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Published in The Shadow of the Beast, 1977.
As long as evil stars arise
Or moonlight fires the East,
May God in Heaven preserve us from
The Shadow of the Beast!
The horror had its beginning in the crack of a pistol in a black hand. A white man dropped with a bullet in his chest and the negro who had fired the shot turned and fled, after a single hideous threat hurled at the pale-faced girl who stood horror-struck close by.
Within an hour grim-faced men were combing the pine woods with guns in their hands, and on through the night the grisly hunt went on, while the victim of the hunted lay fighting for his life.
“He’s quiet now; they say he’ll live,” his sister said, as she came out of the room where the boy lay. Then she sank down into a chair and gave way to a burst of tears.
I sat down beside her and soothed her much as one would a child. I loved her and she had shown that she returned my affection. It was my love for her that had drawn me from my Texas ranch to the lumber camps in the shadow of the pine woods, where her brother looked after the interests of his company.
“Give me the details of all this,” I said. “I haven’t been able to get a coherent account of it. You know I arrived after Harry had been shot.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” she answered listlessly. “This negro’s name is Joe Cagle and he’s bad—in every sense of the word. Twice I’ve seen him peering in my window, and this morning he sprang out from behind a pile of lumber and caught me by the arm. I screamed and Harry rushed up and struck him with a club. Then Cagle shot my brother, and snarling like a wild beast, promised to revenge himself on me, also. Then he dashed away among the trees on the edge of the camp, looking like a great black ape with his broad back and stooping gait.”
“What threats did he make against you?” I asked, my hands involuntarily clenching.
“He said he’d come back and get me some night when the woods were dark,” she answered wearily, and with a fatalism that surprized and dismayed me she added, “He will, too. When a negro like him sets his mind on a white girl, nothing but death can stop him.”
“Then death will stop him,” I said harshly, rising. “Do you think I’m going to sit here and let that black beast menace you? I’m going to join the posse. Don’t you leave this house tonight. By morning Joe Cagle will be past harming any girl, white or black.”
As I went out of the house I met one of the men who had been searching for the negro. He had sprained his ankle on a hidden root in the darkness and had returned to the camp on a borrowed horse.
“Naw, we ain’t found no trace yet,” he replied to my question. “We’ve done combed the country right around the camp, and the boys are spreading out towards the swamp. Don’t look reasonable that he coulda got so far away with the short start he had, and us right after him on horse back, but Joe Cagle’s more of a varmint than he is a man. Looks like one uh these gorillas. I imagine he’s hidin’ in the swamp and if he is, it may take weeks to rout him out. Like I said, we’ve done searched the woods close by—all except the Deserted House, uh course.”
“Why not there?—And where is this house?”
“Down the old tote road what ain’t used no more, ’bout four miles. Aw, they ain’t a black in the country that’d go near that place, to save his life, even. That negro that killed the foreman a few years ago, they chased him down the old tote road and when he seen he was goin’ to have to go right past the Deserted House, he turned back and give up to the mob. No sir, Joe Cagle ain’t nowheres near that house, you can bet.”
“Why has it such a bad name?” I asked curiously.
“Ain’t nobody lived in it for twenty years. Last man owned it leaped, fell or was thrown out of a upstairs window one night and was killed by the fall. Later a young travellin’ man stayed there all night on a bet and they found him outside the house next mornin’, all smashed up like he’d fell a long ways. A backwoodsman who’d passed that way late in the night swore he’d heard a terrible scream, and then seen the travellin’ man come flyin’ out of a second story window. He didn’t wait to see no more. What give the Deserted House the bad name in the first place was—”
But I was in no mood to listen to a long drawn-out ghost story, or whatever the man was about to tell me. Almost every locality in the South has its “ha’nted” house and the tales attached to each are numberless.
I interrupted him to ask where I would be likely to find the part of the posse which had penetrated most deeply into the pine woods, and having gotten instructions, I mounted the horse he had ridden back and rode away, first getting his promise that he would keep watch over the girl, Joan, until I had returned.
“Don’t get lost,” he shouted after me. “Them piney woods is risky business for a stranger. Watch for the light of the posse’s torches through the trees.”
A brisk canter brought me to the verge of a road which led into the woods in the direction I wished to go, and there I halted. Another road, one which was little more than a dimly defined path, led away at right angles. This was the old tote road which went past the Deserted House. I hesitated. I had none of the confidence that the others had shown, that Joe Cagle would shun the place. The more I thought of it, the more I felt it likely that the negro would take refuge there. From all accounts, he was an unusual man, a complete savage, so bestial, so low in the scale of intelligence that even the superstitions of his race left him untouched. Why then should not his animal craft bid him hide in the last place his pursuers would think of looking, while that same animal-like nature caused him to scorn the fears possessed by the more imaginative of his race?
