of the overhanging branches. When
the green fire lit their faces it lent them the appearance of drowned
corpses.
In the midst of the glade stood a giant negro, an awesome statue in
black marble. He was clad in ragged trousers, but on his head was a
band of beaten gold set with a huge red jewel, and on his feet were
barbaric sandals. His features reflected titanic vitality no less than
his huge body. But he was all negro--flaring nostrils, thick lips,
ebony skin. I knew I looked upon Saul Stark, the conjure man.
He was regarding something that lay in the sand before him, something
dark and bulky that moaned feebly. Presently, lifting his head, he
rolled out a sonorous invocation across the black waters. From the
blacks huddled under the trees there came a shuddering response, like
a wind wailing through midnight branches. Both invocation and response
were framed in an unknown tongue--a guttural, primitive language.
Again he called out, this time a curious high-pitched wail. A
shuddering sigh swept the black people. All eyes were fixed on the
dusky water. And presently an object rose slowly from the depths. A
sudden trembling shook me. It looked like the head of a negro. One
after another it was followed by similar objects until five heads
reared above the black, cypress-shadowed water. They might have been
five negroes submerged except for their heads--but I knew this was not
so. There was something diabolical here. Their silence, motionlessness,
their whole aspect was unnatural. From the trees came the hysterical
sobbing of women, and someone whimpered a man's name.
Then Saul Stark lifted his hands, and the five heads silently sank out
of sight. Like a ghostly whisper I seemed to hear the voice of the
African witch: "_He puts them in the swamp!_"
Stark's deep voice rolled out across the narrow water: "And now the
Dance of the Skull, to make the conjer sure!"
What had the witch said? "_Hidden among the trees you shall watch the
dance of the Skull!_"
* * * * *
The drum struck up again, growling and rumbling. The blacks swayed on
their haunches, lifting a wordless chant. Saul Stark paced measuredly
about the figure on the sand, his arms weaving cryptic patterns. Then
he wheeled and faced toward the other end of the glade. By some sleight
of hand he now grasped a grinning human skull, and this he cast upon
the wet sand beyond the body. "Bride of Damballah!" he thundered. "The
sacrifice awaits!"
There was an expectant pause; the chanting sank. All eyes were glued
on the farther end of the glade. Stark stood waiting, and I saw him
scowl as if puzzled. Then as he opened his mouth to repeat the call, a
barbaric figure moved out of the shadows.
At the sight of her a chill shuddering shook me. For a moment she stood
motionless, the firelight glinting on her gold ornaments, her head
hanging on her breast. A tense silence reigned and I saw Saul Stark
staring at her sharply. She seemed to be detached, somehow, standing
aloof and withdrawn, head bent strangely.
Then, as if rousing herself, she began to sway with a jerky rhythm,
and presently whirled into the mazes of a dance that was ancient when
the ocean drowned the black kings of Atlantis. I cannot describe it.
It was bestiality and diabolism set to motion, framed in a writhing,
spinning whirl of posturing and gesturing that would have appalled a
dancer of the Pharaohs. And that cursed skull danced with her; rattling
and clashing on the sand, it bounded and spun like a live thing in time
with her leaps and prancings.
[Illustration: "And that cursed skull danced with her, rattling and
clashing on the sand."]
But there was something amiss. I sensed it. Her arms hung limp,
her drooping head swayed. Her legs bent and faltered, making her
lurch drunkenly and out of time. A murmur rose from the people, and
bewilderment etched Saul Stark's black countenance. For the domination
of a conjure man is a thing hinged on a hair-trigger. Any trifling
dislocation of formula or ritual may disrupt the whole web of his
enchantment.
As for me, I felt the perspiration freeze on my flesh as I watched
the grisly dance. The unseen shackles that bound me to that gyrating
she-devil were strangling, crushing me. I knew she was approaching a
climax, when she would summon me from my hiding-place, to wade through
the black waters to the House of Damballah, to my doom.
Now she whirled to a floating stop, and when she halted, poised on her
toes, she faced toward the spot where I lay hidden, and I knew that she
could see me as plainly as if I stood in the open; knew, too, somehow,
that only she knew of my presence. I felt myself toppling on the edge
of the abyss. She raised her head and I saw the flame of her eyes,
even at that distance. Her face was lit with awful triumph. Slowly she
raised her hand, and I felt my limbs begin to jerk in response to that
terrible magnetism. She opened her mouth----
But from that open mouth sounded only a choking gurgle, and suddenly
her lips were dyed crimson. And suddenly, without warning, her knees
gave way and she pitched headlong into the sands.
And as she fell, so I too fell, sinking into the mire. Something burst
in my brain with a shower of flame. And then I was crouching among
the trees, weak and trembling, but with such a sense of freedom and
lightness of limb as I never dreamed a man could experience. The black
spell that gripped me was broken; the foul incubus lifted from my soul.
It was as if light had burst upon a night blacker than African midnight.
At the fall of the girl a wild cry arose from the blacks, and they
sprang up, trembling on the verge of panic. I saw their rolling white
eyeballs, their bared teeth glistening in the firelight. Saul Stark had
worked their primitive natures up to a pitch of madness, meaning to
turn this frenzy, at the proper time, into a fury of battle. It could
as easily turn into an hysteria of terror. Stark shouted sharply at
them.
