Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (9 page)

 
          
“As
to that, I was able to bring in help,” he smiled at me. “Help by magic that
would be hard to believe. That may seem difficult to explain, but I could do
it.” He touched the thing on his neck he called an amulet. “To make it simple,
you know how Aladdin was able to do wonders with his slave of the lamp. When
this haven was built, I assembled guardians for it.”

 
          
“Your
swarm of bees,” I suggested.

 
          
“And
other things you’ve sensed. Then, out in the world again, I met Scylla and
brought her here to help me. Outside the stockade there are various menaces,
but inside it’s safe, unless I have a notion to change that. This is home,
John.” He sort of stretched where he sat. “And it’s going to be your home.”

 
          
“What
do you want to do up here?” I prodded at him. “What?”

 
          
“I
have a certain ambition. Shall I tell you? Well then, once I was in
India
. I was in a city they called
Nellore
, and I made friends there. I can make
friends.”

 
          
I
could see that he could make friends, though so far he hadn’t made a friend of
me. I waited for him to go on. He went on:

           
“They took me along a river called
Penner, to a town they said was Jonnawada. And at Jonnawada was a great temple
called Kamakshi Devalayam.”

 
          
All
those foreign names he rolled out like as if he loved them. He went on:

 
          
“They
did impressive things there. People came by the thousands, and priests and
sorcerers helped them. Cured their diseases, settled their dilemmas,
defeated
their enemies, won love and riches and happiness
for them.”

 
          
“For
a price, I’ll wager you,” I put in.

 
          
“Yes,
the temple had stores of wealth—money, jewels, all that. But what I want is my
own temple, with thousands coming for help up
Cry
Mountain
.”

 
          
“Coming
for help,” I said after him, “and a-paying you out money.”

 
          
“As
to that,” he smiled, “I don’t really need money. I want people to come for help
and
go away believing
in me.”

 
          
“Disciples?”

 
          
“Call
them that. Just now, I’m in want of one book—as rare a book as there is on
earth—to complete methods. Since you’re here, I think you’ll be a help in
getting it. But even without it, I can get things just by wanting them.”

 
          
“How
do you do that?”

 
          
“Let
me show you,” he said. “What might you want, from anywhere on earth?”

 
          
I
studied him. “I don’t need aught, not very much. Maybe I’d like to see today’s
paper. I haven’t seen a paper for quite a spell.”

 
          
“What
paper?
Perhaps the
New
York Times?”

 
          
“Just
the Asheville paper would suit me.”

 
          
He
got up and walked across the room to the far corner where the rope hung. I saw
how strong, how quiet,
was the way his big body moved
.
He caught the rope and dragged down on it, like as if he was a-ringing a bell.
Then he turned and came back, and in his hand was a folded-up newspaper. “Here
you are,” he said, and gave it to me.

 
          
It
was the Asheville paper, sure enough, the paper for that day. A big-lettered
headline about something Congress was a-doing, another headline farther down
about a big hotel a-get- ting ready to be sold.

 
          
“All
you had to do was pull the rope and there it was,” I said to Harpe.
“The same sort of pull to get you maybe a pound of butter or a ham
of meat.”

 
          
“Or
clothes or shoes or anything. Good blockade whiskey, for instance. That’s how I
got the whiskey we’ve been drinking.”

 
          
I
recollected what I’d heard along the way from Tombs’s cabin to Larrowby and
back, about how things got lost or stolen, but I said naught about that. I
listened while he talked ahead:

 
          
“If
I want anything, I need only to think strongly about it and exactly where it
is, then pull the rope. Scylla had the rope and installed it here. That sort of
thing was being used more than three hundred years ago, by witches in Europe. I
don’t have to stir to have my wishes fulfilled.”

 
          
“How
do you know where things are outside?” I asked him. “How did you know about
me?”

 
          
“You’ve
asked that before. Let me show you. See the window over there?”

 
          
I
looked at the window. “It’s plumb dark,” I said, “and no wonder, down here
under the ground.”

 
          
“Keep
your eye on it, and tell me where you’d like to see things.”

 
          
“Well,”
I said, “how about in the settlement called Larrowby?”

 
          
“Keep
looking.”

 
          
His
hand held the amulet on his neck. He spoke five words like names, five words
I’d hear again and again, and have in my memory. He rolled them out:

 
          
“Fetegan . . . Gaghagan . . . Beigan . . .
Deigan . . . Usagan ...”

