The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (79 page)

“I’ll try to tell you what I glimpsed; then we’ll never speak of it again. It was gigantic and black and shadowy; it was a hulking monstrosity that walked upright like a man, but it was like a toad, too, and it was winged and tentacled. I saw only its back; if I’d seen the front of it–its face–I’d have undoubtedly lost my mind. The old Arab was right; God help us, it was the monster that Xuthltan called up out of the dark blind caverns of the earth to guard the Fire of Asshurbanipal!”

Fragment

And so his boyhood wandered into youth,

And still the hazes thickened round his head,

And red, lascivious nightmares shared his bed

And fantasies with greedy claw and tooth

Burrowed into the secret parts of him–

Gigantic, bestial and misshapen paws

Gloatingly fumbled each white youthful limb,

And shadows lurked with scarlet gaping jaws.

Deeper and deeper in a twisting maze

Of monstrous shadows, shot with red and black,

Or gray as dull decay and rainy days,

He stumbled onward. Ever at his back

He heard the lecherous laughter of the ghouls.

Under the fungoid trees lay stagnant pools

Wherein he sometimes plunged up to his waist

And shrieked and scrambled out with loathing haste,

Feeling unnumbered slimy fingers press

His shrinking flesh with evil, dank caress.

Life was a cesspool of obscenity–

He saw through eyes accursed with unveiled sight–

Where Lust ran rampant through a screaming Night

And black-faced swine roared from the Devil’s styes;

Where grinning corpses, fiend-inhabited,

Walked through the world with taloned hands outspread;

Where beast and monster swaggered side by side,

And unseen demons strummed a maddening tune;

And naked witches, young and brazen-eyed,

Flaunted their buttocks to a lustful moon.

Rank, shambling devils chased him night on night,

And caught and bore him to a flaming hall,

Where lambent in the flaring crimson light

A thousand long-tongued faces lined the wall.

And there they flung him, naked and a-sprawl

Before a great dark woman’s ebon throne.

How dark, inhuman, strange, her deep eyes shone!

Which Will Scarcely Be Understood

Small poets sing of little, foolish things,

As more befitting to a shallow brain

That dreams not of pre-Atlantean kings,

Nor launches on that dark uncharted Main

That holds grim islands and unholy tides,

Where many a black mysterious secret hides.

True rime concerns her not with bursting buds,

The chirping bird, the lifting of the rose—

Save ebon blooms that swell in ghastly woods,

And that grim, voiceless bird that ever broods

Where through black boughs a wind of horror blows.

Oh, little singers, what know you of those

Ungodly, slimy shapes that glide and crawl

Out of unreckoned gulfs when midnights fall,

To haunt a poet’s slumbering, and close

Against his eyes thrust up their hissing head,

And mock him with their eyes so serpent-red?

Conceived and bred in blackened pits of hell,

The poems come that set the stars on fire;

Born of black maggots writhing in a shell

Men call a poet’s skull—an iron bell

Filled up with burning mist and golden mire.

The royal purple is a moldy shroud;

The laurel crown is cypress fixed with thorns;

The sword of fame, a sickle notched and dull;

The face of beauty is a grinning skull;

And ever in
their
souls’ red caverns loud

The rattle of cloven hoofs and horns.

The poets know that justice is a lie,

That good and light are baubles filled with dust—

This world’s slave-market where swine sell and buy,

This shambles where the howling cattle die,

Has blinded not their eyes with lies and lust.

Miscellanea

Golnor the Ape

There are those of you who will not understand how I, the village fool, the imbecile, the beastman, might set down the strange happenings which took place in the sea-coast village where I wandered aforetime, warring with the fen wolves for refuse. But the tale of how I, Golnor the Ape, became a man, has its place in the tale, which is an eery tale and a curious one.

How I came by my strange name, which has no meaning in any language of the world, is easy to say, for it was myself that gave it to me, for the words of men; though the tavern keeper on whose doorstep I was left one summer night called me by some other name which I have forgotten.

My first memory is of sprawling among wine-barrels, on the dirty flag floor and–but I started not to pen the tale of the life of Golnor the Ape. Let my younger years fade back into the strange haze from which they came, with their strange dreams and visions, their monstrous, mystic shapes, and the rest: the scrubbing of floors and tankards, the beatings, the petty persecutions–let them fade as the name the tavern keeper gave me has faded.

