Abraham Merritt - Burn, Witch, Burn!

"Why, no," I answered, and dropped into the chair.

She said, softly: "It is quiet here. And you seem weary. You have been working hard, eh? And you are weary."

I sank back into the chair. Suddenly I realized how weary I really was. For a moment my guard relaxed and I closed my eyes. I opened them to find that the doll–maker had taken her seat at the table.

And now I saw her hands. They were long and delicate and white and I knew that they were the most beautiful I had ever beheld. Just as her eyes seemed to have life of their own, so did those hands seem living things, having a being independent of the body to which they belonged. She rested them on the table. She spoke again, caressingly.

"It is well to come now and then to a quiet place. To a place where peace is. One grows so weary—so weary. So tired—so very tired."

She picked a little dress from the table and began to sew. Long white fingers plied the needle while the other hand turned and moved the small garment. How wonderful was the motion of those long white hands…like a rhythm…like a song…restful!

She said, in low sweet tones:

"Ah, yes—here nothing of the outer world comes. All is peace—and rest—rest—"

I drew my eyes reluctantly from the slow dance of those hands, the weaving of those long and delicate fingers which moved so rhythmically. So restfully. The doll–maker's eyes were on me, soft and gentle…full of that peace of which she had been telling.

It would do no harm to relax a little, gain strength for the struggle which must come. And I was tired. I had not realized how tired! My gaze went back to her hands. Strange hands—no more belonging to that huge body than did the eyes and voice.

Perhaps they did not! Perhaps that gross body was but a cloak, a covering, of the real body to which eyes and hands and voice belonged. I thought over that, watching the slow rhythms of the hands. What could the body be like to which they belonged? As beautiful as hands and eyes and voice?

She was humming some strange air. It was a slumberous, lulling melody. It crept along my tired nerves, into my weary mind—distilling sleep…sleep. As the hands were weaving sleep. As the eyes were pouring sleep upon me—

Sleep!

Something within me was raging, furiously. Bidding me rouse myself! Shake off this lethargy! By the tearing effort that brought me gasping to the surface of consciousness, I knew that I must have passed far along the path of that strange sleep. And for an instant, on the threshold of complete awakening, I saw the room as Walters had seen it.

Vast, filled with mellow light, the ancient tapestries, the panelings, the carved screens behind which hidden shapes lurked laughing—laughing at me. Upon the wall the mirror—and it was like a great half–globe of purest water within which the images of the carvings round its frame swayed like the reflections of verdure round a clear woodland pool!

The immense chamber seemed to waver—and it was gone.

I stood beside an overturned chair in that room to which the doll– maker had led me. And the doll–maker was beside me, close. She was regarding me with a curious puzzlement and, I thought, a shadow of chagrin. It flashed upon me that she was like one who had been unexpectedly interrupted—

Interrupted! When had she left her chair? How long had I slept? What had she done to me while I had been sleeping? What had that terrific effort of will by which I had broken from her web prevented her from completing?

I tried to speak—and could not. I stood tongue–tied, furious, humiliated. I realized that I had been trapped like the veriest tyro— I who should have been all alert, suspicious of every move. Trapped by voice and eyes and weaving hands by the reiterated suggestion that I was weary so weary…that here was peace…and sleep…sleep… What had she done to me while I slept? Why could I not move? It was as though all my energy had been dissipated in that one tremendous thrust out of her web of sleep! I stood motionless, silent, spent. Not a muscle moved at command of my will. The enfeebled hands of my will reached out to them—and fell.

The doll–maker laughed. She walked to the cabinets on the far wall. My eyes followed her, helplessly. There was no slightest loosening of the paralysis that gripped me. She pressed a spring, and the door of a cabinet slipped down.

Within the cabinet was a child–doll. A little girl, sweet–faced and smiling. I looked at it and felt a numbness at my heart. In its small, clasped hands was one of the dagger–pins, and I knew that this was the doll which had stirred in the arms of the Gilmore baby…had climbed from the baby's crib…had danced to the bed and thrust…

"This is one of my peculiarly best!" The doll–maker's eyes were on me and filled with cruel mockery. "A good doll! A bit careless at times, perhaps. Forgetting to bring back her school–books when she goes visiting. But so obedient! Would you like her for your granddaughter?"

Again she laughed—youthful, tingling, evil laughter. And suddenly I knew Ricori had been right and that this woman must be killed. I summoned all my will to leap upon her. I could not move a finger.

The long white hands groped over the next cabinet and touched its hidden spring. The numbness at my heart became the pressure of a hand of ice. Staring out at me from that cabinet was Walters! And she was crucified!

So perfect, so—alive was the doll that it was like seeing the girl herself through a diminishing glass. I could not think of it as a doll, but as the girl. She was dressed in her nurse's uniform. She had no cap, and her black hair hung disheveled about her face. Her arms were outstretched, and through each palm a small nail had been thrust, pinning the hands to the back of the cabinet. The feet were bare, resting one on the other, and through the insteps had been thrust another nail. Completing the dreadful, the blasphemous, suggestion, above her head was a small placard. I read it:

"The Burnt Martyr."

The doll–maker murmured in a voice like honey garnered from flowers in hell:

"This doll has not behaved well. She has been disobedient. I punish my dolls when they do not behave well. But I see that you are distressed. Well, she has been punished enough—for the moment."

The long white hands crept into the cabinet, drew out the nails from hands and feet. She set the doll upright, leaning against the back. She turned to me.

"You would like her for your granddaughter, perhaps? Alas! She is not for sale. She has lessons to learn before she goes again from me."

Her voice changed, lost its diabolic sweetness, became charged with menace.

"Now listen to me—Dr. Lowell! What—you did not think I knew you? I knew you from the first. You too need a lesson!" Her eyes blazed upon me. "You shall have your lesson—you fool! You who pretend to heal the mind—and know nothing, nothing I say, of what the mind is. You, who conceive the mind as but a part of a machine of flesh and blood, nerve and bone and know nothing of what it houses. You—who admit existence of nothing unless you can measure it in your test tubes or see it under your microscope. You—who define life as a chemical ferment, and consciousness as the product of cells. You fool! Yet you and this savage, Ricori, have dared to try to hamper me, to interfere with me, to hem me round with spies! Dared to threaten me— Me—possessor of the ancient wisdom beside which your science is as crackling of thorns under an empty pot! You fools! I know who are the dwellers in the mind—and the powers that manifest themselves through it—and those who dwell beyond it! They come at my call. And you think to pit your paltry knowledge against mine? You fool! Have you understood me? Speak!"

She pointed a finger at me. I felt my throat relax, knew I could speak once more.