path: root/76108-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76108 ***





                           The Salem Horror

                           By HENRY KUTTNER

    _A ghastly horror from the witchcraft days of three centuries ago
    reared its dreadful form in the Witch Room of that old house in
    Derby Street_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                         Weird Tales May 1937.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


When Carson first noticed the sounds in his cellar, he ascribed them to
the rats. Later he began to hear the tales which were whispered by the
superstitious Polish mill workers in Derby Street regarding the first
occupant of the ancient house, Abigail Prinn. There was none living
today who could remember the diabolical old hag, but the morbid legends
which thrive in the “witch district” of Salem like rank weeds on a
neglected grave gave disturbing particulars of her activities, and were
unpleasantly explicit regarding the detestable sacrifices she was known
to have made to a worm-eater, crescent-horned image of dubious origin.
The oldsters still muttered of Abbie Prinn and her monstrous boasts that
she was high priestess of a fearfully potent god which dwelt deep in the
hills. Indeed, it was the old witch’s reckless boasting which had led to
her abrupt and mysterious death in 1692, about the time of the famous
hangings on Gallows Hill. No one liked to talk about it, but
occasionally a toothless crone would mumble fearfully that the flames
could not burn her, for her whole body had taken on the peculiar
anesthesia of her witch-mark.

Abbie Prinn and her anomalous statue had long since vanished, but it was
still difficult to find tenants for her decrepit, gabled house, with its
overhanging second story and curious diamond-paned casement windows. The
house’s evil notoriety had spread throughout Salem. Nothing had actually
happened there of recent years which might give rise to the inexplicable
tales, but those who rented the house had a habit of moving out hastily,
generally with vague and unsatisfactory explanations connected with the
rats.

And it was a rat which led Carson to the Witch Room. The squealing and
muffled pattering within the rotting walls had disturbed Carson more
than once during the nights of his first week in the house, which he had
rented to obtain the solitude that would enable him to complete a novel
for which his publishers had been asking—another light romance to add
to Carson’s long string of popular successes. But it was not until some
time later that he began to entertain certain wildly fantastic surmises
regarding the intelligence of the rat that scurried from under his feet
in the dark hallway one evening.

The house had been wired for electricity, but the bulb in the hall was
small and gave a dim light. The rat was a misshapen, black shadow as it
darted a few feet away and paused, apparently watching him.

At another time Carson might have dismissed the animal with a
threatening gesture and returned to his work. But the traffic on Derby
Street had been unusually noisy, and he had found it difficult to
concentrate upon his novel. His nerves, for no apparent reason, were
taut; and somehow it seemed that the rat, watching just beyond his
reach, was eyeing him with sardonic amusement.

Smiling at the conceit, he took a few steps toward the rat, and it
rushed away to the cellar door, which he saw with surprize was ajar. He
must have neglected to close it the last time he had been in the cellar,
although he generally took care to keep the doors shut, for the ancient
house was drafty. The rat waited in the doorway.

Unreasonably annoyed, Carson hurried forward, sending the rat scurrying
down the stairway. He switched on the cellar light and observed the rat
in a corner. It watched him keenly out of glittering little eyes.

As he descended the stairs he could not help feeling that he was acting
like a fool. But his work had been tiring, and subconsciously he
welcomed any interruption. He moved across the cellar to the rat, seeing
with astonishment that the creature remained unmoving, staring at him. A
strange feeling of uneasiness began to grow within him. The rat was
acting abnormally, he felt; and the unwinking gaze of its cold
shoe-button eyes was somehow disturbing.

Then he laughed to himself, for the rat had suddenly whisked aside and
disappeared into a little hole in the cellar wall. Idly he scratched a
cross with his toe in the dirt before the burrow, deciding that he would
set a trap there in the morning.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The rat’s snout and ragged whiskers protruded cautiously. It moved
forward and then hesitated, drew back. Then the animal began to act in a
singular and unaccountable manner—almost as though it were dancing,
Carson thought. It moved tentatively forward, retreated again. It would
give a little dart forward and be brought up short, then leap back
hastily, as though—the simile flashed into Carson’s mind—a snake were
coiled before the burrow, alert to prevent the rat’s escape. But there
was nothing there save the little cross Carson had scratched in the
dust.

