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Published in Lost Fantasies #4 (1976).
I awoke suddenly and sat up in bed, sleepily wondering who it was that was battering, on the door so violently; it threatened to shatter the panels: A voice squealed, sharpened intolerably as with mad terror.
“Conrad! Conrad!” someone outside the door was screaming. “For God’s sake, let me in! I’ve seen him! I’ve seen him!”
“It sounds like Job Kiles,” said Conrad, lifting his long frame off the divan where he had been sleeping, after giving up his bed to me. “Don’t knock down the door!” he called, reaching for his slippers. “I’m coming.”
“Well, hurry!” squalled the unseen visitor. “I’ve just looked into the eyes of Hell!”
Conrad turned on a light and flung open the door, and in half fell, half staggered a wild-eyed shape which I recognized as the man Conrad had named—Job Kiles, a sour, miserly old man who lived on the small estate which adjoined that of Conrad, Now a grisly change had come over the man, usually so reticent and self-possessed. His sparse hair fairly bristled; drops of perspiration beaded his grey skin, and from time to time he shook as with a violent ague.
“What in God’s name is the matter, Kiles?” exclaimed Conrad, staring at him. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost!”
“A ghost!” Kiles’ high pitched voice cracked and dribbled off into a shriek of hysterical laughter. “I’ve seen a demon from Hell! I tell you, I saw him—tonight! Just a few minutes ago! He looked in at my window and laughed at me! Oh God, that laugh!”
“Who?” snapped Conrad impatiently.
“My brother Jonas!” screamed old Kiles.
Even Conrad started. Job’s twin brother Jonas had been dead for a week. Both Conrad and I had seen his corpse placed in the tomb high upon the steep slopes of Dagoth Hills. I remembered the hatred which had existed between the brothers—Job the miser, Jonas the spendthrift, dragging out his last days in poverty and loneliness, in the ruined old family mansion on the lower slopes of the Dagoth Hills, all the brooding venom in his embittered soul centering on the penurious brother who dwelt in a house of his own in the valley. This feeling had been reciprocated. Even when Jonas lay dying Job had only grudgingly allowed himself to be persuaded to come to his brother. As it chanced, he had been alone with Jonas when the latter died, and the death scene must have been hideous, for Job had run out of the room, grey-faced and trembling, pursued by a horrible cackle of laughter, broken short by the sudden death rattle.
Now old Job stood shaking before us, sweat pouring off his grey skin, and babbling his dead brother’s name.
“I saw him! I sat up later tonight than usual. Just as I, turned out the light to go to bed—his face leered at me through the window, framed in the moonlight. He’s come back from Hell to drag me down, as he swore to do as he lay dying. He’s not human! He hadn’t been for years! I suspected it when he returned from his long wandering in the Orient. He’s a fiend in human shape. A vampire! He plans my destruction, body and soul!”
I sat speechless, utterly bewildered, and even Conrad found no words. Confronted by the apparent evidence of complete lunacy what is a man to say or do? My only thought was the obvious one that Job Kiles was insane. Now he seized Conrad by the breast of his dressing gown and shook him violently in the agony of his terror.
“There’s but one thing to do!” he cried, the light of desperation in his eyes. “I must go to his tomb! I must see with my own eyes if he still lies there where we laid him! And you must go with me! I dare not go through the darkness alone! He might be waiting for me—lying in wait behind any hedge or tree!”
“This is madness, Kiles,” expostulated Conrad. “Jonas is dead—you had a nightmare—”
“Nightmare!” his voice rose in a cracked scream. “I’ve had plenty since I stood beside his evil death-bed and heard the blasphemous threats pour like a black river from his foaming lips; but this was no dream! I was wide awake, and I tell you—I tell you I saw my demon-brother Jonas leering hideously through the window at me!”
He wrung his hands, moaning in terror, all pride, selfpossession and poise swept away by stark, primitive, animal terror. Conrad glanced at me, but I had no suggestion to offer. The matter seemed so utterly insane that the only thing obvious seemed to summon the police and have old Job sent to the nearest madhouse. Yet there was in his manner a fundamental terror which seemed to strike even sensation along my spine.
As if sensing our doubt, he broke out again, “I know! You think I’m crazy! I’m sane as you! But I’m going to that tomb, if I have to go alone! And if you let me go alone, my blood will be on your heads! Are you going?”
“Wait!” Conrad began to dress hurriedly. “We’ll go with you. I suppose the only thing that will destroy this hallucination is the sight of your brother in his coffin.”
“Aye!” old Job laughed terribly. “In his tomb, in the lidless coffin! Why did he prepare that open coffin before his death and leave orders that no lid of any sort be placed upon it?”
