Weird Tales/Volume 36/Issue 6/Coven

by Manly Wade Wellman

A
Demon-Ridden
Drama Novelette—

Coven
by Manly Wade Wellman

... They pledge themselves to frequent the midnight assemblies. These conventicles or covens were bands or companies of witches, composed of men and women, apparently under the discipline of an officer. ...

—History of Witchcraft and Demonology, Montague Summers.

CHAPTER I

The Cursed Damozel

WASN’T Shiloh supposed to be named after an angel or a devil? Angels and devils were both there, sorting the two armies through for who should live and who die, who go to heaven and who go to hell. We Southerners won the first day and part of the second, even after they’d killed General Albert Sidney Johnston. When I say he was about as great as General Lee, I expect to be believed. When we fell back, Bedford Forrest sent some of us to save a field piece that Bragg’s artillery left behind. But the Yankees got there fustest with the mostest men. They carried off the gun, and two or three of us Tennessee cavalry with it.

They were bivouacking on the field—sundown, April 7, 1862. I was marched far back. Passing a headquarters, I saw a fateful little man with a big cigar—General Grant. With him was a taller, red-whiskered man, who was crying. Someone said he was Sherman, but Sherman never seemed to me like a man who would cry over any sorrow, his own or another’s.

This introduction is jumbled. So was my mind at the time. I must have looked forlorn, a skinny gray-clad trooper plundered of saber, carbine and horse. One of the big blue cavalrymen who escorted the prisoners, leaned down from his saddle and rubbed the heel of his hand on my feebly fuzzy cheek.

“Little Johnny Reb’s growing some nice black whiskers to surprise his sweetheart,” he said, laughing.

“I haven’t got a sweetheart,” I snapped, trying to sound like a big soldier. But he laughed the louder.

“Hear that, boys?” he hailed the others of the escort. “This little feller never had a sweetheart.” They mingled their cackles with his, and I wished I’d not spoken. They repeated my words again and again, tagging on sneers and merriments. I frowned, and tried not to cry. This was at dusk, the saddest time of day. We’d been marched back for miles, to some sort of reserve concentration in a tiny town.

“We’ve robbed the cradle for sure,” the big blue cavalryman was saying to friends he met. “This little shaver—no sweetheart, he says!”

A new gale of laughter from towering captors all around me. It hushed suddenly at a stern voice:

“Bring that prisoner to me.”

He rolled out from between two sheds,

as heavily and smoothly as a gun-limber.

He was a short, thick man in a dragoon jacket and one of those little peaked Yankee caps. There was just enough light to show me his big beard and the sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve.

“Bring him along,” he ordered again. “March the others to the stockade.” A moment later, he and I stood alone in the gloom. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“High Private Cole Wickett,” I replied. A prisoner could say that much. If he asked about my regiment, or the conditions of the army—But he didn’t. His next question was: “How old are you?”

“Fifteen next birthday.” Again no reason to lie, though I’d told the recruiting sergeant eighteen.

“Fourteen years, and some months,” the big man figured it out. “Come with me.”

He put a hand the size of a hay-fork on my shoulder, and steered me into a back yard full of soldiers playing cards by firelight. He paused, and scolded them for gambling. Any sergeant in Forrest’s command who had tried that would have been hooted at, maybe struck at—we Confederates respected God and General Johnston and Bedford Forrest, and scorned everyone else. But these men put away the cards and said, “Yes sir,” as if he had been an officer. He marched me on into the house beyond the yard, and sat me in a chair in what had been the kitchen.

There he left me. I could hear him talking to someone in the next room. There was a window through which I might have climbed. But it was dark, and I was tired, hungry, sick, and not yet fifteen. I couldn’t have fought my way back through Grant, Sherman and the rest of the Yankees. I waited where I was until the sergeant opened the door and said, “Come in here, Wickett.”

THE front room was lighted by one candle, stuck in its own grease on a table. There sat a tall, gray officer with a chaplain’s cross for insignia. He was eating supper—bread, bacon and coffee. My eyes must have been wolfish, for he asked if I’d have some. I took enough to make a sandwich, and thanked him kindly. Then the chaplain said, “My boy, is it true what Sergeant Jaeger heard? That you’re only a child, and never had a sweetheart?”

I stuck my chin out and stood up straight. The Yankees must be worse than all our Southern editors and speech-makers claimed, if even a preacher among them made jokes about such things. “Sir,” I said, keeping my voice deep in my chest, “it’s none of your business.”

“But it is my business,” he replied solemnly, "and the business of many people. Upon your answer, Cole, depends an effort to help some folk out of awful trouble—northern and southern both—and to right a terrible wrong. Now will you reply?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I returned, “but I never even thought much about girls. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” answered the big sergeant named Jaeger. “You should be proud to say that thing, Wickett, if it’s really true.”

“Sergeant,” I sputtered, “I’m a southern gentleman. If you and I were alone, with horses and sabers, I’d teach you to respect my word.”

His face grew as dark as his beard, and he said, “Respect your elders and betters, youngster. So says the Bible.”

“The catechism, not the Bible, Sergeant,” corrected the chaplain. “Cole, it’s only that we must be dead sure.” He pushed a black-bound book across the table toward me. “This is the Bible. Do you believe in the sanctity of an oath.”

“My word’s good, sir, sworn on the Bible or not,” I told him, but I put my hand on the book. “Must I swear something?”

“Only that you told the truth about never having a sweetheart,” he said, and I did so. The chaplain put away the book, and looked at Sergeant Jaeger.

“Something tells me that we have the help we needed, and couldn’t be sure of in our own forces,” he said. “Take care of this boy, for we’re lost without him.”

He went out. Sergeant Jaeger faced me. He was no taller than I, even then, but about twice as broad.

“Since you’re a man of your word, will you give your parole?” he asked.

I swallowed the last bite of bacon, and shook my head. “I’ll escape,” I announced, “as soon as there’s light enough.”

“Will you give me your parole until sunrise?” he almost pleaded.

Wondering, I gave it. He put his hand on my shoulder again, steered me to a narrow stairway and up to a little room the size of a pantry. There was a cot with a gray blanket, Union army issue, on it.

“Sleep here,” he said. “No, no questions—I won’t answer them. Be ready for orders at an hour before dawn.”

He left me. I took off my tunic and boots, and stretched out on the cot. Still puzzling over things, I went to sleep.

I woke to the touch of a hand, cold as a washrag, on my brow. Somehow there was light enough to see a woman standing there. She wore a frosty white dress and veil, like a bride’s. Her face was still whiter.

I saw a straight, narrow-cut nose, a mouth that must be very red to be so darkly alive, and eyes that glowed green. Perhaps the eyes gave the light. I sat up, embarrassed.

“I was told to sleep here, ma’am,” I said. “Is this your house?”

“Yes,” she whispered, “it is my house.” She sat on the edge of the cot. Her hand moved from my face to my shoulder. Her grip was as strong as Sergeant Jaeger’s. “Your name is Cole Wickett. You are a brave soldier, but you never had a sweetheart.”