But just then the girl in a last convulsion, rolled over on the wet
sand, and the firelight shone on a round hole between her breasts,
which still oozed crimson. Jim Braxton's bullet had found its mark.
* * * * *
From the first I had felt that she was not wholly human; some black
jungle spirit sired her, lending her the abysmal subhuman vitality that
made her what she was. She had said that neither death nor hell could
keep her from the Dance of the Skull. And, shot through the heart and
dying, she had come through the swamp from the creek where she had
received her death-wound to the House of Damballah. And the Dance of
the Skull had been her death dance.
Dazed as a condemned man just granted a reprieve, at first I hardly
grasped the meaning of the scene that now unfolded before me.
The blacks were in a frenzy. In the sudden, and to them inexplicable,
death of the sorceress they saw a fearsome portent. They had no way
of knowing that she was dying when she entered the glade. To them,
their prophetess and priestess had been struck down under their very
eyes, by an invisible death. This was magic blacker than Saul Stark's
wizardry--and obviously hostile to them.
Like fear-maddened cattle they stampeded. Howling, screaming, tearing
at one another they blundered through the trees, heading for the neck
of land and the shore beyond. Saul Stark stood transfixed, heedless of
them as he stared down at the brown girl, dead at last. And suddenly
I came to myself, and with my awakened manhood came cold fury and the
lust to kill. I drew a gun, and aiming in the uncertain firelight,
pulled the trigger. Only a click answered me. The powder in the
cap-and-ball pistols was wet.
Saul Stark lifted his head and licked his lips. The sounds of flight
faded in the distance, and he stood alone in the glade. His eyes rolled
whitely toward the black woods around him. He bent, grasped the
man-like object that lay on the sand, and dragged it into the hut. The
instant he vanished I started toward the island, wading through the
narrow channels at the lower end. I had almost reached the shore when a
mass of driftwood gave way with me and I slid into a deep hole.
Instantly the water swirled about me, and a head rose beside me; a dim
face was close to mine--the face of a negro--_the face of Tunk Bixby_.
But now it was inhuman; as expressionless and soulless as that of a
catfish; the face of a being no longer human, and no longer mindful of
its human origin.
Slimy, misshapen fingers gripped my throat, and I drove my knife into
that sagging mouth. The features vanished in a wave of blood; mutely
the thing sank out of sight, and I hauled myself up the bank, under the
thick bushes.
Stark had run from his hut, a pistol in his hand. He was staring wildly
about, alarmed by the noise he had heard, but I knew he could not see
me. His ashy skin glistened with perspiration. He who had ruled by fear
was now ruled by fear. He feared the unknown hand that had slain his
mistress; feared the negroes who had fled from him; feared the abysmal
swamp which had sheltered him, and the monstrosities he had created. He
lifted a weird call that quavered with panic. He called again as only
four heads broke the water, but he called in vain.
But the four heads began to move toward the shore and the man who stood
there. He shot them one after another. They made no effort to avoid the
bullets. They came straight on, sinking one by one. He had fired six
shots before the last head vanished. The shots drowned the sounds of my
approach. I was close behind him when he turned at last.
* * * * *
I know he knew me; recognition flooded his face and fear went with it,
at the knowledge that he had a human being to deal with. With a scream
he hurled his empty pistol at me and rushed after it with a lifted
knife.
I ducked, parried his lunge and countered with a thrust that bit
deep into his ribs. He caught my wrist and I gripped his, and there
we strained, breast to breast. His eyes were like a mad dog's in the
starlight, his muscles like steel cords.
I ground my heel down on his bare foot, crushing the instep. He howled
and lost balance, and I tore my knife hand free and stabbed him in the
belly. Blood spurted and he dragged me down with him. I jerked loose
and rose, just as he pulled himself up on his elbow and hurled his
knife. It sang past my ear, and I stamped on his breast. His ribs caved
in under my heel. In a red killing-haze I knelt, jerked back his head
and cut his throat from ear to ear.
There was a pouch of dry powder in his belt. Before I moved further I
re-loaded my pistols. Then I went into the hut with a torch. And there
I understood the doom the brown witch had meant for me. Tope Sorley lay
moaning on a bunk. The transmutation that was to make him a mindless,
soulless semi-human dweller in the water was not complete, but his mind
was gone. Some of the physical changes had been made--by what godless
sorcery out of Africa's black abyss I have no wish to know. His body
was rounded and elongated, his legs dwarfed; his feet were flattened
and broadened, his fingers horribly long, and _webbed_. His neck was
inches longer than it should be. His features were not altered, but the
expression was no more human than that of a great fish. And there, but
for the loyalty of Jim Braxton, lay Kirby Buckner. I placed my pistol
muzzle against Tope's head in grim mercy and pulled the trigger.
And so the nightmare closed, and I would not drag out the grisly
narration. The white people of Canaan never found anything on the
island except the bodies of Saul Stark and the brown woman. They think
to this day that a swamp negro killed Jim Braxton, after he had killed
the brown woman, and that I broke up the threatened uprising by killing
Saul Stark. I let them think it. They will never know the shapes the
black water of Tularoosa hides. That is a secret I share with the cowed
and terror-haunted black people of Goshen, and of it neither they nor I
have ever spoken.