Part 1

The Life-Eater

By HAROLD WARD

_A terror-tale of much power, about the frightful wraith from Beyond, which brought panic and death to the little town in the Louisiana swamplands._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales June 1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_1. The Terror_

Death stalked through the little village of La Foubelle at the edge of the great swamp. Again and again it struck, fattening the tiny, cypress-draped graveyard until there was scarcely a house that was not in mourning.

No ordinary calamity this, but a horror. Men talked of it in awed, hushed whispers. Women, hollow-eyed and gaunt from worry, pressed their little ones to their flaccid breasts as they busied themselves with their household tasks. The coming of night found the streets deserted, the townspeople huddled, white-faced and frightened, behind closed doors.

"_La maladie sans maladie_," they called it, this dark, formless, unspeakable terror that always came at night, striking down young and old alike--leaving in its wake a body shriveled and deflated, the skin puckered into a thousand wrinkles. They had seen their loved ones die, had these simple folk of La Foubelle--seen them twist and writhe in excruciating agony at the very last. Sometimes, when the victim was very strong, the thing took toll of him for days.

Jules Delatour, it was, who whimpered of having seen the horror hovering over the body of his dying mother--a black, transparent thing, he babbled, smoke-like and shapeless, its bestial face filled with malignant ferocity. But Jules was the village drunkard and had been in his cups the night his mother passed away, so no one believed his tale.

* * * * *

Doctor Lamontaine, sipping rum from a battered tin cup and poring over a volume of Cagliostro, noted the shadow that fell across the book as a man entered the cubbyhole of an office.

"Drink?" he growled without looking up, and shoved a second cup across the desk. "Rum. Good Jamaica rum. Help yourself."

The green-and-yellow parrot, swinging on its perch at his elbow, opened its filmy eyes and echoed its master's invitation.

"_Rum!_" it shrieked drowsily. "_Good Jamaica rum! Hotter'n hell! Hotter'n hell!_"

Lamontaine looked up when his visitor made no response to the double overture. Then he leaped to his feet, his hand outstretched, his eyes smiling a welcome under their bushy red brows.

"The dominie, by all that's holy!" he roared.

He dumped a pile of magazines from a chair, kicked them into the corner, and shoved it to his guest.

"No wonder you refused my invitation to guzzle," he chuckled. "You, the only teetotaler in the village. Sit down, my friend, and take a load off your feet."

The schoolmaster dropped wearily into the proffered seat and gazed at his host curiously.

"Will you never grow up?" he demanded whimsically.

Lamontaine shrugged his shoulders and returned the other's smile with a broad grin.

"I hope not," he chuckled. "The devil of it, dominie, is that I've sipped the nectar from the cup of knowledge and now all that's left for me is the dregs. But come, my friend, what brings you, a sick man, out in the heat of the day? Have I not warned you repeatedly against it?"

The little dominie smiled wanly.

"Evelyn l'Brest was stricken today," he said finally. "She is like--the others...."

There was silence for a moment. Lamontaine wagged his big head sagely; then he drew himself into his shell of professional reserve, for he knew that Noel Pelletier loved this slip of a girl who had been his pupil.

"I have already seen her," he said finally.

"There is nothing that you can do for her?"

Again the physician was silent. Then he arose and took a short turn about the tiny room. Returning to his desk, he dropped back into his seat and, filling the tin cup from the rum-jug at his elbow, he downed the contents at a gulp.

"I have told you before, my friend," he said finally, "that this is a case for a priest and not a physician."

The schoolmaster crossed himself.

"_Mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed. "Then you still insist?"

Lamontaine nodded.

"It is a question of exorcism, not physic," he growled. "All night and all this day, when I have had the opportunity, I have pored over my books. I am more convinced now than before. Listen, my friend."

He leaned across the desk and tapped the jumble of books with his long fore-finger.

"There is much knowledge in these," he said quietly, "knowledge that you men with religion in your souls will not admit. Black Magic? Certainly. You say that there is no such thing. I insist that it exists today just as it did in the beginning. True, the church has stamped it out to a large degree. But, nevertheless, there are many isolated cases--places far from the ken of men, such as here in La Foubelle--where it flourishes like the grass after a spring rain. Your people here are superstitious. They have given the devil fertile soil in which to plant his seeds."

