“Well, let me handle it,” said Joe Regetti. “I’ll show you the ropes.”
“Thanks,” I retorted. “You already have.” And I pointed to the ones that bound my hands and feet.
“Sense of humor, eh? O.K. Hope your friends come across with the dough after they get this letter I wrote, or maybe the rest isn’t going to be so funny.”
“What next?” I said, desperately hoping that something would turn up to give me an opening of some sort.
“You’ll see soon enough,” advised the man. “First, I’m going to sit with you down here for the rest of the night.”
The Pole’s face paled.
“No, boss,” he begged. “You no stay down here.”
“Why not?” rasped Regetti, harshly. “What’s the matter with you, Polack—turning yellow on me, eh?”
“I’m not,” whined the man. “But you know what happened here before, boss—how they find Tony Fellippo’s leg lyin’ on floor with no body left.”
“Lay off the bedtime stories,” Regetti chuckled. “You yokels make me sick with that stuff.”
“But dot’s true, boss. They never was for to find any more of old Tony Fellippo—just his leg on cellar floor. Dot why his mob go ’way so quick. They no want for to die, too.”
“What do you mean, die?” snarled Regetti, testily.
The Pole’s face paled, and his voice sank to a hushed whisper that blended with the cellar’s darkness; a shadow voice in a shadow world.
“Dot what everyone say, boss. Dot house is witched—like haunted one, maybe. Nobody put Tony Fellippo on spot—dot feller, he too dam’ smart guy. But he sit all alone here one night, and somet’ing come up from earth and swallow him, all but leg.”
“Will you shut up?” Regetti cut in. “That’s a lot of hooey. Some wise guy put the heat on Fellippo and got rid of the body. Only his leg was left to scare off the rest of his mob. Are you trying to tell me a ghost killed him, sap?”
“Yah, sure,” insisted the Pole. “No man kill Tony. Not like you say, anyhow. Find leg, all right, but all over is lot blood on floor, and little pieces skin. No feller kill man like dot—only spirit. Vampire, maybe.”
“Nuts!” Regetti was scornfully biting his cigar.
“Maybe so. But look—here is blood.” And the Pole pointed a stubby finger at the floor and cellar wall to the left. Regetti followed it with his gaze.
There was blood, all right—great, rusty blobs of blood, spattered all over the floor and wall like the pigments on the palette of a mad painter.
“No man kill odder feller like dot,” the Pole muttered. “Not even ax make such mess. And you know what fellers they say about Fellippo’s leg—was all full of tooth-marks.”
“Right,” mused the other, thoughtfully. “And the rest of his gang did get out of here pretty fast after it happened. Didn’t try to hide the body, or do anything about it.” He frowned. “But that doesn’t prove any baloney about ghosts, or vampires. You been reading too many bum magazines lately, Polack.”
He laughed.
“What about iron door?” grumbled the Pole accusingly, his red face flushing. “What about iron door back of coal in coal-pile, huh? You know what fellers down by Black Jim’s place say about house with iron door in cellar.”
“Yeah.” Regetti’s face clouded.
“You no look by iron door yet, boss,” the man continued. “Maybe you find somet’ing behind door yet, like fellers say—dot where t’ing dot got Fellippo came from; dot where it hide. Police they not find door either, when they come. Just find leg, and blood, and shut up house. But fellers know. They tell me plenty about house with iron door in cellar; say it bad place from old days when witch-fellers live here. It lead to hill back of house; cemetery, maybe. Perhaps dot’s why nobody live here so long—afraid of what hides on other side of door; what come out and kill Tony Fellippo. I know about house with iron door in cellar, all right.”
I knew about the house, too. So that’s where I was at! In the old Chambers house on Pringle Street! Many a story I’ve heard from the old folks when I was a boy about the old man, Ezekiel Chambers, whose wizard tricks bequeathed him such an unsavory reputation in Colonial days. I knew about Jonathan Dark, the other owner, who had been tried for smuggling just before the terrible days of 1818, and the abhorrent practice of grave-robbing he had been said to pursue in the ancient cemetery directly behind the house, on the hill.
