Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

If I was to play my game, it must be to the limit; convincingly; with no reservations. I looked at Dahut and thought, with a sharp pang of compunction, for Helen, that if the Demoiselle were a willing partner it would have its peculiar compensations. And then I thrust Helen out of my mind, as though she might read that thought.

And there was only one way to convince a woman…

I stood up. I took the glass from which I had drunk and I took Dahut's glass and threw them to the cabin floor, splintering. I walked to the door and turned the key. I went to Dahut and lifted her from the chair and carried her to the divan beneath the port. Her arms clung round my neck, and she raised her lips to mine… her eyes closed…

I said: "To hell with Ys and to hell with its mysteries. I live in today."

She whispered: "You love me?"

I answered: "I do love you."

"No!" she pushed me away. "In the long ago you loved me. Loved me even though you killed me. And in this life it was not you but the Lord of Carnac who for a night was my lover. Yet this I know – again in this life you must love me. But must you again kill me? I wonder, Alain… I wonder…"

I took her hands, and they were cold; in her eyes there was neither mockery nor amusement; there was vague puzzlement and vague dread. Nor was there anything of the witch about her. I felt a stirring of pity – what if she, like the others upon this boat, were victim of another's will? De Keradel's who called himself her father… Dahut who lay there looking at me with the eyes of a frightened maiden and she was very beautiful…

She whispered: "Alain, beloved – better for you and better for me if you had not obeyed my summons. Was it because of that shadow I was forced to send your friend… or had you other reasons?"

That steadied me. I thought: Witch, you are not so clever.

I said, as though reluctantly: "There was another reason, Dahut."

She asked: "And that?"

"You," I said.

She bent toward me, took my chin in one soft hand and held my face close to hers: "You mean that – Alain de Carnac?"

I said: "I may not love you as the Lord of Carnac did. But I am tempted to try."

She leaned back at that, laughing – little rippling waves of laughter, careless and cruel.

"You woo me strangely, Alain. Yet I like it – for I know that what you say is truth. What do you truly think of me, Alain?"

I said: "I think of you as a garden that was planned under the red Heart of the Dragon ten thousand years before the Great Pyramid was built and its rays fell upon the altar of its most secret shrine… a strange garden, Dahut, half of the sea… with trees whose leaves chant instead of whisper… with flowers that may be evil and may not be, but certainly are not wholly of earth… whose birds sing strange songs… whose breath is more of ocean than of land… difficult garden to enter… more difficult to find its heart… most difficult, once entered, to find escape."

I said: "I think of you as a garden that was planned."

She bent to me, eyes wide and glowing; kissed me: "You think that of me! And it is true… and the Lord of Carnac never saw me so truly… you remember more than he – "

She fastened my wrists, her breast against mine: "The red-haired girl – I forget her name – is she not a garden, too?"

Helen!

I said, indifferently: "A garden of earth. Fragrant and sweet. But no difficulty there about finding your way out."

She dropped my wrists, and sat for a time silent; then said, abruptly:

"Let us go up on deck."

I followed her, uneasily. Something had gone amiss, something I had said or had not said about Helen. But what the devil it could have been, I did not know. I looked at my watch. It was after four. There was a fog, but the yacht seemed not to mind it; instead of diminishing, it seemed to me that the speed had increased. As we sat on the deck chairs, I mentioned this to the Demoiselle. She said, absently: "It is nothing. There can be no danger."

I said: "The speed seems rather dangerous."

She answered: "We must be at Ys by seven."

I echoed, stupidly: "Ys?"

She said: "Ys. It is so we have named our home."

She sank back into silence. I watched the fog. It was an odd fog. It did not swirl past us as fog normally does. It seemed to go with us, to accommodate its pace to ours.

To move with us.

The wide-eyed, vacant-faced sailors padded past. I began to have a nightmarish sort of feeling that I was on a ship of ghosts, a modern Flying Dutchman, cut off from the rest of the world and sped on by unseen, unheard, unfelt winds. Or being pushed along by some gigantic swimmer whose hand was clasped about the stern of this boat… and whose breath was the fog that shrouded us. I glanced at the Demoiselle. Her eyes were shut, and she seemed to be fast asleep. I closed my own eyes.

When I opened them, the yacht had stopped. There was no sign of fog. We lay in a little harbor between two rocky headlands. Dahut was shaking me by the shoulders. I was outlandishly sleepy. The sea air, I drowsily thought. We dropped into a tender, and landed at a dock. We climbed up steps, interminably, it seemed to me. A few yards from the top of the steps was a long rambling old stone house. It was dark, and I could see nothing beyond it but the banks of trees, half-stripped by autumn of their leaves.

We went into the house, met by servants, wide-pupilled, impassive, as those who manned the Brittis. I was taken to my room, and a valet began to unpack my bags. In the same torpor, I dressed for dinner. The only moment of real consciousness I had was when I put my hand up and felt McCann's holster under my armpit.

I have the vaguest recollection of the dinner. I know that de Keradel greeted me with the utmost politeness and hospitality. During the dinner, he talked on and on, but what he was talking about I'm damned if I knew. Now and then I was aware acutely of the Demoiselle, her face and big eyes swimming out of the haze that gripped me. And now and then I thought that I must have been drugged – but whether I had or hadn't been didn't seem to matter. There was one thing that I was acutely conscious did matter, however – and that was how I answered de Keradel's questions. But another sense, or another self, unaffected by what had so paralyzed my normal ones, seemed to have taken charge of that, and I had the comfortable feeling that it was doing it most satisfactorily.

And after a while I heard Dahut say: "But, Alain, you are so sleepy. Why, you can hardly keep your eyes open. It must be the sea air."

I replied, solemnly, that it must indeed be the sea air and apologized for my dullness. I had a dim perception of the solicitous readiness with which de Keradel accepted the feeble excuses. He, himself, took me to my room. At least, I was hazily aware that he accompanied me to some place where there was a bed. I rid myself of my clothes by sheer habit, dropped into the bed and in an instant was sound asleep.

I sat up in my bed, wide-awake. The strange drowsiness was gone; the irresistible torpor lifted. What had awakened me? I looked at my watch, and it was a few minutes after one. The sound that had awakened me came again somberly – a distant muffled chanting, as though from far under earth. As though from far beneath the old house.

It passed slowly from beneath the house, rising, approaching; becoming ever plainer. A weird chanting, archaic; vaguely familiar. I got up from the bed, and went to the windows. They looked out upon the ocean. There was no moon but I could see the gray surges breaking sullenly against the rocky shore. The chanting grew louder. I did not know where was the switch to turn on the electrics. There had been a flashlight in one of my bags, but these had been unpacked; their contents distributed.