Moon of Skulls (22 page)

The Englishman turned, to see the girl crouching against the cave wall. He looked for his stave; it lay in a heap of dust, among which were a few moldering bones. He stared, his brain reeling. Then with one stride he caught up the voodoo staff and turned to the fallen Negro. His face set in grim lines as he raised it; then he drove it through the black breast. And before his eyes, the giant body crumbled, dissolving to dust as he watched horror-struck, even as had crumbled he through whom Kane had first thrust the stave.

3. Dream Magic

“Great God!” whispered Kane; “these men were dead! Vampires! This is Satan’s handiwork manifested.”

Zunna crawled to his knees and clung there.

“These be walking dead men, master,” she whimpered. “I should have warned you.”

“Why did they not leap on my back when they first came?” asked he.

“They feared the fire. They were waiting for the embers to die entirely.”

“Whence came they?”

“From the hills. Hundreds of their kind swarm among the boulders and caverns of these hills, and they live on human life, for a man they will slay, devouring his ghost as it leaves his quivering body. Aye, they are suckers of souls!

“Master, among the greater of these hills there is a silent city of stone, and in the old times, in the days of my ancestors, these people lived there. They were human, but they were not as we, for they had ruled this land for ages and ages. The ancestors of my people made war on them and slew many, and their magicians made all the dead men as these were. At last all died.

“And for ages have they preyed on the tribes of the jungle, stalking down from the hills at midnight and at sunset to haunt the jungle-ways and slay and slay. Men and beasts flee them and only fire will destroy them.”

“Here is that which will destroy them,” said Kane grimly, raising the voodoo stave. “Black magic must fight black magic, and I know not what spell N’Longa put hereon, but —”

“You are a god,” said Zunna decidedly. “No man could overcome two of the walking dead men. Master, can you not lift this curse from my tribe? There is nowhere for us to flee and the monsters slay us at will, catching wayfarers outside the village wall. Death is on this land and we die helpless!”

Deep in Kane stirred the spirit of the crusader, the fire of the zealot — the fanatic who devotes his life to battling the powers of darkness.

“Let us eat,” said he; “then we will build a great fire at the cave mouth. The fire which keeps away beasts shall also keep away fiends.”

Later Kane sat just inside the cave, chin rested on clenched fist, eyes gazing unseeingly into the fire. Behind in the shadows, Zunna watched him, awed.

“God of Hosts,” Kane muttered, “grant me aid! My hand it is which must lift the ancient curse from this dark land. How am I to fight these dead fiends, who yield not to mortal weapons? Fire will destroy them — a broken neck renders them helpless — the voodoo stave thrust through them crumbles them to dust — but of what avail? How may I prevail against the hundreds who haunt these hills, and to whom human life-essence is Life? Have not — as Zunna says — warriors come against them in the past, only to find them fled to their high-walled city where no man can come against them?”

The night wore on. Zunna slept, her cheek pillowed on her round, girlish arm. The roaring of the lions shook the hills and still Kane sat and gazed broodingly into the fire. Outside, the night was alive with whispers and rustlings and stealthily soft footfalls. And at times Kane, glancing up from his meditations, seemed to catch the gleam of great red eyes beyond the flickering light of the fire.

Gray dawn was stealing over the grasslands when Kane shook Zunna into wakefulness.

“God have mercy on my soul for delving in barbaric magic,” said he, “but demonry must be fought with demonry, mayhap. Tend ye the fire and awake me if aught untoward occur.”

Kane lay down on his back on the sand floor and laid the voodoo staff on his breast, folding his hands upon it. He fell asleep instantly. And sleeping, he dreamed. To his slumbering self it seemed that he walked through a thick fog and in this fog he met N’Longa, true to life. N’Longa spoke, and the words were clear and vivid, impressing themselves on his consciousness so deeply as to span the gap between sleeping and waking.

“Send this girl to her village soon after sun-up when the lions have gone to their lairs,” said N’Longa, “and bid her bring her lover to you at this cave. There make him lie down as if to slumber, holding the voodoo stave.”

The dream faded and Kane awoke suddenly, wondering. How strange and vivid had been the vision, and how strange to hear N’Longa talking in English, without the jargon! Kane shrugged his shoulders. He knew that N’Longa claimed to possess the power of sending his spirit through space, and he himself had seen the voodoo man animate a dead man’s body. Still —

“Zunna,” said Kane, giving the problem up, “I will go with you as far as the edge of the jungle and you must go on to your village and return here to this cave with your lover.”