I do not know how old I was when Helene de Say came to the village of Fenblane. When first I saw her, I was wading in the marsh upon the moor, searching for mussels, and I looked up as she rode by on a great white horse. Now, a white horse was a wonderful being to me and I stood gaping after them, but giving little heed to the girl. I was dimly aware that she shrank from me as she passed, and her face showed loathing, but all humans were the same with Golnor the Ape.

I was a large man, not tall, but the sweep of my sloping shoulders was wide, and mighty was my chest. I bent forward as I walked, lurching on bow legs, my long arms swinging. They were twisted and massive, those arms, with lean, corded muscles, powerful, unbeautiful. As I never had shoes, my feet were large, shapeless and remarkably tough. But mayhap my most primitive feature was my hair. Long, wild and coarse, of a rough dun color, it tumbled over my low, slanting forehead; and through it, from beneath beetling, overhanging brows, my small eyes glittered eerily. Those eyes saw many things unknown to the human race, for in my youth I lived in two worlds. There were the lecas, for instance. I conversed with them constantly and it was they who told me all the strange secrets of the Dim World. And there were others, gerbas and monsters, who sometimes drove me shrieking across the moor, and would have dragged me back to that world entirely if they had had power.

I could not describe any of those beings to you, for there are no words in your language that would fit anything about them. I could speak their language much better than I could that of the villagers of Fenblane, and even now the speech comes strange to me so that my talking sounds not like the talking of other men.

Sometimes I would wander in the village, to do such work as I had the intelligence to do, and receive in turn food which the villagers did not want. More often I roamed about the fen, hunting clams and mussels, and contending with the wolves for their kill. Often I would climb the lonely cliffs that looked out across the sea, and sit there for hours, thinking strange, grotesque thoughts–thoughts which now, being a man, I can scarcely remember. If I could find people who would tolerate me for awhile, I would strive to tell them of my thoughts and of the lecas who flitted about me, and of the beings who danced incessantly on the waves. But the result was always a gibberish so strange that the people would either laugh at me or beat me.

Then sometimes, when the sea was flailing the cliffs, and the wind was yelling among the crags and lashing my wild hair about my eyes, I would thrill with a strange, furious elation, become wildly excited, and standing upright, leaning to the might of the wind, I would brandish my arms and mock the gale, and try to tell the lecas all that surged in my soul. But there again I was handicapped, for the lecas knew no more of my human world than the villagers of Fenblane knew of theirs. I was a strange half-being pausing on the threshold of two worlds.

There was once, when, in a gust of futile passion, and without knowing why, I leaped from the cliff and hurtled down, down, down, until I crashed among the white-crested waves and plunged down through them for fathoms, until I floated up again and by some strange miracle was flung ashore, bruised and battered but unharmed.

I liked the cliffs with their singing wind-noises, and the bellowing ocean, but in the village and on the fen I sought food. When a child, people in the village kicked and beat me so that I liked not to go there, though the persecution ceased when I grew older and stronger. Just outside the village, however, overlooking it, loomed the ancient castle of the de Says, and there I liked to go, for the building was one of curiosity and admiration to me, though usually old Dame de Say sent her servants to beat me away.

However, on icy nights I have slept in the stables, unknown to the old shrew, among the horses who minded not my company. Beasts never feared me, nor I them, feeling perhaps a greater kinship toward them than toward humans.

Helene was niece to the old Dame, whom she resembled not at all. It was outside the castle I saw the girl again. I had come there to catch another look at the great white horse, which I thought marvelous, having never seen one like him, and the servants sallied forth to drub me with cudgels.

They had not struck one blow when there sounded a quick, light step behind us, and Helene stepped between. Her eyes, fine, grey eyes, were flashing, and I mazily realized that she was beautiful.

“What!” she exclaimed, as the servants cringed back before her. “Would you beat this creature? Have you no shame?”

“Your aunt commanded us to thrash him,” said one of the servants.

“I care not. You will obey me.” Then as they hastened to get away she turned to me. “What is your name?”