No doubt it was Carson himself who blocked the rat’s escape, for he was
standing within a few feet of the burrow. He moved forward, and the
animal hurriedly retreated out of sight.

His interest piqued, Carson found a stick and poked it exploringly into
the hole. As he did so his eye, close to the wall, detected something
strange about the stone slab just above the rat burrow. A quick glance
around its edge confirmed his suspicion. The slab was apparently
movable.

Carson examined it closely, noticed a depression on its edge which would
afford a handhold. His fingers fitted easily into the groove, and he
pulled tentatively. The stone moved a trifle and stopped. He pulled
harder, and with a sprinkling of dry earth the slab swung away from the
wall as though on hinges.

A black rectangle, shoulder-high, gaped in the wall. From its depths a
musty, unpleasant stench of dead air welled out, and involuntarily
Carson retreated a step. Suddenly he remembered the monstrous tales of
Abbie Prinn and the hideous secrets she was supposed to have kept hidden
in her house. Had he stumbled upon some hidden retreat of the long-dead
witch?

Before entering the dark gap he took the precaution of obtaining a
flashlight from upstairs. Then he cautiously bent his head and stepped
into the narrow, evil-smelling passage, sending the flashlight’s beam
probing out before him.

He was in a narrow tunnel, scarcely higher than his head, and walled and
paved with stone slabs. It ran straight ahead for perhaps fifteen feet,
and then broadened out into a roomy chamber. As Carson stepped into the
underground room—no doubt a hidden retreat of Abbie Prinn’s, a
hiding-place, he thought, which nevertheless could not save her on the
day the fright-crazed mob had come raging along Derby Street—he caught
his breath in a gasp of amazement. The room was fantastic, astonishing.

It was the floor which held Carson’s gaze. The dull gray of the circular
wall gave place here to a mosaic of varicolored stone, in which blues
and greens and purples predominated—indeed, there were none of the
warmer colors. There must have been thousands of bits of colored stone
making up that pattern, for none was larger than a walnut. And the
mosaic seemed to follow some definite pattern, unfamiliar to Carson;
there were curves of purple and violet mingled with angled lines of
green and blue, intertwining in fantastic arabesques. There were
circles, triangles, a pentagram, and other, less familiar, figures. Most
of the lines and figures radiated from a definite point: the center of
the chamber, where there was a circular disk of dead black stone perhaps
two feet in diameter.

It was very silent. The sounds of the cars that occasionally went past
overhead in Derby Street could not be heard. In a shallow alcove in the
wall Carson caught a glimpse of markings on the walls, and he moved
slowly in that direction, the beam of his light traveling up and down
the walls of the niche.

The marks, whatever they were, had been daubed upon the stone long ago,
for what was left of the cryptic symbols was indecipherable. Carson saw
several partly-effaced hieroglyphics which reminded him of Arabic, but
he could not be sure. On the floor of the alcove was a corroded metal
disk about eight feet in diameter, and Carson received the distinct
impression that it was movable. But there seemed no way to lift it.

He became conscious that he was standing in the exact center of the
chamber, in the circle of black stone where the odd design centered.
Again he noticed the utter silence. On an impulse he clicked off the ray
of his flashlight. Instantly he was in dead blackness.

At that moment a curious idea entered his mind. He pictured himself at
the bottom of a pit, and from above a flood was descending, pouring down
the shaft to engulf him. So strong was this impression that he actually
fancied he could hear a muffled thundering, the roar of the cataract.
Then, oddly shaken, he clicked on the light, glanced around swiftly. The
drumming, of course, was the pounding of his blood, made audible in the
complete silence—a familiar phenomenon. But, if the place was so
still——

The thought leaped into his mind, as though suddenly thrust into his
consciousness. This would be an ideal place to work. He could have the
place wired for electricity, have a table and chair brought down, use an
electric fan if necessary—although the musty odor he had first noticed
seemed to have disappeared completely. He moved to the tunnel mouth, and
as he stepped from the room he felt an inexplicable relaxation of his
muscles, although he had not realized that they had been contracted. He
ascribed it to nervousness, and went upstairs to brew black coffee and
write to his landlord in Boston about his discovery.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The visitor stared curiously about the hallway after Carson had opened
the door, nodding to himself as though with satisfaction. He was a lean,
tall figure of a man, with thick steel-gray eyebrows overhanging keen
gray eyes. His face, although strongly marked and gaunt, was unwrinkled.

