Part 3

"No, darling," protested the old woman; "you must keep out of its sight. Remember, once it went mad at sight of you. If it saw you again, we could never quiet it. And it might harm you."

Valyne acquiesced, and we took her to her room. She kissed me, and her lips were cold.

"Remember your promise, Clay," she whispered. "And tomorrow we shall go away together. Don't let it harm you!"

We heard the lock snap in her door, and went down the stairs.

Sarah Kyle took a kerosene lamp from the dining-table.

"We shall go to the cellar to begin." Her bright, sunken eyes darted at me suddenly. "Have ye any sense for it, Clay? Any intuition from the common blood? Do ye think that ye could trail it?"

"I don't know."

My dazed brain was still spinning blindly along the black, swift river of horror.

"The doctor says it will come to you," she was saying. "And when it comes, I can calm it. It ever heeded me----"

"It won't come to nobody," put in the flat, mannish voice of big Josepha Hand, who had just appeared out of the dark hall. "It wants that girl! It smelled the odor of her on _him_, when he came to speak to it. It broke out to git her, and it won't come to nobody----"

* * * * *

Sarah Kyle led the way down the steps, and I carried the lamp into the walled-off cell. The heavy door had been crushed outward, torn from its hinges as if by some terrific projectile. A broken length of rusty iron chain lay across the threshold. Beyond was a rude wooden trough, which had been overturned, to spill dark, clotted blood across the foul stone floor.

Suffocatingly strong in the room was that acrid, animal stench. Reeling with its nausea, I stumbled back toward the door. But an idea had struck me. The others had seemed unaware of the odor; perhaps I had an abnormal sensitivity to it. If I could follow the trail----

Faintly, then, I heard Valyne's scream.

I ran up the two flights of stairs to her room, vainly cursing the blind folly that had left her alone. Sarah Kyle came clattering along behind, carrying the lamp.

"Valyne!" I gasped, at the door. "Valyne, are you all right?"

The answer was the bang of a loose shutter.

The door was still locked. I kicked it twice, thrust my arm through the hole to twist the key that she had left in the lock. The yellow flicker of Sarah Kyle's lamp showed that the room was empty. The bed was turned down; a filmy pink night-dress was laid across the pillow.

The window was open; the unfastened shutter banged again.

Ashen-faced, Sarah Kyle was staring out into the frosty dark.

"It was outside," she whispered. "It climbed over the tool shed, and broke through the window. It has carried the poor darling out into the forest."

Her voice became a thin, fervid scream.

"I wish to God my husband had killed that fiend when it was born!"

"Where"--the wild whisper leapt from my lips--"where are the others?"

I heard her say, "Searching----"

Then my frantic voice was ringing through the gloomy halls:

"Doctor Kyle! It has taken Valyne!"

Ghastly echoes gibbered at me.

"Where could they all be?"

"Searching," said Sarah Kyle. "They must be outside."

"God! I can't stand here wasting time! Where could it have taken her?"

The stooped old hag came suddenly toward me and thrust the sputtering lamp into my face. The skeletal fingers of one claw-like hand sank savagely into my arm. Her piercing eyes transfixed me. Her high voice sank to a strained and husky whisper.

"Don't ye know, Clay? Doesn't your own sleeping demon whisper it to your own stained soul? Won't your own dark blood draw ye there?"

Instinctively jerking back, I demanded:

"What do you mean?"

Her fingers clung to my arm with a terrible strength, and her voice rasped on with its unthinkable accusation:

"Have ye never felt the call of the elder dark beings that are your kin, Clay? Are ye never drawn to the black altar on the mountain, where your evil father came to your mother? Have ye no sense of the secret power of that circle of stones----"

"You mean"--the gasp broke from my lips--"you mean it has taken her--there?"

Her shriveled head jerked to a quick, sinister nod.

"It knows the place," she said, "for your mother often took it there. She told me it was ever most content in the occult power of that mystic circle. It must have taken Valyne there. And may she die before the demon-child is born!"

_5. The Beast in the Beast_

I think that Sarah Kyle tried to follow me up Blue Squaw Mountain. But desperation had lent me frantic wings. Her shrill voice fell behind, screaming:

"Wait for me, Clay! I can calm it! It always understood----"

The night was moonless and frosty and still. It was very dark beneath the gnarled and ancient trees, upon that rugged mountain slope. And it was many years since I had trod it. Again and again I sprawled and fell in the thorny tangles of undergrowth, or blundered heavily into the boles of gigantic trees. And once I rose, fingering my lacerated, bleeding face, to realize that I was lost. But grim urgency brought back youthful memories with the effect of preternatural vision. And obscure instincts brought me at last, breathless and fearful, to the leafy edge of that forbidden glade that since childhood I had apprehensively shunned.

There horror struck me motionless.

