As he pushed into the heart of the swamp, the gathering silence became oppressive. The ordinary night sounds ceased altogether and only his own strained breathing broke the silence. The ewe became more obstinate than ever; all his strength was required to drag it along. It appeared, he imagined, to sense the fate which awaited it.
Suddenly, so suddenly that he nearly cried aloud in astonishment, the underbrush ended and he was standing at the base of the unhallowed knoll.
It was just as he had remembered it—huge menhirs standing in a rough circle about a central mound upon which lay a large flat slab of a dark hue which did not match the color of the surrounding monoliths. Over all a shadow seemed to fall, and yet when he glanced upward he saw that the full moon stood directly overhead.
Shaking off the sense of dread which closed upon him, he started up the lichen-covered slope. But now the ewe sank upon its forelegs and he was obliged to drag it inch by inch toward the circle of megaliths. He rather welcomed the exertion however, for it freed his mind of the nameless fear which the cromlech aroused in him.
By the time he had dragged the sheep alongside the ring of boulders, he was nearly exhausted, but he dared not pause to rest, for he knew that delay would be his undoing. He already had a wild desire to leave the ewe and rush back through the toad-infested swamp to the familiar outer world.
Quickly slipping off the sheep’s tether, he bound its legs firmly together and with a tremendous heave shoved it onto the rust-colored sacrificial slab.
Rejecting an almost uncontrollable impulse to flee, he unsheathed the hunting knife which he carried and drew from his pocket the curious bound manuscript book, True Magik by Theophilis Wenn.
He had no difficulty in locating the strangely sinister seventh incantation, for in the bright moonlight the unusual bluish-grey ink in which the characters were inscribed seemed actually luminous.
Holding the book in one hand and the knife ready in the other, he began to repeat the jumble of unintelligible sounds.
As he read, the syllables appeared to exert some unearthly influence upon him, so that his voice rose to a savage howl, a high-pitched inhuman ululation which penetrated to the farthest depths of the swamp. At intervals his voice sank to low gutturals or a thin sibilant hiss.
And then, at the last enunciation of the oft-repeated word, “Nyogtha,” there reached his ears as from a vast distance a sound like the rushing of a mighty wind, although not even a leaf stirred on the surrounding trees.
The book suddenly darkened in his hand and he saw that a shadow had fallen across the page.
He glanced up—and madness reeled in his brain.
Squatting on the edge of the slab was a shape which lived in nightmare, a squamous taloned thing like a monstrous gargoyle or a malformed toad which stared at him out of questing red eyes.
He froze in horror and a sudden rage flamed in the thing’s eyes. It thrust out its neck and an angry hiss issued from its mottled beak.
Emmet Telquist was galvanized into action. He knew what the thing wanted—life blood.
Raising the knife, he advanced and was about to plunge it downward into the sheep when a new horror seized him.
The ewe was already dead. The unspeakable presence which squatted beside it had already claimed it. It had died of fright. Its eyes were glazed and there was no indication that it still breathed.
Remembering Theophilis Wenn’s warning, “beware lest the beaste be dead,” Emmet Telquist stood like a stone statue with the knife still unraised in his hand.
Then he dropped it and ran.
Darting between two menhirs, he plunged down the knoll and raced toward the swamp trail.
Lifting its scaly neck, the presence on the slab looked after him and finally, hissing in fury, bounded off the stone and leaped in pursuit.
One terrible shriek rang out and presently the thing hopped back onto the slab, holding in its bloody beak a dangling lifeless form, a fitting sacrifice.
FROM THE PITS OF ELDER BLASPHEMY
BY HUGH B. CAVE & ROBERT M. PRICE
THERE WERE DRUMS TONIGHT—OR WAS IT THUNDER, SO FAR off he couldn’t yet tell the difference? But then he could hardly hear them. Not only too far off, but suddenly drowned by something closer at hand, something admittedly less ominous, but with more raw irritation—the barking of dogs. It started, his bedside clock documented, at precisely 3:15 in the morning, putting an end to any hope of slumber. One dog would bark somewhere in that part of Port-au-Prince in which he had rented a room at the Pension Etoile. Half a dozen others would follow, scattered throughout the city, at first with an almost tentative note, as if a great canine orchestra were tuning up for a concert. But when they started in earnest, it was more like a shouting match, each bark answered by challenging rejoinders until the whole city was set ahowl. Dismissing the momentary urge to add his own barked “Quiet!” to the melee, a weary Peter Macklin gave up in disgust and got out of bed. Shrugging himself into his clothes, he opened the verandah door to let in any breeze that might be passing by. It was July, and Haiti—this Caribbean land of vodun and poverty—was as savagely hot as its people were gentle in their unspoken surrender.
He had expected the city to be hot in July, of course. As a graduate student of anthropology, that fascinating study of man’s veiled origins, struggling development, and kaleidoscopic cultures, he had twice before visited Haiti to write about vodun and its believers. By now he could speak enough French to carry on conversations with the country’s elite, as well as sufficient Creole to communicate with the masses. And he had had ample occasion in his work to do both. His studies had evidenced enough early promise to merit a modest travel stipend included as part of his scholarship, but it was close to exhausted, and he had comparatively little to show for it. After all, vodun, “voodoo,” had long attracted researchers, both serious and sensationalist, because of its inherent exoticism, and his academic advisors warned him of delving into a dried-up well. He was beginning to fear they had been right. What else was there to say about it?
This time he was here on little more than a hunch, based on a rumor he had heard in Miami’s Little Haiti while visiting his parents in Florida. He had once heard of something similar in hushed whispers among the Rasta communities of Jamaica, too. The rumor involved certain of the magicians, or shamans, as anthropologists were careful to call them nowadays, bocors and houngans, belonging to a secret cult whose members were in touch with unknown deities, terrible gods from the sound of it, who might be called upon to do terrible things. The infamous zombie legends went back to such people. They existed as religious outlaws on the margins of vodun society and theology, operating much as contract killers who claimed magical means to do dirty jobs. But until now no one had ever heard of them banding together in a religious society of their own. Was it something new? Or perhaps something very, very old, only now becoming known for the first time? In either case, here was a new wrinkle, a new aspect of the matter. And his research took on a whole new relevance. Here was his chance not only to avoid reploughing a depleted field, but even to gain a precocious reputation among his peers by a major discovery. If, that is, he could make it more than a rumor. There would have to be interviews, participant observation, and before that, some actual, personal contact.
And here he was in luck, for it turned out that the brother of a young Haitian in Florida, who did odd jobs for Peter’s family, claimed association with this mysterious cult, and Peter was awaiting the arrival of this man, one Metellus Dalby, who would bring him news of the group’s latest meeting. He did not have long to wait. It almost seemed as though the barking of the sleepless dogs had been prophetic, an oracle wrung from them by some supernatural influence on their keen other-than-human senses. Within fifteen minutes there came a knock on the rickety door of his room.