“He was always eccentric,” answered Conrad.
“He was always a devil,” snarled old Job. “We hated each other from our youth. When he squandered his inheritance and came crawling back, penniless, he resented it because I would not share my hard-gotten wealth with him. The black dog! The fiend from Purgatory’s pits!”
“Well, we’ll soon see if he’s safe in his tomb,” said Conrad. “Ready, O’Donnel?”
“Ready,” I answered, strapping on my holstered .45. Conrad laughed.
“Can’t forget your Texas raising, can you?” He bantered. “Think you might be called on to shoot a ghost?”
“Well, you can’t tell,” I answered. “I don’t like to go out at night without it.”
“Guns are useless against a vampire,” said Job, fidgeting with impatience. “There is only one thing which will prevail against them! A stake driven through the fiend’s black heart.”
“Great heavens, Job!” Conrad laughed shortly. “You can’t be serious about this thing?”
“Why not?” A flame of madness rose in his eyes. “There were vampires in days past—there still are in Eastern Europe and the Orient. I’ve heard him boast about his knowledge of secret cults and black magic. I suspected it—then when he lay dying, he divulged his ghastly secret to me—swore he’d come back from the grave and drag me down to Hell with him!”
We emerged from the house and crossed the lawn. That part of the valley was sparsely settled, though a few miles to the southeast shone the lights of the city. Adjoining Conrad’s grounds on the west lay Job’s estate, the dark house looming gaunt and silent among the trees. That house was the one luxury the miserly old man allowed himself. A mile to the north flowed the river, and to the south rose the sullen black outlines of those low, rolling hills—barren-crowned, with long bush-clad slopes—which men call the Dagoth Hills—a curious name, not allied to any known Indian language, yet used first by the red man to designate this stunted range. They were practically uninhabited. There were farms on the outer slopes, toward the river, but the inner valleys were too shallow of soil, the hills themselves too rocky, for cultivation. Somewhat less than half a mile from Conrad’s estate stood the rambling structure that had housed the Kiles family for some three centuries—at least, the stone foundations dated that far back, though the rest of the house was more modern. I thought old Job shuddered as he looked at it, perched there like a vulture on a roost, against the black undulating background of the Dagoth Hills.
It was a wild windy night through which we went on our mad quest. Clouds drove endlessly across the moon and the wind howled through the trees, bringing strange night noises and playing curious tricks with our voices. Our goal was the tomb which squatted on an upper slope of a hill which projected from the rest of the range, running behind and above the high tableland on which the old Kiles house stood. It was as if the occupant of the sepulcher looked out over the ancestral home and the valley his people had once owned from ridge to river. Now all the ground remaining to the old estate was the stripe running up the slopes into the hills, the house at one end and the tomb at the other.
The hill upon which the tomb was built diverged from the others, as I have said, and in going to the tomb, we passed close by its steep, thicket-clad extremity, which fell off sharply in a rocky, bush-covered cliff. We were nearing the point of this ridge when Conrad remarked, “What possessed Jonas to build his tomb so far from the family vaults!”
“He did not build it,” snarled Job. “It was built long ago by our ancestor, old Captain Jacob Kiles, for whom this particular projection is still called Pirate Hill—for he was a buccaneer and a smuggler. Some strange whim caused him to build his tomb up there, and in his lifetime he spent much time there alone, especially at night. But he never occupied it for he was lost at sea in a fight with a man-of-war. He used to watch for enemies or soldiers from that very bluff there ahead of us, and that’s why people call it Smuggler’s Point to this day.
“The tomb was in ruins when Jonas began living at the old house, and he had it repaired to receive his bones. Well he knew he dared not sleep in consecrated ground! Before he died he had made full arrangements—the tomb had been rebuilt, the lidless coffin placed in it to receive him—”
I shuddered in spite of myself. The darkness, the wild clouds soudding across the leprous moon, the shrieking windnoises, the grim dark hills looming above us, the wild words of our companion, all worked upon my imagination to people the night with shapes of horror and nightmare. I glanced nervously at the thicket-masked slopes, black and repellent in the shifting light, and found myself wishing we were not passing so close to the bushgrown, legend-haunted cliffs of Smuggler’s Point, jutting out like the prow of a ship from the sinister range.
“I am no silly girl to be frightened by shadows,” old Job was chattering. “I saw his evil face at my moonlit window. I have always secretly believed that the dead walk the night. Now—what’s that?”
He stopped short, frozen in an attitude of utter horror. Instinctively we strained our ears. We heard the branches of the trees whipping in the gale. We heard the loud rustling of the tall grass.