 
          
The
window quit a-being dark. It was a roily glow, like smoke. Then it cleared, and
it showed me the little main street of Larrowby, the cabins, the church house
yonder one way, the store with its sign the other.

 
          
“You
see it,” said Harpe. He’d come to stand beside me, still a-holding his amulet.
“We move now. Move to the store.”

 
          
It
was like a moving picture, we sort of swam toward the porch. The door was open
before us, and then we were inside.
Folks
a-shopping,
a-talking. I saw Mr. Larrowby at the post office desk, a-selling stamps to
somebody. Behind the counter was Myrrh, as pretty as the prettiest of pictures
as she put things in a paper poke for a customer and asked him how his folks
were.

 
          
“All
right, I’ve seen it,” I said, and Harpe mumbled those names again and the
picture died out and the window went dark.

 
          
“Are
you convinced?” Harpe inquired me.

 
          
“I’ve
kindly got to be,” I said. “There was the place and the store, and pretty Myrrh
herself, a-talking.”

 
          
“Pretty
Myrrh,” he echoed me. “You think she’s truly pretty.”

 
          
“She’s
pretty enough to be the prettiest girl in another sight bigger place than
little bitty Larrowby,” I said. “A man could walk a whole long summer day and
not meet up with a prettier girl than she is.”

 
          
"I
see,” Harpe said, and grinned so that his swept-out mustache wiggled on his
face. I wondered myself what it was he thought he saw, but again I decided I
wouldn't ask.

 
          
He
patted his leather-covered book on the table. “There are many spells in here.
Spells of great potency.
Not quite everything I need, but
still I can, for instance, go anywhere in the world simply by willing myself
there.”

 
          
“Is
that a fact?” I said.
“Sure enough?”

 
          
“Watch.”

 
          
His
left hand grabbed his amulet. He put his right hand on top of his head, so that
it squashed his hair down. He mumbled something, too low for me to hear. Then I
was just a-looking at his empty chair, where he didn't sit any more. He’d
vanished away, like a busted soap bubble.

 
          
There
wasn’t aught I could do but sit and wonder myself how he’d done it. I reckon I
sat for likely half a minute. Then he was back again, as sudden quick as he’d
gone. He showed his teeth in a smile.

 
          
“I’ve
been to New York, on Times Square,” he said. “To prove it, I’ve brought you the
New York Times
.
”

 
          
He
held me out a folded newspaper. I opened it, and sure enough it was the
New York Times,
for that very day. The
ink of it was so fresh printed that I could smell it. On the front page it said
that some senator was a-scolding the President about one thing another.

 
          
“Convinced?”
Harpe prodded at me.

 
          
“I
reckon I am,” I had to admit. “Now then, are you a-going to tell me that you
can see the past and the future?”

 
          
“As
to the past,” he said, “I can’t see back there clearly, but I can call up
ghosts from the past. Shall I do that for you?” “Not right this minute,” I
shook my head to him, for I didn’t want too much to happen too quick.

           
“As to the future,” he went on, as
cheerful as a chickadee, “nobody can see that except in blurs and spots,
because the future has yet to become the present. But I can heal diseases. Or
turn men into animals. Or raise monsters all around, the way I’ve done here.”

 
          
“Outside
the stockade, you mean.”

 
          
“You’ve
seen the swarm of bees. You’ve sensed other things. You know what the Behinder
is.”

 
          
“Yes,
I know,” I said. Nobody’s supposed to see the Behinder, but I’d seen one once,
on that other mountain named Yandro, and each day since I’d wished I hadn’t
seen it.

 
          
“And
the Bammat and the Flat and the Skim,” he went through a sort of catalogue.
“Plus others.
I’ve mustered them all out there, just outside
our stockade. That’s why you’d better not try to get out there among them.”

 
          
He
said it in the quietest voice you could call for.

 
          
“But
wait,” he said. “You’ve met Scylla. Let me introduce you to another pair of
ladies.”

           
He slapped his big hands together
three times, the way he'd done before. Scylla poked her cotton-topped head out
past the green curtain of the door.

 
          
“Will
you please ask Alka and Tarrah to come out here?" Harpe said to her. “I’ve
been informing John about a few basic matters, and now it’s time for a
conference of all of us.”

 
          
Scylla
bobbed out of sight again. Harpe offered me the blockade jug, and I trickled me
about a thimbleful into my clay cup. He poured himself a right good jolt. He
seemed to be able to handle good jolts.

 
          
The
curtain moved again and in walked Scylla, and behind her two other women. I got
up on my feet. Harpe didn’t stir an inch out of his chair. He might just as
well have been a judge a-holding court.

