Collected short fiction, p.419
Collected Short Fiction, page 419
“We’re hybrids.”
Barbee caught his breath arid waited.
“It’s hard to understand,” Quain said, “when the two races were such, enemies. Mondrick believed that the daughters of the subject race were forced to take part in frightful ceremonies, of which the witch’s Sabbath is a memory. Perhaps the witch folk saw the danger of revolt and tried to dilute the blood and the strength of men. Anyhow, it happened.”
Against the far roll of thunder, his weary voice had become a terrible droning chant.
“Down out of the past, that black river of alien blood flows in the veins of men. A black and monstrous racial memory haunts our unconscious minds. It is a shadow that is thickening. The cunning of the witch folk is about to win the old war of the races, after all!”
Barbee sat up on the cold damp stone. He shivered and opened his mouth and said nothing.
“It’s stunning, at first,” Quain said. “But you can’t escape the evidence. Mondrick found it in every field of knowledge. Jupiter of the Greeks, carrying away the daughters of men. The witch finders of the Zulus. The inmates of our prisons and asylums. Blood groups and cephalic indices. Rhine’s ESP experiments. Freud’s exploration of the unconscious. Not to mention the exhibits we have here.”
He touched the green box.
“But,” muttered Barbee, “if the witch folk were exterminated—”
“WILL, you are familiar with the laws of Mendel,” Sam Quain said. “You know that recessive characters can be transmitted, undetected, from generation to generation—until at last the chance re-combination of the genes reproduces the ancestral type.
“A simple example is the inheritance of the recessive gene that makes deaf-mutes. Normal hybrid deaf-mutes can’t be distinguished from the completely normal people—unless two of them marry. But only one child in four will be completely normal. Two, on the average, will be normal hybrids. The unfortunate fourth will be a deaf-mute.
“In the same way, throwbacks to the witch-folk type appear continually in our hybrid breed. Many genes are involved, and the case is more complicated. Literally millions of variations are possible between the pure human and pure lycanthropus.
“Those who are perhaps one sixteenth witch folk display such powers as ESP. They are ‘psychic.’ Often moody and unhappy—because of-that unconscious racial conflict. They are your religious fanatics, your mediums, your split personalities, your pathological criminals. The exception may be a genius. You know your hybrids.
“Those born with a stronger inheritance are usually better aware of their powers—and more careful to hide them. In the Middle Ages they used to be hanged or burned. Nowadays they are far more clever and powerful. They must spend a lot of their time cultivating the modern scientific skepticism of everything supernatural—even that’s a propaganda word that really means superhuman.
“Some outstanding individuals are perhaps approximately quarter-breeds. They have increased perceptions, some bungling and half-unconscious use of those ancestral powers, some of the vigor of hybrids. The key to their lives is the conflict of two races. Evil, mingled with good, fighting good and cloaked with good—their twisted lives take strange directions.”
Barbee was gaining understanding. It made the chill of the storm-darkened cave more gripping. “The full-blood witches?”
“From the mathematics of heredity,” Sam Quain told him, “it is clear that even half-breeds will be born only once in millions of births—perhaps one to the generation. They will be too clever to be suspected. Especially in such a country as this, where the real instruments of power are newspaper chains and banks and holding companies and legislative lobbies.”
Ouain’s haggard face showed grim as lightning flashed again.
“Yet we know that there is at least one alive today who has a vast heritage of that evil power. A veiled satan, he moves among unsuspecting mankind, plotting to restore the black, dead dominion of his kind.”
“The Black Messiah!” Barbee shivered to the north wind’s chill. “But how can the witch folk come back to power,” he protested faintly, “when they are born only by chance?”
“Hundreds of years ago,” Quain told him grimly, “the throwbacks began to gather into a secret clan. By mating among themselves, they upset the random odds. Naturally, the witch folk knew of their own existence long before we became aware of it. Having the powers of their black breed, it’s easier for them to detect the hidden strain in others, detect it in humans that may not know it is in them. They are using the modern science of selective breeding to filter out their human blood and so give birth to the awaited powerful leader that Mondrick called the Black Messiah.”
