“The work of the jungle. The work of the deep. That’s what must be done. The time approaches. Millions and millions will help. And I shall soon be there. Ha! ha! You came too late. The Master saw to that. On the storm he rides. His breath is the breath of the fog. In the rain, he comes to the earth. He stayed you tonight. Eh? Didn’t he?”
In spite of myself, I was troubled. Who was this Master who rode on the wings of the storm, and whose breath was the fog? I asked myself how this lunatic in his ravings knew of my experience that night. He was gasping for breath. His efforts had exerted him unduly, and apparently he was about to expire.
The nurse brought a glass of water, which he gulped greedily. “Water,” he said. “Oceans of it. That’s what the Master likes. That’s the way to reach him. Into the caves where the blue light flames it goes, down, down beneath the bodies of dead men, deep — deep. The Master! Ah! B’Moth! Master — I come!”
His head fell back upon the pillow, and with a rapt expression in his eyes he died. I stood perplexed. This could be no ordinary case of hallucination. The man had seemed, as Dr. Prendergast said, bewitched, possessed. I left the cot, in company with my friend.
Suddenly he clutched my arm feverishly. “Look,” he cried. “Look!”
I turned in the direction in which he was pointing. The glass of water was still clutched in the patient’s hand. The fluid glowed with a lambent bluish radiance. It flittered across the features of the dead man, which became greenish under its influence. His lips twisted into a snarl under the light, and the sharp fangs of his long canine teeth pricked through his closed mouth.
And the water in the glass was bubbling — bubbling as though it boiled; and there before my eyes the fluid slowly fell, until the glass was empty of all save the bluish glow that surrounded it, and not only it, but the bed, the linen, the dead man, and ourselves!
The pressure of my professional duties served to drive the matter from my attention for several days, but it was rudely brought to my mind in a manner as strange as can well be conceived.
I had been carelessly scanning the newspaper, when my eyes were arrested and riveted by a small and apparently unimportant notice that was sandwiched in between the account of a big alimony case and the raid upon some bootleggers. Had the editor known the full import of his copy, he would have blazoned the thing in block type, and put out a special edition of his sheet. I quote the notice verbatim:
ARICA, PERU, May 8 — A strange case was brought to the attention of police here today. Alonzo Sigardus, a West Indian, was haled before Justice Cordero on a charge of attempted suicide. He was seen to dive into the ocean near Point Locasta by Captain Jenks, the lookout at the Marine Exchange station there.
Jenks says he rushed to the assistance of the man, thinking he had intended to go swimming and did not know of the treacherous undertow at the point. When he arrived, however, he saw at a glance that it was a case of attempted suicide, for Sigardus could not swim, and was merely floundering around helplessly in the depths.
Captain Jenks promptly dived into the water at the place known to sightseers as Devil’s Cauldron, and after a frantic struggle with the maelstrom, during which Sigardus did his best to drown the two of them, was able to rescue the man.
Instead of thanks, however, Sigardus struck Jenks brutally upon the face, crying: “The curse of B’Moth upon you! It was the call of the Master. What right have you to interfere? I went to join B’Moth, and now you have dragged me back again. When the time comes, you shall suffer.”
The incident has aroused wide-spread local interest, because it is said that the Devil’s Cauldron upon foggy days is the meeting-place of spirits of the deep. Legend has it that upon such days, and during the rainy season, the Monster of the Pool arises from the deep water to claim his own.
Obviously, the superstitious Sigardus thought he had been called by the spirit of the Cauldron. It is interesting to note that a thick haze commenced to overcloud the pool after Sigardus had been rescued. Until this time, the sun had been shining with great brilliance.
There is much excitement among the native population here, and talk is common that the rescue bodes no good. Serious disturbances have arisen in several inland villages, and police and military have united forces to protect the white population against whom the attacks seem chiefly to have been directed.
Apparently, the incident had only obtained recognition in the press because of the legends which were connected with the Devil’s Cauldron, and which were thought to be of interest to the outside world; and because of the attempted uprisings. But to me, the insertion of that single and apparently incomplete word gave a sinister and terrible inflection to the whole paragraph.
Who, or what, was B’Moth? It must be the same “Master” to whom the dying man had appealed in the German-American Hospital. And there was no shadow of doubt that it was a duplication of the same occurrence, unconnected with it except by the subtle influence of B’Moth.
I felt my hair begin to tingle when I read the news item again and came to the note about the fog that overlay the pool after Sigardus had uttered his curse. This was too close a similarity to admit of any such explanation as mere coincidence. As a psychiatrist it interested me greatly, and I even began to feel in some obscure way that it was my duty to investigate the whole business. Perhaps (and far-fetched as the idea may seem, I thought of it in all seriousness) — perhaps the very sanity of the world was at stake.
As I laid the paper aside and prepared to drive to my office, I felt again the oppressive weight of that unspeakable thing that I was slowly coming to dread, so that I could not drive alone in fog or through a rainstorm (though I dared tell no one of this phobia). I felt — Good God, how I felt! — the weight of that pollution. I seemed to be drawn unresistingly into the maw of this corruption. I stood transfixed, my teeth chattering, unable to lift a hand, watching the place where I felt absolutely certain the thing was. And then into my jangled consciousness came the imperative ringing of the telephone bell.
I moved slowly toward the instrument, my eyes fixed irresistibly upon the other side of the room. Mechanically I lifted the receiver.
A voice came as though from a great distance. “Is that Dr. Randall? Please come across to the German-American Hospital immediately. Dr. Prendergast has gone insane!”
When I arrived at the hospital where my friend was being treated, the condition of my mind was far from equable. That the same calamity which I dreaded had actually befallen my friend came as no slight shock. But I strove to compose myself as I entered the building. If my suspicions were correct, there was work to be done, hard work and plenty of it — if this foul thing was to be foiled in its malign purposes.
I found Dr. Prendergast in a comfortable private room — the best in the place. He was sleeping quietly when I entered. But before I had been there more than a few minutes, he awoke, and looking at me, shook hands cordially. He began to speak, in a natural, softly modulated voice.
“Randall, there’s something strange and uncanny about this business. Ever since that affair when I had to call you into consultation, I have had an odd feeling that all is not well. I’ve actually been harassed by morbid phobias — if that’s what they are. I never dreamed of a psychosis coming to me. The more I think about the matter, the more I have come to believe that you and I are marked out as martyrs to the cause, though why, or how, I can not even begin to understand.”