Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

His lips were smiling, but his eyes were pale blue ice: "I am still speaking as sorcerer, of course."

I asked: "Why did you come here for your experiment, de Keradel? Could you not have carried it on better in Carnac, before the ancient Cairn – the path to which the Gatherer knew well?"

He answered: "All paths are known to the Gatherer. And how could I have had freedom to open that ancient path in a land where memory still lingers? Where could I have gotten the sacrifices – or carried on the ritual without interruption? It was not possible. Therefore I came here. Where the Gatherer is unknown – as yet."

I nodded; that was reasonable enough. I asked, bluntly:

"What do you expect to gain?"

He laughed: "You are too naive, Caranac. That I will not tell you."

Anger and remorse swept away my caution; I said:

"You'll never have my aid again in that black work, de Keradel."

"So!" he said, slowly. "So! And so I thought. But I will not need you again, Caranac. The rapprochement last night was almost perfect. So perfect… that I may not even need… again… Dahut."

He had said that last musingly, more as though sealing by words a secret thought than speaking to me. And once more I had the feeling of dissension between the two… and fear of Dahut driving him… driving him to what?…

He leaned back and roared laughter; his eyes and lips both laughing, without malice or evil.

"That is one side of the matter, Dr. Caranac. And now I give you the other side, the commonsense side. I am an able psychiatrist, and adventurous. I am an explorer, but not of the jungles nor the deserts of this world. I explore the brains of men, which are thousands of worlds. Mostly, I admit, they are distressingly similar; yet now and then there is one sufficiently different to justify the labor of exploration. Let us suppose that I have heard of you – as a matter of fact, Caranac, I know the history of your family better than you do yourself. Still, I have no desire to meet you until I read your interview in the case of this Ralston, whom I knew not at all. It arouses my curiosity, and I decide to explore – you. What is my best approach without exciting your suspicions? The most favorable, unguarded entrance into the particular territory of your brain which I wish to survey? I read that you are a friend of Dr. Bennett, who has interesting ideas upon the death of this same Ralston and others. I read that he is with Dr. Lowell, a brother psychiatrist upon whom I have long been intending to call. So I do call upon him, and what more natural that I should receive a dinner invitation for myself and my daughter. And, as I expect, there are you and Dr. Bennett.

"Very well, then. You are a connoisseur of warlocks, a student of sorcery. I turn the conversation in that direction. You have spoken to the pressmen of shadows, and to my delight I find that Dr. Bennett is obsessed by the same idea. Better still, he is half-convinced of sorcery's reality. You two are so thoroughly en rapport that not only do I find entrance to your mind doubly easy, but his also open to me."

He paused as though inviting comment. I made none. Something of the amiability faded from his face. He said: "I have called myself an explorer of minds, Caranac. I can cut my trails through them even as other explorers cut theirs through the jungles. Better. Because I can control the – vegetation."

Again he paused, and when again I made no comment, asked with edge of irritation: "You understand me?"

I nodded: "I follow you perfectly." I did not add that not only did I follow him but was a bit ahead of him… a thought was forming in my mind.

He said: "I now suggest to you – in my character of psychiatrist, Caranac, not of sorcerer – that my whole experiment has been centered upon awakening those memories which have come down to you from ancestors who did make sacrifices to a Demon-god. Those very sacrifices in which last night it seemed to you that you participated. That what you thought you saw upon the Cairn and within the Cairn was the image of that Demon-god the imaginations of your ancestors created long centuries ago… that, and nothing more. I suggest that from the moment we met, little which has seemed reality to you has been wholly so – a tapestry of dark ancestral memories and innocent realities of which I have been the weaver. There is no Gatherer… there are no creeping Shadows… no hidden lair beneath this house. My daughter, who shares in my experiments, is in truth what sometimes she has seemed to you to be… a woman of today's world, sophisticated, certainly, but no more witch nor harlot than the Helen you called your antique coin. And finally, that you are a guest here, only. No prisoner, and under no compulsion to remain other than your own imagination – stimulated, as I have admitted, by my own passion for research."

He added with barely discernible irony: "And my daughter's."

Now it was I who walked to the window, and stood with my back to him. Absently, I noted that the rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the clouds. He was lying – but in which of his two interpretations were the lies the fewer? No sorcerer could have set the stage of Dahut's towers in New York and Ys, nor have directed my experiences there, real or imagined; nor been fugleman to what had happened after the rites of last night. Only a sorceress could have managed those things.

Also, there were other weak spots to that second explanation. But the one indissoluble rock on which it split was that McCann, flying over this place, had also seen the corposants, the rotting lights of the dead… had seen the black and formless shape squatting upon the Cairn… glimpsed figures weaving among the standing stones before the fog had covered all.

Which of the two stories did de Keradel want me to believe? Which was it better for me to pretend to believe? That he had never really trusted me, I knew. Was this a sort of Lady or the Tiger trap? Which door ought I open?

The thought that had been forming in my mind grew clear. I turned to him with what I hoped was the precise mixture of chagrin and admiration. I said:

"Frankly, de Keradel, I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. After all, you know, you did take me up on the mountain and show me the kingdoms of Earth, and a part of me rejoiced exceedingly at the prospect and was perfectly willing to sign over to you. If a tenderer part is set at ease because it was mirage, still the sterner part wishes it had been true. And I am divided between resentment that you should make me the subject of such an experiment, and admiration for your perfect workmanship."

I sat down and added, carelessly: "I take it that now you have made everything plain, the experiment is ended."

The pale blue eyes dwelt upon me; he answered, slowly: "It is ended – so far as I am concerned."

Well did I know it wasn't, and well did I know I was as much a prisoner as ever; but I lighted a cigarette, and asked: "I suppose, then, I am free to go whenever I choose?"

"An unnecessary question," the pale eyes narrowed, "if you have accepted my commonsense interpretation of your experiences."

I laughed: "It was an echo of my servitude to you. One does not so quickly feel himself free of such fetters of illusion as you forge, de Keradel. By the way, I'd like to send a telegram to Dr. Bennett."

"I am sorry," he said, "but the storm has broken the wire between us and the village."

I said: "I am sure it has. But what I would like to wire Dr. Bennett is that I like it here, and intend to remain as long as I am welcome. That the matter in which we have been so interested has been explained to my complete satisfaction, and to drop it. That there is nothing for him to worry about, and that I will amplify all this later by letter."