"Admitted! Admitted!" the little schoolmaster said excitedly. "Against such ignorance one man can do nothing; a dozen could not handle the situation efficiently. Yet----"

Lamontaine held up a restraining hand.

"Books such as these of mine tell of strange, weird things," he interrupted, "horrible things--things of which the average man never dreams. Our ancestors knew more about spirit life--the life beyond the veil--than we shall ever know. Why? Because they lived closer to it.

"I have traveled in many lands and I have studied in innumerable out-of-the-way places," he went on heatedly, "but never have I seen such a rare opportunity for the devil and his imps as here in La Foubelle. And he has taken advantage of it, dominie. There is a terrible influence at work here--under our very noses."

The schoolmaster crossed himself again.

"_Désorienté!_" he exclaimed with a shudder. "Do you mean----"

"That there are many things the average man cannot--will not--understand," Lamontaine interrupted. "There are innumerable forms of spirit life--forms that function in various ways. Some of them--most of them, I might say--are kindly disposed toward us. Others are malignant. We have to deal with one of the latter in this case."

He filled and lighted his pipe, the little schoolmaster gazing at him with eyes that betrayed his horror and astonishment.

"_Désorienté!_" he said again. "You are beyond my depth, my friend. Explain yourself."

Lamontaine scratched his red beard reflectively.

"Primal earth forces," he said shortly, "elementals--spirit forms that have never evolved--subhuman nature spirits. They exist, together with innumerable other spirit forms, on the other side of the veil."

"_Mon Dieu!_" the schoolmaster gasped. "I can hardly believe it, my doctaire."

"These things are jealous of mankind, hating living beings because mankind has evolved," Lamontaine went on. "Why? Because they have never developed beyond the rudimentary stages. Consequently, they consider mankind their natural prey. One of these things is loose in our peaceful little village. Because it is out of its natural habitat, it must have vitality on which to live--human vitality. Otherwise, it ceases to be. So it feeds upon the vitality of those with whom it comes in contact, just as a vampire feeds upon human blood."

* * * * *

The face of the little schoolmaster turned a ghastly white. He half rose from his chair, then dropped back again, his teeth chattering.

"Horrible! Horrible! Blasphemous!" he ejaculated.

Lamontaine shrugged his broad shoulders.

"In order to obtain this sustenance--this vitality to prolong its existence," he continued, "an elemental must, necessarily, in its early stages, prey largely upon the sick, the weak--those who are at a low physical stage. But eventually it satiates itself with their vitality and becomes stronger. Then it seeks its victims among the more powerful. That is the cause of this plague among the members of our community."

The schoolmaster leaned back in his chair, his thin face drawn and haggard.

"_Dieu avec nous!_" he said in a low, awed whisper. "Then Jules Delatour told the truth! And it is this--this horrible thing--that my little Evelyn is faced with, my doctaire? Is there nothing that we can do to combat it?"

Lamontaine patted the pile of books in front of him, his eyes wearing a strange, far-away look.

"That is what I have been studying," he said finally. "But, first, let us consider how this unholy thing chanced to come to us. There must be a reason. What caused it to break through the veil?"

The schoolmaster's hands trembled like those of a man with the ague.

"Explain!" he said hoarsely.

"Alone and unassisted, these primal forces cannot come to us," Lamontaine told him. "They must be aided by someone who is already here--someone who has the vitality to support them for the nonce. It must be one with mediumistic powers. Now do you understand?"

The little schoolmaster crossed himself again.

"It is unbelievable, horrible!" he said. Then, leaning forward, his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper:

"I would willingly give my life, doctaire, in order to save the woman I love. You, who know everything, perhaps can show me the way."

Lamontaine combed his long beard with his fingers, reflectively.

"My books have already told me that much," he said after a brief pause. "If you ... care to take ... the chance."

The other nodded, a hectic spot appearing in each cheek.

"Proceed!" he commanded hoarsely.