Many peculiar rumors were circulated about the moldering house with the iron door in the cellar at this time—about the door, particularly, which Dark was said to use as a passageway for bringing his stolen cadavers back to dispose of. It was even claimed that the door had never been opened when Dark was tried, because of his astounding and hideous claim that the key which locked it was on the other side. Dark had died during the trial, while in prison, babbling blasphemies that no man dared believe; monstrous hints of what lay beneath the old graveyard on the hill; of tunnels and burrows and secret vaults used in witch-days for unhallowed rites. He spoke of tenants in these vaults, too, and of what sometimes would come to visit the house from below when a wizard invoked it with the proper spells and sacrifice. There was more, too—but then, Dark was quite mad. At least, everyone thought it better to believe so.
Old tales die. The house had stood deserted for many years, until most men forgot the reason for which it had been forsaken, ascribing its vacancy only to age. The public today were utterly unaware of the legends. Only the old ones remembered—the old ones who whispered their stories to me when I was a boy.
So this was the Dark house to which I had been brought! And this was the very cellar of the tales in question! I gathered from the remarks between Regetti and the superstitious Pole that another gang had recently used it for a hideaway until the death of their leader; indeed, I even vaguely remembered some newspaper reports of Tony Fellippo’s murder.
And now Regetti had come from New York to use it as a base.
Clever scheme of his, evidently—coming to an old New England town and kidnapping the local gentry to hold for ransom; then hiding them away in some old, deserted house so conveniently protected by superstition. I supposed that there would be more victims after me, too; the man was smart and cunning enough to get away with it.
These thoughts flashed through my mind during the argument between the Pole and his leader. But their altercation came to an abrupt halt.
“I wish you get out of here,” the Pole was saying. “If you stay only one night dot t’ing he come. Dot’s all Tony Fellippo stay.”
“Shut up, you fool. Didn’t we stay here last night, too, before the job? And nothing happened.”
“Yeah, sure. I know. But we stay upstairs, not by cellar. Why not keep feller upstairs?”
“Because we can’t afford to risk being seen,” Regetti snapped, wearily. “Now, cut the chatter.”
He turned to me.
“Listen, you. I’m sending this guy out with a ransom letter right now, to your friends back at the party. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and sit tight. But any funny business means you’re through, see?”
I kept silent.
“Take him in there, Polack, and tie him up.” Regetti indicated a fruit-cellar adjacent to the stairs.
The Pole, still grumbling, dragged me across the floor and into the room. He lit a candle, casting strange shadows over the cobwebbed, dust-drowned shelving on the walls. Jars of preserves still stood untouched, storing, perhaps, the crop of a hundred years ago. Broken jars were still strewn about on the tottering table. As I glanced about, the Pole tossed me into a chair beside the rickety board, and proceeded to lash me to it firmly with a stout rope. I was not gagged or blindfolded again, though the choking atmosphere about me served as a good substitute for both.
He left me, closing the door. I was alone in the candle-lit quiet.
I strained my ears, and was rewarded by hearing Regetti dismiss his henchman for the night, evidently to deliver the ransom note to the proper
authorities. He, Regetti, would stay behind on guard.
“Don’t run into any ghosts on your way,” he called after his companion, as the big Pole lumbered up the stairs.
A slamming outer door was his only response. From the ensuing quiet I judged Regetti had gone back to his solitaire.
Meanwhile, I looked about for some means of escape. I found it at last, on the table beside me. The broken jars—glass edges to cut my bonds!
Purposefully I edged my chair closer to the table end. If I could get a piece of that glass in my hands . . .
As I moved, I strained my ears once more to make sure that any noise made by the chair would be inaudible to Regetti, waiting outside. There was no sound from the chair as I reached the table, and I sighed with relief as I maneuvered my pinioned hands until they grasped a piece of glass firmly. Then I began to rub it against the edge of the rope which bound them.
