The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 9
"I eeled back into my room, taking care to make no noise. So the locals never spoke about anything, eh? And who was the Father and what was he waiting for and why was I supposed to leave, or possibly be 'given' to him, whoever he was? With all these things chasing themselves through my head, I finally did drift off into an uneasy doze. But my hand gripped my pistol under the pillow. The Island of the Turtle seemed to have sinister overtones all of a sudden.
"Supper, or rather tiffin, that evening was strained. Strudwick was very silent, and I caught him more than once looking at me in an unpleasant and calculating way. He seemed to be suppressing an air of intense excitement. His wife again was two-thirds blotto, and at intervals would rouse herself to relate some incoherent tale of her past, usually involving a dance at Bar Harbor or a society scandal of her dead youth in some exclusive enclave in Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, I think. The whole thing was both depressing and eerie. I excused myself as soon as I decently could and retired. But I did not undress, and I never had my hand far from the gun. A little nocturnal prowling on my own account seemed to be more than called for.
"The light, such as there was under the sulfurous vapors of the place, became suddenly absent. Tropic sunsets didn't last long, but here there was a dim light one moment, nothing the next. I frankly preferred it to the smoky haze of the day, and I can get about in full dark as well as most so-called savage people that I have met. In addition to my gun, I had a 4-inch, single-bladed, clasp knife, a tool I have often found to be more useful in the dark than any firearm.
"I went out through my open window again. I could hear nothing in the night but water drip and the sound of a faraway frog croaking. I placed my feet carefully, whole foot at a time, testing wherever I set it down before placing my full weight on the foot. I had my torch, but I kept it in my pocket for emergencies. The pallid ghost of a full moon appeared up over the fogs and reeks, and I found I could see quite well, if I concentrated. Eyes need training to see in dim light, and I had had more than just a trifle, since it is a sense I cultivate.
"Around the front of the house I moved, and even with care, I almost trod on a small turtle more than once. They appeared to be even thicker on the ground than at the morning hours, and after a while, I could hear them moving in the silence as my ears also grew attuned, the scrape of tiny claws on the rock path and an occasional squelch as they moved into one of the damper areas.
"Nothing happened to stir my interest for a very long time. I ignored the mosquitoes, which is also a trick and a necessary one, if one is to do any proper stalking. I just kept moving slowly about, resting under a tree at intervals, then going on again. The house was silent. There were no lights, and I gathered my host and hostess were abed. She had taken on enough gin to keep her insensible until morning.
"Once I heard a vast, heaving, sucking noise over to the far side of the clearing, as if a hippo were lurching out of some mud, but it soon ceased. I felt sure it was an internal gas bubble in one of the warm springs, erupting to the surface and throwing the sand about. I have seen the same thing in New Zealand, where such mud geysers are common.
"I must have been spooking around for several hours, with no incident of any kind, when the quiet came to an abrupt end. The house was still silent, and I had reached the lower end of the clearing in front of it, near the base of the path, when I heard a woman scream. The cry was short in length, and I felt sure it had been smothered. There was only one woman on this hill, and without thinking, I drew my gun from my belt and ran straight for where I knew the house to lie, though it was invisible through the mist.
"Now I had forgot those stinking pools of sand and water, and simply ran dead ahead in a straight line. I had cleared only a few yards when my right foot went smack into one and myself after it in a spiral curve, head over heels. But I kept hold of the gun, which, by the way, was heavily oiled and was loaded with greased cartridges. My other arm flailed about and hooked on something hard, the edge of the rock path. I was immersed, for the sand was in suspension, like quicksand, and seemed to have no bottom, but I had a good grip and began to haul myself out. There was no pull such as one finds in genuine quicksand, and I was soon halfway to the solid ground with only my legs from the knee down in the muck.
"Then my ankles were seized. There was no mistaking the feeling. Something warm, muscular and very powerful had two death grips on my legs and was exerting a steady pressure to drag me back down into that slop from which I had almost succeeded in freeing myself! I swear that not only was I being gripped but that I could feel fingers!"
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We all sat silent, while Ffellowes took a long pull on his cigar. In passing, I noticed that Williams had his mouth open and was just as enthralled as the rest of us.
"I froze, but only for a second," resumed Ffellowes. "My first reaction was to try and get up, in other words a panicked one, simply to keep struggling out the same way I had been pulling. My waist was well up on the solid rock, and I dropped the gun and used both hands to try and haul myself forward on my stomach. But it was no go. Whatever had me was at least as strong as I and from the feel probably stronger. I couldn't move an inch, and the pressure to haul, that is to haul me back down, never slackened an inch. Then I got the use of my brain back, and tried to twist, so that I was now on my side. This got me a little ground, though not much, and I tried it again, gaining a few more inches. Now I could see the pool, or rather I could see my legs, sunk in something. The fog was so dense that the pool's surface was invisible. I never thought of yelling, you know. Something told me it would be useless, and so the silent struggle continued.
"By now, I was almost sitting, and I shifted my right hand to get a better grip. It was only a few inches, but it was almost the death of me. Whatever had hold of my legs also pulled at just this point, and the yank almost took me the whole way back in!