My decision reached, I reined my steed about and started down the old road.
There is no darkness in the world so utterly devoid of light as the blackness of the pine woods. The silent trees rose like basaltic walls about me, shutting out the stars. Except for the occasional eery sigh of the wind through the branches, or the far away, haunting cry of an owl, the silence was as absolute as the darkness. The stillness bore heavily upon me. I seemed to sense, in the blackness about me, the spirit of the unconquerable swamplands, the primitive foe of man whose abysmal savagery still defies his vaunted civilization. In such surroundings anything seems possible. I did not then wonder at the dark tales of black magic and voo-doo rites attributed to these horrid depths, nor would I have been surprized to hear the throb of the tomtom, or to see a fire leap up in the dark, where naked figures danced about a cannibalistic feast.
I shrugged my shoulders to rid myself of such thoughts. If voo-doo worshippers secretly held their fearsome rites in these woods, there were none tonight with the vengeful white men combing the country.
As my mount, bred in the pine country and sure-footed as a cat in the darkness, picked his way without my aid, I strained my senses to catch any sound such as a man might make. But not one stealthy footfall reached me, not a single rustle of the scanty underbrush. Joe Cagle was armed and desperate. He might be waiting in ambush; might spring on me at any moment, but I felt no especial fear. In that veiling darkness, he could see no better than I, and I would have as good a chance as he in a blind exchange of shots. And if it came to a hand-to-hand conflict, I felt that I, with my two hundred and five pounds of bone and sinew, was a match for even the ape-like negro.
Surely I must be close to the Deserted House by now. I had no idea of knowing the exact time, but far away in the east a faint glow began to be apparent through the masking blackness of the pines. The moon was rising. And on that instant, from somewhere in front of me, rattled a sudden volley of shots, then silence fell again like a heavy fog. I had halted short and now I hesitated. To me it had sounded as if all the reports had come from the same gun, and there had been no answering shots. What had happened out there in the grim darkness? Did those shots spell Joe Cagle’s doom, or did they mean that the negro had struck again? Or did the sounds have any connection with the man I was hunting? There was but one way to find out and nudging my mount’s ribs, I started on again at a swifter gait.
A few moments later a large clearing opened and a gaunt dark building bulked against the stars. The Deserted House at last! The moon glimmered evilly through the trees, etching out black shadows and throwing an illusive witch-light over the country. I saw, in this vague light, that the house had once been a mansion of the old colonial type. Sitting in my saddle for an instant before I dismounted, a vision of lost glory passed before my mind—a vision of broad plantations, singing negroes, aristocratic Southern colonels, balls, dances—gallantry—
All gone now. Blotted out by the Civil War. The pine trees grew where the plantation fields had flourished, the gallants and the ladies were long dead and forgotten, the mansion crumbled into decay and ruin—and now what grim threat lurked in those dark and dusty rooms where the mice warred with the owls?
I swung from my saddle, and as I did, my horse snorted suddenly and reared back violently upon his haunches, tearing the reins from my hand. I snatched for them again, but he wheeled and galloped away, vanishing like a goblin’s shadow in the gloom. I stood struck speechless, listening to the receding thunder of his hoofs, and I will admit that a cold finger traced its way down my spine. It is rather a grisly experience to have your retreat suddenly cut off, in such surroundings as I was in.
However, I had not come to run away from danger, so I strode boldly up to the broad veranda, a heavy pistol in one hand, an electric flash-light in the other. The massive pillars towered above me; the door sagged open upon broken hinges. I swept the broad hallway with a gleam of light but only dust and decay met my eyes. I entered warily, turning the light off.
As I stood there, trying to accustom my eyes to the gloom, I realized that I was doing as reckless a thing as a man could do. If Joe Cagle were hiding somewhere in the house, all he had to do would be to wait until I turned on my light and then shoot me full of lead. But I thought again of his threats against the weak and helpless girl I loved, and my determination was steeled. If Joe Cagle was in that house, he was going to die.
I strode toward the stairs, instinctively feeling that if there, the fugitive would be somewhere in the second story. I groped my way up and came out on a landing, lit by the moonlight which streamed in at a window. The dust lay thick on the floor as if undisturbed for two decades and I heard the whisper of bats’ wings and the scampering of mice. No foot prints in the dust betrayed a man’s presence but I felt sure that there were other stairways. Cagle might have come into the house through a window.
I went down the hallway, which was a horrible system of black lurking shadows and squares of moonlight—for now the moon had risen high enough to flood in at the windows. There was no sound save the cushioned tread of my own feet in the deep dust on the floor. Room after room I passed, but my flashlight showed only moldered walls, sagging ceilings and broken furniture. At last, close to the end of the corridor, I came to a room whose door was shut. I halted, an intangible feeling working upon me to steel my nerves and send the blood racing through my veins. Somehow, I knew that on the other side of that door lay something mysterious and menacing.
