The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (80 page)

I had settled myself comfortably with a volume of Fraser’s
Golden Bough
when a loud and positive rap on my door told me that I was not to enjoy an evening alone. However, I laid the book down with no very great reluctance, for as all raps have their peculiarities, I knew that Michael Costigan craved a few hours’ chat and Michael was always an interesting study.

He lumbered in, filling the room in his elephantine way, as out of place among the books, paintings and statues as a gorilla in a tea-room. He snarled something in reply to my greeting and seated himself on the edge of the largest chair he could find. There he sat silent for a moment, chafing his mallet-like hands together, his head bent between his huge shoulders. I watched him, unspeaking, taking in again the immensity of him, the primitive aura which he exuded; admiring again the great fists with their knotty, battered knuckles, the low, sloping forehead topped by a rough mass of unkempt hair, the narrow, glinting eyes, the craggy features marked by many a heavy glove. I sat, intrigued by the workings of his heavy features as the clumsy brain sought to shape words to suit the thought.

“Say,” he spoke suddenly but gropingly as he always spoke at first. “Say, lissen, do youse believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” I looked at him a moment without replying, lost in a sudden revery–ghosts; why this man himself was a ghost of mine, a spectre of my old, degenerate days, always bringing up the years of wandering and carousal and drifting.

“Ghosts?” I repeated. “Why do you ask?”

He seemed not entirely at ease. He twined his heavy fingers together and kept his gaze concentrated on his feet.

“Youse know,” he said bluntly, “youse know dat I killed Battlin’ Roike a long time ago.”

I did. I had heard the story before and I wondered at the evident connection of his remarks about ghosts, and about the long dead Rourke. I had heard him before disclaim any feelings of remorse or fear of after judgment.

“De breaks uh de game,” he expressed it. Yet now:

“Ev’body knows,” he went on slowly, “dat I had nuttin’ agin him. Roike knows dat himself.”

I wondered to hear him speak of the man in the present tense.

“No, it wuz all in de game. We had bad luck, dat wuz all, bad fer Roike an’ bad fer me. We wuz White Hopes–dat wuz de jinx–youse know.”

I tapped a finger nail on the chair arm and nodded, thinking of Stanley Ketchel, Luther McCarty, James Barry and Al Palzer, all White Hopes, touted to wrest the heavy-weight title from the great negro, Jack Johnson, and all of whom died violent deaths, at the height of their fame.

“Yeh, dat wuz it. I come up in Jeffries’ time but after I beat some good men dey began to build me fer a title match, as uh White Hope. I wuz matched wid Battlin’ Roike, another comer an’ de winner wuz tuh fight Johnson. For nineteen rounds it wuz even,” his great hands were clenched, a steely glint in his eyes as if he were again living through that terrible battle–“we wuz bot’ takin’ a lotta punishment–den we bot’

went down in de twentieth round at de same time. I got on me feet just as the referee wuz sayin’ ‘Ten!’

but Roike died dere in de ring. De breaks uh de game, dat’s wot it wuz and dat’s all. Bat Roike knows I had nuttin’ agin him and he ain’t got no reason tuh be down on me.”

The last sentence was spoken in a strangely querulous manner.

“Why should you care?” I asked in the callous manner of my earlier life. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yeh–but say, lissen. I wouldn’t say dis to anybody else, see? But you got savvy; you’re my kind, under de skin, see? You been in de gutter and you know de ropes. You know a boid like me ain’t got no more noives den uh rhino. You know I ain’t afraid uh nuttin’, don’tcha? Sure yuh do. But lissen. Somethin’

damn’ queer is goin’ on in my rooms. I’m gittin’ so’s I don’t like tuh be in de dark an’ de landlady is raisin’ Cain ’cause I leave de light on all night. Foist t’ing I saw dat wuzn’t on de up-an’-up wuz several nights ago w’en I come in me room. I tell yuh, somethin’ wuz in dere! I toined on de light an’ went t’rough de closets an’ under de bed but I didn’t find a t’ing an’ dere wuz no way for a man tuh git out without me seein’ him. I fergot it, see, but de next night it wuz de same way. Den I began to SEE things!”

“See things!” I started involuntarily. “You better lay off the booze.”

He made an impatient gesture. “Naw, ’tain’t de booze; I can’t go dis bootleg stuff an’ anyway I got outa de habit when I wuz trainin’. Jes’ de same, I see t’ings.”