“Only the wind,” muttered Conrad. “It distorts every sound—”
“No! No, I tell you! It was—”
A ghostly cry came driving down the wind—a voice sharpened with mortal fear and agony. “Help! Help! Oh, God have mercy! Oh, God! Oh, God—”
“My brother’s voice!” screamed Job. “He is calling to me from Hell!”
“Which way did it come from?” whispered Conrad, with lips suddenly dry.
“I don’t know,” The goose-flesh stood out clammily on my limbs. “I couldn’t tell. It might have come from above—or below. It sounds strangely muffled.”
“The clutch of the grave muffles his voice!” shrieked Job. “The clinging shroud stifles his screams! I tell you he howls on the white-hot grids of Hell, and would drag me down to share his doom! On! On to the tomb!”
“The ultimate path of all mankind,” muttered Conrad, which grisly play on Job’s words did not add to my comfort. We followed old Kiles, scarcely able to keep pace with him as he loped, a gaunt, grotesque figure, across the slopes mounting towards the squat bulk the illusive moonlight disclosed like a dully glistening skull.
“Did you recognize that voice?” I muttered to Conrad.
“I don’t know. It was muffled, as you mentioned. It might have been a trick of the wind. If I said I thought it was Jonas, you’d think me mad.”
“Not now,” I muttered. “I thought it was insanity at the beginning. But the spirit of the night’s gotten into my blood. I’m ready to believe anything.”
We had mounted the slopes and stood before the massive iron door of the tomb. Above and behind it the hill rose steeply, masked by dense thickets. The grim mausoleum seemed invested with sinister portent, induced by the fantastic happenings of the night. Conrad turned the beam of an electric torch on the ponderous look, with its antique appearance.
“This door has not been opened,” said Conrad. “The lock has not been tampered with. Look—spiders have already built their webs thickly across the sill, and the strands are unbroken. The grass before the door has not been mashed down, as would have been the case had anyone recently gone into the tomb—or come out.”
“What are doors and looks to a vampire?” whined Job. “They pass through solid walls like ghosts. I tell you, I will not rest until I have gone into that tomb and done what I have to do. I have the key—the only key there is in the world which will fit that lock.”
He drew it forth—a huge old-fashioned implement—and thrust it into the lock. There was a groan and creak of rusty tumblers, and old Job winced back, as if expecting some hyena-fanged ghost to fly at him through the opening door.
Conrad and I peered in—and I will admit I involuntarily braced myself, shaken with chaotic conjectures. But the blackness within was Stygian. Conrad made to snap on his light, but Job stopped him. The old man seemed to have recovered a good deal of his normal composure.
“Give me the light,” he said and there was grim determination in his voice. “I’ll go in alone. If he has returned to the tomb—if he is again in his coffin, I know how to deal with him. Wait here, and if I cry out, or if you hear the sounds of a struggle, rush in.”
“But—” Conrad began an objection.
“Don’t argue!” shrieked old Kiles, his composure beginning to crumble again. “This is my task and I’ll do it alone!”
He swore as Conrad inadvertently turned the light beam full in his face, then snatched the torch and drawing something from his coat, stalked into the tomb, shoving the ponderous door to behind him.
“More insanity,” I muttered uneasily. “Why was he so insistent that we come with him, if he meant to go inside alone? And did you notice the gleam in his eyes? Sheer madness!”
“I’m not so sure,” answered Conrad. “It looked more like an evil triumph to me. As for being alone, you’d hardly call it that, since we’re only a few feet away from him. He has some reason for not wanting us to enter that tomb with him. What was it he drew from his coat as he went in?”
“It looked like a sharpened stick, and a small hammer. Why should he take a hammer, since there is no lid to be unfastened on the coffin?”
“Of course!” snapped Conrad. “What a fool I’ve been not to understand already! No wonder he wanted to go in to the tomb alone! O’Donnel, he’s serious about this vampire nonsense! Don’t you remember the hints he’s dropped about being prepared, and all that? He intends to drive that stake through his brother’s heart! Come on! I don’t intend that he shall mutilate—”
From the tomb rang a scream that will haunt me when I lie dying. The fearful timbre of it paralyzed us in our tracks, and before we could gather our wits, there was a mad rush of feet, the impact of a flying body against the door, and out of the tomb, like a bat blown out of the gates of Hell, flew the shape of Job Kiles. He fell head-long at our feet, the flashlight in his hand striking the ground and going out. Behind him the iron door stood ajar and I thought to hear a strange scrambling, sliding noise in the darkness. But all my attention was reverted on the wretch who writhed at our feet in horrible convulsions.
We bent above him. The moon sliding from behind a dusky cloud lighted his ghastly face, and we both cried out involuntarily at the horror stamped there. From his distended eyes all light of sanity was gone—blown out as a candle is blown out in the dark. His loose lips worked, spattering forth. Conrad shook him. “Kiles! In God’s name, what happened to you?”