I was tired of hearing about it. I said nothing, and she went on:

“I will be your sweetheart.” And she put her arms around me.

She was beautiful, more than anyone I had ever seen. But when she came that close I felt a horrible sick fear. Perhaps it was the smell of deadness, as of a week-old battlefield. Or all of them.

I wriggled loose and jumped off the cot. She laughed, a little gurgle like water in a cave.

“Do not be afraid, Cole. Stand where you are.”

She, too, rose. She was taller than I. Her eyes fixed mine, and I could not move. If you want to know how I felt, stare for a while at some spot on the wall or floor. After a moment, you’ll have trouble looking away. It’s called hypnotism, or something. She came near again, and this time I did not shrink when she put her hands on my shoulders.

“Now,” she said.

Then Sergeant Jaeger opened the door, took one look, and began to say something, very rapidly and roughly. It sounded like Bible verses: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God—”

The woman shrieked, high and ear-tingling, like a bat. She let go of me.

She was gone. It was like a light being blown out, or a magic-lantern image switched from a screen.

I stared stupidly, like a country idiot. Jaeger cleared his throat, and tugged his beard. "That was close,” he said.

“Who was she?” I asked, and the words had a hard time forming in my throat.

“Somebody whose call we’ll return,” he put me off gruffly. "She thought she’d destroy the one power we’re counting on. It’s time to strike back.”

---

I FOLLOWED him outside. The night was black, but the early-morning stars had wheeled up into heaven. We passed two different sentries, and came through the sleeping street of the little town to a church, either ruined or shell-smashed. Beyond was a burying ground, grown up in weeds and walled around with stone. At the broken-down gate stood the chaplain. He held the bridle of a chunky black stallion colt, not quite full grown.

“I can vouch for the beast,” he greeted Sergeant Jaeger. “It is sad that we watch our animals so much more carefully than our own children.”

“This night I almost failed in my own duty of watching,” replied Jaeger in a tired voice. To me he said, “crawl out of those clothes. Don’t stare. Do as I say.”

By this time there had been so much strangeness and mystery that I did not argue. I shucked my uniform, and the pre-dawn air was cold on my bare skin. The chaplain motioned for me to mount. I did, and he led the colt into the burying ground.

There were wreaths and wrappings of mist. Through them I saw pale, worn-out tombstones. We tramped over them. It wasn’t polite nor decent, but I saw that the chaplain and the sergeant—he came behind, carrying some shovels and a mattock—meant business. I kept my mouth closed. Riding the colt, I was steered across that burying ground, and across again.

In the middle of the second crossing, the colt planted his hoofs and balked.

Jaeger, bringing up the rear, struck with the handle of a shovel. The colt stood firm. The chaplain tugged in front, Jaeger flogged behind. The colt trembled and snorted, but he did not move.

The chaplain pointed. A grave-mound, a little naked wen of dirt among the weeds, showed just in front of the planted hoofs.

“Your book tells the truth,” he said, strangely cheerful. “Here is a tomb he will not cross.”

“Get down, Wickett,” commanded Jaeger. “Dress, and help dig.”

I hurried to the gate, threw on my clothes anyhow, and returned. The chaplain was scraping with a shovel. Jaeger swung a mattock. I grabbed another spade and joined in.

As the first moment of gray dawn was upon us, we struck a coffin lid. Jaeger scraped earth from it. “Get back!” he grunted, and I did so; but not before he heaved up the lid with his mattock.

Inside lay the woman who had come to my cot, in her bridal dress.

“The stake,” said the chaplain, and passed down a sharp stick like a picket-pin. I judged it was of hawthorn, cut from a hedge somewhere. “Strike to the heart,” went on the chaplain, “while I strike at the throat.”

He suited action to word, driving down the blade of his shovel. At the same moment Jaeger made a strong digging thrust with the stick. I heard again the bat-squeaking; and then, was made faint by a horrid stink of rottenness.

Jaeger slammed down the lid—I heard it fall—and scrambled out of the grave. He and the chaplain began tumbling clods into the hole.

Jaeger looked at me over his shoulder, haggard but triumphant.

“I give you back your parole,” he panted. “Jump on that colt and clear out. To the west there’ll be none of our troops. If you ever tell what was done here, nobody will believe you!”

I needed no second permission.

 

CHAPTER II

 

The Flying Horned One

 

I REMEMBERED that adventure, strangest moment of all my war-boyhood on a late night in the fall of 1876.

The wagon track I walked was frozen to rutted concrete. Wind as cold as fear rustled the tall dead grass and the naked twigs of roadside thickets. A round moon reminded me of a pancake, and I tried not to think of that or anything else to eat. It had been long since I had eaten.

The black beard prophesied me by a long-vanished Yankee captor hung thick on my jowls. I was gaunt, big-boned, seam-faced. My clothes were torn, dirty, inadequate—overall pants, a frayed jumper, a hickory shirt that was little more than the traditional “button and frill,” outworn cowhide brogans, no hat. I warmed my knuckly hands under my armpits, and blew out steamy breath.

A man, hungry and weary and unsheltered, might die tonight. I wondered, without much dread, if I were at the end of my sorry trail. Other Southern veterans had died, from sheer want, after surviving the heartbreak of war and defeat. In 1865, after becoming sergeant and finally lieutenant under Bedford Forrest, the general surrender on all hands had failed to include me. I had been detached somewhere, and had gone home. There was no home—Kilpatrick’s cavalry had burned the place in ’64, and I found only the graves of my mother and sister. They had died of sickness, as my father had died of a minie ball at Chattanooga. After that, the black “Reconstruction” period. I had been gambler, Ku Klux raider, jailbird, chicken thief, swamp trapper. And now a tramp.

Up ahead were lights, two houses fairly close together. I knew that I was near the Missouri-Arkansas border. A loosely joined community hereabouts was called Welcome Rock. Would those lights welcome me?

As I faced them, I saw the moon clear. Something winged slowly across it.

What I say seems unreal to you, as the sight then seemed unreal to me. That winged shape must have been larger than any creature that flies; I made certain of that later.

At the moment, I saw only how black it was, with a body and legs half-human, and great bat-wings through which the moon shone as through umbrella cloth.

I told myself sagely that hunger showed me a vision.

The thing flopped around and across the moon again. I saw its ball-shaped head, with curved horns. Then it swooped downward. Suddenly I heard the voices of men.

One laughed, another cursed. The third cried pitifully. From somewhere beyond me came strength, fury, decision. I ran heavily forward, my broken shoes heavy and clumsy. I saw the three at a distance. One was strung up by his hands to a tree’s bare branch, the other two were flogging him with sticks.

I passed under other trees to approach. Their criss-cross of boughs shut away sight of whatever fluttered overhead. The captive’s face showed white as curd, and the floggers seemed black. Running, I stooped and grabbed up a stone the size of my fist. When I straightened, I made out horns on the black skulls, horns like those of the flying thing. Somebody jeered: "You told on us. Now you beg us. But we—”

The two floggers were aware of me, and dropped their sticks.