It was slow work. Minutes ticked away into hours, and still no sound from outside, save a muffled series of snores. Regetti had fallen asleep over his cards. Good! Now, if I could get my wrists free and work on my feet, I would be able to make it.
My right hand was loose at last, though my wrist was damp with mingled sweat and blood. Cutting away from behind was not a precise, calculated sort of job. Quickly, I finished the work on my left, then rubbed my swollen fingers and bent over to saw at the ropes on my legs.
Then I heard the sound.
It was the grating of rusty hinges. Anyone who has lived in archaic houses all his life learns to recognize the peculiar, eerie clang. Rusty hinges grating from the cellar beyond . . . from an iron door? A scuffling sound among the coal . . . the iron door is concealed by the coal-pile. Fellippo only stayed down here one night. All they found was his leg.
Jonathan Dark, babbling on his deathbed. The door locked from the other side. Tunnels to the graveyard. What lurks in graveyards, ancient and unseen, then creeps from crypts to feast?
A scream rose in my throat, but I choked it back. Regetti still snored. Whatever was going on in the outer room, I must not wake him and lose my only chance of escape. Instead, I had best hasten and free my legs. I worked feverishly, but my ears were alert for developments.
They came. The noise in the coal-pile abruptly ceased, and I went limp with relief. Perhaps rats were at work.
A moment later I would have given anything to have heard the coal rattling again, if only to drown out the new noise.
There was something creeping across the cellar floor; something crawling, as if on hands and knees; something with long nails or claws that rasped and scraped. There was something croaking and chuckling as it moved through the cellar dark; something that wheezed with bestial, sickening laughter, like the death-rattle in the throat of a plague-stricken corpse.
Oh, how slyly it crept—how slowly, cautiously, and sinisterly! I could hear it slinking in the shadows, and my fingers raced at their work, even while my brain grew numb.
Traffic between tombs and a wizard’s house—traffic with things the old wives say can never die.
Regetti snored on.
What bides below, in caverns, that can be invoked by the proper spell—or the sight of prey?
Creep.
And then . . .
Regetti awoke. I heard him scream, once. He didn’t even have time to get up or draw his gun. There was a demoniac scurrying across the floor, as if made by a giant rat. Then the faint sound of shredding flesh, and over all, a sudden ghoulish baying that conjured up worlds of nightmare horror in my shattered brain.
Above the howling came a series of low, almost animal moans, and agonized phrases in Italian, cries for mercy, prayers, curses.
Claws make no sound as they sink into flesh, and yellow fangs are silent till they grate on bone . . .
My left leg was free, then my right. Now I slashed the rope around my waist. Suppose it came in here?
They baying ceased, but the silence was haggard with horror.
There are some banquets without toasts . . .
And now, once again, moans. My spine shivered. All around me the shadows grinned, for outside was revelry as in the olden days. Revelry, and a thing that moaned, and moaned, and moaned.
Then I was loose. As the moaning died away in the darkness, I cut the final strands of rope that bound me to my chair . . .
I did not leave at once, for there were still sounds in the other room which I did not like; sounds which caused my soul to shrivel, and my sanity to succumb before a nameless dread.
I heard that pawing and padding rustle along the floor, and after the shrieking had ceased, a worse noise took its place—a burbling noise—as if someone or something was sucking marrow from a bone. And the terrible, clicking sound; the feeding sound of gigantic teeth . . .
Yes, I waited; waited until the crunching had mercifully ceased, and then waited on until the rustling slithered back into the cellar, and disappeared. When I heard the brazen clang of a rusty door grate in the distance, I felt safe.
It was then that I left at last; passing through the now-deserted cellar, up the stairs, and out unguarded doors into the silver security of a moonlit night. It was very good to see the street-lights again, and hear the trolleys rumble from afar. My taxi took me to the precinct station, and after I had told my story the police did the rest.