Red tongues of malevolent flame set lurid shadows into a fantastic demon dance against the surrounding dark wall of forest. Glowing sinister scarlet outlined the circle of rough-hewn monolithic stones, standing twice a man's height. Within that cabalistic circle I could see the low, blood-darkened altar--burdened with madness and terror!

Valyne Kirk lay across it, on her back, between two wan and ghastly fires. She was stripped nearly nude; her alabaster loveliness was bare to the red, mounting flames. Her wrists and ankles were bound with rope. She was motionless, and, I thought, unconscious.

Crouching over her, looming colossal and grotesque and hideous in the sinister gleam of the altar fires, was the monster I had glimpsed in the cellar dungeon--that dread creature of my own dark blood. It brought back those haunting lines from Poe:

They are neither man nor woman-- They are neither brute nor human--

It was gigantic, yet vaguely man-like in outline. It was horned. Its long, angular legs ended in cloven hoofs. Its body was heavy, bulging, hideously gross. It was covered with coarse, dark hair.

The stench of it came to me where I stood, an odor overwhelmingly nauseating as that of a reptile's den.

The red flames burst higher, on either side of Valyne's helpless body, and suddenly I saw its face. To my mind came that other line:

They are Ghouls.

There are things that words cannot describe, even by suggestion. I can say that its face was grossly broad, and yet made savage with an angular gauntness; that it was noseless, queerly hairy, livid; that its eyes were crimson lakes of flaming hell.

But the demon that glared from it escapes the words.

It is enough to say that when I looked into that creature's face, and knew that its blood was mine--then I realized that my promise to Valyne had been mad folly. If the blood of that beast was in my veins, then it must be spilled before its pollution touched another human soul.

It was curiously just, I thought, that one fiend should destroy another. For once I was conscious of no shrinking from combat. I was frankly glad of the red and dreadful rage that swept me into the fury of destruction.

As I leapt past the circle of tall stones, I saw that the twin fires were burning close to Valyne. Their crimson tongues would soon be licking her naked flesh--unless I won.

The monstrosity saw me. With an uncouth, bestial snarl of surprize and rage, it lumbered toward me. Its hairy, taloned, foul-smelling hand slapped at me. The blow flung me to the frosty ground, at the foot of the black altar.

I stumbled back to my feet, plunging blindly toward it.... The gun under my coat was forgotten. And all the details of the fight have been fogged with that red madness. I know that I fought that being, body to body. I know that I staggered with the sickness of its nauseating effluvium. I remember being crushed in its powerful, hairy arms, being flung to the ground and kicked with its cloven hooves. I dimly recall that it battered at my head, with a great black stone from the altar....

But when the shock of returning sanity struck me, it was slumping to the ground. I reeled over it, swinging a last desperate blow. It went wild; I stumbled groggily to my knees.

* * * * *

The gross, hairy bulk lay before the black altar. It quivered a little, and ceased to move. The mad horror of its face was hidden, for which I was thankful. I saw a little dark hole in the side of its long, flattened head, saw dark blood gushing out. That surprized me, for it was a bullet wound, and I didn't remember having drawn my gun. But in that crimson chaos----

Valyne moaned. I lurched to the low black altar, and lifted her from between the two licking fires. I untied the ropes. She was shivering. Her violet eyes looked at me, and it sickened me to see their mute and shrinking terror.

"The thing"--she choked--"the thing----"

"It will never frighten you again," I promised, "Valyne darling."

I carried her a little away from the inert horror by the altar, and wrapped my coat around her. My arms clung to her. The last embrace....

From the moment I glimpsed that hideous face, my purpose had been clear. Hope and doubt alike had died before the grim resolve that never should another such demon be born into the world. Not if my death could prevent it....

I was glad when Valyne seemed to drop again into unconsciousness--from shock and fear, I was certain, rather than from any injury. It was better that she shouldn't see me go.

I left her, and reluctantly touched the gray, motionless bulk of the monster. Its limp weight and the rush of blood from the little wound assured me that it was truly dead.

Resolutely, then, I strode toward the dark wall of forest that would hide my body, fumbling under my coat for the automatic.

"Clay!"

The strong hollow voice boomed from beyond the circle of stones, and gaunt Doctor Kyle stalked into the crimson light. His powerful hand gripped a hunting-rifle. Gray smoke was curling from its muzzle. He stood for a moment between two red-lit pillars, and in the scarlet flickering his head looked more than ever like a skull.

He nodded to my voiceless question.

"Yes," he said, "I shot your brother, Clay--I should have killed him the day he was born. You were unarmed; he was getting the better of you. Sarah," he explained, "told us where you had come.--Valyne! is she all right?"

I turned for a moment to look at her motionless body. It wavered and faded with my tears, and my voice was husky when I said:

"She isn't harmed, Doctor. And you needn't fear that I shall wreck her life, or that there shall be born another of my blood. For I'm going--after my brother."

The sunken eyes that flamed from that gaunt, skeletal head were abruptly crimson in the firelight. Through thin lips came the ghastly rasp:

"Perhaps--perhaps that is best."