 
          
“Ladies,”
he said, “permit me to introduce to you our guest and new companion, John.
John—no more of a name than that, no less.
You will remember
times that we’ve watched him, heard him,
knew
that he
was determined to come up here to us. We’ve let him come, and now we make him
welcome to our community.”

 
          
I
stood and looked on those women. Scylla I’d met. She creased her scowl at me.
Of the other two, one was tall and gaunt and as straight as a guitar string,
with a smooth-cheeked face and a firm-held mouth and behind great big glasses
dark eyes so bright and sharp they could near about cut into you.

           
She wore a black skirt and tailored
jacket and a white blouse, more or less like some boss lady in an office
somewhere. With her came a young one, a right young one, and she smiled on me
like a cat on a dish of cream, with little, even white teeth a-showing inside
wide, full red lips. Her black hair hung heavy on her shoulders, below a red
ribbon tied on it above the ears. Her face was round and rosy-tanned, and her
eyes were brown as brown. Her tight-filled blouse was a rosy tan color, too, it
more or less matched her face, and her short skirt was a darker brown. No
stockings on her curvy legs with the same rosy tan on them, and on her feet
sandals of dark shiny leather straps with what looked like silver buckles.

 
          
“John,
this is Alka,” Harpe made an introduction, and the tall one's tawny-braided
head nodded me. “And this is Tarrah."

 
          
The
young girl said, “Hello," and smiled me the wider.

 
          
“Sit
down at the table with us, ladies," Harpe said to them. “Sit down, all of
you. John will be interested to hear how you came to be on
Cry
Mountain
, and what you do here to help me in a truly
great endeavor."

 
          
They
dragged them up chairs and sat down. Tarrah, the young one, fetched her chair
right close to mine. Harpe poured more liquor into clay cups and gave them
round. Scylla's scowling face looked like as if it didn't want to see me. The
one named Alka nodded again as she took her cup. Tarrah giggled up at me. When
I sat down, something sort of snuggled up against my boot. I didn't need to
look down to know that that was Tarrah’s sandal.

 
          
She
kept her smile on me.

 
          
“We
make John welcome here," said Harpe again. “We know of things he’s done,
we know how very well and profitably he’ll fit in with us."

 
          
“I
don’t aim to stay," I said right out.

 
          
“But
you must stay, John," said Harpe, and silk was in his voice. “You realize
by now that you couldn’t venture outside our stockade and live more than five
minutes.”

           
I couldn’t think of air reply to
that. Harpe nodded Scylla. “You first, my dear,” he said.

 
          
She
sat a-clutching her cup. I saw her bony knuckles all white with the clutch.

 
          
“I’m
from
Salem
in
Massachusetts
,” she began in her shrill voice.

 
          
“Yes,
and what a historic town,” put in Harpe.
“The town of
witchcraft.
Where, back in 1692, the colonial judges executed witches.”

 
          
“I’ve
read about it some,” I said. “What the histories call the
Salem
witchcraft delusion.”

 
          
“No
delusion,” Scylla scraped out. “Those judges didn’t know how to go about their
oyer and terminer trials. Why, some of them couldn’t even sign their names. And
they hanged some of the old religion, but others they missed.” Her eyes
glittered like chunks of glass.
“A lot of others.
The
old religion goes on.”

 
          
“And
you’re a
Salem
witch by blood descent and home training,”
said Harpe. “Isn’t that so?”

 
          
“That’s
so, and I’m glad it’s so. I had the old wisdom, I had the old powers. Many came
to consult me, including Ruel Harpe.”

 
          
“We
decided to become partners,” Harpe added on, “and to establish our headquarters
here on
Cry
Mountain
.”

 
          
“I
located
Cry
Mountain
, from rumors drifting up to
Salem
,” said Scylla, “I chose it.”

 
          
“True,”
Harpe agreed her, “but it was I who came here first, by myself, made sure how
carefully it was avoided, and gathered a crew of helpers to build our stockade
and our living quarters.” He made a wave of his hand.
“All
this, and the grounds outside.”

 
          
“That
rope in the comer/' cawed Scylla, “the one we tug to bring us whatever we
want—it was mine in Salem, it's mine here."

 
          
“It's
ours, Scylla, it's ours," said Harpe.
“Community
property.
Thank you for your interesting history. Now, Alka, it's your
turn."