“Knife,” said one, and the other drew a blade from under his coat. I threw my stone, and it struck the knife-holder’s black horned brow with a sound like an axe on wood. The knife dropped, and its owner sprawled upon it. I charged in after my rock.

The other man stood absolutely still. His outline could stand for a symbol of frightened surprise. He was mumbling words in an unknown tongue:

"Mirathe saepy Satonich yetmye—but it won’t work!”

From the moonlit sky came a whickering, like a bad horse in terror. Then I was upon the mumbler.

We struggled and strove. His gabble of strange sounds had failed to do something or other. Now he saved his breath, and fought with more strength than mine. I found myself hugged and crushed in his long, hard arms, and remembered a country wrestling trick. I feigned limpness, and when he unconsciously slacked his grip, I slid down out of it. Catching him around the knees, I threw him heavily. Then I fell with all my weight upon him, clutching at his throat.

Overhead the whickering rose shrill and shaky, and grew faint. The man I fought thrust my hands from his windpipe. I now saw that the blackness of his face, and the horns to either side, were a mask. He was wheezing, “If I get away quick, will that suit you?”

I tried to gouge his eye through a slit in the mask, but with a sudden effort he tore clear from me. Rising, he seized and dragged away the man my rock had struck down.

My strength and fury were ebbing, and I waited on one knee, watching the two flee among the brush. I glanced up. The flier was also gone.

The man who hung in bonds began to babble brokenly:

"You’re free from cursing ... free from cursing....”

The knife dropped by one of the masked pair still lay on the frozen ground. I picked it up and went to the man. Cords were noosed over his thumbs, drawing him up to the branch so that his toes barely touched ground. The shirt was torn from his back, which showed a shocking mass of gore.

I cut him down, and he collapsed in my arms like a wet coat.

Then spoke a challenging voice I remembered from long ago, “What are you doing to him?”

I had breath left only to say: “Help!”

“I heard the noise of fighting, and came at once.” A thick body approached in the half-light. “Bring him to my cabin.”

I glanced upward, and the newcomer did likewise. “Oh, then you saw the Flying Horned One? He must have fled when I came.”

“He fled before that,” I said, for I had recovered a little wind. My words seemed to make the thick man start and stare, but he made no rejoinder. We got the poor flogged wretch between us and dragged him across a field to the nearest lighted house. The moon showed me a dwelling, small but well built of adzed logs, with the chinks plastered and whitewashed. On the threshold the man we helped was able to speak again:

“This is the preacher’s place. I want baptism.”

“I baptized you once before,” growled the burly man from the other side of him. “Once is enough, even when you backslide.”

“What he wants is doctoring, not baptizing,” I put in. “His back’s all cut to hash.”

It was all of that. But the answer was still: “Baptize me.”

We helped him in. “I don’t think it will hurt you,” said the burly one, and as we came into the light of a kerosene lamp I saw whose voice I remembered.

 

THIS was the Yankee Sergeant Jaeger, whom I had last seen nearly fifteen years before, spading dirt over a woman who had seemingly died twice. He wore rough country boots and pants, but a white shirt and a string tie. He set the poor fellow in a splint-bottomed chair, where I steadied him, then went to the kitchen and returned with his hand wet. He laid the wet hand on the rumpled hair.

“Peter, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son—”

At his touch the tortured form relaxed, the eyes seemed to close softly in slumber. Jaeger looked across at me.

“You’re a stranger to the Welcome Rock country. Or are you?”

“A stranger here, but not to you,” I replied. “I’m Cole Wickett, formerly with General Forrest—at your service, Sergeant.”

His eyes fixed me. He tugged his beard, which I saw had begun to thread through with gray. He opened his hard mouth twice before speaking.

“It is the same,” he said then, more to himself than to me. “A strong weapon twice placed in the hands of the righteous.”

The man we had saved sank almost out of the chair, and I caught him. But he was dead, and no wonder, for the beating had been terrific.

Jaeger laid him out on a strip of carpet, and caught a blanket from a cot to cover him.

“Poor Peter Dole,” he muttered. “He backslid from one congregation without rebuke. When he tried backsliding from his new fellowship, it was his destruction.”

I told what had happened outside in full. Jaeger did not seem particularly surprised about the bat-winged monster or the men with masks. He only said, “God grant that the baptism Peter asked for will bring him peace in the grave.”

What is this mystery, Sergeant Jaeger?” I demanded.

He waved the title away. “I am done with war. I am the Reverend Mr. Jaeger now, a poor man of God, striving with adversaries worse than any your rebel army marshalled against me—Wickett, you make a dark hour bright.”

“More mystery,” I reminded him. “I want explanations.”

He studied me, wisely and calculatingly. “If I’m not mistaken, you are hungrier now than when we met before. Wait.”

He left me alone with the blanketed corpse of Peter Dole, and I heard him busy in the kitchen. He came back with a tin plate on which were cold biscuits, sardines from a tin, and some sort of preserves.

He also brought a cup, old Union army issue, filled with hot black coffee.

“Eat,” he bade me, “while I enlighten you.”

 

CHAPTER III

 

The Night Side of Preaching

 

“I REPEAT,” began Jaeger, as I gobbled, “that your second appearance to me is in the nature of an act of Providence. How could you meet my need so aptly twice, with years and a continent in which to be lost? Probabilities against it are millions to one. Yet you’ve come, Cole Wickett, and with your help I’ll blunt the claws of demons.”

I scalded my throat with the coffee. “You promised me the story,” I reminded.

“It will be short. You remember the digging up of a grave. The woman you saw was not dead, nor alive. She was a vampire.”

That word is better known now, but I appreciated its meaning with difficulty. Jaeger’s voice grew sharp:

“You must believe me. You were close to a fearful fate, and to me you owe life and soul—when I defended you from that monster. Let me read from this book.”

He took it from a shelf above the table that served him for desk. It was old and musty, with a faded title in German. “The work of the German, Dorn Augustin Calmet,” he explained, and read from the cover: “A Treatise on the Appearance of Spirits, Vampires, and so on. Written a century ago. And here,” leafing through it, “is the reference you will need. I’ll translate, though my German is rusty.”

He cleared his throat and read: “‘They select a pure young lad, and mount him naked on a stallion colt that has never stumbled, and is coal-black with no white hair. The stallion is ridden in and out among the graves, and the grave which he will not cross, despite hard blows, is where the vampire is buried.’”

He closed the book. “You begin to see what service you rendered. That part of the country was plagued by what seemed consumption or fever—strong people sickening and dying. Only I, and that wise chaplain, saw that their lives were sapped by a vampire. Other cases have occurred in this country—in Connecticut before the war, and in Rhode Island only two years ago. Men would have scoffed at our claim, and so we acted secretly.”

I accepted the honesty, if not the accuracy, of his tale. “You speak,” I said, “as if I am doing you a similar service.”

“You can if you choose. I saw little of your struggle this night, but enough to know that enchantment cannot touch you.”

My eyes were on the blanket-draped corpse as I said, “You think that one victory begets another.”