A horrible slavering mewling was the only answer; then among the drooling and meaningless sounds we caught human words, slobbering, and half inarticulate.
“The thing!—The thing in the coffin!” Then as Conrad cried a fierce question, the eyes rolled up and set, the harddrawn lips froze in a ghastly mirthless grin, and the man’s whole lank frame seemed to sink and collapse upon itself.
“Dead!” muttered Conrad, appalled.
“I see no wound,” I whispered, shaken to my very soul.
“There is no wound—no drop of blood.”
“Then—then—” I scarcely dared put the grisly thought into words.
We looked fearsomely at the oblong strip of blackness framed in the partly open door of the silent tomb. The wind shrieked suddenly across the grass, as if a paean of demoniac triumph, and a sudden trembling took hold of me.
Conrad rose and squared his shoulders.
“Come on!” said he. “God knows what lurks in the hellish grave—but we’ve got to find out! The old man was overwrought—a prey to his own fears. His heart was none too strong. Anything might have caused his death.
“Are you with me?”
What terror of a tangible and understood menace can equal that of menace unseen and nameless? But I nodded consent, and Conrad picked up the flashlight, snapped it on, and grunted pleasure that it was not broken. Then we approached the tomb as men might approach the lair of a serpent. My gun was cocked in my hand as Conrad thrust open the door. His light played swiftly over the dank walls, dusty floor and vaulted roof, to come to rest on the lidless coffin which stood on its stone pedestal in the center. This we approached with drawn breath, not daring to conjecture what eldritch horror might meet our eyes. With a quick intake of breath, Conrad flashed his light into it. A cry escaped each of us; the coffin was empty.
“My God!” I whispered. “Job was right! But where is the vampire?”
“No empty coffin frightened the life out of Job Kiles’ body,” answered Conrad. “His last words were ‘the thing in the coffin.’ Something was in it—something the sight of which extinguished Job Kiles’ life like a blown-out candle.”
“But where is it?” I asked uneasily, a most ghastly thrill playing up and down my spine. “It could not have emerged from the tomb without our having seen it. Was it something that can make itself invisible at will? Is it squatting unseen in the tomb with us here at this instant?”
“Such talk is madness,” snapped Conrad, but with a quick instinctive glance over his shoulder to right and left.
Then he added, “Do you notice a faint repulsive odor about this coffin?”
“Yes, but I can’t define it.”
“Nor I. It isn’t exactly a charnel-house reek. It’s an earthly reptilian sort of smell. It reminds me faintly of scents I’ve caught in mines far below the surface of the earth. It clings to the coffin—as if some unholy being out of the deep earth had lain there.”
He ran the light over the walls again, and halted it suddenly, focusing it on the back wall, which was out of the sheet rock of the hill on which the tomb was built.
“Look!”
In the supposedly solid wall showed a long thin aperture! With one stride Conrad reached it, and together we examined it. He pushed cautiously on the section of the wall nearest it, and it gave inward silently, opening on such blackness as I had not dreamed existed this side of the grave. We both involuntarily recoiled, and stood tensely, as if expecting some horror of the night to spring out at us. Then Conrad’s short laugh was like a dash of icy water on taut nerves.
“At least the occupant of the tomb uses an un-supernatural means of entrance and exit,” he said. “This secret door was constructed with extreme care, evidently. See, it is merely a large upright block of stone that turns on a pivot. And the silence with which it works shows that the pivot and sockets have been oiled recently.”
He directed his beam into the pit behind the door, and it disclosed a narrow tunnel running parallel to the door-sill, plainly out into the solid rock of the hill. The sides and floor were smooth and even, the roof arched.
Conrad drew back, turning to me.
“O’Donnel, I seem to sense something dark and sinister indeed, here, and I feel sure it possesses a human agency. I feel as if we had stumbled upon a black, hidden river, running under our very feet. Whither it leads, I can not say, but I believe the power behind it all is Jonas Kiles. I believe that old Job did see his brother at the window tonight. ”
“But empty tomb or not, Conrad, Jonas Kiles is dead. ”
“I think not. I believe he was in a self-induced state of catalepsy, such as is practiced by Hindu Fakirs. I have seen a few cases, and would have sworn they were really dead. They have discovered the secret of suspended animation at will, despite scientists and sceptics. Jonas Kiles lived several years in India, and he must have learned that secret, somehow.
