Creep, Shadow! by Abraham Merritt

Author:Abraham Merritt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: The Reading Room
Published: 2011-11-09T09:08:01+00:00

CHAPTER 13

SUMMONS FROM DAHUT

“Well, that’s all.” McCann lighted a cigarette and looked at me. “But I got the idea what I’ve been telling makes a lot more sense to Dr. Caranac than it does to me. Me—I know it’s black poison. Mebbe he knows just how black. For instance, Doc, why’d you shy so when I made mention of them two paupers?”

I said: “Dr. Lowell, you won’t mind if I have a little talk with Bill. McCann, I apologize to you in advance. Bill, come over here in the corner. I want to whisper to you.”

I took Bill out of earshot, and asked: “Just how much does McCann know?”

Bill answered: “All that we know about Dick. He knows de Keradel’s connection with the doll-maker. And that would be enough for him, if he knew nothing else.”

“Anything about my experiences with the Demoiselle?”

“Certainly not,” said Bill stiffly. “Both Lowell and myself thought too much of the confidential element entered into them.”

“That,” I said, keeping solemn with an effort, “was true delicacy. But have you spoken to anyone except me about the shadowy visitation your imagination drew upon you?”

Bill exclaimed: “Imagination hell! But no—I haven’t.”

“Not even to Helen?”

“No.”

“Fine,” I said. “Now I know where I stand.” I went back to the table and apologized again to McCann. I said to Lowell:

“You remember de Keradel spoke to us of a certain experiment he contemplated? Its purpose the evocation of some god or demon worshiped long ago? Well, from McCann’s story I would say that his experiment must be rather far advanced. He has set up the standing stones in the order prescribed by the ancient ritual, and he has built in their center the Great Cairn. The House of the Blackness. The Shrine of the Gatherer. The Alkar-Az—”

Lowell interrupted, eagerly: “You have identified that name? I recall that when first you spoke it de Keradel showed consternation. You evaded his questions. Did you do that to mystify him?”

I said: “I did not. I still do not know how that name came into my mind. Perhaps from that of the Demoiselle as other things may have come later. Or perhaps not; the Demoiselle, you will also recall, suggested to him that I had—remembered. Nevertheless, I know that what he has built in the heart of the monoliths is the Alkar-Az. And that, as McCann truly says, it is black poison.”

McCann asked: “But the two paupers, Doc?”

I said: “It may be that they were beaten by the waves against the rocks. But it is also true that at Carnac and at Stonehenge the Druid priests beat the breasts of the sacrifices with their mauls of oak and stone and bronze until their ribs were crushed and their hearts were pulp.”

McCann said, softly: “Jesus!”

I said: “The stone-cutter who tried to escape told of men being crushed under the great stones, and of their bodies vanishing. Recently, when they were restoring Stonehenge, they found fragments of human skeletons buried at the base of many of the monoliths. They had been living men when the monoliths were raised.

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