Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

The oaks bent and waved their boughs and shouted the chant.

The servants had lighted their flambeaux and stood like watching dogs on the fringes of the sacrifices. We entered the field of the monoliths. In front of me strode de Keradel, maul held high, raised to the Cairn as the priest raises the Host to the Altar. Dahut was beside me, singing… singing… her golden sickle uplifted. Thicker grew the walls of the great inverted bowl of the fog above and around us; and thicker grew the fog-wraiths dancing among and circling the monoliths. Darker became the shadows guarding the standing stones.

And the sacrifices were circling the monoliths, dancing around them in the ancient measures as though hand in hand with the fog wraiths. The servants had quenched their torches, for now the corposants had begun to glimmer over the standing stones. The witch lights. The lamps of the dead. Faintly at first, but growing ever stronger. Glimmering, shifting orbs of gray phosphorescence of the grayness of the dead. Decaying lights, and putrescent.

And now I stood before the great Cairn. I looked into its vault; empty; untenanted – as yet. Louder was the chanting as the sacrifices danced between and around the monoliths. Coming ever closer. And more lividly gleamed the corposants, lighting the path of the Gatherer.

The chanting muted, became a prayer, an invocation… The sacrifices pressed upon me, swaying, murmuring, rapt eyes intent upon the Cairn… and seeing – what?

There were three stones close to the entrance to the chamber of the Cairn. The middle one was a slab of granite, longer than a tall man, and at about where the shoulders of a man lying upon it would be there was a rounded ridge of stone like a pillow. It was stained – like the maul; and the stains ran down its sides. At its left was another stone, lower, squat, hollowed shallowly and channeled at its lower end as though to let some, liquid escape from it. And at the right of the long slab was a more deeply hollowed stone black with fire.

There was a curious numbness creeping through me; a queer sense of detachment as though a part of me, and the most vital part, were stepping aside to watch some play in which another and less important self was to be an actor. At the same time, that lesser part knew perfectly well what it had to do. Two of the white robed servants handed me small bunches of twigs, small bundles of leaves, and two black bowls in which were yellow crystals and lumps of resinous gum. With the twigs I built the fire on the blackened altar as the ancient rites prescribed… well did I remember how the priests of Ys had made that fire before the Alkar-Az at Carnac…

I struck the flint, and as the twigs blazed I cast on them leaves and crystals and gums. The strangely scented smoke arose and wound around us and then went streaming into the Cairn as though sucked by a strong draft.

Dahut glided past me. There was a woman close by with a child in her arms. Dahut drew the child from her, unresisting, and glided back to the squat altar. Through the smoke I caught the flash of the golden sickle, and then de Keradel took the black bowl and ewer from me. He set them beneath the gutter of the squat altar. He gave them to me, and they were filled…

I dipped my fingers into the bowl and sprinkled what filled it over the threshold of the Cairn. I took the ewer and poured what it held from side to side of that threshold. I went back to the altar of the fire and fed it from red hands.

Now de Keradel was standing at the squat altar. He raised a small body in his arms, and cast it into the Cairn. Dahut was beside him, rigid, golden sickle upraised – but the sickle was no longer golden. It was red… like my hands…

The smoke from the sacred fire swirled between and around us.

De Keradel cried a word – and the chant of the prayer ended. A man shambled from the sacrifices, eyes wide and unwinking, face rapt. De Keradel caught him by the shoulders, and instantly two of the servants threw themselves upon this man, tore off his clothing and pressed him naked down upon the stone. His head fell behind the stone pillow – his chest strained over it. Swiftly de Keradel pressed upon a spot on the neck, and over the heart, and under the thighs. The sacrifice lay limp upon the slab… and de Keradel began to beat upon the naked lifted breast with the black maul. Slowly at first… then faster and faster… harder… to the ancient prescribed rhythm.

There was a shrilling of agony from the man on the stone. As though fed by it, the corposants flared wanly. They pulsed and waned. The sacrifice was silent, and I knew that de Keradel had pressed fingers against his throat… the agony of the sacrifice must not be articulate since agony that is voiceless is hardest to bear, and therefore most acceptable to the Gatherer…

The maul crashed down in the last stroke, splintering ribs and crushing heart. The smoke from the fire was swirling into the Cairn. De Keradel had raised the body of the sacrifice from the slab… held it high over his head…

He hurled it into the Cairn, while fast upon its fall came the thud of a smaller body, hurled after it…

From the hands of Dahut! And they were stained red and dripping – like my own.

He gave them to me, and they were filled…

There was a buzzing within the Cairn, like hundreds of carrion flies. Over the Cairn the fog blackened. A formless shadow dropped through the fog and gathered over the Cairn. It had no shape, and it had no place in space. It darkened the fog and it squatted upon the Cairn – yet I knew that it was but a part of Something that extended to the rim of the galaxy of which our world is a mote, our sun a spark… and beyond the rim of the galaxy… beyond the universe… beyond, where there is no such thing as space.

It squatted upon the Cairn, but it did not enter.

Again the golden sickle flashed in the hand of Dahut; and again de Keradel filled the ewer and the bowl and gave them to me. And again, numbly, I walked through the smoke of the altar fire and sprinkled the red drops from the bowl into the Cairn, and poured the red contents of the ewer from side to side of its threshold.

De Keradel held up the black maul, and cried out once more. A woman came out of the sacrifices, an old woman, wrinkled and trembling. The acolytes of de Keradel stripped her, and he threw her upon the stone… and swung the black maul down upon her withered breasts… and again and again…

And he swung her body up and out and through the portal of the Cairn… and others came running to him… and them he slew with the black maul… no longer black but dripping crimson… and hurled them into the Cairn…

The squatting darkness on the Cairn was no longer there. It had seeped through the great stones that roofed it, but still its shadow stained the fog reaching up and up like a black Pillar. The chamber of the Cairn was thick with the Blackness. And the smoke from the altar fire no longer clothed Dahut and de Keradel and I, but streamed straight through into the Cairn.

The buzzing ceased, all sound died everywhere, a silence that was like the silence of space before ever a sun was born took its place. All movement ceased. Even the drifting fog wraiths were motionless.

But I knew that the formless darkness within the Cairn was aware of me. Was aware of me and weighing me with a thousand eyes. I felt its awareness, malignant – crueler beyond measurement than even human cruelty. Its awareness streamed out and flicked over me like tiny tentacles… like black butterflies testing me with their antennae.

I was not afraid.

Now the buzzing began again within the Cairn, rising higher and higher until it became a faint, sustained whispering.

De Keradel was kneeling at the threshold, listening. Beside him stood Dahut, listening… sickle in hand… sickle no longer golden but red…