Cautiously I turned on the light. The dust in front of the door was disturbed. An arc of the floor was brushed bare, just in front. The door had been open; had been closed only a short time before. I tried the knob warily, wincing at the rattle it made and expecting a blast of lead through the door. Silence reigned. I tore the door open and leaped quickly aside.
There was no shot, no sound. Crouching, gun cocked, I peered about the jamb and strained my eyes into the room. A faint acrid scent met my nostrils—gun powder—was it in this room that had been fired those shots I had heard?
Moonlight streamed over a broken window sill, lending a vague radiance. I saw a dark bulky form, that had the semblance of a man, lying close to the center of the floor. I crossed the threshold, bent over the figure and turned my light full into the upturned face.
Joan need never fear Joe Cagle’s threats again, for the shape on the floor was Joe Cagle and he was dead.
Close to his outstretched hand lay a revolver, the chambers of which were filled with empty shells. Yet there was no wound upon the negro—at whom had he fired and what had killed him? A second glance at his distorted features told me—I saw that look once before in the eyes of a man struck by a rattlesnake, who died with fear before the reptile’s venom could kill him. Cagle’s mouth gaped, his dead eyes stared hideously; he had died of fright, but what grisly thing had caused that fright? At the thought cold sweat started out on my brow and the short hairs prickled at the base of my skull. I was suddenly aware of the silence and solitude of the place and the hour. Somewhere in the house a rat squeaked and I started violently.
I glanced up, then halted, frozen. Moonlight fell on the opposite wall and suddenly a shadow fell silently across it—I bounded to my feet, whirling toward the outer door as I did so. The doorway stood empty. I sprang across the room and went through another door, closing it behind me. Then I halted, shaken. Not a sound broke the stillness. What was it that had stood for an instant in the doorway opening into the hall, throwing its shadow into the room where I had stood? I was still trembling with a nameless fear. The thought of some desperate man was bad enough, but the glance I had had of that shadow had left upon my soul an impression of something strange and unholy—inhuman!
The room in which I now was also opened in the hallway. I started to cross to the hall door and then hesitated at the thought of pitting my powers against whatever lurked in the outer darkness. The door sagged open—I saw nothing, but to my soul-freezing horror, a hideous shadow fell across the floor and moved toward me!
Etched blackly in the moonlight on the floor, it was as if some frightful shape stood in the doorway, throwing its lengthened and distorted shade across the boards to my feet. Yet I swear that the doorway was empty!
I rushed across the room and entered the door that opened into the next room. Still I was adjacent to the hallway. All these upstairs rooms seemed to open into the hall. I stood, shivering, my revolver gripped so tightly in my sweating hand that the barrel shook like a leaf. The pounding of my heart sounded thunderously in the silence. What in God’s name was this horror which was hunting me through these dark rooms? What was it that threw a shadow, when its own substance was unseen? Silence lay like a dark mist; the ghostly radiance of the moon patterned the floor. Two rooms away lay the corpse of a man who had seen a thing so unnamably terrible that it had shattered his brain and taken away his life. And here stood I, alone with the unknown monster.
What was that? The creak of ancient hinges! I shrank back against the wall, my blood freezing. The door through which I had just come was slowly opening! A sudden gust of wind shuddered through. The door swung wide, but I, nerving myself to meet the sight of some horror framed in the opening, saw nothing!
Moonlight, as in all of the rooms on this side of the hall, streamed through the hall door and lay on the opposite wall. If any invisible thing was coming from that adjoining room, the moonlight was not at its back. Yet a distorted shadow fell across the wall which shone in the moonlight and moved forward.
Now I saw it clearly, though the angle at which it was thrown deformed it. A broad, shambling figure, stooped, head thrust forward, long man-like arms dangling—the whole thing was hideously suggestive of the human, yet fearsomely unlike. This I read in the approaching shadow, yet saw no solid form that might throw this shadow.
Then panic seized me and I jerked the trigger again and again, filling the empty house with crashing reverberations and the acrid smell of powder, aiming first at the doorway in front of me, then in desperation sending the last bullet straight into the gliding shadow. Just so Joe Cagle must have done in the last terrible moment which preceded his death. The hammer fell hollowly on a discharged shell and I hurled the empty gun wildly. Not an instant had halted the unseen thing—now the shadow was close upon me.
My back-flung hands encountered the door—tore at the knob. It held! The door was locked! Now on the wall beside me, the shadow loomed up black and horrific. Two great treelike arms were raised—with a scream I hurled my full weight against the door. It gave way with a splintering crash and I fell through into the room beyond.