Lamontaine rose and, walking to the little medicine cabinet, filled a hypodermic with clear, colorless liquid.

"An injection of this liquid will lower your vitality to a point where you will be an easy victim," he said quietly; "far easier than Evelyn, who is strong and healthy and able to resist it. Why? Because you are already a sick man. I have a plan to trap this thing--it must be a secret between us--if you are willing to trust me and take the only way out."

For an instant there was silence. Then the little schoolmaster bared his frail arm to the needle.

_2. The Thing_

Rum-guzzler though he was, a soldier of fortune--a wild, barbaric throw-back, born a hundred years too late--Doctor Hugo Lamontaine was yet an occultist of international reputation and a physician of extraordinary ability. Possessed of a fortune which made him independent of his fellow-men, he followed the dictates of his own conscience, caring not a whit for the conventions. To him the esoteric practises of voodoo, obeah and demonology were open books; to study them he had followed his beard to the end of the world.

Tall and broad-shouldered, his hair as red as the blood that he had shed on a dozen foreign fields, possessing the whiskers of a Viking, slovenly in his attire, constantly spoiling for a fight or a frolic, he was a man to be reckoned with under any conditions.

His insatiable craving for knowledge had brought him to the little village of La Foubelle. Slumbering at the very edge of the gigantic morass, uncontaminated by the presence of outsiders, its French-Creole inhabitants had clung, leech-like, to the customs and superstitions of their ancestors. Close association with the blacks who, brought from West India as slaves at an early day, had revolted and fled to the interior of the swamp, had intensified these weird beliefs. La Foubelle was a virgin vein of folklore and heterodoxies, witchcraft and bizarre customs. Lamontaine had deliberately thrown himself into the midst of the lives of these near-barbarians. He had ingratiated himself to them and, by degrees, had been accepted as one of them. Eventually he had become not only their physician, but their confessor as well.

The day had brought more than its accustomed load of suffering. The heat had made the afflicted ones worse. Making his evening rounds, Lamontaine was filled with a premonition of death lurking close at hand. He had the narrow street to himself. Men and women talked in low, hushed whispers, huddling together, sheep-like, fearful of the darkness that had dropped like a pall. Frightened children clung to their mothers' skirts, their black eyes beady with terror. From inside a tiny cottage came the sound of muffled sobs as a young mother rocked her first-born, slowly wasting away.

The bell in the little schoolhouse at the end of the lane clanged dolefully. Lamontaine halted in his tracks, his broad shoulders drooping like those of a defeated man. For the schoolhouse was also the church.

"_Bong! ... bong! ... bong! ... bong!_"

He counted the strokes. When they passed sixteen, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. It meant that little Evelyn l'Brest was not the victim.

"_Bong! ... bong! ... bong!_"

He counted on until the strokes passed fifty. Then, as they continued their doleful monody, he lifted his shoulders and took up his walk again. It would be old Kenny Tolan, he told himself--Kenny Tolan, eighty-two and long ago marked as a victim by the grim reaper.

And deep in his pagan heart, Doctor Hugo Lamontaine breathed a little prayer of thanksgiving.

Evelyn l'Brest, the schoolmaster's sweetheart, still lived. There was yet a chance.

Again he was halted by an agonized scream. It came from a cottage close at hand--the abode of Jacques d'Arcy, at the end of the side road. He whirled and dashed through the darkness in the direction of the low, thatched house with its single lighted window. A white, scared face stared at him through the darkness as a man rushed around the corner, his gun drawn, almost colliding with him in his mad rush. It was Pierre Le Front, the village constable.

"_Mon Dieu!_" the little man exclaimed. "You heard it, doctaire?"

Lamontaine nodded grimly. The constable by his side, he padded noiselessly over the soft earth between the rows of trees, covered with Spanish moss, that led to the d'Arcy home.

A man dashed toward them from the direction of the house. He saw them and, whirling, leaped into the thicket that banked the roadside. As he disappeared, he turned. Even though the moon was dead in the leaden sky, Lamontaine caught a glimpse of a lean, cadaverous face, of teeth over which the lips were drawn in a wolfish snarl, of deeply sunken eyes that glittered ominously.