"But it also saved me. I scrabbled wildly with my right hand seeking a stronger hold, and the hand came down on my pistol. As a wave of sand and water eddied up around my middle, spilled out of the sink by my struggle, I wrenched myself around further, thrust the barrel down as close to my leg as I could, while still keeping it clear of the water, mind you, and fired. I kept firing as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.
"The thing must have come up near the surface to get a better grip on me. There was a great final heave and a flurry in the muck. I dimly could make out something brownish and rounded emerging briefly from the watery slime and ooze, but it was hard enough to see any detail. I could be sure of nothing except that I had seen something. Then, the stuff subsided, and I was left with a half empty gun, sprawled over the edge of the pool. The surface was calm again under the mist and vapor.
"I had not forgot that scream. I staggered to my feet and got out my torch. With that in one hand and the gun in the other, I headed for the house as fast as I could. With the light of the torch, the path was easy enough to view, and I carefully avoided the other pools. I made no effort to avoid the turtles, for there were none. For some reason they all had disappeared.
"I lurched up the front step, calling for Strudwick. There was no answer and the house was silent as a tomb. I tried to control my panting breath and listened. Not a sound broke the night I took the opportunity to reload the automatic with fresh .455 bullets. They had been useful once that night already.
"Barely had this been done when I did hear something. From the higher shoulder of the slope, behind the house and above it, there came a repetition of that appalling cry I had heard twice before. Loud and long, it rang out in the silent steaming dark. 'Muaah. muaaah!' But this time it sounded well, different with almost a note of triumph, or impossible as it sounds laughter.
"I raced through the house, no longer calling. The time for it seemed past, if it had ever existed. There was a back door and leading from it another path. It suddenly occurred to me that the house had been built on the existing path. My light showed that in the mud of the path were many footprints, some of feet shod with canvas tennis shoes, the ru
bber crosshatching showing clearly. My host and hostess had come this way, but so had others, many with bare feet. Another path joined this one a few yards higher up the hill, and there the new feet had come in. Some of them, even in that moment looked strange, as if the feet that made them were blurred and lumpy. Not that I stayed to examine them in detail, mind. For that strange cry was ringing out ahead of me again, and I went on upward, keeping my torch masked in my left fist which gave me enough vision. The moon was still up as well, and the mists were a trifle thinner up here.
"The track wound around the base buttresses and outthrust roots of monstrous trees, and vines and branches hung over the way, sometimes brushing my face. But I had my wind back and went steadily and softly. And all the while that ghastly sound kept echoing down the path, growing louder and louder as I went on.
"I must have done a good quarter mile, all steadily uphill, when I saw a glimmer of light ahead and slowed down a bit. As I drew near, I saw that another clearing lay ahead and that it opened out under the moon's rays. I crept on and presently found myself looking at something very strange indeed.
"Two steep sides of the island's peak made an angle here, though a shallow one. They, the walls, were rock but covered with mosses and wet growth that hung down over the face. In front of the angled steep, in the V, was a broad, flat place, and here was a much larger replica of the small pools such as lay in front of the house below, a sinkhole two hundred feet across, filled with the same dark water and patches of suspended sand as the ones lower down. Around the wet area was a strip of glistening rock, this perhaps ten yards and a bit in width. And it was full of people. The islanders were there in force, both men and women. Again, I saw no children. They stood silent, facing the pool, and in the center, his back to me, was Strudwick. He was supporting his wife over one arm. She appeared to have fainted, or was, at best, semiconscious.
"Now the light, and I must stress this, was most capricious. That is, the moon would illumine bits very clearly for a second or two, and then the drift of the fog and haze from the great pool would blot things out just as one was trying to concentrate one's gaze on some particular detail.
"But at the back of the crowd there were figures which made my flesh crawl. Whatever disease affected these people, the ones in the last stages, or at least I surmised, were not good to look upon. I could see long swaying necks, covered with leathery skin, and high, arched humped backs which looked rounded and hard. The terminal stages of the peculiar island blight ought not to have been viewed at all, not by normal people. All of the folk, though, were swaying the same way, their bodies still, but their necks weaving, as if in some ghastly parody of those little girls who do the formal Thai and Javanese dances. And all were watching Strudwick and his wife.
"Then came that terrible coughing, moaning cry again. And this time I saw, or at least partly saw, whatever made it.
"I had not been watching the pool as I edged closer, since I was looking for possible danger, being noticed by a native or something. Now I saw that the surface, the floating sand and brown scum were moving. And out of the water had come a head.
"To this day, I have trouble convincing myself I saw what I think I saw. As the head rose higher on a monstrous, rugose neck, I half noticed the beginning of a great rounded dome of a back, glistening and rigid in the unearthly moon glow. But it was on the head which I concentrated, because it was moving, the whole incredible thing was moving, slowly with hardly a ripple, directly toward where Dr. Sylvanus Strudwick, Ph.D., author of more learned papers than I can remember hearing, stood holding his wife. And I knew what it had come for, as if I somehow had known all along. This was the Father and Ethel Strudwick was what it wanted.
