"Jacob," he said bluntly, "the time's come for you to talk. I know you know the secret of Blassenville Manor. I've never questioned you about it, because it wasn't in my line. But a man was murdered there last night, and this man here may hang for it, unless you tell me what haunts that old house of the Blassenvilles."
The old man's eyes gleamed, then grew misty as if clouds of extreme age drifted across his brittle mind.
"The Blassenvilles," he murmured, and his voice was mellow and rich, his speech not the patois of the piny woods darky. "They were proud people, sirs--proud and cruel. Some died in the war, some were killed in duels--the men-folks, sirs. Some died in the Manor--the old Manor--" His voice trailed off into unintelligible mumblings.
"What of the Manor?" asked Buckner patiently.
"Miss Celia was the proudest of them all," the old man muttered. "The proudest and the cruelest. The black people hated her; Joan most of all. Joan had white blood in her, and she was proud, too. Miss Celia whipped her like a slave."
"What is the secret of Blassenville Manor?" persisted Buckner.
The film faded from the old man's eyes; they were dark as moonlit wells.
"What secret, sir? I do not understand."
"Yes, you do. For years that old house has stood there with its mystery. You know the key to its riddle."
The old man stirred the stew. He seemed perfectly rational now.
"Sir, life is sweet, even to an old black man."
"You mean somebody would kill you if you told me?"
But the old man was mumbling again, his eyes clouded.
"Not somebody. No human. No human being. The black gods of the swamps. My secret is inviolate, guarded by the Big Serpent, the god above all gods. He would send a little brother to kiss me with his cold lips--a little brother with a white crescent moon on his head. I sold my soul to the Big Serpent when he made me maker of zuvembies--"
Buckner stiffened.
"I heard that word once before," he said softly, "from the lips of a dying black man, when I was a child.
What does it mean?"
Fear filled the eyes of old Jacob.
"What have I said? No--no! I said nothing!"
"Zuvembies," prompted Buckner.
"Zuvembies," mechanically repeated the old man, his eyes vacant. "A zuvembie was once a woman--on the Slave Coast they know of them. The drums that whisper by night in the hills of Haiti tell of them. The makers of zuvembies are honored of the people of Damballah. It is death to speak of it to a white man--it is one of the Snake God's forbidden secrets."
"You speak of the zuvembies," said Buckner softly.
"I must not speak of it," mumbled the old man, and Griswell realized that he was thinking aloud, too far gone in his dotage to be aware that he was speaking at all. "No white man must know that I danced in the Black Ceremony of the voodoo, and was made a maker of zombies and zuvembies. The Big Snake punishes loose tongues with death."
"A zuvembie is a woman?" prompted Buckner.
"Was a woman," the old Negro muttered. "She knew I was a maker of zuvembies--she came and stood in my hut and asked for the awful brew--the brew of ground snake-bones, and the blood of vampire bats, and the dew from a nighthawk's wings, and other elements unnamable. She had danced in the Black Ceremony--she was ripe to become a zuvembie--the Black Brew was all that was needed--the other was beautiful--I could not refuse her."
"Who?" demanded Buckner tensely, but the old man's head was sunk on his withered breast, and he did not reply. He seemed to slumber as he sat. Buckner shook him. "You gave a brew to make a woman a zuvembie--what is a zuvembie?"
The old man stirred resentfully and muttered drowsily.
"A zuvembie is no longer human. It knows neither relatives nor friends. It is one with the people of the Black World. It commands the natural demons--owls, bats, snakes and werewolves, and can fetch darkness to blot out a little light. It can be slain by lead or steel, but unless it is slain thus, it lives for ever, and it eats no such food as humans eat. It dwells like a bat in a cave or an old house. Time means naught to the zuvembie; an hour, a day, a year, all is one. It cannot speak human words, nor think as a human thinks, but it can hypnotize the living by the sound of its voice, and when it slays a man, it can command his lifeless body until the flesh is cold. As long as the blood flows, the corpse is its slave. Its pleasure lies in the slaughter of human beings."
"And why should one become a zuvembie?" asked Buckner softly.
"Hate," whispered the old man. "Hate! Revenge!"
"Was her name Joan?" murmured Buckner.
It was as if the name penetrated the fogs of senility that clouded the voodoo-man's mind. He shook himself and the film faded from his eyes, leaving them hard and gleaming as wet black marble.
"Joan?" he said slowly. "I have not heard that name for the span of a generation. I seem to have been sleeping, gentlemen; I do not remember--I ask your pardon. Old men fall asleep before the fire, like old dogs. You asked me of Blassenville Manor? Sir, if I were to tell you why I cannot answer you, you would deem it mere superstition. Yet the white man's God be my witness--"
As he spoke he was reaching across the hearth for a piece of firewood, groping among the heaps of sticks there. And his voice broke in a scream, as he jerked back his arm convulsively. And a horrible, thrashing, trailing thing came with it. Around the voodoo-man's arm a mottled length of that shape was wrapped and a wicked wedge-shaped head struck again in silent fury.
The old man fell on the hearth, screaming, upsetting the simmering pot and scattering the embers, and then Buckner caught up a billet of firewood and crushed that flat head. Cursing, he kicked aside the knotting, twisting trunk, glaring briefly at the mangled head. Old Jacob had ceased screaming and writhing; he lay still, staring glassily upward.
"Dead?" whispered Griswell.
"Dead as Judas Iscariot," snapped Buckner, frowning at the twitching reptile. "That infernal snake crammed enough poison into his veins to kill a dozen men his age. But I think it was the shock and fright that killed him."
"What shall we do?" asked Griswell, shivering.
"Leave the body on that bunk. Nothin' can hurt it, if we bolt the door so the wild hogs can't get in, or any cat. We'll carry it into town tomorrow. We've got work to do tonight. Let's get goin'."
Griswell shrank from touching the corpse, but he helped Buckner lift it on the rude bunk, and then stumbled hastily out of the hut. The sun was hovering above the horizon, visible in dazzling red flame through the black stems of the trees.
They climbed into the car in silence, and went bumping back along the stumpy terrain.
"He said the Big Snake would send one of his brothers," muttered Griswell.
"Nonsense!" snorted Buckner. "Snakes like warmth, and that swamp is full of them. It crawled in and coiled up among that firewood. Old Jacob disturbed it, and it bit him. Nothin' supernatural about that."
After a short silence he said, in a different voice, "That was the first time I ever saw a rattler strike without singin' and the first time I ever saw a snake with a white crescent moon on its head. "
They were turning into the main road before either spoke again.
"You think that the mulatto Joan has skulked in the house all these years?" Griswell asked.
"You heard what old Jacob said," answered Buckner grimly. "Time means nothin' to a zuvembie."
As they made the last turn in the road, Griswell braced himself against the sight of Blassenville Manor looming black against the red sunset. When it came into view he bit his lip to keep from shrieking. The suggestion of cryptic horror came back in all its power.