Looking at the green box, Barbee gulped and croaked: “May I see . . . what’s inside?”
Sam Quain’s hand came down the box and he touched the gun.
“It’s proof of all I have told you,” he said. “An almost complete skeleton of Homo lycanthropus. Charred, cracked human bones from the same deposit. Some other things. A weapon that defeated the witch folk once—and will again!” His voice was strained and grim. “But I won’t show you now.”
“Who—” Barbee tried to swallow, and grated, “Who is the Black Messiah?”
“He might be you. By that,” Sam Quain said, “I mean he might be anybody. We do know something of the appearance of thoroughbred witch folk—pointed ears and rounded skulls and low-growing hair and strong, peculiar teeth. But physical and mental characters are not always linked, and even the Black Messiah may be no more than a half-breed.”
His voice was dull with brooding horror. —
“That’s why I came out here, Will. I can’t stand—people. Some of them are human. But I’ve no way of distinguishing the monsters. I was never quite sure that Nick or Rex wasn’t a spy of the enemy. It seems hideous to say, but I’ve wondered even about Nora—”
His sick voice trailed away.
BARBEE TRIED to stop his shivering. He wanted to ask how a witch could snare a normal man and how he could escape her spells. But he knew that Sam Quail would kill him if he asked all the questions in his mind.
“You’ll let me help you, Sam?” he asked huskily. “To find the Black Messiah and expose him?”
“That was Mondrick’s idea.” Sam Quain shook his unkempt head. “It might have worked—four hundred years ago. But now the witches in university laboratories can prove there are no witches. The witches who publish papers can make a fool of one who says there are. The witches in the government can put him out of the way.”
Barbee stared into the stormy dusk.
“Then—what can we do?”
It was a long time before Sam Quain moved in the damp, cold gloom that filled the cave, and said:
“I’ll tell you my plan.” His tired voice was low and grim. “I’m going to fight fire with fire. It’s the only way. Mondrick and Rex tried to tell thousands—and died. I am going to gather a small, secret group, one at a time. That doesn’t require that I identify the hybrids—but merely that I find a few who don’t belong to that secret cabal. Still, it will be a desperate fight, with all the odds against us. But it’s the only way.”
Water dripped in the silent cave. Barbee shivered to the damp, creeping chill. With a pitiless and terrible illumination, Sam Quain’s words seemed to dissolve all the old painful riddles of the world and his own life. In a faint, uneasy voice, he asked:
“Sam—do you think;—am I a hybrid?”
He caught his breath as Sam Quain nodded.
“Probably you are, Will. While the human blood predominates, a thousand to one, nearly every individual is slightly tainted—enough to cause some unconscious conflict with that buried racial memory. That is the curse of mankind.” He shuddered. “I’ve wondered, Will—even about myself.”
“Thanks, Sam!” Barbee gulped. “Now—can I help with your plan?” The hollowed, glittering eyes searched him again.
“All right, Will.” Quain nodded at last. “You have already helped. Now perhaps you can make a few contacts with the future members of our secret legion. They must be carefully picked. They must have money, or political power, or scientific skill. They can’t be weaklings. This job is tough enough to kill the best man alive. And—”
His feverish eyes flashed hard at Will.
“—they can’t be witches! Because one traitor would destroy us all. We have no test—Mondrick thought he had one when he picked Nick and Rex and me, but later it failed him. We’ll have to take a chance. The risk is ghastly. But there’s no other way.”
“Have you anybody in mind?” Barbee considered. “Such a man as Dr. Glenn? He’s a scientist—a grim materialist. He has a reputation and a good deal of money.”
But Sam Quain shook his head.
“Glenn’s just the type we can’t trust. The type who is always laughing at witchcraft. It may be because he is a witch himself. No, the first man on my list is your employer.”
“Preston Troy?” Barbee was a little astonished. “He does have millions and a lot of political drag. But he’s no saint. He’s in the city hall ring up to his neck. His wife has locked him out of her room for the last ten years, and lie’s keeping half the pretty women in Clarendon.”