"You may ask what the head resembled. It was high-domed and leathery. Great flaps, or ears, stood out on the side. The pink mouth was frankly disgusting as it opened out for its hideous call, for it projected and there were no teeth, giving it the look of a great beaked maw. The eyes, as well as I could make out, were large and bulbous, of an unwinking black. And as I watched, I saw membranes slide across them and lift again. Yet the most awful thing concerning the whole appearance, if I may so describe it, was something not physical at all. The thing was intelligent. Whatever abysmal lair had spawned it had given it the same germ, DNA or whatever they call it now, that had been given us. It was not a beast, but somehow a hyena would have looked clean by comparison. Its size? Far larger than a human, but how much I really could not undertake to say.
"It was now very close to the edge of the rock surface. And Strudwick had shifted his grip on his wife. What madness affected the man, I will never know. Whether he hated her anyway, no doubt with some cause, or whether he had simply made some foul bargain in the interest of 'pure science' (I have always distrusted scientists most when they claim to be pure, by the way), I will never know. Certainly she feared him and his purposes. With good reason, since it was perfectly obvious he was about to chuck her into the grip of the insane-looking form of monstrous life in front of him.
"I had to do something and rather promptly. I tucked my torch in my pocket, opened my clasp knife, walked down to the pack in front of me and simply stabbed the nearest in the back, aiming high for the kidneys as a certain Pathan had once taught me, long before our commandos perfected the technique. I managed to kill three in three strokes, so hypnotized were they, and then there was no one at all between me and my fellow Cantabrigian.
"I had kept my pistol in my left hand. As I got clear of the natives, none of whom seemed capable of moving, I simply called out, 'Strudwick.'
"He turned and let his wife slip to the ground, which was what I had been praying for. Above and behind him, the impossible head rose higher on the vast wrinkled neck, and the great expressionless eyes focused on me. I ignored it for the moment. Everything seemed very plain and logical. There really was not time for parleying or argument.
"Strudwick must have read my eyes, for he tried to put up his hands. The moon was full on his face as I put a bullet through his brain, quite easy at that range. He reeled backward and fell into the muck with a sodden splash. The echo of the shot reverberated off the rock face behind the pool. I had no compunction about what I had done and still do not.
"The Father was now about six feet away and perhaps eight above the surface of the pool. I straddled Ethel Strudwick's body, which lay very still, and raised my pistol. As I did so, the thing's mouth opened and a rumble heralded the start of the cry. I sighted very carefully and fired three rapid shots into the yawning pink gape, resting one arm on the other forearm as I did.
"I watched the death, for my bullets had crashed up into the brain through the roof of the mouth, just as I intended. And as the light went out of those strange eyes and the giant head slumped, I felt a queer pang well, no doubt you'll think me soft almost of pity. Who knows how old it was, nor how long it had lived there?
"The great neck collapsed and the vast dome sank back. A wave of sulfurous water and sand sloshed over my shoes as I bent and lifted the woman. I still had four shots, and I still clung to the knife. I turned and saw the beginnings of movement in that circle of rapt faces. They could not yet believe what they had seen, but the death of the Father and the blast of the shots were beginning to have an effect, even on such very dim and peculiar minds as theirs.
"Then, and thank God for it, the moon went out. Whether a real cloud way up in the far sky had crossed it or whether an unusually heavy waft of the local murk had done so, I neither know nor care. The effect was all I cared for.
"Lifting Mrs. Strudwick, who was damned heavy, I ran right back the way I had come. In thirty very fast paces indeed, I felt a tree bole in front of me and dropped her. I tucked the knife in my belt, still open, and pulled out my torch. Then I bent down and gave her face a good hard slap. I was never going to get down that hill carrying a woman who must have weighed little less than I, and I had to get her on her legs. I jammed the gun into my belt next to the knife and hauled her to her feet. She m
oaned, but her eyes were open. I slapped her again, hard enough to sting, but not disable, and draped her arm over my shoulder. I could hear movement behind us now, and a grunting, cracking sound that reminded me more of the Father's voice than anything that ought to issue from human lips. The opposition could not be expected to stay quiescent forever.
"I shone the torch about, and there was the entrance to the path, just a few feet away. I ran toward it, forcing her to use her feet at least a touch and thus take some of the weight off me. My light was still the only one, but as we entered the trail and headed down, the moon came out again. The mumbling behind us now swelled into a yell, through which ominous grunts came all too clearly. I got a speedy notion that the village 'elders,' the gentry with the high backs and long necks, might not be too slow in action either.
"Down that slippery, twisting track we went like a couple of good ones. After a brief spurt she seemed to wake up at last and took her arm away. She was still shaky, not surprisingly, but she got along at a pretty fair clip, and I handed her the light at the next bend. She kept it on the path, which was good enough for me and enabled me to get my gun back in my hand. The cries behind us were getting louder, and some of them sounded like echoes of the 'Muaah' thing. Worse, though I said nothing, I thought at one point that I caught an echo of the same cry ahead of us. I had hoped the whole population would be up on the hill, indulging in what passed for church services, but it might be a mistaken hope. Well, I still had my weapons.