Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

They raced down upon me like a black wave… and I saw that they were shadowy, but in the blackness of their shadows red eyes gleamed with the same hell-fires that were in Dahut's. And behind them thundered the stallion with Dahut – no longer screaming, her mouth twisted into a square of fury and her face no woman's but a fiend's.

They were almost upon me before my paralysis broke. I raised the automatic and shot straight at her. Before I could press trigger again, the shadow pack was on me.

Like the thing that had touched me, they, too, had substance, these shadow hounds of Dahut. Tenuous, misty – but material. I staggered under their onslaught. It was as though I fought against bodies made of black cobwebs, and I saw the moon as though it were shining through a black veil; and Dahut upon the stallion and the desolate meadow were dimmed and blurred as though I looked through black cobwebs. I had dropped my gun and I fought with bare hands. Their touch had not the vileness of the ape-armed thing, but from them came a strange and numbing cold. They tore at me with shadowy fangs, tore at my throat with red eyes burning into mine, and it was as though the cold poured into me through their fangs. I was weakening. It was growing harder to breathe. The numbness of the cold had my arms and hands so that now I could only feebly struggle against the black cobwebs. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath…

Dahut was down from the stallion and I was free from hounds. I stared up at her and tried to stagger to my feet. The fury had gone from her face, but in it was no mercy and out of its whiteness the violet flames of her eyes flared. She brought her whip down across my face: "A brand for your first treachery!" She lashed. "A brand for your second!" A third time again. "A brand for this time!"

I wondered, dazedly, why I did not feel the blows.

I felt nothing; all my body was numb, as though the cold had condensed within it. Slowly it was creeping into my brain, chilling my mind, freezing my thought. She said: "Stand up."

Slowly, I arose. She leaped upon the stallion's back. She said: "Raise your left arm." I lifted it, and she noosed the lash of the quirt around my wrist like a fetter.

She said: "Look. My dogs feed."

I looked. The shadow hounds were coursing over the meadow and the shadow things were running, hopping from bush to bush, squeaking, piping in terror. The hounds were chasing them, pulling them down, tearing at them.

She said: "You, too, shall feed!"

She called to her dogs and they left their kills and came coursing to her.

The cold had crept into my brain. I could not think. I could see, but what I saw had little meaning. I had no will, except hers.

The stallion trotted away, into the lane. I trotted at its side, held by the fetter of Dahut's lash, like a runaway slave. Once I looked behind. At my heels was the shadow pack, red eyes glinting in their bodies' murk. It did not matter.

And the numbness grew until all I knew was that I was trotting, trotting.

Then even that last faint fragment of consciousness faded away.

There was no feeling in my body, but my mind was awake and alert. It was as though I had no body. The icy venom from the fangs of the shadow hounds still numbed me, I thought. But it had cleared from my brain. I could see and I could hear.

All that I could see was a green twilight, as though I lay deep in some ocean abyss looking upward through immense spaces of motionless, crystal-clear green water. I floated deep within this motionless sea, yet I could hear, far above me, its waves whispering and singing.

I began to rise, floating up through the depths toward the whispering, singing waves. Their voices became clearer. They were singing a strange old song, a sea-song old before ever man was… singing it to the measured chime of tiny bells struck slowly far beneath the sea… to measured tap, tap, tap on drums of red royal coral deep beneath the sea… to chords struck softly on harps of sea-fans whose strings were mauve and violet and crocus-yellow.

Up I floated and up, until song and drum beat, chimes and sighing harp chords blended into one… The voice of Dahut.

She was close to me, and she was singing, but I could not see her. I could see nothing but the green twilight, and that was fast darkening. Sweet was her voice and pitiless… and wordless was her song except for its burden…

I strove to speak and could not; strove to move and could not. And still her song went on… only its burden plain…

Suddenly I felt my body. First as a tingling, and then as a leaden weight, and then as a wrenching agony. I was out of my body. It lay upon a wide, low bed in a tapestried room filled with rosy light. The light did not penetrate the space in which I was, crouching at my body's feet. On my body's face were three crimson welts, the marks of Dahut's whip, and Dahut stood at my body's head, naked, two thick braids of her pale gold hair crossed between white breasts. I knew that my body was not dead, but Dahut was not looking at it. She was looking at me… whatever I was… crouched at my body's feet…

The room, my body, and Dahut faded – in that precise order. I was creeping, creeping, through darkness. It was like creeping through a tunnel, for solidity was above and below and on each side of me; and at last, as though reaching a tunnel's end, the blackness before me began to gray. I crept out of the darkness.

I was at the edge of the standing stones, on the threshold of the monoliths. The moon was low, and they stood black against it.

There was an eddy of wind, and like a leaf it blew me among the monoliths. I thought: What am I to be blown like a leaf in the wind! I felt resentment, rage. I thought: A shadow's rage!

I was beside one of the standing stones. Dark as it was, a darker shadow leaned against it. It was the shadow of a man, although there was no man's body to cast it. It was the shadow of a man buried to the knees. There were other monoliths near, and against each of them leaned a man's shadow… buried to the knees. The shadow closest to me wavered, like the shadow cast by a wind-shaken candle flame. It bent to me and whispered: "You have life! Live, Shadow and save us!"

I whispered: "I am shadow… shadow like you… how can I save you?"

The shadow against the standing stone swayed and shook: "You have life… kill… kill her… kill him…"

The shadow on the stone behind me whispered: "Kill… her… first."

From all the monoliths rose a whisper: "Kill… kill… kill…"

There was a stronger eddy of the wind, and on it I was whirled like a leaf almost to the threshold of the Cairn. The whispering of the shadows fettered to the circling monoliths grew locust shrill, beating back the wind that was whirling me into the Cairn… shrilling a barrier between the Cairn and me… driving me back, out of the field of the monoliths…

The Cairn and the monoliths were gone. The moon was gone and gone was the familiar earth. I was a shadow… in a land of shadows…

There were no stars, no moon, no sun. There was only a faintly luminous dusk which shrouded a world all wan and ashen and black. I stood alone, on a wide plain. There were no perspectives, and no horizons. Everywhere it was as though I looked upon vast screens. Yet I knew there were depths and distances in this strange land. I was a shadow, vague and unsubstantial. Yet I could see and hear, feel and taste, I knew that because I clasped my hands and felt them, and in my mouth and throat was the bitter taste of ashes.