“I do.” He leaned forward eagerly, the old book in his hands. “You survived one peril of the unknown. Like one who survives a sickness, you have some immunity.”

I let that hang, too. “You speak as if another combat of the sort is coming.”

“Again you anticipate me. The combat has now begun—here in the Welcome Rock country, from which I thought to stamp all evil worship.”

The story he then told me seems to be fairly well known, at least in that community, which once was called Fearful Rock. Leaving the Union army, he came there as a frontier preacher without pay. Vestiges of an ancient and evil influence clung around a ruined house, and stories about it caused settlers to stay away. After his efforts to exorcise the apparent malevolent spirit, several farmers homesteaded nearby, and the name of the district was changed. Recently, he and the men of his little congregation had built a church.

“That started things again,” he said, and I must have looked my utter stupid amazement, for he smiled sadly.

“If you study the lore of demon-worship, as I have studied it, you would know that the deluded fools must have a church at which to aim their blasphemies. Look at the history of the defilers of the North Berwick Church in Scotland. Look at the story of the Salem witches in a minister’s pasture.”

“Those are only legends,” I suggested, but he shook his head.

“They are true. And the truth is manifest here. I am being crusaded against. Stop and think—I defeated evil beings on their own dunghill. They were overthrown and chased out. But their black hearts, if they have hearts, yearn back to here. This place is their Unholy of Unholies.”

“I see,” I replied, wondering if I did. Then I glanced again at the blanket-covered thing on the carpet. Jaeger saw the direction of my glance.

“I’m coming to poor Peter Dole. It was last Sunday—five days ago. I came early to my little church. The lock was broken, the Bible tipped from the pulpit, various kinds of filth on the benches and in the aisles, and on the walls some charcoal writing. It is not fit to repeat to you, but I recognized the hand.”

“Bad boys?”

“Bad men. I cleaned up the mess, and made a change in my text and sermon. I preached from Twelfth of Revelations, ‘The devil is come unto you, having great wrath; for he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’ I stressed the second clause of the observation.”

“‘He hath but a short time’,” I repeated.

“Yes. I spoke of the outrage, and said that the enemy gained no victory, but only shame. I read a little further into Revelations, the part where certain people are made to hide among rocks to escape the just wrath of heaven. Then I said that I knew who had written on the walls.” He eyed my empty cup. “More coffee? No?”

I shook my head. He continued.

“Peter Dole came to me after the benediction. It was he whose writing I had recognized. Terrified, he confessed some things I had already made sure of—his membership as a very humble figure in a coven.”

I shook my head, to show that I did not know what a coven was.

“It’s an old-country word. Scotch, maybe. It means a gathering of thirteen witches or wizards or devil-worshippers, twelve rank-and-file, and a chief devil. Maybe that’s where we got the unluckiness of the number thirteen. Peter was of the twelve rank-and-file, and he pleaded for mercy. I referred him to the Lord, and asked who were his mates. He said he’d pray courage into himself to tell me. Tonight he must have been coming to see me. And his comrades beat him to death.”

“One of his comrades has wings, then,” I said.

 

JAEGER tugged his beard thoughtfully. “I have seen that shape against the full moon before this. Full moon-time is their meeting time, as with the underground cults of old Greece and Rome. The full moon makes wolves howl, and turns weak minds mad. I don’t like the full moon. Anyway, that creature is the chief devil of which I spoke.”

“Chief devil?” I repeated. “I thought that probably—”

“That probably some human leader dressed up for the part?” he finished for me. “Not here, at least. Hark!”

I, too, heard what his ear had caught—the flip-flop of great membranes, and the faraway chatter of strange inhuman jaws.

Then a knock at the door, sharp and furtive.

With shame I remember how I flinched and looked for a way out. Jaeger rose, flipped open a drawer in his work-table, and took out a big cap-and-ball revolver. He walked heavily toward the door.

Pausing with his hand on the knob, he spoke clearly:

“If you seek trouble, your search ends

here. Too long have I borne with the ungodly,

meekly turning my other cheek. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, I will repay.”

He opened the door, took one look, and lowered his weapon. A girl came stumbling in.

She wore a dark dress of coarse wool, very full-skirted and high-necked, with edging of white at throat and cuffs. Her brown hair was disarrayed, under a knitted shawl. Her face was cream-white, set with bright, scared eyes.

“Please,” she said, out of breath, “they shouted that I’d find my father with you.” She swallowed, and her lips quivered. “Badly hurt, they said.”

“Sit down, Susan,” bade Jaeger. "He is here, but no more in pain or terror.”

She saw the body then, seemed to recognize it through the blanket. Sitting down, as Jaeger had told her, she grew one shade whiter, but calm.

“I will not cry,” she promised us. “I would even be glad, if I thought the curse was gone from him—”

“Then be glad, Susan,” rejoined Jaeger, “for he repented and died a believer.”

He turned his gaze to me. “Now will be proven, or not proven, my thought that you have strength against wickedness. For the gates of hell are open, and our enemies close in about us.”

The girl Susan and I both turned toward him. He continued, with an impatient note in his voice.

“How can mankind defend himself when he does not take thought? This is Satan’s one night of the year, the wizard’s Christmas.”

 

CHAPTER IV

 

The Gathering of the Vultures

 

IN THE outer night rose again the whickering cry, that rose into a shrill yearning whine. Jaeger cocked his bearded head sidewise. “The flying horned one summons his faithful. This is their day, and midnight will be their hour. Shakespeare knew that, and passes the word on to us—‘The time of night when Troy was set on fire.’”

I looked at a little old clock of dark wood, set on a bracket. “It is past eleven now. Have you time to tell me what you mean by the witches’ Christmas?”

“Briefly, this: In ancient heathen times a festival of scorn was held, from which grew the Christian Hallowe’en—”

“But this is the middle of November!” I protested.

“Witches are simple folk. They reckon by full moons. We have one tonight, and they’ve crept out of their dens to do what mischief their hearts, and their demon, tells them. Beginning at my house.”

He fixed his eyes on the girl. She had been sitting silent and tense, staring straight before her. “Susan,” he said gently, “they sent you to find your father’s body. Did they send you for any other purpose? If so—”

She rose, and lifted her hands. She spoke, slowly and questioningly, as though reciting an unfamiliar lesson:

“Mirathe saepy Satonich—”

I started and opened my mouth, to tell her where I had heard those words, earlier in the night. But Jaeger signed me to keep silent. Susan was not chanting understandably.

“Stand still, stand still! No more than a tree or a rock can you depart! This by the four elements, the seven unspoken numbers, the innumerable stars in the sky! This by the name of—of—”

Abruptly she sat down, as if utterly weary. “I can’t!” she sobbed. “I can’t say that name!”

Jaeger smiled, beautifully for all his broad shagginess, and stepped across to her side. He laid his hand on her head. “No decent person can, child,” he comforted her softly. “They failed in the plot when they chose you for a tool.”

She looked up, and faint color had come to her cheeks. Her eyes and lips had regained steadiness. She appeared to be wakened and calmed from a nightmare.