I told my story, but I did not mention the iron door against the hillside. That I saved for the ears of the Government men. Now they can do what they like about it, since I am far away. But I did not want anybody prying around too closely to that door while I remained in the city, because even now I cannot—dare not—say what might lurk behind it. The hillside leads to the graveyard, and the graveyard to places far beneath. And in olden days there was a curious traffic betwixt tomb and tunnel and a wizard’s house; traffic not confined to men alone . . .
I’m pretty positive about all this, too. Not alone from the disappearance of the Fellippo gang, or the wildly whispered tales of the foreign men; not alone from these, but from a much more concrete and ghastly proof.
It is a proof I don’t care to speak about even today—a proof that the police know, but which is fortunately deleted from newspaper accounts of the tragedy.
What men will find behind that iron door I will not venture to say, but I think I know why only Fellippo’s leg was found before. I did not look at the iron door before I left the house, but I did see something else in the cellar as I passed through to the stairs. That is why I ran frantically up the steps; that is why I went to the Government, and that is why I never want to go back to witch-haunted, age-accursed Arkham. I found proof.
Because when I went out, I saw Joe Regetti sitting in his chair by the table in the cellar. The lamp was on, and I am quite sure I saw no footprints. I’m glad of that. But I did see Joe Regetti sitting in his chair, and then I knew the meaning of the screams, and the crunching, and the padding sound.
Joe Regetti, sitting in his chair in the cellar lamplight, with his naked body chewed entirely to ribbons by gigantic and unhuman teeth!
The Secret of Sebek
In this story, whose climax is, one suspects, in some measure inspired by Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, Bloch tells us that the only real magic is that of the ancient and mysterious past (here the very real writings of Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge function much in the manner of De Vermis Mysteriis in the other tales) and the fiction of creative writers. We see this in the implied contrast not only between the shallow costumed revelers and the hardcore cult of Henricus Vanning, but also between these latter and the admitted writer of fiction, Bloch’s autobiographical narrator, who alone emerges unscathed from the visitation of occult doom.
The Secret of Sebek
by Robert Bloch
I should never have attended Henricus Vanning’s costume ball. Even if the tragedy had not occurred, I would be better off had I refused his invitation that night. Now that I have left New Orleans I can view the episode in saner light, and I know that I made a
mistake. The remembrance of that final inexplicable moment is a horror that I still cannot face with a rational mind, however. Had I suspected beforehand I might now be spared the recurrent nightmares which afflict me.
But at that time of which I speak there was no premonition to guide me. I was a stranger in the Louisiana city, and very lonely. The Mardi Gras season served only to accentuate my feeling of utter isolation. During the first two evenings of celebration, tired from long vigils at the typewriter, I wandered alien and alone along the quaintly twisted streets, and the crowds that hustled by seemed to mock my solitude.
My work at the time was very exhausting—I was doing a series of Egyptian stories for a magazine—and my mental state was a bit odd. During the day I sat in my quiet room and gave my mind over to images of Nyarlathotep, Bubastis, and Anubis; my thoughts were peopled with the priestly pageantries of olden times. And in the evenings I walked unknown amidst thoughtless throngs more unreal than the fanciful figures of the past.
But enough of excuses. To be perfectly frank, when I left the house that third night after a weary day, I expressly intended to get drunk. I entered a café at dusk, dining lavishly with a bottle of peach brandy. The place was hot and crowded; the ribald, costumed masqueraders all seemed to be enjoying the reign of Momus.
After a time this did not disturb me. Four generous goblets of the really excellent liqueur had set the blood running like elixir in my veins; bold, reckless dreams cascaded through my head. I now gazed at the impersonal swarms about me with new interest and understanding. They too were trying to escape tonight—escape from maddening monotony and humdrum commonplace. The fat man in the clown costume near by had looked silly an hour ago; now I seemed to sympathize with him. I sensed the frustration behind the masks these strangers wore; appreciated how valiantly they strove to find forgetfulness in the Mardi Gras.
I would forget, too. The bottle was emptied. I left the café and once more walked the streets, but this time I no longer had any feeling of isolation. I strode along like the carnival king himself, and traded gibe for gibe with chance buffeters.