“About the Witch Room, I suppose?” Carson said ungraciously. His
landlord had talked, and for the last week he had been unwillingly
entertaining antiquaries and occultists anxious to glimpse the secret
chamber in which Abbie Prinn had mumbled her spells. Carson’s annoyance
had grown, and he had considered moving to a quieter place; but his
inherent stubbornness had made him stay on, determined to finish his
novel in spite of interruptions. Now, eyeing his guest coldly, he said,
“I’m sorry, but it’s not on exhibition any more.”

The other looked startled, but almost immediately a gleam of
comprehension came into his eyes. He extracted a card and offered it to
Carson.

“Michael Leigh ... occultist, eh?” Carson repeated. He drew a deep
breath. The occultists, he had found, were the worst, with their dark
hints of nameless things and their profound interest in the mosaic
pattern on the floor of the Witch Room. “I’m sorry, Mr. Leigh, but—I’m
really quite busy. You’ll excuse me.”

Ungraciously he turned back to the door.

“Just a moment,” Leigh said swiftly.

Before Carson could protest he had caught the writer by the shoulders
and was peering closely into his eyes. Startled, Carson drew back, but
not before he had seen an extraordinary expression of mingled
apprehension and satisfaction appear on Leigh’s gaunt face. It was as
though the occultist had seen something unpleasant—but not unexpected.

“What’s the idea?” Carson asked harshly. “I’m not accustomed——”

“I’m very sorry,” Leigh said. His voice was deep, pleasant. “I must
apologize. I thought—well, again I apologize. I’m rather excited, I’m
afraid. You see, I’ve come from San Francisco to see this Witch Room of
yours. Would you really mind letting me see it? I should be glad to pay
any sum——”

Carson made a deprecatory gesture.

“No,” he said, feeling a perverse liking for this man growing within
him—his well-modulated, pleasant voice, his powerful face, his magnetic
personality. “No, I merely want a little peace—you have no idea how
I’ve been bothered,” he went on, vaguely surprized to find himself
speaking apologetically. “It’s a frightful nuisance. I almost wish I’d
never found the room.”

Leigh leaned forward anxiously. “May I see it? It means a great deal to
me—I’m vitally interested in these things. I promise not to take up
more than ten minutes of your time.”

Carson hesitated, then assented. As he led his guest into the cellar he
found himself telling the circumstances of his discovery of the Witch
Room. Leigh listened intently, occasionally interrupting with questions.

“The rat—did you see what became of it?” he asked.

Carson looked surprized. “Why, no. I suppose it hid in its burrow. Why?”

“One never knows,” Leigh said cryptically as they came into the Witch
Room.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Carson switched on the light. He had had an electrical extension
installed, and there were a few chairs and a table, but otherwise the
chamber was unchanged. Carson watched the occultist’s face, and with
surprize saw it become grim, almost angry.

Leigh strode to the center of the room, staring at the chair that stood
on the black circle of stone.

“You work here?” he asked slowly.

“Yes. It’s quiet—I found I couldn’t work upstairs. Too noisy. But this
is ideal—somehow I find it very easy to write here. My mind feels”—he
hesitated—“free; that is, disassociated with other things. It’s quite
an unusual feeling.”

Leigh nodded as though Carson’s words had confirmed some idea in his own
mind. He turned toward the alcove and the metal disk in the floor.
Carson followed him. The occultist moved close to the wall, tracing out
the faded symbols with a long forefinger. He muttered something under
his breath—words that sounded like gibberish to Carson.

“_Nyogtha_ ... _k’yarnak_....”

He swung about, his face grim and pale. “I’ve seen enough,” he said
softly, “Shall we go?”

Surprized, Carson nodded and led the way back into the cellar.

Upstairs Leigh hesitated, as though finding it difficult to broach his
subject. At length he asked, “Mr. Carson—would you mind telling me if
you have had any peculiar dreams lately.”

Carson stared at him, mirth dancing in his eyes. “Dreams?” he repeated.
“Oh—I see. Well, Mr. Leigh, I may as well tell you that you can’t
frighten me. Your compatriots—the other occultists I’ve
entertained—have already tried it.”

Leigh raised his thick eyebrows. “Yes? Did they ask you whether you’d
dreamed?”

