Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

There was a child upon the squat altar, crying – not yet dead…

Abruptly the Cairn was empty… the fog above it empty of the shadow… the Gatherer gone.

I was marching back between the standing stones, Dahut and de Keradel beside me. There were no corposants over the monoliths. The flambeaux flared in the hands of the servants. Behind us, chanting and swaying, danced those who were left of the sacrifices. We passed through the oaks, and they were silent. The curious numbness still held me, and I felt no horror of what I had seen or of what I had done.

The house was before me. It was strange how its outlines wavered… how misty and unsubstantial they seemed…

And now I was in my own room. The numbness that had deadened all emotional reactions during the evocation of the Gatherer was slowly giving way to something else not yet defined, not yet strong enough to be known. The exaltation which had followed the green drink ebbed and flowed in steadily decreasing waves. I had an overpowering sense of unreality – I moved, unreal, among unreal things. What had become of my robe of white? I remembered that de Keradel had stripped it from me but where and when I could not think. And my hands were clean – no longer red with blood… the blood of…

Dahut was with me, feet bare, white skin gleaming through a silken shift that held no concealment. The violet fires still flickered faintly in her eyes. She put her arms around my neck, drew my face down to hers, set her mouth on mine. She whispered: "Alan… I have forgotten Alain de Carnac… he has paid for what he did, and he is dying… it is you, Alan – you that I love… "

I held her in my arms, and within them I felt the Lord of Carnac die. But I, Alan Caranac, was not yet awake.

My arms closed tighter around her… there was the fragrance of some secret flower of the sea about her… and there was the sweetness of new- learned or long forgotten evil in her kisses…

I awakened as though escaping from some singularly unpleasant dream. I could not remember what the dream had been, but I knew it had been rotten. It was a stormy day, the surges hammering against the rocky shores, the wind wailing, and the light that came through the windows was gray. I raised my left arm to look at my watch, but it was not there. Nor was it on the table beside the bed. My mouth was dry, and my skin was dry and hot. I felt as though I had been drunk for two days.

Worst of all was my fear that I would remember the dream.

I sat up in bed. Something was missing besides my watch – the gun under my armpit – McCann's gun. I lay back, and tried to remember. There had been a green drink which had sparkled and effervesced – after that, nothing. There was a fog between the green drink and now. The fog hid what I feared to have uncovered.

Fog had been in the dream. The pistol had been in the dream, too. When I had taken the green drink I still had the gun. There was a flash of memory – after the drink the gun had seemed absurd, unconsequential and I had thrown it into a corner. I jumped out of the bed to look for it.

My foot struck against a black and oval bowl. Not all black – there were stains along its sides, and inside it was a viscous scum.

The bowl of sacrifice!

Abruptly the fog lifted and there was the dream… if dream it had been… stark and clear in each dread detail. I recoiled from it, not only sick of soul but nauseated of body…

If it had been no dream, then was I damned and trebly damned. If I had not killed, I had acquiesced in killing. If I had not beaten in the breasts of the sacrifices with my own hands, I had not lifted a hand to save them – and I had fed the fires that were their funeral torches.

Equally with Dahut and de Keradel, I had summoned that black and evil Power… equally with them I was murderer, torturer… thrall of Hell.

What was there to prove it dream? Illusion suggested by de Keradel and Dahut while my will lay quiescent under the spell of the green drink? Desperately out of the damning memories I tried to sift some evidence that it had been only dream. There had been the flaring of the feral phosphorescence in their eyes – and in mine. A physiological peculiarity which man does not commonly possess, nor could any drink create the layer of cells which causes it. Nor does humanity bear within its breasts, over its hearts, perceptible lumens bright in youth and dimmed and yellow in age. Yet they had glowed in the breasts of the sacrifices!

Nor where except in dream do oaks chant as though their leafed boughs had voices?

But – there was the blood-stained bowl! Could that materialize from a dream?

No… but de Keradel or Dahut might have placed it there to make me, waking, believe the dream had been real. And dream or no dream – I was tainted with their evil.

I got up and searched for the automatic. I found it in the corner of the room where I had tossed it. Well, that much had been true. I strapped the holster under my arm. My head felt like a hive, my brain a honeycomb in and out of which lame bees of thought went buzzing aimlessly. But a cold, implacable hatred, a loathing of de Keradel and his witch-daughter held steady in the shaken fabric of my mind.

The rain lashed the windows, and the gale cried around the old house. Somewhere a clock struck a single clanging note. Whether it was the half-hour or the full I could not tell. A straight thought struck through the aimless ones. I took a pinch of the leaves out of the holster and chewed them. They were exceedingly bitter, but I swallowed them – and almost instantly my head was clear.

There was no use in hunting out de Keradel and killing him. In the first place, I could give no real defense for doing so. Not unless there was a heap of bodies in the Cairn, and I could open the cavern of the paupers. I had not the slightest belief that I could find that cavern or that there would be any bodies. Killing de Keradel would seem the act of a madman, and for doing so a madhouse would be the best I could expect. Also, if I killed him, there would yet be the blank-eyed servants to reckon with.

And Dahut… I doubted whether I could shoot down Dahut in cold blood. If I did there still would be the servants. They would kill me… and I had no especial desire to die. The face of Helen came before me… and still less did I desire to die.

Also, there was the necessity of knowing whether what I had been visualizing had been dream or reality. It was most necessary that I know that.

Someway, somehow, I must get in touch with McCann. Whether dream or reality, I must continue to play the game, not allow myself to be trapped again. At any rate, at first I must seem to believe in its reality; convince de Keradel that I did so believe. For no other reason could he or Dahut have left the bowl beside my bed.

I dressed, and picked up the bowl and went downstairs, holding it behind me. De Keradel was at the table, but the Demoiselle was not. I saw that it was a little after one. He looked up at me, sharply, as I sat and said: "I trust you slept well. I gave order that you should not be disturbed. It is a desolate day, and my daughter sleeps late."

I laughed: "She should – after last night."

He asked: "What do you mean?"

"No need to fence longer with me, de Keradel," I answered, "after last night."

He asked, slowly: "What do you remember of last night?"

"Everything, de Keradel. Everything – from your convincing disquisition upon the dark begetting of life, its darker delivery, its darkest evolution – and the proof of it in what we summoned to the Cairn."

He said: "You have dreamed."

"Did I dream this?"

I set the stained bowl upon the table. His eyes widened; he looked from it to me and back again to the bowl. He asked: "Where did you find that?"