“What kind of things.”

“Things.” He waved his hand in a vague manner. “I don’t jes’ see ’um, but I feel ’um.”

I regarded him with growing wonder. Hitherto imagination had formed a small part in his makeup.

“Shadows, like,” he continued, evidently at a loss to explain his exact sensations. “Stealin’ an’ slidin’

around w’en the light’s off. I can’t see ’um but I can see ’um. I know they’re there, so I’m bound tuh see

’um, ain’t I?

“Yeh, dey–or it–I don’t know which. De udder night I nearly saw ’um.” His voice sank broodingly. “I come in an’ shut de door an’ stand dere in de dark a minute, den I KNOW dat somethin’ is beside me. I let go wid me left but all I do is skin me hand an’ knock a panel outta de door. W’en I toin on de light, de room is empty. I tell yuh”–the voice sank yet lower and the wicked eyes avoided mine sullenly–“I tell yuh, either I’m bugs or Bat Roike is hauntin’ me!”

“Nonsense.” I spoke abruptly but I was conscious of a queer sensation as if a cold wind had blown upon me from a suddenly opened door. “It’s neither. You changed your habits too much; from a gregarious, restless adventurer, you’ve become almost a recluse. The change from the white lights and the clamor of the throng to a second rate boarding house and a job in a poolhall is too great. You brood too much and think too much about the past. That’s the way with you professional athletes; when you quit active competition, you forget the present entirely. Get out and tramp some more; forget Battling Rourke; change boarding places. It isn’t good for a man of your nature to think too much. You’re too much of an extrovert–if you know what that means. You need lights and crowds and fellowship, too.”

“Mebby you’re right,” he muttered. “Dis is gettin’ on me noives, sure. I been talkin’ to uh bootlegger wot wants me tuh go in wid him, woikin’ outa Mexico; mebbe I’ll take him up.” Suddenly he rose abruptly.

“Gettin’ late,” he said shortly. A moment he turned at the door and I could have sworn I saw a gleam in his cold grey eyes–was it fear? A moment later his huge hand shut the door behind him and his footsteps died away in the distance.

The next morning my breakfast room was invaded by my closest friend, Hallworthy, and his young wife.

This young lady, a slim little twenty year old beauty, perched herself on my knee and held up a pair of rosy lips to be kissed. Her husband did not object in the least, however, because his wife happens to be my sister.

“This is a truly remarkable hour for a visit,” I remarked. “How did you ever get this Young American up this early, Malcolm?”

“The most terrible thing!” the girl interrupted. “I can’t imagine–”

“Let me tell it, Joan,” said Hallworthy mildly. “Steve, you knew Clement Van Dorn, didn’t you, and Professor Falrath?”

“I know Clement Van Dorn very intimately and have heard him speak of Falrath.”

“Look here.” Hallworthy laid a Los Angeles paper before me. I read the item he pointed out, attentively.

“Falrath murdered by Van Dorn, his best friend? I am surprized.”

“Surprized!” exclaimed Hallworthy. “I am astounded! Nonplussed! Dumfounded! Why, outside the fact that they were the best of friends, Clement Van Dorn had the greatest abhorrence of violence that I ever saw in a man! It was almost an obsession with him! He kill a man? I don’t believe it!”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“There is but a thin veneer over the savagery of all of us,” I said calmly. “I, who have seen life, both at its highest and its lowest, assure you of this. Trivial things can assume monstrous proportions and loose, for an instant, the primal savage, roaring and red handed. I have seen a man kill his best friend over a checker game. Men are only men and the primitive, monstrous instincts still hold sway in the dim corners of the mind.”

“Not among men like Van Dorn,” Hallworthy dissented. “Why, Steve, Clement is positively bloodless in his erudition. He was out of his element anywhere but in Greenwich Village, where he was an authority on the most pallid form of vers libre and cubist art.”

“I agree with Malcolm,” said Joan, taking his arm, her protective feminism uppermost. “I don’t believe Clement killed him.”

“We shall soon know,” I answered. “We’re going to see Clement.”

This necessitated a trip to the prison, for Van Dorn’s bail had been remanded and he was being held for trial. Van Dorn, a slim, pallid youth with delicate and refined features, paced his cell and gesticulated jerkily with his slender, artistic hands as he talked. His hair was tousled, his eyes bloodshot; he was unshaven. His universe had crashed about him; his standards were upset. He had lost his mental equilibrium. Looking at him, I felt that if he were not already insane, that he was hovering on the verge of insanity.