“Several did—yes.”

“And you told them?”

“No.” Then as Leigh leaned back in his chair, a puzzled expression on
his face, Carson went on slowly, “Although, really, I’m not quite sure.”

“You mean?”

“I _think_—I have a vague impression—that I have dreamed lately. But I
can’t be sure. I can’t remember anything of the dream, you see. And—oh,
very probably your brother occultists put the idea into my mind!”

“Perhaps,” Leigh said non-committally, getting up. He hesitated. “Mr.
Carson, I’m going to ask you a rather presumptuous question. Is it
necessary for you to live in this house.”

Carson sighed resignedly. “When I was first asked that question I
explained that I wanted a quiet place to work on a novel, and that any
quiet place would do. But it isn’t easy to find ’em. Now that I have
this Witch Room, and I’m turning out my work so easily, I see no reason
why I should move and perhaps upset my program. I’ll vacate this house
when I finish my novel, and then you occultists can come in and turn it
into a museum or do whatever you want with it. I don’t care. But until
the novel is finished I intend to stay here.”

Leigh rubbed his chin. “Indeed. I can understand your point of view.
But—is there no other place in the house where you can work?”

He watched Carson’s face for a moment, and then went on swiftly.

“I don’t expect you to believe me. You are a materialist. Most people
are. But there are a few of us who know that above and beyond what men
call science there is a greater science that is built on laws and
principles which to the average man would be almost incomprehensible. If
you have read Machen you will remember that he speaks of the gulf
between the world of consciousness and the world of matter. It is
possible to bridge that gulf. The Witch Room is such a bridge! Do you
know what a whispering-gallery is?”

“Eh?” Carson said, staring. “But there’s no——”

“An analogy—merely an analogy. A man may whisper a word in a
gallery—or a cave—and if you are standing in a certain spot a hundred
feet away you will hear that whisper, although someone ten feet away
will not. It’s a simple trick of acoustics—bringing the sound to a
focal point. And this principle can be applied to other things besides
sound. To any wave impulse—_even to thought_!”

Carson tried to interrupt, but Leigh kept on.

“That black stone in the center of your Witch Room is one of those focal
points. The design on the floor—when you sit on the black circle there
you are abnormally sensitive to certain vibrations—certain thought
commands—dangerously sensitive! Why do you suppose your mind is so
clear when you are working there? A deception, a false feeling of
lucidity—for you are merely an instrument, a microphone, tuned to pick
up certain malign vibrations the nature of which you could not
comprehend!”

Carson’s face was a study in amazement and incredulity. “But—you don’t
mean you actually _believe_——”

Leigh drew back, the intensity fading from his eyes, leaving them grim
and cold. “Very well. But I have studied the history of your Abigail
Prinn. She, too, understood this super-science of which I speak. She
used it for evil purposes—the black art, as it is called. I have read
that she cursed Salem in the old days—and a witch’s curse can be a
frightful thing. Will you——” He got up, gnawing at his lip. “Will you,
at least, allow me to call on you tomorrow?”

Almost involuntarily Carson nodded. “But I’m afraid you’ll be wasting
your time. I don’t believe—I mean, I have no——” He stumbled, at a
loss for words.

“I merely wish to assure myself that you—oh, another thing. If you
dream tonight, will you try to remember the dream? If you attempt to
recapture it immediately after waking, it is often possible to recall
it.”

“All right. If I dream——”

                 *        *        *        *        *

That night Carson dreamed. He awoke just before dawn with his heart
racing furiously and a curious feeling of uneasiness. Within the walls
and from below he could hear the furtive scurryings of the rats. He got
out of bed hastily, shivering in the cold grayness of early morning. A
wan moon still shone faintly in a paling sky.

Then he remembered Leigh’s words. He _had_ dreamed—there was no
question of that. But the content of his dream—that was another matter.
He absolutely could not recall it to his mind, much as he tried,
although there was a very vague impression of running frantically in
darkness.

He dressed quickly, and because the stillness of early morning in the
old house got on his nerves, went out to buy a newspaper. It was too
early for shops to be open, however, and in search of a news-boy he set
off westward, turning at the first corner. And as he walked a curious
and inexplicable feeling began to take possession of him: a feeling
of—familiarity! He had walked here before, and there was a dim and
disturbing familiarity about the shapes of the houses, the outline of
the roofs. But—and this was the fantastic part of it—to his knowledge
he had never been on this street before. He had spent little time
walking about this region of Salem, for he was indolent by nature; yet
there was this extraordinary feeling of remembrance, and it grew more
vivid as he went on.

