Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

I felt around in my coat and found a box of matches. The chanting was dying away, as though those singing were passing far beyond the house. I lighted a match, and saw a switch beside the wall. I pressed it, and without result. I saw my flashlight on a table beside the bed. I clicked the catch, but no ray streamed forth. Suspicion began to take hold of me that these three things were linked – the strange sleepiness, the useless flash, the unresponsive switch…

McCann's gun! I felt for it. There it was, nestling under my left armpit. I looked at it. The magazine was full and the extra clips safe. I went to the door and cautiously turned the key. It opened into a wide, old-fashioned hall at the end of which dimly glimmered a great window. The hall was curiously uneasy. That is the only word for it. It was filled with whisperings and rustlings – and shadows.

I hesitated; then stole to the window and looked out.

There was a bank of trees through whose half-bare branches I could see across a level field. Beyond that level field was another bank of trees. From beyond them came the chanting.

There was a glow through and over these trees – a gray glow. I stared at it… thinking of what McCann had said… like light decaying… rotten…

It was exactly that. I stood there, gripping the window, looking at the putrescent glow wax and wane… wax and wane. And now the chanting was like that dead luminescence transformed to sound…

And then a sharp scream of human agony shot through it.

The whisperings in the hall were peremptory. The rustlings were close. The shadows were pressing around me. They pressed me from the window, back to my room. I thrust the door shut against them, and leaned against it, wet with sweat.

Leaning against it, I heard again that scream of anguish, sharper, more agonized. And suddenly muffled.

Again the torpor swept over me. I crumpled down at the edge of the door, and slept.

Something was dancing, flittering, before me. It had no shape, but it had a voice. The voice was whispering, over and over: "Dahut… beware of Dahut… Alan, beware of Dahut… give me release, Alan… beware of Dahut, Alan… give me release… from the Gatherer… from the Blackness…"

I tried to focus upon this flittering thing, but there was a brilliancy about it into which it melted and was lost; a broad aureole of brilliancy and only when I turned my eyes from it could I see the thing dancing and flittering like a fly caught in a globule of light.

But the voice – I knew the voice.

The thing danced and flittered; grew larger but never assumed definite shape; became small, and still was shapeless… a flittering shadow caught in a brilliancy…

A shadow!

The thing whispered: "The Gatherer, Alan, the Gatherer in the Cairn, do not let It eat me but beware, beware of Dahut free me, Alan, free… free… " Ralston's voice!

I lifted myself to my knees, crouching, hands on the floor; my eyes fixed upon the brilliancy – straining to focus this flittering thing that whispered with the voice of Ralston.

The brilliancy contracted – like the eyes of the captain of the Brittis. It became the knob of a door. A knob of brass glimmering in the light of dawn.

There was a fly upon the knob. A bluebottle; a carrion fly. It was crawling over the knob, buzzing. The voice I had thought that of Dick was drained down into the buzzing; became one with it. There was only a bluebottle fly flittering and buzzing upon a shining brass door-knob. The fly left the knob, circled me and was gone.

I staggered to my feet. I thought: Whatever you did to me there on the boat, Dahut, it was a first-class job. I looked at my wristwatch. It was a few minutes after six. I opened the door, cautiously. The hall was shadowless; tranquil. There was not a sound in the house. It seemed to sleep, but I didn't trust it. I closed the door quietly. There were great bolts at top and bottom which I dropped into place.

There was a queer emptiness in my head, and I could not see clearly. I made my way to the window and drew deep breaths of the sharp morning air, the tang of the sea strong within it. It made me feel better. I turned and looked at the room. It was immense; paneled in old wood; tapestries, colors softened by centuries, fell here and there. The bed was ancient, carved and postered and canopied. It was the chamber of some castle in Brittany, rather than that of a New England manse. At my left was an armoire, ancient as the bed. Idly, I opened a drawer. There upon my handkerchiefs lay my pistol. I pulled it open. Not a cartridge was in the chamber.

I looked at it, unbelievingly. I knew that I had loaded it when I had placed it in one of my bags. Abruptly, its emptiness linked itself with the useless flash, the unresponsive switch, the strange sleepiness. It jarred me wide-awake. I put the gun back in the drawer and went and lay down on the bed. I hadn't the slightest doubt that something other than natural cause had induced the stupor. Whether it had been suggestion by Dahut while I lay asleep on the deck, or whether she had given me some soporific drug with my lunch, made no difference. It had not been natural. A drug? I remembered the subtle drug the Tibetan lamas administer – the drug they name "Master of the Will" which weakens all resistance to hypnotic control and renders the minds of those to whom it is given impotent against command, wide-open to hallucination. All at once the behavior, the appearance, of the men on the boat, the servants in this house, fell into an understandable pattern. Suppose that all were being fed with such a drug, and moved and thought only as the Demoiselle and her father willed them to move and think? That I was surrounded by human robots, creatures who were reflections, multiplications, of the de Keradels?

And that I, myself, was in imminent peril of the same slavery?

Belief that something like this was the truth became stronger the more I thought over it. I strove to recall the conversation with de Keradel the night before. I could not – but I still retained the conviction I had passed the ordeal successfully; that the other sense or self which had taken charge had not allowed me to be betrayed. Deep within, I felt that assurance.

Suddenly, as I lay there, I felt other eyes upon me; knew that I was being watched. I was facing the windows. I drew a deep breath, sighed as one does in deep sleep, and turned with arm over face. Under its cover, with scarcely opened lids, I watched. In a few moments a white hand stole from behind a tapestry, drew it aside, and Dahut stepped into the room. Her braids fell below her waist, she wore the sheerest of silken negligйes and she was incomparably lovely. She slipped to the bottom of the bed, soundlessly as one of her shadows, and stood studying me. I forced myself to breathe regularly, as though in soundest slumber. She was so lovely that I found it rather difficult. She came to the side of the bed and leaned over me. I felt her lips touch my cheek as lightly as the kiss of a moth.

Then, as suddenly, I knew she was gone.

I opened my eyes. There was another scent, unfamiliar, mingling with the breath of the sea. It was oddly stimulating. Breathing it, I felt the last traces of lethargy vanish. I sat up, wide-awake and alert. There was a shallow metal dish on the table beside the bed. Piled on it was a little heap of fern-like leaves. They were smoldering, and from their smoke came the invigorating scent. I pressed out the sparks and instantly smoke and scent disappeared.

Evidently this was an antidote to whatever had induced the other condition; and quite as evidently there was no suspicion that I had not slept uninterruptedly throughout the night.

And possibly, it occurred to me, the shadow-crowded, rustling hall and the bluebottle fly that had buzzed with the voice of Ralston might have been by- products of this hypothetical drug; the sub-consciousness fantastically picturing under its influence, as it does in dream, chance sounds in terms of what has been engrossing the consciousness.