 
          
Alka
put up a thin hand to straighten her big glasses. “I was a librarian," she
said.
“On the staff of the library of
Miskatonic
University
at
Arkham
,
Massachusetts
."

 
          
“Arkham,"
tittered
Scylla. “Don't I know that town?"

 
          
“Among
my duties was the directorship of the library's considerable collection of
occult literature and memorabilia," Alka went on. “I became very much
interested in it. I wrote articles on occultism for various reviews. I took to
attending the meetings of two interesting cults in town. I felt that most of
the members were stumbling fanatics without much understanding, but I found
that I could perform unusual effects—what some would call miracles."

 
          
I
felt a nudge against my leg. That would be Tarrah’s plump knee, sort of out
from under her short skirt.

 
          
“At
my library post, I met many earnest researchers into the occult. Writers, for
instance—Robert Bloch called on me, and Fritz Leiber, and Frank Belknap Long.
And then, Ruel Harpe."

 
          
“Yes,
indeed," Harpe drawled.

 
          
“And
we had a pleasant luncheon together, Ruel and I," Alka said, “and he
persuaded me to come here to be with him and Scylla, help them with what I'd
learned. And I came, and I'm glad to be here. That’s my story."

 
          
“Not
quite all of it, John," said Harpe with his drawl. “When I visited her, I
was able to warn her that the Massachusetts State Bureau of Investigation was
mounting a troublesome probe into those Arkham cult meetings. And I knew that
her name was on the list of those to be questioned. Dear Alka, you got out of
there just in time.”

           
“You’re right, Ruel, I did. And I
managed to bring along some manuscripts from the library. They’ve been
interesting, haven’t they?”

 
          
“Interesting,”
he said, “and helpful.”

 
          
“
One we
don’t have yet,” squalled out Scylla.
“The Judas book.”

 
          
“That
wasn’t in the collection at Miskatonic,” said Alka. “I’ve heard some reports of
it, that’s all.”

 
          
“If
I knew just where it was, I’d bring it here,” allowed Harpe.

 
          
“Judas book?”
I wondered them. “What’s that?”

 
          
Harpe
wagged his head, like as if I’d shown my ignorance. “You know who Judas was,
John. Judas the betrayer, isn’t that how you think of him?”

 
          
“Yes,”
I said.
“For thirty pieces of silver.”

 
          
“Judas
isn’t properly understood these days,” Harpe said. “There’s a story, a highly
intriguing one, to the effect that he wasn’t really a betrayer. He informed on
his master and took pay for it because he expected his master to do miracles,
come to the throne as king of the whole world.”

 
          
He’d
told all that without a-using the name of Judas’s master. I recollected what
he’d said about not a-speaking holy names.

 
          
“But
it didn’t happen thataway,” I pointed out.

 
          
“No,”
Harpe agreed me. “When Judas saw that he’d taken the wrong thing for granted,
that what his master chose was martyrdom, he gave back the thirty pieces of
silver and hanged himself.
But not at once.
First,
before putting the rope around his neck, he wrote his own Gospel—the Gospel
According to Judas.
With all his concept of miraculous power
and world rule.”

 
          
“Well,”
I said, “I want to know.”

 
          
“If
I had the Gospel According to Judas, I’d know far more than I know by studying
Abramelin,” vowed Harpe. “Maybe that’s to come, now that I have you to help.
But meanwhile, you’ll be interested to hear from Tarrah.”

 
          
Tarrah
smiled us all round, and she kept her knee nudged on mine.

 
          
“All
right,” she started out, “I’ve been in this business all my life. My mother
took me to my first witch meeting in
Ohio
when I wasn’t much more than a baby girl. I
learned how to make rain fall, how to curse people blind and deaf, things like
that. I was doing all sorts of things—profitably—when I was just sixteen. I did
them so well that people got suspicious of me in the town where I lived. So I
thought I’d look for another field for my talents. I went to
New Mexico
, to a little town called Estevanico.”

 
          
“Estevanico,”
Harpe said the name. “Little Stephen. Someone of that name roamed over the
Southwest with Cabeza de Vaca. I wonder if your town was named for him.”

 
          
“I
wouldn’t know,” vowed Tarrah. “It was a town of
Chica-
nos—
Latin-American
people—and they took to talk and my charms and I was living more or less
happily. I could make mothers have easy births, I told fortunes, I cured sick
goats— things like that. But there came a time when a nice-looking young fellow
said I’d put a spell on him to make him fall in love with me. And his father
and mother
raised
up a gang of neighbors, and they
were going to hang me.”