The big physician seized the little constable by the shoulder, halting him with a violence that almost jerked him off his feet.

"Your gun! Quick!" he snarled.

He jerked the weapon from the officer's hand and emptied it in the direction the fleeing man had taken. Then, dropping it at the astonished constable's feet, he dashed madly in the same direction.

Le Front followed. He heard Lamontaine crash through the dank grass and underbrush that bordered the fetid swamp. Then came the sound of a bâteau as it swung out into the water ... the creak of oars in their locks....

* * * * *

Lamontaine, his feet bogged by the mud, met the little man as he struggled through the tangled growth, and cursed fluently.

"_Mon Dieu!_" the constable panted.

"Who was it? And what happened?"

"It was Aaron Kronk!" Lamontaine snarled.

From far out in the fetid waters of the swamp came a harsh, sinister laugh.

Constable Le Front dropped to his knees and crossed himself.

Aaron Kronk! Little wonder Pierre Le Front turned a shade paler under his coating of tan. Aaron Kronk! Master of _diablerie_ and king of devils! He it was who, only a few weeks earlier, masquerading as the infamous Gilles de Laval, Baron de Retz, the blue-bearded monster of the Middle Ages, had involved himself in a saturnalia of blood from which only the bravery and occult knowledge of Lamontaine had rescued the community. Even now, two of his intended victims were in the hospital at New Orleans recovering from their injuries; the old house on the peninsula where he had made his headquarters was a mass of charred embers and smoke-stained masonry.

* * * * *

They hurried back toward the house of Jacques d'Arcy. Once more the wild shrieks assailed their ears, speeding their footsteps. Mingled with the screams was a low, gurgling moaning. It grew fainter as they approached. By the time they reached the low, whitewashed gate, it had ceased.

The front door was thrown hurriedly open and a white face peered out at them, terror written in every lineament.

In a rustic wicker chair in the low-ceilinged room an old woman was weaving backward and forward, shrieking hysterically. Around her stood three other women--two of them neighbors, one a daughter. A fourth had opened the door.

They greeted the newcomers with gasps of relief.

"_On connait l'ami au besoin_--a friend is known in time of need!" the younger woman exclaimed. "Eet ees ze doctaire!"

Lamontaine seized her by the shoulder.

"What happened?" he snapped.

She twisted her tattered handkerchief about her fingers nervously.

"Zat I do not rightly know," she finally managed to ejaculate. "Père d'Arcy, he ees dying, we theenk. We were weeth heem. We hear a noise outside. We look through ze window. Zere was a face peering een at us--a horrible face, doctaire. Eet was ze face of _le Diable_."

She stopped, shuddering like one who suffers from the ague. Lamontaine glared at her and she continued.

"We scream. Zen ze awful face disappear and through ze window come ze shape--ze shapeless shape! Lak' a ghos' eet was--wizout form, yet eet had ze form! _Oui_, I cannot explain eet, doctaire!"

She broke off her recital and gave way to shuddering sobs, her face buried in her hands. Lamontaine seized her by the shoulder again and shook her roughly. The old woman recommenced her hysterical howling.

"Talk!" Lamontaine snapped, shaking the woman until her teeth chattered. "Time is of value now. Talk!"

The woman ceased her convulsive sobbing and looked at the big physician pathetically.

"Eet was awful--horrible!" she said finally. "Père d'Arcy, he give ze wild scream. Ze theeng--ze awful theeng--drop upon heem like ze great veil. Jacques, he moan again and again. Zen, ze moan, eet, too, stop. We have rush out and we are here. We are afraid of ze theeng. Zen you come----"

Lamontaine shoved her aside and, darting to the door of the sickroom, seized the knob and jerked it open.

The room was in darkness, yet the light, shining through the open door from the outer room, was strong enough to reveal the scene that was being enacted. Even Lamontaine, inured though he was to death and violence, shrank back.

Old Jacques d'Arcy lay upon the floor by the side of the bed. His face, glaring up at them, was twisted into a horrible contortion, the eyes protruding as if they had been squeezed from their sockets. His body was shriveled into a million wrinkles; it was like a toy balloon that has been deflated.