“I’ll guess what happened,” he went on. “Those who told you that your father was here, also gave you a message to deliver. They spoke the words for you to repeat, making passes before your eyes—thus, eh?”

Slowly he drew his open hand through the air, as if stroking invisible fur. Susan nodded, and bit her lip.

“Several names for that,” Jaeger commented to me over his shoulder. “Mesmerism, animal magnetism, hypnotism. Most occult dabblers know a little of it, would God they did not! But I had no fear of Susan, even when I saw that she was entranced. In the book of James Braid I read that nobody will do things when hypnotized that he would not do in his right mind; and, whatever her father’s sad delusions, Susan is healthy and good.”

Susan began to weep. “I would never have hurt you, Mr. Jaeger,” she managed to protest.

“Certainly not.” He touched her head again, comfortingly. “That spell was to make us both stand like posts, while the prowlers came in and did what they pleased with us.

Even had she said it in full, however, it would not work. It already failed on you, Wickett. For myself, I was silently saying the counter-charm, from this book.”

He again produced a volume from his shelf, this time a sort of pamphlet in gray paper. On its cover was the title:

Pow-Wows, or Long Lost Friend

And, underneath, the picture of an owl. Jaeger flipped it open—I saw the page number, 69—and began to patter nimbly:

“Like unto the cup and the wine—may we be guarded in daytime and nightime—that no wild beast may tear us, no weapons wound us, no false tongues injure us—and no witchcraft or enchantment harm us. Amen.”

I took it that such was the counter-spell he mentioned, and thought it odd that a minister should use such a device. But scant time for philosophy was left us. Outside voices began to laugh.

I say voices, not men. To this day I do not know just what sort of throats uttered that merriment. At the time it seemed to me that human beings were trying to sound like beasts, or beasts were trying to sound like human beings. The blending of beast and human was imperfect, and horrid to hear. Jaeger laid down the little book on the table, and again took up his revolver.

“Wickett,” he said softly, “there is a window where you can watch the door. Take your post there. Watch. If they enter—and they probably will—stand still, as if the charm had worked. Because we can trap them so, as they meant to trap us.”

He had no more time to prepare me, for outside there came a new chorus, this time of rhythmic recital:

“I strolled through a red forest, and in the red forest was a red church. In the red church stood a red altar, and upon the red altar lay a red knife.”

A breathless moment of silence. Then a single booming voice, strangely accented, as if it echoed in a deformed mouth:

“Take the red knife and cut red bread!”

Jaeger sniffed. “Their sacrament ritual,” he muttered. “A vile blasphemy. The window, Wickett.”

He jerked his bearded chin toward an alcove by the door, and I moved into it. The window there looked upon the entrance from one side. Beneath the sill hung an old Chicopee saber, such as the Yankees once carried, and such as the Southern cavalry filched from enemy dead or captives. I started to draw it.

“No,” Jaeger warned. “Only stay near, and seize it when they least expect. They will expect Susan to put out the light before they venture any nearer.”

He bent toward the lamp, and blew strongly down its glass chimney. Its flame went out, and we were left in a sort of bluish gloom. I could barely see Jaeger’s thick body stiffen into a statue, and I imitated him, my eyes on the window.

“Move only when I do,” cautioned Jaeger softly.

Outside rose more racket. Those who besieged us were plainly trying to put fire into their own hearts.

“Hola noa massa!” spoke the strange booming voice. And back came a chorus intonation:

“Janna, janna! Hoa, hoa! Sabbat, sabbat! Moloch, Lucifer, Asteroth!”

Those, I fancied, were the names of pagan gods and devils. As the last syllable died away, something came into view beyond the window glass.

With the house dark, the moon made sufficient pale radiance outside. It showed me what was approaching the door.

It was a black low shape, greened here and there as light struck it, like an expanse of old worn broadcloth. My first impression was of a monstrous flood of filthy liquid.

Then I saw that it was indeed a creeping creature, not more in solid bulk than a big man, but with outspread wings like ribbed blankets. It paused at the squared section of log that served for door-step, and straightened up from its crouch. I could not have looked away for wealth or hope of salvation.

This was the same thing I had earlier seen flapping across the face of the moon. Now it stood upon two flat slabs of feet, like charred shingles. Its legs were long and lean, and seemed to bend backward, cricket fashion. The deep chest thrust forward prowlike the breastbone must have been like a bird’s, a protruding blade from which great muscles branched to employ those wings. For the batlike membranes would measure twenty feet and more from tip to tip, and hung from two long lumpy arms. The thing had hands, or what might resemble hands. From them sprouted the wingribs downward, and the gaunt, sharp fingers outward.

But of face I saw nothing for all the moonlight, only an owlish roundness of skull, and two curved horns that gleamed like polished jet, and narrow green eyes like the eyes of a meat-eating animal.

It started to lift a flat foot to the step, then paused. It bent, and I knew now that it had a mouth, for it blew upon Jaeger’s lock, then whickered. The door opened slowly, as if pushed by invisible hands. The entity turned and moved away.

“Enter,” it boomed to whatever companions lurked behind. “Do as you been commanded, and do it well.”

I froze to immobility in my alcove. A moment later, the horde outside made a concerted rush across the threshold. With them came the ugliest and rottenest of pale lights.

 

CHAPTER V

 

The Rout of the Witches

 

I KNEW an instant of terror more complete and sickening than any that had been mine in the war, a worse chill than at Murfreesboro, Selma or Shiloh itself. Then the terror departed from me, and left me almost serenely strong and confident. For those who came in were only men.

They were murderous men, perhaps. They possessed ugly powers—witness that light in which they seemed to be dipped, and the chivvying commands from that being called the Flying Horned One. They were men joined for a steadfast purpose of evil. They did not simply lack ideals, morals or character, but adhered to ideals, morals and character antithetic to all I honored. They had a belief, even a form of travestied worship, that claimed them as ever pure religion claimed saints or martyrs. They had come to execute horrors upon me.

But their master had stayed outside. These, his followers, were no more than men, and as such had but muscles with which to attack, vital organs in which to receive wounds. I asked no lesser opponents than such.

Jaeger had spoken of twelve members to the coven, under rule of the Flying Horned One. The death of Peter Dole, the pitiful renegade, would leave only eleven. I think that that many came in now, and the light seemed to burst from the uplifted hand of the tallest. But my second glance showed me that the hand was not his. It was a five-fingered candle or taper, fixed by the wristlike base upon a tin plate, and each of the fingers sprouted a kindled wick.

I had lost sight, though not thought, of Susan. She stood near Jaeger, and came forward. One of the throng whooped in laughter—his voice was muffled by his mask and thickened by alcohol—and confronted her.

“She did it, good girl! She bound them!” He turned upon the motionless form of Jaeger. “Why aren’t you preaching, Parson? Walloping the pulpit and quoting chapter and verse? Pretty quiet and stiff, ain’t you?”

He drew a straight dagger like the one drawn against me at the scene of the flogging.

“Take the red knife,” he quoted unsteadily, “and cut red bread!”