“The open coffin, the tunnel leading from the tomb—all point to the belief that he was alive when he was placed here. For some reason he wished people to believe him to be dead. It may be a whim of a disordered mind. It may have a deeper and darker significance. In the light of his appearance to his brother and Job’s death, I lean to the latter view, but just now my suspicions are too horrible and fantastic to put into words. But I intend to explore this tunnel. Jonas may be hiding in it somewhere. Are you with me? Remember, the man may be a homicidal maniac, or if not, he may be more dangerous even than a madman. ”
“I’m with you,” I grunted, though my flesh crawled at the prospect of plunging into that nighted pit. “But what about that scream we heard as we passed the Point? That was no feigning of agony! And what was the thing Job saw in the coffin?”
“I don’t know. It might have been Jonas, garbed in some hellish disguise. I’ll admit there is much mystery attached to this matter, even if we accept the theory that Jonas is alive and behind it all. But we’ll look into that tunnel. Help me lift Job. We can’t leave him lying here like this. We’ll put him in the coffin.”
And so we lifted Job Kiles and laid him in the coffin of the brother he had hated, where he lay with his glassy eyes staring from his frozen grey features. As I looked at him, the dirge of the wind seemed to echo his words in my ears, “On! Onto the tomb!” And his path had indeed led him to the tomb.
Conrad led the way through the secret door, which we left open. As we moved into that black tunnel I had a moment of sheer panic, and was glad that the heavy outer door of the tomb was not furnished with a spring-lock, and that Conrad had in his pocket the only key with which the ponderous lock could be fastened. I had an uneasy feeling that the demoniac Jonas might make fast the door, leaving us sealed in the tomb until Judgment Day.
The tunnel seemed to run, roughly east and east, following the outer line of the hillhill. We took the left-hand turn—toward the east—and moved along cautiously, shining the light ahead of us.
“This tunnel was never cut by Jonas Kiles,” whispered Conrad. “It has a very air of antiquity about it—look!”
Another dark doorway appeared on our right. Conrad directed his beam through it, disclosing another, narrower passage. Other doorways opened into it on both sides.
“It’s a regular network,” I muttered. “Parallel corridors connected by smaller tunnels. Who’d have guessed such a thing lay under the Dagoth Hills?”
“How did Jonas Kiles discover it?” wondered Conrad. “Look, there’s another doorway on our right—and another—and another! You’re right—it’s a veritable network of tunnels. Who in heaven’s name dug them? They must be the work of some unknown prehistoric race. But this particular corridor has been used recently. See how the dust is disturbed on the floor? All the doorways are on the right, none on the left. This corridor follows the outer line of the hill, and there must be an outlet somewhere along it. Look!”
We were passing the opening of one of the dark intersecting tunnels, and Conrad had flashed his light on the wall beside it. There we saw a crude arrow marked in red chalk, pointed down the smaller tunnel.
“That can’t lead to the outside,” I muttered. “It plunges deeper into the guts of the hill.”
“Let’s follow it, anyway,” answered Conrad. “We can find our way back to this outer tunnel easily.”
So down with it we went, crossing several other larger corridors, and at each finding the arrow, still pointing the way we were going. Conrad’s thin beam seemed almost lost in that dense blackness, and nameless forebodings and instinctive fears haunted me as we plunged deeper and deeper into the heart of that accursed hill. Suddenly the tunnel ended abruptly in a narrow stair that led down and vanished in the darkness. An involuntary shudder shook me as I looked down those carven steps. What unholy feet had padded them in forgotten ages? Then we saw something else—a small chamber opening onto the tunnel, just at the head of the stair. And as Conrad flashed his light into it, an involuntary exclamation burst from my lips. There was no occupant, but plenty of evidence of recent occupation. We entered and stood following the play of the thin finger of light.
That the chamber had been furnished for human occupancy was not so astonishing, in the light of our previous discoveries, but we stood aghast at the condition of the contents. A camp cot lay on its side, broken, the blankets strewn over the rocky floor in ragged strips. Books and magazines were torn to bits and scattered aimlessly about, cans of food lay carelessly about, battered and bent, some burst and the contents spilled. A lamp lay smashed on the floor.
“A hideout for somebody,” said Conrad. “And I’ll stake my head it’s Jonas Kiles. But what a chaos! Look at these cans, apparently burst open by having been struck against the rock floor—and those blankets, torn in strips, as a man might rip a piece of paper. Good God, O’Donnel, no human being could work such havoc!”
“A madman might,” I muttered. “What’s that?”
Conrad had stopped and picked up a notebook. He held it up to his light.
“Badly torn,” he grunted. “But here’s luck, anyway. It’s Jonas Kiles’ diary! I know his handwriting. Look, this last page is intact, and it’s dated today! Positive proof that he’s alive, were other proof lacking.”
“But where is he?” I whispered, looking fearfully about. “And why all this devastation?”