The rest is nightmare. I scrambled up without a glance behind me and rushed into the hall. At the far end I saw, as through a fog, the stair landing and toward it I rushed. The hall was long—it seemed endless. It seemed as though it stretched into Eternity and that I fled for hours down that grisly corridor. And a black shadow kept pace with me, flying along the moonlit wall, vanishing for an instant in black darkness, reappearing an instant later in a square of moonlight, let in by some outer window.
Down the hall it kept by my side, falling upon the wall at my left, telling me that whatever thing threw that shadow, was close at my back. It has long been said that a ghost will fling a shadow in the moonlight, even when it itself is invisible to the human sight. But no man ever lived whose ghost could throw such a silhouette. Such thoughts as these did not enter my mind tangibly as I fled; I was in the grip of unreasoning fear, but piercing through the fogs of my horror, was the knowledge that I was faced by some supernatural thing, which was at once unearthly and bestial.
Now I was almost at the stair; but now the shadow fell in front of me! The thing was at my very back—was reaching hideous unseen arms to clutch me! One swift glance over my shoulder showed me something else: on the dust of the corridor, close upon the footprints I left, other footprints were forming! Huge misshapen footprints, that left the marks of talons! With a terrible scream I swerved to the right, leaping for an open outer window as a drowning man seizes a rope—without conscious thought.
My shoulder struck the side of the window; I felt empty air under my feet—caught one whirling, chaotic glimpse of the moon, sky and the dark pine trees, as the earth rushed up to meet me, then black oblivion crashed about me.
My first sensation of returning consciousness was of soft hands lifting my head and caressing my face. I lay still, my eyes closed, trying to orient myself—I could not remember where I was, or what had happened. Then with a rush it all came back to me. My eyes flared open and I struggled wildly to rise.
“Steve, oh Steve, are you hurt?”
Surely I was insane, for it was the voice of Joan! No! My head was cradled in her lap, her large dark eyes, bright with tears, gazed down into mine.
“Joan! In God’s name, what are you doing here?” I sat up, drawing her into my arms. My head throbbed nauseatingly; I was sore and bruised. Above us rose the stark grim wall of the Deserted House, and I could see the window from which I had fallen. I must have lain senseless for a long time, for now the moon lay red as blood close to the western horizon, glimmering in a scarlet wallow through the tops of the pines.
“The horse you rode away came back riderless. I couldn’t stand to sit and wait—so I slipt out of the house and came here. They told me you’d gone to find the posse, but the horse came back the old tote road. There wasn’t anyone to send so I slipt away and came myself.”
“Joan!” the sight of her forlorn figure and the thought of her courage and love took hold of my heart and I kissed her without speaking.
“Steve,” her voice came low and frightened, “what happened to you? When I rode up, you lay here unconscious, just like those other two men who fell from those windows—only they were killed.”
“And only pure chance saved me, despite my powerful frame and heavy bones,” I answered. “Once out of a hundred times a fall like that fails to injure a man—Joan, what happened in that house twenty years ago to throw a curse upon it?”
She shivered. “I don’t know. The people who owned it before the war had to sell it afterwards. The tenants let it fall into disrepair, of course. A strange thing happened there just before the death of the last tenant. A huge gorilla escaped from a circus which was passing through the country and took refuge in the house. He fought so terribly when they tried to recapture him that they had to kill him. That was over twenty years ago. Shortly after that, the owner of the house fell from an upstairs window and was killed. Everyone supposed he committed suicide or was walking in his sleep, but—”
“No!” I broke in with a shudder. “He was being hunted through those horrible rooms by a thing so terrible that death itself was an escape. And that travelling man—I know what killed him—and Joe Cagle—”
“Joe Cagle!” she started violently. “Where—”
“Don’t worry, child,” I soothed. “He’s past harming you. Don’t ask me any more. No, I didn’t kill him; his death was more horrible than any I could have dealt. There are worlds and shadows of worlds beyond our ken, and bestial earth-bound spirits lurk in the dark shadows of our world, it may be. Come, let us go.”
She had brought two horses with her, and had tethered them a short distance from the house. I made her mount and then, despite her protests and pleas, I returned to the house. I went only as far as a first story window and I stayed only a few moments. Then I also mounted, and together we rode slowly down the old tote road. The stars were paling and the east was beginning to whiten with the coming morn.
“You have not told me what haunts that house,” said Joan in an awed voice, “but I know it’s something frightful; what are we to do?”
For answer I turned in my saddle and pointed. We had rounded a bend in the old road and could just glimpse the old house through the trees. As we looked, a red lance of flame leaped up, smoke billowed to the morning sky, and a few minutes later a deep roar came to us, as the whole building began to fall into the insatiate flames I had started before we left. The ancients have always maintained that fire is the final destroyer, and I knew as I watched, that the ghost of the dead gorilla was lain, and the shadow of the beast forever lifted from the pine lands.