“Wait,” interposed the tall man who held the five-fingered light. “There’s something to do first. There lies some dead clay under the blanket yonder. I'd guess it for what’s left of Dirt Fire, known to men as Peter Dole.”

Dirt Fire. Dirt Fire—I had heard somewhere of how witches, upon joining the circle, were baptized mockingly to new names. That had befallen Peter Dole, and he had asked for a second baptism to clear his soul of the horror he felt. The tall one passed his tin plate, with the light, to a pudgy figure who must have been a woman, masked and in men’s rough riding clothes. Then he took a step toward Susan and towered over her.

“You've served us well,” he spokes “Our coven is one short. You will fill the emptiness.”

There was no asking of her whether she wanted to. Perhaps some quick instruction by Jaeger had prepared her for this. In any case, she voiced neither acceptance nor refusal. She only faced the tall mask man, silently and gravely.

“Thirteen we shall be, counting our master,” intoned the tall one. “Susan Dole, say after me the words I now repeat.”

He lifted a hand, and made the stroking gesture in air that Jaeger had called “hypnotic.” Susan drew herself up. The spell seemed to be catching hold of her on instant.

Just then, Jaeger made a little twitching motion with the right hand that had hung quietly at its side. That hand held his revolver, unnoticed by the invaders, Fire spurted, powder exploded. The tall hypnotist seemed to somersault sidewise, a banged down on the floor to lie without a quiver.

I had been like a hound on leash all this while, forcing myself to wait for the cue of Jaeger’s first move. Now, before the sharp echo of the revolver-shot died that room, I had flung out my left hand and snatched the saber from its fastenings by the sill. My right hand brought it from the sheath with a loud rasp of metal. I gathered my legs under me and leaped at the man with the drawn dagger.

He knew I was coming, somehow or other. For he turned, trying to fend off with that straight blade he had meant for Jaeger. My first axelike chop broke his steel close to the hilt. My second assault a drawing slice, severed muscles, arteries and tendons at junction of neck and shoulder. Down he went at my knee, the gushing blood all black and shiny in that pallid light. I stepped across him, and into the melee that had sprung into being around Jaeger.

No less than myself, those invaders must have been keyed up to expectation of violence. When Jaeger’s first shot felled their comrade, they threw themselves upon the sender of that shot. A big mask-wearer came in under the revolver muzzle, stood up under a terrific blow with the barrel, and grappled Jaeger. Others seized him by the arms, beard, throat, legs. They were pulling him down, as dogs pull down a bear. The pudgy one who held the five-fingered light stood apart, drawing another of those straight daggers. The look of the hand that held the dagger convinced me more than ever that here was a woman in men’s garments.

Coming upon the press, I slid my saber-point into the back of the big fellow whose arms were around Jaeger. He subsided, coughing and struggling, and I cleared my weapon in time to face another who quitted his assault on Jaeger to leap at me. He tried to avoid my slash, and I smote his jaw with the curved guard that enclosed my knuckles. He sprawled upon a comrade, and both fell.

Then Jaeger, fighting partially free, fired two more shots. One of his attackers fell limply, and another flopped away, screaming and cursing by the names of gods I did not recognize.

The light-holder now gave tongue in a shrill warning:

“Betrayed, we’re betrayed! Run! Get away!”

 

THOSE who could respond did so. Jaeger fired yet again, his fourth bullet. The last of those who fled was down, floundering awkwardly to crawl across the hewn log outside the door. Two of the others caught the squirming body and dragged it clear. We were suddenly alone.

“Don’t close that door,” said Jaeger from the dimness that fell again—for the five-fingered light had been knocked down and extinguished. “I doubt if we need to be fenced in from them.” He was kindling his own kerosene lamp, that gave a healthier radiance. “Count the dead, Wickett.”

I did so, noting that all wore coats or jackets turned inside out. Two had perished by my saber, two more by Jaeger’s bullets, while a third whom he had shot, died even as I bent over him. The man I uppercutted with the saber-hilt was still alive and breathing heavily, but quite unconscious. I reckoned the one dragged away must be badly hurt, if not also dying.

“We killed or wounded seven,” was my report. Jaeger had led Susan to one side, where she might not look. Then he went from one body to the other, pulling away their horned masks of dingy black cloth. At the sight of each face he grunted his recognition.

“All of them are my neighbors,” he announced, “and all of them in my congregation, or pretending to be. Look Wickett! This one is a woman—she and that first man you sabered were husband and wife. I would have spared her had I known her sex. But here is one who seems to be awakening.”

The single survivor sat up. He fingered his bruised chin, waggling it tenderly. His face, unmasked, looked long and sharp and vicious. His small, dark eyes burned as they fixed upon Susan.

“She tricked us,” he accused, spitting blood.

“It was I who tricked you,” corrected Jaeger. “Stand up, Splain. But make any sudden move, and I will fire one of the two bullets still in this revolver.” He held it up significantly.

The captive stood up. Like the others, he wore his coat inside out. “My name isn’t Splain any more,” he stated, with a show of defiance. "Now I’m called—”

“Spare us what foolish name your devil master gave you,” interrupted Jaeger sharply. “I know most of that stupid ritual, that you think so frightening—another baptism, another book of prayer, another submission to mastery. I will call you Splain, and to that name you will answer, if you hope for mercy. Take off that coat, and put it on properly.”

“You can’t make me,” flared Splain.

Jaeger pocketed the revolver, caught Splain by a shoulder, and shook him like a rug in a high wind. Splain squealed, cursed, and fumbled inside his coat. But Jaeger pinned his wrists, gave it a wrench, and a knife fell to the floor.

“I’ve seen this kind of knife before,” I said, picking it up.

“Yes, several like it,” agreed Jaeger. He had shaken the resistance out of Splain, had roughly dragged the reversed coat from him, and was now turning it back as it should go. “Get into this, Splain.... Yes, so. Clothing turned inside out was an invulnerability charm as long ago as the Egyptian Pharoahs, but it did not protect you. Wickett, I judge that it is a magic dagger, so-called, that you hold. Potent against all enemies that are not prepared.”

“It looks home-made,” I ventured, examining the weapon.

“Of course. Each wizard must make his own knife, hand-forging it of metal never before used. The blade is inscribed? In strange characters? I thought so.”

 

WE PICKED up four other knives, including the one I had broken, from the floor. Jaeger gathered them on a table, also the plate with the extinguished five-fingered taper.

“A poor imitation,” he said of this last object. “The hand of glory, cut from a hanged murderer’s arm, is supposed to shed light and strike victims numb. Having no hanged murderer convenient, these made a dummy of wax. It failed against us as other charms have failed.”

He smiled grimly at Splain. “Had the blades been simple and honest, your friends might have killed us. But they were enchanted—and useless. Get out, Splain.”

“Out?” repeated the other stupidly.

“Yes. Seek that monster you call your lord, who thought a poor minister of God could not plan and fight a battle. Tell him that I prophesy his defeat. Six of the eleven he sent against us have died. The souls and bodies of the remainder are his responsibility. I shall require them at his hands. You obey?”

