VI
That same June evening, without having heard a word from
the sea, Malone was desperately busy among the alleys of Red Hook. A sudden
stir seemed to permeate the place, and as if apprised by 'grapevine telegraph'
of something singular, the denizens clustered expectantly around the dance-hall
church and the houses in Parker Place. Three children had just disappeared
- blue-eyed Norwegians from the streets toward Gowanus - and there were
rumours of a mob forming among the sturdy Vikings of that section. Malone
had for weeks been urging his colleagues to attempt a general cleanup;
and at last, moved by conditions more obvious to their common sense than
the conjectures of a Dublin dreamer, they had agreed upon a final stroke.
The unrest and menace of this evening had been the deciding factor, and
just about midnight a raiding party recruited from three stations descended
upon Parker Place and its environs. Doors were battered in, stragglers
arrested, and candlelighted rooms forced to disgorge unbelievable throngs
of mixed foreigners in figured robes, mitres, and other inexplicable devices.
Much was lost in the melee, for objects were thrown hastily down unexpected
shafts, and betraying odours deadened by the sudden kindling of pungent
incense. But spattered blood was everywhere, and Malone shuddered whenever
he saw a brazier or altar from which the smoke was still rising.
He wanted to be in several places at once, and decided
on Suydam's basement flat only after a messenger had reported the complete
emptiness of the dilapidated dance-hall church. The flat, he thought, must
hold some due to a cult of which the occult scholar had so obviously become
the centre and leader; and it was with real expectancy that he ransacked
the musty rooms, noted their vaguely charnel odour, and examined the curious
books, instruments, gold ingots, and glass-stoppered bottles scattered
carelessly here and there. Once a lean, black-and-white cat edged between
his feet and tripped him, overturning at the same time a beaker half full
of a red liquid. The shock was severe, and to this day Malone is not certain
of what he saw; but in dreams he still pictures that cat as it scuttled
away with certain monstrous alterations and peculiarities. Then came the
locked cellar door, and the search for something to break it down. A heavy
stool stood near, and its tough seat was more than enough for the antique
panels. A crack formed and enlarged, and the whole door gave way - but
from the
other side; whence poured a howling tumult of ice-cold
wind with all the stenches of the bottomless pit, and whence reached a
sucking force not of earth or heaven, which, coiling sentiently about the
paralysed detective, dragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured
spaces filled with whispers and wails, and gusts of mocking laughter.
Of course it was a dream. All the specialists have told
him so, and he has nothing to prove the contrary. Indeed, he would rather
have it thus; for then the sight of old brick slums and dark foreign faces
would not eat so deeply into his soul. But at the time it was all horribly
real, and nothing can ever efface the memory of those nighted crypts, those
titan arcades, and those half-formed shapes of hell that strode gigantically
in silence holding half-eaten things whose still surviving portions screamed
for mercy or laughed with madness. Odours of incense and corruption joined
in sickening concert, and the black air was alive with the cloudy, semi-visible
bulk of shapeless elemental things with eyes. Somewhere dark sticky water
was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of raucous little
bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked phosphorescent thing
which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly
on a carved golden pedestal in the background.
Avenues of limitless night seemed to radiate in every
direction, till one might fancy that here lay the root of a contagion destined
to sicken and swallow cities, and engulf nations in the foetor of hybrid
pestilence. Here cosmic sin had entered, and festered by unhallowed rites
had commenced the grinning march of death that was to rot us all to fungous
abnormalities too hideous for the grave's holding. Satan here held his
Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless childhood the leprous limbs
of phosphorescent Lilith were laved. Incubi and succubae howled praise
to Hecate, and headless moon-calves bleated to the Magna Mater. Goats leaped
to the sound of thin accursed flutes, and Ægypans chased endlessly
after misshapen fauns over rocks twisted like swollen toads. Moloch and
Ashtaroth were not absent; for in this quintessence of all damnation the
bounds of consciousness were let down, and man's fancy lay open to vistas
of every realm of horror and every forbidden dimension that evil had power
to mould. The world and Nature were helpless against such assaults from
unsealed wells of night, nor could any sign or prayer check the Walpurgis-riot
of horror which had come when a sage with the hateful key had stumbled
on a horde with the locked and brimming coffer of transmitted daemon-lore.