“No, no, no!” he kept exclaiming. “I don’t understand it! It’s monstrous, a terrible nightmare! They say I murdered him–that’s preposterous! How do they account for the fact that when we were found his body was clear across the room from his wheel chair?”

“Tell us the whole thing, old fellow,” Hallworthy’s voice came, soothing, calm. “We’re your friends, you know, and we will believe you.”

“Yes, tell us, Clement,” echoed Joan, her large eyes tender with pity for the wretched youth.

Van Dorn pressed his hands to his temples as if to still their throbbing, his face twisted in mental torment.

“This is the way of it,” he said haltingly. “I’ve told this tale over and over but no one believes me. I’ve been going up to Professor Falrath’s apartment nearly every night for the past week and he was explaining Spencer’s principles, the deeper phases of them. I never saw a man who possessed such a store of metaphysical learning, or who had gone deeper into the roots of things in general. Why, there never were two greater friends. That night we were sitting and talking as we had been and I stepped over to a table to get a book. When I turned”–he closed his eyes tightly, shook his head as if to rid himself of some inner vision, then stared fixedly at us, his hands clenched–“when I turned, Professor Falrath was rising out of his chair; that in itself was astonishing, because he hasn’t left the chair in years, but his face held me in frozen silence. My God, that face!” He shuddered violently. “There was no likeness of Professor Falrath, no HUMAN likeness in those frightful features! It was as if Falrath had vanished and in his place sat a horrid Spectre from some other sphere. The Thing leaped from the chair and hurled itself toward me, fingers stretched like claws. I screamed and fled toward the door but it was in front of me; it closed in on me and in desperation I fought back. Violence of any sort has always repelled me; I have always looked upon the exercize of physical force as a return to bestiality. As for killing, the very sight of blood from a cut finger always nauseated me. But now, I was no longer a civilized man, but a wild beast fighting frenziedly for life. Falrath tore my clothing to pieces and his nails left long tears in my skin; I struck him again and again in the face but without effect.

“At last I secured–how I know not for all is a scarlet haze of horror–a dagger which was one of his collection of arms–this I drove through his wrist and the start of the blood weakened and revolted me.

Yet, as he still pressed his attack, I steeled myself and thrust it through his bosom. He fell dead and I, too, fell in a dead faint.”

We were silent for a time following this weird narration.

“We’ve stayed our limit, Clement,” I said presently. “We will have to go, but rest assured that you will receive all the aid possible. The only solution I can see, is that Professor Falrath was the victim of a sudden homicidal insanity, which might have temporarily overcome his physical weaknesses as you say.”

Clement nodded but there was no spark of hope in his eyes, only a bleak and baffled despair. He was not suited to cope with the rough phases of life, which until now he had never encountered. A weakling, morally and physically, he was learning in a hard school that savage fact of biology–that only the strong survive.

Suddenly Joan held out her arms to him, her mothering instinct which all women have touched to the quick by his helplessness. Like a lost child he threw himself on his knees before her, laid his head in her lap, his frail body racked with great sobs as she stroked his hair, whispering gently to him–like a mother to her child. His hands sought hers and held them as if they were his hope of salvation. The poor devil; he had no place in this rough world; he was made to be mothered and cared for by women–like so many others of his kind.

There were tears in Joan’s eyes as we came out of the cell and Hallworthy’s face showed that he too had been deeply touched.

I had learned that a detective had been put to work on the case–rather an unusual procedure since Van Dorn had confessed to the killing, but the object was to find the motive.

The detective working on the case gave his views as follows: “Van Dorn is just bugs, I figure. One of these fellows that was born half cookoo and completed the job by hanging around such crazy places as Greenwich Village where they’re all crazy and liable to kill anybody just for the sensation.” (Evidently his knowledge of artists and the New Thought was gathered from ten-cent movies.) “He and the old professor must have had a row and he killed Falrath, dragged his body across the room, tore his own clothes and then lay down and pretended to be in a faint when the people, who had heard the noise, come busting in at the door. That’s the way I think it was. Must have been a terrible thing, Falrath’s face was twisted all out of shape; didn’t scarcely look like a human.”

“What do you think?” asked Hallworthy as we were on our way back.