“Yes, Parson,” grumbled Splain. He shambled toward the door.

Green fire suddenly played about him, like many little lightnings, or some display of fireworks. Splain shuddered, sagged, crumpled. He, too, was dead, the seventh to perish on the floor of Jaeger’s front room.

Jaeger looked at him, at me. Then he whistled in his beard.

“So much for a defeated wizard,” he commented pithily. “In some way the Flying Horned One knew of Splain’s failure, and he has no use for failures.”

He had produced his revolver once more. Flipping the cylinder clear, he drew the two charges remaining. Then he carefully loaded the gun afresh. From a box in the table drawer he took the bullets, pale and gleaming.

“Those look like silver,” I said.

“They are silver. The sovereign weapon against wicked creatures which are more and less than human.”

“You are going to shoot at the Flying Horned One?”

“No, Wickett,” said the Reverend Mr. Jaeger, and put the weapon into my hand. “You are.”

 

CHAPTER VI

 

The Five Silver Bullets

 

JAEGER’S talk about the influence called hypnotism came back to my mind later, when I found myself outside in the chill moonglow, the revolver in my right hand, moving with quick stealth toward a distant sound of mouthy misery.

Of me he had made a champion, in this frontier strife of angels good and bad. Reiterating his insistence that my share in that uncanny adventure after Shiloh had made me somewhat immune to evil magic, he had given me the revolver and sent me forth. Where? And to do what? My head was clearing now, as after too much drink. I began to ponder the recent events with something of disgusted wonder at my own readiness to mix into what was surely no business of mine.

After all, I was strange in this Welcome Rock country. I had had no idea of staying more than the night through. I had no practical interest in any quarrels there, even quarrels incited by demons. But from the first I had taken a hand—charging those who flogged Peter Dole, wielding a saber in the parson’s parlor, and now stepping forth, gun in hand, to seek and battle the Flying Horned One.

I told myself that I was a fool. I entertained the thought of finding the through trail and tramping away from Welcome Rock. There were silver bullets in the gun. They might have some cash value to buy me breakfast, miles away—

The cries grew louder. They rose from beyond one of the leafless thickets that banded the country. From that point also came a musty glow of the green cold light. I heard a voice:

“No! We did our best! Don’t!”

Something struck, hard and heavy. The voice broke away from the words into a scream of agony.

As at the flogging earlier that night, I quickened my pace to a run. I was fully prepared to meddle yet again.

Beyond two or three belts of trees I came in sight of a round cleared space. Away off to one side rose the dark pinnacle that once had been called Fearful Rock, in whose shadow had been done strange matters. I lurked inside the thicket, watching what happened in the open.

There were gathered my late adversaries, only four of them now. They were wailing, posturing and wriggling, as though blows fell upon them. But it was well away from them that the punishment was dealt. There stood the Flying Horned One, or perhaps he hovered—in any case his feet touched the ground, and his wings may have fluttered slightly to hold him erect. From him came the unpleasant light. He was striking again and again with a stick, at dark objects that lay limp on the ground.

“No! No!” the voices begged him. “Strike no more, master!”

He ceased the blows, and flourished the stick at them. “You have had enough?” he demanded, in that uncouth horselike voice of his.

They assured him, tearfully, that they had.

“Then obey. Go back and kill—”

“We have no powers, no powers!” cried the plump woman who had held the five-fingered candle.

Her misshapen ruler made an impatient fluttering gesture with his umbrella wings. “This, I think, is your coat,” he said, and touched with the point of his stick one of the dark objects on the ground. I saw then that these objects were garments, cloaks or coats. The woman squealed and clasped her hands.

“Don’t beat on me again!” she sobbed.

To my mind came one of the most familiar legends about witches, the one about hurting at a distance. The wax image or portrait pierced with needles, the hair or nail-clipping burnt—yes, and the discarded garment beaten. I was seeing such a thing done.

“Abiam, dabiam, fabiam,” babbled the monster over his stick. It was a conjuration of some sort, I guessed; indeed, Jaeger told me later that a similar spell is included in Albertus Magnus. “True you speak,” he continued. “But you are bad servants.” I saw his long green eyes glitter. “Perhaps I should discard you and get others. You who summoned me among you, step forward.”

A fragile, oldish man came away from the others. His mask had been torn, probably in the fight, and his skin showed corpse-pale through the rent.

“I did according to the law and the books,” he quavered. “If we have served you badly, it was because we did not know how to serve. Teach us.”

The Flying Horned One put his arm-like upper limbs, that bore the wings, akimbo. The membranes drooped around him like an ugly living shawl. “You never asked if I wished to leave my own world,” he charged fiercely. “You did not wait to think if I was happy there or not. You haled me in among strange things and thoughts. You talk about serving me, but you meant that I should serve you. Huh? Deny it if you will!”

They did not deny it. I gathered that he referred to some ceremony which had brought him into existence among them. Of such things, too, I had heard.

Again he addressed the thin oldster. “Do as you did when you summoned me.”

There was a moment of scared silence. Then, “mean the circle, master? And the pentacle?”

“You will be sorry if I command you twice,” said the Flying Horned One.

The magic-maker hopped and fluttered like a frightened rabbit to obey. Stooping, with his dagger in hand, he traced on the ground a figure like a shallow-pointed star, about three yards across. As he did so he mumbled words, apparently one for each point. “Gaba,” he said loud enough for me to hear, and again “Tetragrammaton.” The other words I did not catch. Having finished the star, he traced a circle outside it. His comrades all moved back, but the winged monster hovered near, in some eagerness.

“Shall I say the rest?” quavered the circle-tracer.

“Not unless you wish to bring me a brother among you,” replied the Flying Horned One, and it was plain that his hearers had no such wish. “Say only the first part.”

There came forth a flood of gibberish, spoken by the old man with both forefingers uplifted. The others joined in briefly at the end, chanting as if at prayer. I saw the lines that the knife had marked suddenly grow more plain and hot-looking—the star was outlined as in rosy brightness, like a figure of heated wire; and the circle gleamed blue-green, like a tracing of phosphorus.

“Look!” commanded the winged master, in a voice that made my flesh change position on my bones. “Is it—”

“The door!” hoarsely finished the magician. “It is ready to be opened unto us.”

“Yes,” agreed the Flying Horned One. “Opened unto you. Speak on.”

The magician fronted his glowing diagram. His words became spaced and cadenced, like verse from some ponderous tragedy:

“Fear is stronger than love!

“Serve those above with joy! Serve those below with terror!

“For those above, a sacrifice of one white sheep! For those below, a sacrifice of two black sheep!

“For those above, a sacrifice of one white slave! For those below, a sacrifice of two black slaves!”

“The door opens,” the others intoned.

It was more like a wall, dark and gloom-clotted, that showed itself in the center of the star-circle diagram. From it rose, lazily, a thin little veil of vapor.

“Enough,” decreed the Flying Horned One, and suddenly shot out his two upper talons to seize the shoulders of the magician.