“The only thing I can think of,” said Conrad, “is that the man was at least partly sane when he entered these caverns, but has since become insane. We’d best be alert—if he is mad, it’s altogether possible that he might attack us in the dark.”
“I’ve thought of that,” I growled with an involuntary shudder. “It’s a pretty thought—a madman lurking in these hellish black tunnels to spring on our back. Go ahead—read the diary while I keep an eye on the door.”
“I’ll read this last entry,” said Conrad. “Perhaps it will throw some light on the subject.”
And focussing the light on the cramped scrawl, he read: “All is now in readiness for my grand coup. Tonight I leave this retreat forever, nor will I be sorry, for the eternal darkness and silence are beginning to shake even my iron nerves. I am becoming imaginative. Even as I write, I seem to hear stealthy sounds, as of things creeping up from below, although I have not seen so much as a bat or a snake in these tunnels. But tomorrow I will have taken up my abode in the fine house of my accursed brother. While he—and it is a jest so rare I regret that I can not share it with someone—he will take my place in the cold darkness—darker and colder than even these dark tunnels.
“I must write, if I can not speak of it, for I am thrilled by my own cleverness. What diabolical cunning is mine! With what devilish craft have I plotted and prepared! Not the least was the way in which, before my ‘death’—ha! ha! ha! if the fools only knew—I worked on my brother’s superstitions—dropping hints and letting fall cryptic remarks. He always looked on me as a tool of the Evil One. Before my final ‘illness’ he trembled on the verge of belief that I had become supernatural or infernal. Then on my ‘death-bed’ when I poured my full fury upon him, his fright was genuine. I know that he is fully convinced that I am a vampire. Well do I know my brother. I am as certain as if I saw him, that he fled his home and prepared a stake to drive through my heart. But he will not make a move until he is sure that what he suspects is true.
“This assurance I will lend him. Tonight I will appear at his window. I will appear and vanish. I do not want to kill him with fright, because then my plans would be set at naught. I know that when he recovers from his first fright, he will come to my tomb to destroy me with his stake. And when he is safely in the tomb, I will kill him. I will change garments with him—lay him safely in the tomb, in the open coffin—and steal back to his fine house. We resemble each other enough, so that, with my knowledge of his ways and mannerisms, I can mimic him to perfection. Besides, who would ever suspect? It is too bizarre—too utterly fantastic. I will take up his life where he left off. People may wonder at the change in Job Kiles, but it will go no further than wondering. I will live and die in my brother’s shoes, and when the real death comes to me—may it be long deferred!—I will lie in state in the old Kiles’ vaults, with the name of Job Kiles on my headstone, while the real Job sleeps unguessed in the old tomb on Pirate Hill! Oh, it is a rare, rare, jest!
“I wonder how old Jacob Kiles discovered these subterranean ways. He did not construct them. They were carved out of dim caverns and solid rock by the hands of forgotten men—how long ago I dare not venture a conjecture. While hiding here, waiting for the time to be ripe, I have amused myself by exploring them. I have found that they are far more extensive then I had suspected. The hills must be honeycombed with them, and they sink into the earth to an incredible depth, tier below tier, like the stories of a building, each tier connected with the one below by a single stairway. Old Jacob Kiles must have used these tunnels, at least those of the upper tier, for the storing of plunder and contraband. He built the tomb to mask his real activities, and of course, cut the secret entrance and hung the door-stone on the pivot. He must have discovered the burrows by means of the hidden entrance at Smuggler’s Point. The old door he constructed there was a mere mass of rotting splinters and rusty metal when I found it. As no one ever discovered it, after him, it is not likely anyone will find the new door I built with my own hands, to replace the old one. Still, I will take the proper precautions in due time.
“I have wondered much as to the identity of the race which must once have inhabited these labyrinths. I have found no bones or skulls, though I have discovered, in the upper tier, curiously hardened copper implements. On the next few stories I found stone implements, down to the tenth tier, where they disappeared. Also, on the topmost tier I found portions of walls decorated with paintings, greatly faded, but evidencing undoubted skill. These picture-paintings I found on all the tiers down to, and including, the fifth, though each tier’s decorations were cruder than those of the one above, until the last paintings were mere meaningless daubs, such as an ape might make with a paintbrush. Also, the stone implements were much cruder on the lower levels, as was the workmanship of the roofs, stairs, doorways, etc. One gets a fantastic impression of an emprisoned race burrowing deeper and deeper into the black earth, century by century, and losing more and more of their human attributes as they sank to each new level.
“The fifteenth tier is without rhyme or reason, the tunnels running aimlessly, without apparent plan—so striking a contrast to the top-most tier, which is a triumph of primitive architecture, that it is difficult to believe them to have been constructed by the same race. Many centuries must have elapsed between the buidling of the two tiers, and the builders must have become greatly degraded. But the fifteenth tier is not the end of these mysterious burrows.