“Kran?” she asked naïvely.

“Whatever his name is. Eat and we will go.”

Again the sun slanted toward the west. Kane sat in the cave, waiting. He had seen the girl safely to the place where the jungle thinned to the grasslands, and though his conscience stung him at the thought of the dangers which might confront her, he sent her on alone and returned to the cave. He sat now, wondering if he would not be damned to everlasting flames for tinkering with the magic of a black sorcerer, blood-brother or not.

Light footfalls sounded, and as Kane reached for his musket, Zunna entered, accompanied by a tall, splendidly proportioned youth whose brown skin showed that he was of the same race as the girl. His soft dreamy eyes were fixed on Kane in a sort of awesome worship. Evidently the girl had not minimized the white god’s glory in her telling.

He bade the youth lie down as he directed and placed the voodoo stave in his hands. Zunna crouched at one side, wide-eyed. Kane stepped back, half-ashamed of this mummery and wondering what, if anything, would come of it. Then to his horror, the youth gave one gasp and stiffened!

Zunna screamed, bounding erect.

“You have killed Kran!” she shrieked, flying at the Englishman who stood struck speechless.

Then she halted suddenly, wavered, drew a hand languidly across her brow — she slid down to lie with her arms about the motionless body of her lover.

And this body moved suddenly, made aimless motions with hands and feet, then sat up, disengaging itself from the clinging arms of the still senseless girl.

Kran looked up at Kane and grinned, a sly, knowing grin which seemed out of place on his face somehow. Kane started. Those soft eyes had changed in expression and were now hard and glittering and snaky — N’Longa’s eyes!

“Ai ya,”
said Kran in a grotesquely familiar voice. “Blood-brother, you got no greeting for N’Longa?”

Kane was silent. His flesh crawled in spite of himself. Kran rose and stretched his arms in an unfamiliar sort of way, as if his limbs were new to him. He slapped his breast approvingly.

“Me N’Longa!” said he in the old boastful manner. “Mighty ju-ju man! Blood-brother, not you know me, eh?”

“You are Satan,” said Kane sincerely. “Are you Kran or are you N’Longa?”

“Me N’Longa,” assured the other. “My body sleep in ju-ju hut on Coast many treks from here. I borrow Kran’s body for while. My ghost travel ten days march in one breath; twenty days march in same time. My ghost go out from my body and drive out Kran’s.”

“And Kran is dead?”

“No, he no dead. I send his ghost to shadowland for a while — send the girl’s ghost too, to keep him company; bimeby come back.”

“This is the work of the Devil,” said Kane frankly, “but I have seen you do even fouler magic — shall I call you N’Longa or Kran?”

“Kran —
kah!
Me N’Longa — bodies like clothes! Me N’Longa, in here now!” he rapped his breast. “Bimeby Kran live along here — then he be Kran and I be N’Longa, same like before. Kran no live along now; N’Longa live along this one fellow body. Blood-brother, I am N’Longa!”

Kane nodded. This was in truth a land of horror and enchantment; anything was possible, even that the thin voice of N’Longa should speak to him from the great chest of Kran, and the snaky eyes of N’Longa should blink at him from the handsome young face of Kran.

“This land I know long time,” said N’Longa, getting down to business. “Mighty ju-ju, these dead people! No, no need to waste one fellow time — I know — I talk to you in sleep. My blood-brother want to kill out these dead black fellows, eh?”

“’Tis a thing opposed to nature,” said Kane somberly. “They are known in my land as vampires — I never expected to come upon a whole nation of them.”

4. The Silent City

“Now we find this stone city,” said N’Longa.

“Yes? Why not send your ghost out to kill these vampires?” Kane asked idly.

“Ghost got to have one fellow body to work in,” N’Longa answered. “Sleep now. Tomorrow we start.”

The sun had set; the fire glowed and flickered in the cave mouth. Kane glanced at the still form of the girl, who lay where she had fallen, and prepared himself for slumber.

“Awake me at midnight,” he admonished, “and I will watch from then until dawn.”

But when N’Longa finally shook his arm, Kane awoke to see the first light of dawn reddening the land.

“Time we start,” said the fetish-man.

“But the girl — are you sure she lives?”