“Including some certain one?”
Sam’s grim face showed a passing glint of amusement.
“That doesn’t matter,” he said soberly. “Mondrick used to say that most saints are about one eighth lycanthropus—their saintliness just an overcompensation for the taint of evil. Suppose you tackle Troy tonight?”
Barbee rose stiffly, stooping under the black roof, and took Sam’s hard, tense hand.
“Two of us,” he whispered, “against the Black Messiah!”
“But we’ll find others. We must!” Quain’s tired shoulders straightened. “Because hell itself—every legend of men degraded and tortured by demons—is only a memory of the witch folk’s reign.”
IX.
BARBEE LEFT Sam Quain crouched watchfully on his sleeping bag beside the green box in the damp, chill darkness of the cave—how weary and feeble a champion of mankind against that secret threat!
The dusk was almost gone by the time he reached his car. But he drove without lights, blindly groping his way through the cold, gray drizzle of rain until he was back on the highway. It was eight when he parked his car beside Troy’s mansion at Trojan Hills.
Barbee knew his way about the house, for he had been there often on political jobs. He let himself in through the side entrance and rapped on the door of Troy’s second-story den. Troy’s rasping voice asked who the devil he was. After a little delay, it said: “Come in.”
The den was a huge room, with a mahogany bar across one end, decorated with hunting trophies and long-limbed, luscious nudes in oil. An aura of stale cigar smoke and financial importance always hung in it, and Troy boasted that more history had been made here than in the governor’s mansion.
The first thing Barbee saw was a white fur jacket on the back of a chair. He knew it was April Bell’s. His hands tried to clench, and it was a moment before he could breathe.
“Well, Barbee?” In shirt sleeves, with a fresh cigar in his mouth, Troy stood beside a long desk littered with papers and ash trays and empty glasses. His massive blue-jowled face looked surprised. “I thought you were at Glennhaven.”
“I was, chief.” Barbee made himself look away from April’s coat and tried to smooth his voice. “Chief, I’ve got a story—a terrible, tremendous thing. Will you listen to me?”
“Wait.” Troy went behind the bar and mixed two Scotch-and-sodas and brought them back to the desk. “Shoot.”
In a hurried, nervous, earnest voice, Barbee began to tell what Sam Quain had told him. Troy’s cigar went out. His big-mouthed face was poker grim. Barbee couldn’t read anything in his shrewd, narrow eyes. At last he laced his fingers together in front of his paunch and rumbled:
“So you want me to join you against this Black Messiah?”
“That’s what we want.”
Troy chewed the dead cigar.
“Maybe you aren’t crazy, Barbee!” An excitement seemed to burn behind his hard, ruddy mask. “This thing might explain a lot. Why you like some people on sight. Why you hate others—because you sense that veiled evil in them.”
His big head moved decisively.
“I’ll go with you tonight and listen to Quain and see what he’s got in that box. If he’s as convincing as you are, I’m with you, Barbee—to my last cent and my last gasp. Just give me half an hour to get ready. I’ll tell Rhodora that I can’t go with her to the refugee children’s bazaar. Use the bath if you want to wash up.”
Barbee was appalled by what he saw in the bathroom mirror. He looked gaunt and tired and bearded and begrimed and torn as Sam Quain had been. And there was something else—something subtly unpleasant. He wondered if the glass were faintly discolored and slightly curved, so that it distorted his image. He was certain that he didn’t look quite like that.
It was a hunch that made him hurry back into the den and pick up the telephone on Troy’s desk. He was in time to hear the heavy voice giving instructions.
“Parker? I’ve just got a tip on the murderer. He’s hiding in a cave up Laurel Canyon. Better surround it right away. And don’t forget the Star’s publicity gag—we’re offering five hundred dollars for the first look in that green box.”
“O.K., chief,” the sheriff said.
CAREFULLY, Barbee replaced the receiver. The lush nudes on the walls danced fantastically, and a chill, gray mist thickened in the long room. He knew that he had betrayed Sam Quain—perhaps even to the Black Messiah.