“The doorway opening on the single stairway at the bottom of the lowest tier was blocked by stones which had fallen from the roof—probably hundreds of years ago, before old Captain Jacob discovered the tunnels. Prompted by curiosity, I cleared away the debris, in spite of the tax it was on my strength, and opened a hole in the heap this very day, although I did not have time to explore what lay beneath. Indeed, I doubt if I could do so, for my light showed me, not the usual series of stone stairs, but a steep smooth shaft, leading down into the blackness. An ape or a serpent might pass up and down it, but not a human being. Into what unthinkable pits it leads, I do not care to even try to guess. For some reason, the realization that the fifteenth tier was not of the unstepped shaft gave me a strangely creepy feeling, and led me to fantastic conjectures regarding the ultimate fate of the race which once lived in these hills. I had supposed the diggers, sinking lower and lower into the scale of life, had become extinct in the lower tiers, although I had not found any remains to justify my theories. The lower tiers do not lie in almost solid rock as do those nearer the surface. They are out into black earth and a very soft sort of stone, and were apparently scooped out with the most primitive utensils; they even appear in places to have been dug out with fingers and nails. It might be the burrowings of animals, except for the evident attempt to imitate the more orderly systems above. But below the fifteenth tier, as I could see, even by my superficial investigations from above, all mimicry ceases; the diggings below the fifteenth tier are mad and brutish pits, and to what blasphemous depths they descend, I have no wish to know.
“I am haunted by fantastic speculations as to the identity of the race which literally sunk into the earth and disappeared in its black depths, so long ago. A legend persisted among Indians of this vicinity that many centuries before the coming of the white men, their ancestors drove a strange alien race into the caverns of Dagoth Hills, and sealed them up to perish. That they did not perish, but survived somehow for at least several centuries, is evident. Who they were, whence they came, what was their ultimate fate, will never be known. Anthropologists might glean some evidence from the paintings on the upper tier, but I do not intend that anyone shall ever know about these burrows. Some of these dim pictures depict unmistakable Indians, at war with men evidently of the same race as the artists. These models, I should venture to say, resembled the Caucasian type rather than the Indian.
“But the time approaches for my call on my beloved brother. I will go forth by the door in Smuggler’s Point, and return the same way. I will reach the tomb before my brother, however quickly he comes—as come I know he will. Then when the deed is done, I will go forth from the tomb, and no man shall ever set foot in these corridors again. For I shall see that the tomb is never opened, and a convenient dynamite-blast shall shake down enough rocks from the cliffs above to effectually seal the door in Smuggler’s Point forever.”
Conrad slipped the notebook into his pocket.
“Mad or sane,” he said grimly, “Jonas Kiles is a proper devil. I am not greatly surprised, but I am slightly shocked. What a hellish plot! But he errored in one thing: he apparently took it for granted that Job would come to the tomb alone. The fact that he did not was sufficient to upset his calculations.”
“Ultimately,” I answered. “Yet inasfar as Job is concerned, Jonas has succeeded in his fiendish plan—he managed to kill his brother somehow. Evidently he was in the tomb when Job entered. He frightened him to death somehow, then, evidently realizing our presence, slipped away through the secret door. ”
Conrad shook his head. A growing nervousness had made itself evident in his manner as he had progressed with the reading of the diary. From time to time he had paused and lifted his head in a listening attitude.
“O’Donnel, I do not believe that it was Jonas that Job saw in the coffin. I have changed my opinion somewhat. An evil human mind was first at the back of all this, but some of the aspects of this business I can not attribute to humanity.
“That cry we heard at the Point—the condition of this room—the absence of Jonas—all indicate something even darker and more sinister than Jonas Kiles’ murder plot. ”
“What do you mean?” I asked uneasily.
“Suppose that the race which dug these tunnels did not perish!” he whispered. “Suppose their descendants still dwell in some state of abnormal existence in the black pits below the tiers of corridors! Jonas mentions in his notes that he thought to hear stealthy sounds, as of things creeping up from below!”
“But he lived in these tunnels for a week,” I expostulated.
“You forget that the shaft leading to the pits was blocked up until today, when he cleared away the rocks. O’Donnel, I believe that the lower pits are inhabited, that the creatures have found their way up into these tunnels, and that it was the sight of one of them, sleeping in the coffin, which killed Job Kiles!”
“But this is utter madness!” I exclaimed.
“Yet these tunnels were inhabited in times past, and according to what we have read, the inhabitants must have sunk to an incredibly low level of life. What proof have we that their descendants have not lived on in the horrible black pits which Jonas saw below the lower tier? Listen!”
