Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

"Why do you say that?"

"I do not know. But always you have seemed to me of the sea, Dahut. I told you so that night I met you. So why should your spirit not rise and fall with the rise and fall of the tides?"

She arose, abruptly, and her face was colorless: "Good-night, Alan. I am very tired. Sleep – without dreams."

She was out of the room before I could answer her. Why had that mention of the tides brought about such change in her, forced her to flight – for flight that swift, departure had been? I could find no answer. A clock struck nine. I sat at the table for a quarter-hour more, the blank-eyed servants watching me. I stood up, yawning. I smiled drowsily at the butler and said to him in the Breton:

"Tonight I sleep."

He had been among the van of those who with their flambeaux had herded the sacrifices. He bowed low, no slightest change of expression to betray that he sensed the true significance of what I had said. He held the curtains open for me, and I felt his gaze upon me as I slowly went up the stairs to my room.

I paused for a moment in the hall and looked out the window. There was a rack of thin clouds over the sky, half-veiling the moon, now a few nights past its full. It was a dimly luminous night, and a very silent one. There were no shadows in the wide, old-fashioned hall – whispering and rustling. I entered my room, undressed and went to bed. It was close to ten.

An hour went by while I lay there feigning sleep. Then that for which I had been waiting happened. Someone was in the room, and by the faint strange fragrance I knew it was Dahut, and that she stood close beside my bed. I felt her bend over me and listen to my breathing; then her fingers, light as the touch of a moth, upon the pulse in my neck and upon the pulse in my wrist. I sighed, and turned, and seemed to sink again in deepest slumber. And I heard her sigh, and felt a touch upon my cheek that was not of fingers. The fragrance stole away, soundlessly. Yet I knew Dahut had paused before the tapestry, listening. For long minutes she stood there, and then there was the faintest of clicks, and I knew that she had gone.

Nevertheless, I waited until the hands upon my watch-face pointed to eleven before I slipped out of bed, and drew on breeches, shirt, dark sweater, and sneakers.

The driveway to the house ran straight to the guarded gates, a mile and a half away. I did not believe this was patrolled, and I purposed to follow it to within half a mile of the gates, strike off to the left, reach the wall and skirt it to the rock where McCann would be awaiting me. True, the keeper of the inn had said the breast could not be scaled from the water, but I had no doubt McCann would find a way. I should make it in half an hour, easily.

I stepped out into the hall, crept to the head of the stairs, and looked down. A faint light was burning, but there was no sign of servants. I stole down the stairs and reached the front door. It was unlocked and unbolted. I closed it behind me and merged into the shadow of a rhododendron, getting my bearings.

Here the driveway made a wide curve, unprotected by shrubbery. The scud had thinned and the moon was far too bright, but once the loop was crossed, there would be cover from the trees that bordered the road. I walked across the loop and gained the shelter of the trees. I waited a good five minutes, watching. The house remained dark, no lights from any window; no stir nor sound. I set off along the roadway.

I had covered a trifle under my mile when I came to a narrow lane angling to the left. It was fairly straight, what I could see of it in the watery moonlight. It struck in the general direction of the rock, and promised not only a shorter cut but a safer way. I took it. A few score yards and the trees ended. The lane continued, but bordered with scrub and bushes just too high for me to look over and far too dense for me to see through.

A half mile of this, and I began to have an acutely disagreeable feeling of being followed. It was an extraordinary unpleasant feeling – as though that which followed was peculiarly loathsome. And suddenly it was at my back – reaching out to me? I wheeled, snatching the gun from the holster.

There was nothing behind me. The lane stretched dimly back, and empty.

My heart was pumping as though I had been running, the backs of my hands and my forehead wet with sweat and I felt a stirring of nausea. I fought it down and went on, gun in hand. A dozen steps, and again I felt the stealthy approach – coming closer, closer, closer… faster and faster… sweeping upon me. I mastered panic impulse to run, and wheeled again – and again saw only empty lane.

I pressed my back against the bushes, and sidled along, watching the path I had traversed.

Now there was furtive movement in the scrub that lined the lane; movement as of things flitting through the bushes to the measure of my steps, watching me, gloating upon me; and there were rustlings and whisperings and thin obscene pipings as though they talked of me as I sidled on and on, legs trembling, nausea growing, and fighting, fighting at every step that panic desire to fling away my gun, cover my eyes with my arms lest I see the things – and run and run.

The lane ended. Step by step I backed away from it until I could no longer hear the rustlings and the pipings. But still there was movement in the bushes and I knew the things watched me from them. I turned and saw that I was on the edge of the haunted meadow. Sinister enough it had seemed by day, but it had been gay to what it was now, by night, under the scud-veiled, waning moon. It was desolate, unutterably desolate, and the bushes that had seemed like crouching men were now bent souls chained for eternity to that desolation, in irrevocable despair.

I could not cross that meadow unless I did it quickly. I could not go back through the piping things. I began to run straight across the meadow, toward the wall.

I was a third over it when I heard the baying of the hounds. It came from the direction of the house, and involuntarily I stopped, listening. It was not like the cry of any pack I had ever heard. It was sustained, wailing, ineffably mournful; with the thin unearthly quality of the obscene pipings. It was the desolation of the meadow given voice.

I stood, throat dry, every hair prickling, unable to move. And nearer drew the howling, and nearer.

The lane spewed shadow shapes. They were black under the moon and they were like the shadows of men, but of men deformed, distorted, changed into abominable grotesques within a workshop in Hell. They were – foul. They spread fan-wise from the mouth of the lane and came leaping, skipping, flittering over the meadow; squattering in the crouching bushes, then flinging themselves out again, and as they ran they mewed and squeaked and piped. There was one with bloated body like a monstrous frog that came hopping toward me and leaped croaking over my head. There was another that touched me as it passed – a shadowy thing with long and twisted ape-like arms, dwarfed legs and head the size of an orange set upon a thin and writhing neck. It was not all shadow, for I felt its touch, gossamer as the wing of a moth, thin as mist – but palpable. It was unclean, a defilement, a horror.

The baying of the dogs was close, and with it a tattoo of hoofs, the drumming of a strong horse, galloping.

Out of the lane burst a great black stallion, neck outstretched, mane flying. Upon his back rode Dahut, ash-gold hair streaming loose in the wind, eyes flaming with the violet witch-fire. She saw me, and raised her whip and screamed, reining in the stallion so that he danced, fore-feet high in air. Again she screamed, and pointed to me. From behind the stallion poured a pack of huge dogs, a dozen or more of them, like staghounds… like the great hounds of the Druids.