“She live, blood-brother.”

“Then in God’s name, we cannot leave her here at the mercy of any prowling fiend who might chance upon her. Or some lion might —”

“No lion come. Vampire scent still linger, mixed with man scent. One fellow lion he no like man scent and he fear the walking dead men. No beast come; and” — lifting the voodoo stave and laying it across the cave entrance — “no dead man come now.”

Kane watched him somberly and without enthusiasm.

“How will that rod safeguard her?”

“That mighty ju-ju,” said N’Longa. “You see how one fellow vampire go along dust alongside that stave! No vampire dare touch or come near it. I gave it to you, because outside Vampire Hills one fellow man sometimes meet a corpse walking in jungle when shadows be black. Not all walking dead men be here. And all must suck Life from men — if not, they rot like dead wood.”

“Then make many of these rods and arm the people with them.”

“No can do!” N’Longa’s skull shook violently. “That ju-ju rod be mighty magic! Old, old! No man live today can tell how old that fellow ju-ju stave be. I make my blood-brother sleep and do magic with it to guard him, that time we make palaver in Coast village. Today we scout and run; no need it. Leave it here to guard girl.”

Kane shrugged his shoulders and followed the fetish-man, after glancing back at the still shape which lay in the cave. He would never have agreed to leave her so casually, had he not believed in his heart that she was dead. He had touched her, and her flesh was cold.

They went up among the barren hills as the sun was rising. Higher they climbed, up steep clay slopes, winding their way through ravines and between great boulders. The hills were honeycombed with dark, forbidding caves, and these they passed warily, and Kane’s flesh crawled as he thought of the grisly occupants therein. For N’Longa said:

“Them vampires, he sleep in caves most all day till sunset. Them caves, he be full of one fellow dead man.”

The sun rose higher, baking down on the bare slopes with an intolerable heat. Silence brooded like an evil monster over the land. They had seen nothing, but Kane could have sworn at times that a black shadow drifted behind a boulder at their approach.

“Them vampires, they stay hid in daytime,” said N’Longa with a low laugh. “They be afraid of one fellow vulture! No fool vulture! He know death when he see it! He pounce on one fellow dead man and tear and eat if he be lying or walking!”

A strong shudder shook his companion.

“Great God!” Kane cried, striking his thigh with his hat; “is there no end to the horror of this hideous land? Truly this land is dedicated to the powers of darkness!”

Kane’s eyes burned with a dangerous light. The terrible heat, the solitude and the knowledge of the horrors lurking on either hand were shaking even his steely nerves.

“Keep on one fellow hat, blood-brother,” admonished N’Longa with a low gurgle of amusement. “That fellow sun, he knock you dead, suppose you no look out.”

Kane shifted the musket he had insisted on bringing and made no reply. They mounted an eminence at last and looked down on a sort of plateau. And in the center of this plateau was a silent city of gray and crumbling stone. Kane was smitten by a sense of incredible age as he looked. The walls and houses were of great stone blocks, yet they were falling into ruin. Grass grew on the plateau, and high in the streets of that dead city. Kane saw no movement among the ruins.

“That is their city — why do they choose to sleep in caves?”

“Maybe-so one fellow stone fall on them from roof and crush. Them stone huts, he fall down bimeby. Maybe-so they no like to stay together — maybe-so they eat each other, too.”

“Silence!” whispered Kane; “how it hangs over all!”

“Them vampires no talk nor yell; they dead. They sleep in caves, wander at sunset and at night. Maybe-so them black fellow bush tribes come with spears, them vampires go to stone kraal and fight behind walls.”

Kane nodded. The crumbling walls which surrounded that dead city were still high and solid enough to resist the attack of spearmen — especially when defended by these snout-nosed fiends.

“Blood-brother,” said N’Longa solemnly, “I have mighty magic thought! Be silent a little while.”

Kane seated himself on a boulder and gazed broodingly at the bare crags and slopes which surrounded them. Far away to the south he saw the leafy green ocean that was the jungle. Distance lent a certain enchantment to the scene. Closer at hand loomed the dark blotches that were the mouths of the caves of horror.

N’Longa was squatting, tracing some strange pattern in the clay with a dagger point. Kane watched him, thinking how easy they might fall victim to the vampires if even three or four of the fiends should come out of their caverns. And even as he thought it, a black and horrific shadow fell across the crouching fetish-man.