He had snapped off his light, and we had been standing in the darkness for some minutes. Somewhere I heard a faint sliding scrambling noise. Stealthily we stole into the tunnel.
“It is Jonas Kiles!” I whispered, but an icy sensation stole up and down my spine.
“Then he has been hiding below,” muttered Conrad. “The sounds come from the stairs—as of something creeping up from below. I dare not flash the light—if he is armed it might draw his fire.”
I wondered why Conrad, iron-nerved in the presence of human enemies, should be trembling like a leaf. I wondered why cold trickles of nameless horror should trace their way along my spine. And then I was electrified. Somewhere back up the tunnel, in the direction from which we had come, I heard another soft repellent sound.
And at that instant Conrad’s fingers sunk like steel into my arm. In the murky darkness below us, two yellow oblique sparks suddenly glittered.
“My God!” came Conrad’s shocked whisper. “That’s not Jonas Kiles!”
As he spoke another pair joined the first—then suddenly the dark well bwlow us was alive with floating yellow gleams, like evil stars reflected in a nighted gulf. They flowed up the stairs toward us, silently except for that detestable sliding sound. A vile earthy smell welled up to our nostrils.
“Back, in God’s name!” gasped Conrad, and we began to move back away from the stairs, up the tunnel down which we had come. Then suddenly there came the rush of some heavy body through the air, and wheeling, I fired blindly and pointblank in the darkness. And my scream, as the flash momentarily lighted the shadow, was echoed by Conrad. The next instant we were racing up the tunnel as men might run from hell, while behind us something flopped and floundered and wallowed on the floor in its death-throes.
“Turn on your light,” I gasped. “We mustn’t get lost in these hellish labyrinths.”
The beam stabbed the dark ahead of us, and showed us the outer corridor where we had first seen the arrow. There we halted an instant, and Conrad directed his beam back down the tunnel. We saw only the empty darkness, but beyond that short ray of light, God only knows what horrors crawled through the blackness.
“My God, my God!” Conrad panted. “Did you see? Did you see?”
“I don’t know!” I gasped. “I glimpsed something—like a flying shadow—in the flash of the shot. It wasn’t a man—it had a head something like a dog—”
“I wasn’t looking in that direction,” he whispered. “I was looking down the stairs when the flash of your gun cut the darkness.”
“What did you see?” My flesh was clammy with cold sweat.
“Human words can not describe it!” he cried. “The black earth quickened as with giant maggots. The darkness heaving and with blasphemous life. In God’s name, let’s get out of here—down this corridor to the tomb!”
But even as we took a forward step, we were paralyzed by stealthy sounds ahead of us.
“The corridors are alive with them!” whispered Conrad. “Quick—the other way! This corridor follows the line of the hill and must run to the door in Smuggler’s Point.”
Until I die I will remember that flight down that black silent corridor, with the horror that slunk at our heels. I momentarily expected some demon-fanged spectre to leap upon our back or rise up out of the blackness ahead of us. Then Conrad, shining his dimming light ahead, gave a gasping sob of relief.
“The door, at last. My God, what’s this?”
Even as his light had shone on a heavy iron-bound door, with a heavy key in the massive lock, he had stumbled over something that lay crumpled on the floor. His light showed a twisted human shape, its blasted head lying in a pool of blood. The features were unrecognizable, but we knew the gaunt, lank shape, still clad in the grave-clothes. The real Death had overtaken Jonas Kiles at last.
“That cry as we passed the Point tonight!” whispered Conrad. “It was his death-scream! He had returned to the tunnels after showing himself to his brother—and horror came upon him in the dark!”
Suddenly, as we stood above the corpse, we heard again that damnable sliding scrambling noise in the darkness. In a frenzy we leaped at the door—tore at the key—hurled open the door. With a sob of relief we staggered into the moonlit night. For an instant the door swung open behind us, then as we turned to look, a savage gust of wind crashed it shut.
But before it closed, a ghastly picture leaped out at us, half lighted by the straggling moon-beams: the sprawling, mutilated corpse, and above it a grey shambling monstrosity—a flaming-eyed dog-headed horror such as madmen see in black nightmares. Then the slamming door blotted out the sight, and as we fled across the slope in the shifting moonlight, I heard Conrad babbling, “Spawn of the black pits of madness and eternal night! Crawling obscenities seething in the slime of the earth’s unguessed deeps—the ultimate horror of retrogression—the nadir of human degeneration—good God, their ancestors were men! The pits below the fifteenth tier, into what hells of blasphemous black horror do they sink, and by what demoniac hordes are they peopled? God protect the sons of men from the Dwellers—the Dwellers under the tomb!”