Suddenly a ray of physical light shot through these phantasms,
and Malone heard the sound of oars amidst the blasphemies of things that
should be dead. A boat with a lantern in its prow darted into sight, made
fast to an iron ring in the slimy stone pier, and vomited forth several
dark men bearing a long burden swathed in bedding. They took it to the
naked phosphorescent thing on the carved golden pedestal, and the thing
tittered and pawed at the bedding. Then they unswathed it, and propped
upright before the pedestal the gangrenous corpse of a corpulent old man
with stubbly beard and unkempt white hair. The phosphorescent thing tittered
again, and the men produced bottles from their pockets and anointed its
feet with red, whilst they afterward gave the bottles to the thing to drink
from.
All at once, from an arcaded avenue leading endlessly
away, there came the daemoniac rattle and wheeze of a blasphemous organ,
choking and rumbling out the mockeries of hell in a cracked, sardonic bass.
In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at once
into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away in quest
of the sound - goat, satyr, and Ægypan, incubus, succubus and lemur,
twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and silent strutter
in darkness - all led by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that
had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently
bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man. The
strange dark men danced in the rear, and the whole column skipped and leaped
with Dionysiac fury. Malone staggered after them a few steps, delirious
and hazy, and doubtful of his place in this or in any world. Then he turned,
faltered, and sank down on the cold damp stone, gasping and shivering as
the daemon organ croaked on, and the howling and drumming and tinkling
of the mad procession grew fainter and fainter.
Vaguely he was conscious of chanted horrors and shocking
croakings afar off. Now and then a wail or whine of ceremonial devotion
would float to him through the black arcade, whilst eventually there rose
the dreadful Greek incantation whose text he had read above the pulpit
of that dance-hall church.
'O friend and companion of night, thou who
rejoicest in the baying of dogs (here a hideous howl bust forth) and
spilt blood (here nameless sounds vied with morbid shriekings) who
wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, (here a whistling
sigh occurred)
who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals,
(short, sharp cries from myriad throats) Gorgo, (repeated as response)
Mormo,
(repeated with ecstasy) thousand-faced moon, (sighs and flute notes)
look
favourably on our sacrifices!'
As the chant closed, a general shout went up, and hissing
sounds nearly drowned the croaking of the cracked bass organ. Then a gasp
as from many throats, and a babel of barked and bleated words - 'Lilith,
Great Lilith, behold the Bridegroom!' More cries, a clamour of rioting,
and the sharp, clicking footfalls of a running figure. The footfalls approached,
and Malone raised himself to his elbow to look.
The luminosity of the crypt, lately diminished, had now
slightly increased; and in that devil-light there appeared the fleeing
form of that which should not flee or feel or breathe - the glassy-eyed,
gangrenous corpse of the corpulent old man, now needing no support, but
animated by some infernal sorcery of the rite just closed. After it raced
the naked, tittering, phosphorescent thing that belonged on the carven
pedestal, and still farther behind panted the dark men, and all the dread
crew of sentient loathsomenesses. The corpse was gaining on its pursuers,
and seemed bent on a definite object, straining with every rotting muscle
toward the carved golden pedestal, whose necromantic importance was evidently
so great. Another moment and it had reached its goal, whilst the trailing
throng laboured on with more frantic speed. But they were too late, for
in one final spurt of strength which ripped tendon from tendon and sent
its noisome bulk floundering to the floor in a state of jellyish dissolution,
the staring corpse which had been Robert Suydam achieved its object and
its triumph. The push had been tremendous, but the force had held out;
and as the pusher collapsed to a muddy blotch of corruption the pedestal
he had pushed tottered, tipped, and finally careened from its onyx base
into the thick waters below, sending up a parting gleam of carven gold
as it sank heavily to undreamable gulfs of lower Tartarus. In that instant,
too, the whole scene of horror faded to nothingness before Malone's eyes;
and he fainted amidst a thunderous crash which seemed to blot out all the
evil universe.