I heard a thin choking squeal for mercy. The Flying Horned One lowered his wings about the man he had grasped, and I could only guess what happened to that man under their jagged shadow. It was sufficiently horrible, I make no doubt. Lifting the revolver, I fired my first shot.

It missed its mark, for I heard it strike a tree-trunk beyond. The three companions of the magician heard my shot and turned toward its sound. Not so the monster who ruled them, for he extended his wings and with a single beat of them rose into air. In all four of his talons he gripped the limp form of the magician. I am sure that I saw blood on that form—dark wetness, anyway. Two great flops carried the victim above the diagram and its inner opening. The talons let go, and the body fell into the hole, away from sight.

“Ohhh!” intoned the others, as if it were part of the ritual. Probably they were entranced, half delirious, unable to see their peril. Their lord flew back at and among them.

“In after him,” he grunted, and seized two of them by their necks.

I fired a second shot, more carefully. It tore a hole through one of those wing membranes. For a moment I saw the tear, quite large and ragged, and moonlight through it. Then the Flying Horned One had dashed his two captives at the hole, one after the other. They vanished. I could swear that the hole gulped at and seized them, like a hungry, knowing mouth.

I came into the open, firing twice more. But my hand trembled, and both bullets went wide. This revolver, with which Jaeger had killed so coolly and capably at our earlier fight, was doing very little for me. Then I ran close. The Flying Horned One had seized the last of his worshippers, the fat woman, and twitched her in front of him as I fired a fifth time.

She caught my bullet, and whether it inflicted a slight or serious wound I cannot say. The Flying Horned One whinnied, and tossed her after the others. She, too, was vanished. I faced the dark winged silhouette, with not a dozen yards between us.

“You, too, have power,” the inhuman voice addressed me levelly. “Power, but not wit. Do not use the weapon again, it is empty.”

That much was truth. Jaeger had loaded it with five charges, the hammer being down on an empty chamber. I poised the gun to use as a club, and came slowly forward. The winged form moved to meet me.

“You have escaped,” and the voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Nothing that I said, or my slaves did, harmed you. Man, have you lived in more worlds than one, like me?”

I made no reply. I could think of none. Two talons reached out to clutch at me.

Then we struggled and fought. He tore at my face and at my chest, as though he would rend my flesh away. I struck with my fists and the clubbed revolver, but made no impression. His substance did not seem to have any true resistance, yet I knew that he had strength and weight.

“At my leisure, in another place—I will examine you,” he told me, and heaved me toward the glowing diagram.

I grabbed him close to the elbow-joints, and we both fell heavily toward the black hole.

I struck the ground first, and there was a flash of fire, real or imaginary. Too, there was a little breathless shriek, out of the dark face of my adversary. Suddenly all weight and grip was gone from me.

I set up. The diagram was no more than knife-edges in the moonlight. The hole—there was no hole any more, only hard earth. Of the Flying Horned One was nothing to be seen.

Jaeger, then had been right. Power to resist evil magic kept me safe. Endeavoring to carry me away, the Flying Horned One had fallen alone into the hole and had, so to speak, pulled the hole in after him.

Rising, I wondered if I should consider myself the victor.

 

CHAPTER VII

 

The Grave-Digging

 

THE morning sun was warm, invigoratingly so. Jaeger and I strove, with grubbing hoe and shovel, at earth that was no longer frozen to stony hardness.

“Make the grave wide, but not too shallow,” he directed as he toiled. “Seven must go into it. I wonder if I can spare blankets enough to wrap them all.”

“Will nobody ask questions?” I demanded. “Have they no friends or families?”

“Their friends and families will know that fate overtook them, but not in what form,” replied Jaeger. “If no corpse shows above earth, I will not be required to explain anything. That is the way of the law hereabouts, and it is well. Wrestlings with demons do not court publicity.”

I reflected that, after all, here was a wild and unwatched country. It was no more than four or five years since many more persons had been killed in Kansas by the Bender family, and the detection had come only by the slimmest of chances. Jaeger seemed confident that the matter was as good as closed.”

“I shall read a prayer for them all,” he took up the subject again. “God knows that few men have needed prayers more, but I do not despair of their souls. They were only misled, not wicked of their own wish.”

I wiped my face on my sleeve. “Didn’t they flog Peter Dole to death?” I reminded. “Didn’t they come to kill us?” Didn’t—”

“All at the bidding of the Flying Horned One. He had bound them in a spell. But he is gone, and I doubt if he ever comes again to Welcome Rock.” Jaeger was speaking triumphantly. “His reception was calculated to daunt even a demon.”

“Demon,” I repeated. “Mr. Jaeger, tell me now, simply and shortly, what sort of a person a demon is?”

“No sort of person. For a demon is not born on Earth, nor does it die there. It comes from another place.”

“From hell, yes.”

“Perhaps from the place we think of as hell. What that place is like I cannot tell you, nor could any other man—not even if the Flying Horned One’s betrayed servants returned to life. For we live and behave in but one sphere, with no conception of others. Yet, if another sphere could touch ours by accident or purpose, and beings come from it to us—”

He paused, and let the rest of the explanation grow in my own mind.

I considered the bizarre possibility. We of this life are two-legged things with blood in our veins, appetites to satisfy, hopes and duties to impel our actions. Basic concepts of nature as we know her make us all brothers. This is what we call the universe, this tiny handful of objects experienced through our few senses and imaginations.

But another universe, wherein not only beings and viewpoints and constructions are different, but the very elements of them—had that spawned the Flying Horned One?

Perhaps his very appearance, strange though it seemed, was only his effort to conform with a new state of affairs. Perhaps his original impulses had been influenced by the worship paid him, and by the expectations of the worshippers. Perhaps he had thought of himself as neither good nor evil, but doing something which partook of neither quality. He might have been the least proper item by which to judge that stranger universe.

But I had no desire to visit such a place, or to encounter others of its creatures.

“Of morals to be drawn from our experience, there are perhaps a thousand,” Jaeger resumed. “One, however, I shall build into a sermon. My text shall be, ‘He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’”

“From Ecclesiastes,” I said.

“What I shall say is that a fascinating study can sometimes do more harm than good, especially to the careless. What hopes must that poor fellow have had, who drew a diagram and clumsily performed a ceremony he could not understand—thereby opening a trapdoor to another sphere and admitting the Flying Horned One to ours!”

“He went to the Flying Horned One’s sphere, and his knowledge is painfully increased,” I reminded.

“Can you say for certain to what sphere they went? Perhaps they have blundered into yet another manner of living, bringing strangeness and pain with them.”

We had finished our digging. Jaeger looked toward the house.

“Smoke is coming up the chimney. Susan has made some sort of breakfast for us. After that, to bury the dead.”

“And after that?” I prompted. “I am too tired to move on just yet.”

Jaeger smiled.

“Why move on at all? There are empty acres here. Nobody will discourage a young man who wants to settle down, work, and rebuild his fortune. If you are lonely, notice that Susan Dole is beautiful and helpful.”

But I had already noticed that.