“Golnor, mistress; aye, I am Golnor. I can scrub tankards and clean stables and chop wood and row boats.”

“Never mind.” She smiled and her teeth were like pearls. “Come to the kitchen and I will give you food.”

I was her slave from that moment. Not that I followed her about to do her bidding. The old Dame would never have tolerated that, nor do I think that Helene, for all her kindness, would have cared to have been followed by a filthy imbecile in scanty and ragged garments.

There was rain on the day that the Baron rode down to the village of Fenblane. Squatting among the fenrushes and talking with the lecas, I did not see him, nor hear his horse splashing through the mud until he loomed above me, and slashed me with his riding whip as I scrambled out of the way.

A great, dark man was he, with gleaming eyes and thin, cruel lips. A rapier swung at his hip, and he was clothed finely, but about him hovered the lurid yellow haze that marks a wicked soul, and which only a creature of the shadow world may see.

Where would he be riding but to Castle de Say to see the girl of whom he had heard? Later I saw him riding back through the rain, a smile on his lips. I watched him, eyes aglitter, until he was only a moving smudge in the curtain of rain, at last vanishing entirely. Usually I forgot anything or anyone the instant I was out of sight. The world, the universe, was represented by the village of Fenblane and a great circle which included moor, cliffs and sea. When one rode out of Fenblane, he or she rode out of the world.

But I remembered the Baron and the wicked smile on his lips, until I saw him again.

There was sun and a clear windy sky when I next saw Helene. She and her aunt had ridden out on the moor and they dismounted beside a lake, sat upon the bank and let the horses graze. Unnoticed, I stole up close and listened to what they said.

“But I will not!” said Helene. “I do not love the man–”

“You shall learn,” said the old Dame. “And this talk of love is foolishness. The Baron is a strong man and has gold and lands.”

“But Francois–”

“Bah. A penniless student. I shall not allow you to make a fool of yourself.”

“But–”

“Enough, I tell you. If the Baron wishes your hand, he shall have you.”

“But perhaps he will not wish me.”

“Then you shall find ways of encouraging him. What? Bah. Have your silly notions of honor ever put gold in your purse or garments on your back? You will do as I say.”

Presently they mounted their horses and rode away and I sat me down to muse over what had been said and to study meaning from their words. I thought and thought until my head was dizzy, but could make nothing of it, so gave it up and went searching for clams.

Later I climbed the cliffs as the moon rose over the sea, making a path of silver light across the waves. I again turned my mind toward the conversation. Words and phrases flitted through my mind, and putting them together to piece out complete thoughts was like a puzzle.

Finally I gave it up entirely, and one day, wandering among the cliffs, decided to visit the Witch of Wolf

’s Cavern. She was among the few humans who would tolerate me for a short while, for I always gave her the village gossip, garbled and labored to be sure, but from the gibberish she could usually piece together information to use to her own advantage. I was in awe of her somewhat, but had I had intelligence I would have despised her, for, far from having enough knowledge of the occult to understand my vague talk of lecas and gerbas and the like, she clothed those beings with the likenesses of the demons and familiars of her own tawdry and filthy witchcraft. She considered me devil-ridden, haunted by her own worldly spirits, whereas I was simply an imbecile, an inhabitant of two worlds.

Her cave overlooked the lake-ridden fen, and she usually sat, cross-legged, staring into the fire which burned incessantly. Beatrice–strange name for a witch; but she had once been beautiful.

Spectres in the Dark

The following item appeared in a Los Angeles paper, one morning in late summer:

“A murder of the most appalling and surprizing kind occurred at 333–Street late yesterday evening. The victim was Hildred Falrath, 77, a retired professor of psychology, formerly connected with the University of California. The slayer was a pupil of his, Clement Van Dorn, 33, who has, for the last few months, been in the habit of coming to Falrath’s apartment at 333––Street for private instruction. The affair was particularly heinous, the aged victim having been stabbed through the arm and the breast with a dagger, while his features were terribly battered. Van Dorn, who appears to be in a dazed condition, admits the slaying but claims that the professor attacked him and that he acted only in self defense. This plea is regarded as the height of assumption, in view of the fact that Falrath has for many years been confined to a wheel chair. Van Dorn gave bail and is under surveilance.”