He reached a corner, turned unthinkingly to the left. The odd sensation
increased. He walked on slowly, pondering.

No doubt he _had_ traveled by this way before—and very probably he had
done so in a brown study, so that he had not been conscious of his
route. Undoubtedly that was the explanation. Yet as Carson turned into
Charter Street he felt a nameless uneasy waking within him. Salem was
rousing; with daylight impassive Polish workers began to hurry past him
toward the mills. An occasional automobile went by.

Before him a crowd was gathered on the sidewalk. He hastened his steps,
conscious of a feeling of impending calamity. With an extraordinary
sense of shock he saw that he was passing the Charter Street Burying
Ground, the ancient, evilly famous “Burying Point.” Hastily he pushed
his way into the crowd.

Comments in a muffled undertone came to Carson’s ears, and a bulky
blue-clad back loomed up before him. He peered over the policeman’s
shoulder and caught his breath in a horrified gasp.

A man leaned against the iron railing that fenced the old graveyard. He
wore a cheap, gaudy suit, and he gripped the rusty bars in a clutch that
made the muscles stand out in ridges on the hairy back of his hands. He
was dead, and on his face, staring up at the sky at a crazy angle, was
frozen an expression of abysmal and utterly shocking horror. His eyes,
all whites, were bulging hideously; his mouth was a twisted, mirthless
grin.

A man at Carson’s side turned a white face toward him. “Looks as if he
was scared to death,” he said somewhat hoarsely. “I’d hate to have seen
what he saw. Ugh—look at that face!”

Mechanically Carson backed away, feeling an icy breath of nameless
things chill him. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, but still that
contorted, dead face swam in his vision. He began to retrace his steps,
shaken and trembling a little. Involuntarily his glance moved aside,
rested on the tombs and monuments that dotted the old graveyard. No one
had been buried there for over a century, and the lichen-stained
tombstones, with their winged skulls, fat-cheeked cherubs, and funereal
urns, seemed to breathe out an indefinable miasma of antiquity. What had
frightened the man to death?

                 *        *        *        *        *

Carson drew a deep breath. True, the corpse had been a frightful
spectacle, but he must not allow it to upset his nerves. He could
not—his novel would suffer. Besides, he argued grimly to himself, the
affair was obvious enough in its explanation. The dead man was
apparently a Pole, one of the group of immigrants who dwell about Salem
Harbor. Passing by the graveyard at night, a spot about which eldritch
legends had clung for nearly three centuries, his drink-befuddled eyes
must have given reality to the hazy phantoms of a superstitious mind.
These Poles were notoriously unstable emotionally, prone to mob hysteria
and wild imaginings. The great Immigrant Panic of 1853, in which three
witch-houses had been burned to the ground, had grown from an old
woman’s confused and hysterical statement that she had seen a mysterious
white-clad foreigner “take off his face.” What else could be expected of
such people, Carson thought?

Nevertheless he remained in a nervous state, and did not return home
until nearly noon. When on his arrival he found Leigh, the occultist,
waiting, he was glad to see the man, and invited him in with cordiality.

Leigh was very serious. “Did you hear about your friend Abigail Prinn?”
he asked without preamble, and Carson stared, pausing in the act of
siphoning charged water into a glass. After a long moment he pressed the
lever, sent the liquid sizzling and foaming into the whisky. He handed
Leigh the drink and took one himself—neat—before answering the
question.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Has—what’s she been up to?” he
asked, with an air of forced levity.

“I’ve been checking up the records,” Leigh said, “and I find Abigail
Prinn was buried on December 14th, 1690, in the Charter Street Burying
Ground—with a stake through her heart. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Carson said tonelessly. “Well?”

“Well—her grave’s been opened and robbed, that’s all. The stake was
found uprooted near by, and there were footprints all around the grave.
Shoe-prints. Did you dream last night, Carson?” Leigh snapped out the
question, his gray eyes hard.

“I don’t know,” Carson said confusedly, rubbing his forehead. “I can’t
remember. I was at the Charter Street graveyard this morning.”