And I strode on, away from the twin red fires of the blood-stained altar, through the tall silent stones, toward the dark forest waiting to drink my blood. I was reaching again for the cold, comforting grip of the automatic. Its swift flame would burn all the horror and the madness from my brain. When I was dead, I thought with dim gratitude, I should be at last like other men....

"Clay----"

It was Valyne's voice, faint, but urgent, frantic.

But I dared not stop, lest my love and her tenderness should sweep me into the black pit of a crime too hideous to name. I strode on, into the shadows that would hide and comfort me for ever.

"Clay!" It was a terrified gasp. "Come back to me. Remember your promise----"

But rasping against my brain was Doctor Kyle's fearful warning:

"Passion will wake your slumbering demon, Clay. You must walk with care, my son, or you will lose all humanity, in a hideous reversion. If you married, you might become as monstrous as your brother."

I heard his hollow tones addressing Valyne:

"Peace, my child. God has ordered it. I will care for you----"

I hastened on, lest my purpose fail too soon....

The faint, desperate appeal came again:

"Clay--listen! It's all a trick. A ghastly hoax! _Listen!_"

A hoax! That word brought me back at a run. My outraged sanity had fought grimly against belief. But there had seemed no escape. What could have been the motive for so frightful a deception?

"My child!" Amazement boomed in the voice of Doctor Kyle. "What are you saying?"

"Listen!" repeated Valyne. "To that!"

She struggled to sit up, pointing at the dead monster. Wonderingly, I moved toward it, stooped. And abruptly, in the still, frosty air, I heard a familiar sound: the jangling tick of a cheap watch.

"It's Jud!" her faint voice said. "I heard his watch, when he was carrying me."

I flung back the hideous head, and tore at its ghastly face. It came away in my hands, a painted mask of wax and soft rubber adhesive. Beneath, dark with oozing blood, was the broad, bearded face of Jud Geer. The glazed, protruding eyes, still open, leered up with the fearful grin of death.

"Jud!" exclaimed the hollow, surprized voice of Doctor Kyle. "How could he----"

* * * * *

I rose abruptly to face him.

"You needn't act, Doctor," I told him, grimly. "This thing is your planning--though God knows what you hoped to gain by preventing my marriage to Valyne----"

"Clay!" he interrupted, still protesting. "Are you mad? Sarah and I have loved you since you were an infant. I was desolated at the thought of your suicide----"

"Suicide!" I grasped the word, with sudden understanding. "That's it! You were trying to drive me to kill myself. It's all part of a monstrous plot--everything from that letter you wrote me months ago, to Jud carrying Valyne up here. You were all trying to drive me to insane suicide! But, in Heaven's name, why?"

"I'll tell you, Clay." A hard ring came into his hollow voice. "We are poor in Creston. We live and die in bitter, grinding poverty. And we knew that you had made money in the Orient; that if you died, before your marriage, that money would be ours.

"The servants were ready to aid us, for a share. Jud Geer was useful, because he wanted Valyne. I shot him because I saw you were getting the better of him; I feared you were about to unmask him. Besides, he was becoming too impatient for his reward.

"My studies in the dark secret history of Creston supplied material for the hoax. Some of your forefathers really dealt in the black arts, Clay--some of them must actually have had a hand in the building of this altar.

"But out of respect for the dead"--and a twisted smile of terrible mockery crossed his gaunt, skeletal face--"I should tell you that your grandfather, Eliakim Coe, was no more than a common lunatic. He murdered your father in his bed, true enough. And he wrecked your mother's life, if in a manner a little less picturesque than I told you.

"And your own youth, in the shadow of that crime, was strange enough to give some color to my account."

He smiled again in the red firelight, hideously.

"The details should be clear enough, if I mention Jud's private entrance to the cellar----"

The rifle lifted a little in his tense grasp.

"It was a fair plan, Clay." His voice rang grim and cold with triumphant menace. "And even now it shall not fail me!" His tone sank. "It is known that you and Jud were rivals for Valyne. It is known that you have fought, and that you both are violent men. I shall remove from Jud's body this artistic creation of mine, that made him your brother. And who will be surprized to find the three of you together, dead?"

Very abruptly, his rifle snapped to the level. Its barrel flamed red in the glare from the altar, with a companion light to the twin fires of hell in the sunken eyes. Sparks burst from the muzzle, and the report shattered against the pillars of stone.

For once, then, I was completely thankful for that swift, deadly response to danger that has ever been independent of my conscious mind. I was myself surprized to feel the hard abrupt recoil of the automatic in my hand.

And Doctor Kyle had never learned of the weapon in my armpit holster. I think I had fired before he saw the gun; I am sure that he was dead before his aimless contracting finger pulled the trigger of the falling rifle.

Valyne and I have never returned to Creston. In the darkness we went down the farther slope of Blue Squaw Mountain, and morning found us in a green and peaceful meadow, whose sunlit fragrance washed away the horror of the night.