For this was his fault. He had been afraid to tell Sam that April Bell was a witch, that Troy was intimate with her. It was too late now. Or was it? A new grim purpose steadied him.
He walked swiftly out of the den and hurried silently down the back stairs. He got out of the house and reached his car. With his heart thudding painfully, he started it as silently as he could and drove to the highway before he snapped on the lights. He turned south and inched up the speed.
Perhaps he could reach the cave in time to warn Sam. It might be that they could carry the green box back to the car, and escape the sheriff’s net together. Now that Troy knew Sam’s plan, they must go far from Clarendon. Because Troy might be the Black Messiah.
The lightning had ceased with the fall of night, but the north wind blew steadily, laden with fine, cold rain. The windshield wipers slowed as he stepped on the gas, and it was difficult to see the wet road. He remembered that one back tire had a boot in it, and held his speed to fifty. Even a blowout could mean Sam Quain’s final defeat.
He was slowing for the intersection with the mountain highway when suddenly he knew that he was being followed. He braked to an abrupt halt and peered behind him. Twin points of feral green winked at him out of the wet dark.
He knew he was awake. Perhaps, after all, he was insane. But those were the eyes of the white werewolf of his nightmares. April Bell was following him to kill Sam Quain. Now he couldn’t go back with his warning. The Black Messiah had won.
Barbee felt ill again with a beaten despair. It was no more than a blind and helpless panic that spurred him to start the car again. He swung east, off the river road, instead of west. He lurched over the bridge at sixty and turned back toward Clarendon on the valley highway beyond the river.
The headlamps made a white blur in the rain. He saw a strange procession marching through it. Mondrick’s blind wife, tall and proud and silent in her grief. Old Ben Chittum, fumbling with gnarled, quivering hands to light his pipe, dead inside. Mama Spivak, clinging to the little tailor, thinly wailing. Nora, with her blond hair disheveled and her round, freckled face swollen with tears, leading little Pat, who was trying stubbornly not to weep.
He pushed the needle up to seventy. The vacuum-driven wipers almost stopped. Rain blurred the windshield. The roaring car lurched and swayed on the wet pavement, flung wings of water out of puddles. A farm truck with no light burst suddenly out of the mist. He whipped around it on shrieking tires.
But the white wolf shape, he knew, still followed him.
And the nightmares haunted him. Once again he was the huge gray wolf, cracking the vertebrae of Pat’s little Jiminy Cricket in his jaws, and stealing into Sam Quain’s house. He was the saber-tooth, leaping tirelessly up Sardis Hill with the naked witch astride him, slashing Rex Chittum’s throat. He was the great snake, squeezing out Nick Spivak’s life.
He watched the mist-blurred mirror, looking for the green eyes of April Bell. For a terrible queer eagerness was growing, beside his dread. In the corner of the mirror was a little sticker cut in the outline of a pterosaur—it was the emblem of an oil company, marked with the mileage when the car had been greased. The image of that winged reptile began to haunt Barbee.
He felt a swelling mad desire to stop the car and change himself into some giant flying saurian and soar away into freedom from all this unendurable confusion of maddening troubles—with April Bell.
That urge was insanity, and he fought it grimly.
Like a wild thing shut in a treadmill cage, his fevered mind ran on endlessly and reached no goal. Plad April snared him with black magic—or merely with a normal woman’s lure? Was he maniac or murderer or neither? Could Sam Quain have really been the killer, all his story of the witch folk a fantastic invention? Or was it truth and Troy the Black Messiah?
He tramped harder on the gas.
It was just as Sam had warned him. Knowledge of the witch folk was horror and madness. Now he could never rest. He could find no safety. Any witch would kill him just because he knew. Any person might be a witch. He had betrayed his knowledge to the Black Messiah. The witch folk would hunt him until he was dead.
He had slowed to fifty for the long curve east of Clarendon when the tire blew out. A blur of crashing disaster and the car spun in the air, tortured metal screaming hideously in mockery of human pain. In one dreadful second it was over; the wreckage stopped on its side in a pool of mud and shattered, glass in the ditch.