Over the dead man was a form--a strange, gossamer-like wraith, vague, shadowy, indistinct. The physician had an impression of malignant eyes glaring at him--of a slit of a mouth drawn back into a wolfish snarl. Yet there were no eyes--no mouth. The thing was shapeless.

Recovering himself, Lamontaine took a step forward. The hellish thing seemed about to spring at him. Then it drew back as if reluctant to leave the body of its victim.

Slowly it dissolved itself--floating away like a bit of vapor, through the open window.

Lamontaine turned to the others who stood shuddering in the doorway. The old woman took up her hysterical wailing again.

A faint odor filled the room. It was strange, indistinguishable, horrible, nauseating. It was the odor of death.

The thing from beyond, gorged with vitality, had reached a point in its development where it was visible to human eyes.

_3. Out of the Night_

It was apparent to Lamontaine that Aaron Kronk was the medium by which the horrific spirit form from the other world had been materialized. Yet the burly physician was puzzled. What sinister motive did the diabolical Kronk have in thus wreaking his vengeance upon the inoffensive, simple-minded inhabitants of the sleepy little village? They had done him no harm. Until a few weeks earlier, when Lamontaine had met and bested him in his struggle for the de Laval fortune, these people had never known of his existence.

Yet in Lamontaine's mind there was no doubt that Kronk was possessed of more than ordinary mediumistic ability and that it was through him that the terrible primal force had been developed. But why? He asked himself the question a hundred times as he completed his rounds of the sick, following the horrible death of Jacques d'Arcy.

It was late when he had finished. Now, even though it was well past midnight, he still sat in his darkened office, his feet upon the desk, his eyes, half closed, gazing out of the open window. He had kicked off his shoes and thrust his toes into carpet slippers. His shirt was tossed carelessly into the corner and his suspenders hung down over his hips.

The little village had long since quieted down for the night. Here and there a dim light glimmered in a curtained window, marking the home of some helpless victim who was fighting the horror that was hovering over the peaceful little hamlet like a great pall--a horror that he, the man in whom these simple village folk had learned to place their trust, was unable to combat.

Lamontaine cursed aloud as he realized the futility of his struggle against the thing from beyond. He had found in his books no surcease of sorrow--no way to scotch the demon. It was something that he must think out--reason out for himself.

His only chance lay in the trap he had laid by means of the little schoolmaster. Had he done right in thus exposing Noel Pelletier to the terrible danger? There was no other way. He consoled himself with the thought that Pelletier had no desire to live if Evelyn l'Brest died. And unless he was successful in his assault on the malevolent spirit through the little dominie, Evelyn l'Brest must surely go.

And yet he had no set plan. He was trusting to luck--blind luck--hoping against hope that he would succeed.

There was a light footstep on the gravel outside the window. He looked out. It was Pierre Le Front, the constable, making his midnight rounds. Seeing the physician sitting in the open window, he had entered the yard. Now, at Lamontaine's invitation, he stepped inside.

The physician picked the rum-jug from the floor and, filling a cup for himself, tossed another across the desk to the officer and jerked his thumb toward the jug.

"Drink?" he growled. "Jamaica rum. It'll do you good on a night like this--a night when the very atmosphere tingles with death."

"_Mon Dieu!_ Yes, yes!" Le Front ejaculated. "I, too, feel eet een ze air, doctaire."

He filled the cup and tossed off the contents with an appreciative smack of his lips.

"Ze dominie ees worse," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I am go zere and stay ze night weeth heem w'en I feenish my round. He ees fear to stay alone."

Lamontaine cursed again--full, man-sized oaths.

"And there's not a damned thing that I can do," he mourned. "Not a damned thing!"

Le Front leaned forward, the better to see through the darkness the face of the man on the other side of the desk.

"Zen eet ees true, zat wheech ze dominie wheesper to me--zat ze theeng wheech we see awhile ago at d'Arcy's ees not a ghost--zat eet navaire lived lak' you an' me?"

For a moment Lamontaine made no answer. Then he nodded solemnly.