“Oh. Then you must have heard something about the man who——”

“I saw him,” Carson interrupted, shuddering. “It upset me.”

He downed the whisky at a gulp.

Leigh watched him. “Well,” he said presently, “are you still determined
to stay in this house?”

Carson put down the glass and stood up.

“Why not?” he snapped. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t? Eh?”

“After what happened last night——”

“After _what_ happened? A grave was robbed. A superstitious Pole saw the
robbers and died of fright. Well?”

“You’re trying to convince yourself,” Leigh said calmly. “In your heart
you know—you must know—the truth. You’ve become a tool in the hands of
tremendous and terrible forces, Carson. For three centuries Abbie Prinn
has lain in her grave—_undead_—waiting for someone to fall into her
trap—the Witch Room. Perhaps she foresaw the future when she built it,
foresaw that some day someone would blunder into that hellish chamber
and be caught by the trap of the mosaic pattern. It caught you,
Carson—and enabled that undead horror to bridge the gulf between
consciousness and matter, to get _en rapport_ with you. Hypnotism is
child’s play to a being with Abigail Prinn’s frightful powers. She could
very easily force you to go to her grave and uproot the stake that held
her captive, and then erase the memory of that act from your mind so
that you could not remember it even as a dream!”

Carson was on his feet, his eyes burning with a strange light. “In God’s
name, man, do you know what you’re saying?”

Leigh laughed harshly. “God’s name! The devil’s name, rather—the devil
that menaces Salem at this moment; for Salem is in danger, terrible
danger. The men and women and children of the town Abbie Prinn cursed
when they bound her to the stake—and found they couldn’t burn her! I’ve
been going through certain secret archives this morning, and I’ve come
to ask you, for the last time, to leave this house.”

“Are you through?” Carson asked coldly. “Very well. I shall stay here.
You’re either insane or drunk, but you can’t impress me with your
poppycock.”

“Would you leave if I offered you a thousand dollars?” Leigh asked. “Or
more, then—ten thousand? I have a considerable sum at my command.”

“No, damn it!” Carson snapped in a sudden blaze of anger. “All I want is
to be left alone to finish my novel. I can’t work anywhere else—I don’t
want to, I won’t——”

“I expected this,” Leigh said, his voice suddenly quiet, and with a
strange note of sympathy. “Man, you can’t get away! You’re caught in the
trap, and it’s too late for you to extricate yourself so long as Abbie
Prinn’s brain controls you through the Witch Room. And the worst part of
it is that she can only manifest herself with your aid—she drains your
life forces, Carson, feeds on you like a vampire.”

“You’re mad,” Carson said dully.

“I’m afraid. That iron disk in the Witch Room—I’m afraid of that, and
what’s under it. Abbie Prinn served strange gods, Carson—and I read
something on the wall of that alcove that gave me a hint. Have you ever
heard of Nyogtha?”

Carson shook his head impatiently. Leigh fumbled in a pocket, drew out a
scrap of paper. “I copied this from a book in the Kester Library,” he
said, “a book called the _Necronomicon_, written by a man who delved so
deeply into forbidden secrets that men called him mad. Read this.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Carson’s brows drew together as he read the excerpt:

    Men know him as the Dweller in Darkness, that brother of the Old
    Ones called Nyogtha, the Thing that should not be. He can be
    summoned to Earth’s surface through certain secret caverns and
    fissures, and sorcerers have seen him in Syria and below the
    black tower of Leng; from the Thang Grotto of Tartary he has
    come ravening to bring terror and destruction among the
    pavilions of the great Khan. Only by the looped cross, by the
    Vach-Viraj incantation and by the Tikkoun elixir may he be
    driven back to the nighted caverns of hidden foulness where he
    dwelleth.

Leigh met Carson’s puzzled gaze calmly. “Do you understand now?”

“Incantations and elixirs!” Carson said, handing back the paper.
“Fiddlesticks!”

“Far from it. That incantation and that elixir have been known to
occultists and adepts for thousands of years. I’ve had occasion to use
them myself in the past on certain—occasions. And if I’m right about
this thing——” He turned to the door, his lips compressed in a
bloodless line. “Such manifestations have been defeated before, but the
difficulty lies in obtaining the elixir—it’s very hard to get. But I
hope ... I’ll be back. Can you stay out of the Witch Room until then?”

“I’ll promise nothing,” Carson said. He had a dull headache, which had
been steadily growing until it obtruded upon his consciousness, and he
felt vaguely nauseated. “Good-bye.”

He saw Leigh to the door and waited on the steps, with an odd reluctance
to return to the house. As he watched the tall occultist hurry down the
street, a woman came out of the adjoining house. She caught sight of
him, and her huge breasts heaved. She burst into a shrill, angry tirade.

Carson turned, staring at her with astonished eyes. His head throbbed
painfully. The woman was approaching, shaking a fat fist threateningly.

“Why you scare my Sarah?” she cried, her swarthy face flushed. “Why you
scare her wit’ your fool tricks, eh?”

Carson moistened his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “Very sorry. I didn’t frighten your Sarah.
I haven’t been home all day. What frightened her?”

“T’e brown t’ing—it ran in your house, Sarah say——”

The woman paused, and her jaw dropped. Her eyes widened. She made a
peculiar sign with her right hand—pointing her index and little fingers
at Carson, while her thumb was crossed over the other fingers. “T’e old
witch!”

She retreated hastily, muttering in Polish in a frightened voice.

Carson turned, went back into the house. He poured some whisky into a
tumbler, considered, and then set it aside untasted. He began to pace
the floor, occasionally rubbing his forehead with fingers that felt dry
and hot. Vague, confused thoughts raced through his mind. His head was
throbbing and feverish.

At length he went down to the Witch Room. He remained there, although he
did not work; for his headache was not so oppressive in the dead quiet
of the underground chamber. After a time he slept.

                 *        *        *        *        *

How long he slumbered he did not know. He dreamed of Salem, and of a
dimly-glimpsed, gelatinous black thing that hurtled with frightful speed
through the streets, a thing like an incredibly huge, jet-black ameba
that pursued and engulfed men and women who shrieked and fled vainly. He
dreamed of a skull-face peering into his own, a withered and shrunken
countenance in which only the eyes seemed alive, and they shone with a
hellish and evil light.

He awoke at last, sat up with a start. He was very cold.

It was utterly silent. In the light of the electric bulb the green and
purple mosaic seemed to writhe and contract toward him, an illusion
which disappeared as his sleep-fogged vision cleared. He glanced at his
wrist-watch. It was two o’clock. He had slept through the afternoon and
the better part of the night.

He felt oddly weak, and a lassitude held him motionless in his chair.
The strength seemed to have been drained from him. The piercing cold
seemed to strike through to his brain, but his headache was gone. His
mind was very clear—expectant, as though waiting for something to
happen. A movement near by caught his eye.

A slab of stone in the wall was moving. He heard a gentle grating sound,
and slowly a black cavity widened from a narrow rectangle to a square.
There was something crouching there in the shadow. Stark, blind horror
struck through Carson as the thing moved and crept forward into the
light.

It looked like a mummy. For an intolerable, age-long second the thought
pounded frightfully at Carson’s brain: _It looked like a mummy!_ It was
a skeleton-thin, parchment-brown corpse, and it looked like a skeleton
with the hide of some great lizard stretched over its bones. It stirred,
it crept forward, and its long nails scratched audibly against the
stone. It crawled out into the Witch Room, its passionless face
pitilessly revealed in the white light, and its eyes were gleaming with
charnel life. He could see the serrated ridge of its brown, shrunken
back....

Carson sat motionless. Abysmal horror had robbed him of the power to
move. He seemed to be caught in the fetters of dream-paralysis, in which
the brain, an aloof spectator, is unable or unwilling to transmit the
nerve-impulses to the muscles. He told himself frantically that he was
dreaming, that he would presently awaken.

The withered horror arose. It stood upright, skeleton-thin, and moved to
the alcove where the iron disk lay embedded in the floor. Standing with
its back to Carson it paused, and a dry and sere whisper rustled out in
the dead stillness. At the sound Carson would have screamed, but he
could not. Still the dreadful whisper went on, in a language Carson knew
was not of Earth, and as though in response an almost imperceptible
quiver shook the iron disk.

It quivered and began to rise, very slowly, and as if in triumph the
shriveled horror lifted its pipestem arms. The disk was nearly a foot
thick, but presently as it continued to rise above the level of the
floor an insidious odor began to penetrate the room. It was vaguely
reptilian, musky and nauseating. The disk lifted inexorably, and a
little finger of blackness crept out from beneath its edge. Abruptly
Carson remembered his dream of a gelatinous black creature that hurtled
through the Salem streets. He tried vainly to break the fetters of
paralysis that held him motionless. The chamber was darkening, and a
black vertigo was creeping up to engulf him. The room seemed to rock.

Still the iron disk lifted; still the withered horror stood with its
skeleton arms raised in blasphemous benediction; still the blackness
oozed out in slow ameboid movement.

There came a sound breaking through the sere whisper of the mummy, the
quick patter of racing footsteps. Out of the corner of his eye Carson
saw a man come racing into the Witch Room. It was the occultist, Leigh,
and his eyes were blazing in a face of deathly pallor. He flung himself
past Carson to the alcove where the black horror was surging into view.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The withered thing turned with dreadful slowness. Leigh carried some
implement in his left hand, Carson saw, a _crux ansata_ of gold and
ivory. His right hand was clenched at his side. His voice rolled out,
sonorous and commanding. There were little beads of perspiration on his
white face.

“_Ya na kadishtu nilgh’ri ... stell’hsna kn’aa Nyogtha ... k’yarnak
phlege-thor_....”

The fantastic, unearthly syllables thundered out, echoing from the walls
of the vault. Leigh advanced slowly, the _crux ansata_ held high. And
from beneath the iron disk black horror came surging!

The disk was lifted, flung aside, and a great wave of iridescent
blackness, neither liquid nor solid, a frightful gelatinous mass, came
pouring straight for Leigh. Without pausing in his advance he made a
quick gesture with his right hand, and a little glass tube hurtled at
the black thing, was engulfed.

The formless horror paused. It hesitated, with a dreadful air of
indecision, and then swiftly drew back. A choking stench of burning
corruption began to pervade the air, and Carson saw great pieces of the
black thing flake off, shriveling as though destroyed with corroding
acid. It fled back in a liquescent rush, hideous black flesh dropping as
it retreated.

A pseudopod of blackness elongated itself from the central mass and like
a great tentacle clutched the corpse-like being, dragged it back to the
pit and over the brink. Another tentacle seized the iron disk, pulled it
effortlessly across the floor, and as the horror sank from sight, the
disk fell into place with a thunderous crash.

The room swung in wide circles about Carson, and a frightful nausea
clutched him. He made a tremendous effort to get to his feet, and then
the light faded swiftly and was gone. Darkness took him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Carson’s novel was never finished. He burned it, but continued to write,
although none of his later work was ever published. His publishers shook
their heads and wondered why such a brilliant writer of popular fiction
had suddenly become infatuated with the weird and ghastly.

“It’s powerful stuff,” one man told Carson, as he handed back his novel,
_Black God of Madness_. “It’s remarkable in its way, but it’s morbid and
horrible. Nobody would read it. Carson, why don’t you write the type of
novel you used to do, the kind that made you famous?”

It was then that Carson broke his vow never to speak of the Witch Room,
and he poured out the entire story, hoping for understanding and belief.
But as he finished, his heart sank as he saw the other’s face,
sympathetic but skeptical.

“You dreamed it, didn’t you?” the man asked, and Carson laughed
bitterly.

“Yes—I dreamed it.”

“It must have made a terribly vivid impression on your mind. Some dreams
do. But you’ll forget about it in time,” he predicted, and Carson
nodded.

And because he knew that he would only be arousing doubts of his sanity,
he did not mention the thing that was burned indelibly on his brain, the
horror he had seen in the Witch Room after awakening from his faint.
Before he and Leigh had hurried, white-faced and trembling, from the
chamber, Carson had cast a quick glance behind him. The shriveled and
corroded patches that he had seen slough off from that being of insane
blasphemy had unaccountably disappeared, although they had left black
stains upon the stones. Abbie Prinn, perhaps, had returned to the hell
she had served, and her inhuman god had withdrawn to hidden abysses
beyond man’s comprehension, routed by powerful forces of elder magic
which the occultist had commanded. But the witch had left a memento
behind her, a hideous thing which Carson, in that last backward glance,
had seen protruding from the edge of the iron disk, as though raised in
ironic salute—_a withered, claw-like hand_!



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76108 ***