“Sir, life is sweet, even to an old black man.”
“You mean somebody would kill you if you told me?”
But the old man was mumbling again, his eyes clouded.
“Not somebody. No human. No human being. The black gods of the swamps. My secret is inviolate, guarded by the Big Serpent, the god above all gods. He would send a little brother to kiss me with his cold lips–a little brother with a white crescent moon on his head. I sold my soul to the Big Serpent when he made me maker of zuvembies–”
Buckner stiffened.
“I heard that word once before,” he said softly, “from the lips of a dying black man, when I was a child.
What does it mean?”
Fear filled the eyes of old Jacob.
“What have I said? No–no! I said nothing!”
“Zuvembies,” prompted Buckner.
“Zuvembies,” mechanically repeated the old man, his eyes vacant. “A zuvembie was once a woman–on the Slave Coast they know of them. The drums that whisper by night in the hills of Haiti tell of them. The makers of zuvembies are honored of the people of Damballah. It is death to speak of it to a white man–it is one of the Snake God’s forbidden secrets.”
“You speak of the zuvembies,” said Buckner softly.
“I must not speak of it,” mumbled the old man, and Griswell realized that he was thinking aloud, too far gone in his dotage to be aware that he was speaking at all. “No white man must know that I danced in the Black Ceremony of the voodoo, and was made a maker of zombies and zuvembies. The Big Snake punishes loose tongues with death.”
“A zuvembie is a woman?” prompted Buckner.
“Was a woman,” the old Negro muttered. “She knew I was a maker of zuvembies–she came and stood in my hut and asked for the awful brew–the brew of ground snake-bones, and the blood of vampire bats, and the dew from a nighthawk’s wings, and other elements unnamable. She had danced in the Black Ceremony–she was ripe to become a zuvembie–the Black Brew was all that was needed–the other was beautiful–I could not refuse her.”
“Who?” demanded Buckner tensely, but the old man’s head was sunk on his withered breast, and he did not reply. He seemed to slumber as he sat. Buckner shook him. “You gave a brew to make a woman a zuvembie–what is a zuvembie?”
The old man stirred resentfully and muttered drowsily.
“A zuvembie is no longer human. It knows neither relatives nor friends. It is one with the people of the Black World. It commands the natural demons–owls, bats, snakes and werewolves, and can fetch darkness to blot out a little light. It can be slain by lead or steel, but unless it is slain thus, it lives for ever, and it eats no such food as humans eat. It dwells like a bat in a cave or an old house. Time means naught to the zuvembie; an hour, a day, a year, all is one. It cannot speak human words, nor think as a human thinks, but it can hypnotize the living by the sound of its voice, and when it slays a man, it can command his lifeless body until the flesh is cold. As long as the blood flows, the corpse is its slave. Its pleasure lies in the slaughter of human beings.”
“And why should one become a zuvembie?” asked Buckner softly.
“Hate,” whispered the old man. “Hate! Revenge!”
“Was her name Joan?” murmured Buckner.
It was as if the name penetrated the fogs of senility that clouded the voodoo-man’s mind. He shook himself and the film faded from his eyes, leaving them hard and gleaming as wet black marble.
“Joan?” he said slowly. “I have not heard that name for the span of a generation. I seem to have been sleeping, gentlemen; I do not remember–I ask your pardon. Old men fall asleep before the fire, like old dogs. You asked me of Blassenville Manor? Sir, if I were to tell you why I cannot answer you, you would deem it mere superstition. Yet the white man’s God be my witness–”
As he spoke he was reaching across the hearth for a piece of firewood, groping among the heaps of sticks there. And his voice broke in a scream, as he jerked back his arm convulsively. And a horrible, thrashing, trailing thing came with it. Around the voodoo-man’s arm a mottled length of that shape was wrapped and a wicked wedge-shaped head struck again in silent fury.
The old man fell on the hearth, screaming, upsetting the simmering pot and scattering the embers, and then Buckner caught up a billet of firewood and crushed that flat head. Cursing, he kicked aside the knotting, twisting trunk, glaring briefly at the mangled head. Old Jacob had ceased screaming and writhing; he lay still, staring glassily upward.
“Dead?” whispered Griswell.
“Dead as Judas Iscariot,” snapped Buckner, frowning at the twitching reptile. “That infernal snake crammed enough poison into his veins to kill a dozen men his age. But I think it was the shock and fright that killed him.”
“What shall we do?” asked Griswell, shivering.
“Leave the body on that bunk. Nothin’ can hurt it, if we bolt the door so the wild hogs can’t get in, or any cat. We’ll carry it into town tomorrow. We’ve got work to do tonight. Let’s get goin’.”
Griswell shrank from touching the corpse, but he helped Buckner lift it on the rude bunk, and then stumbled hastily out of the hut. The sun was hovering above the horizon, visible in dazzling red flame through the black stems of the trees.
They climbed into the car in silence, and went bumping back along the stumpy terrain.
“He said the Big Snake would send one of his brothers,” muttered Griswell.
“Nonsense!” snorted Buckner. “Snakes like warmth, and that swamp is full of them. It crawled in and coiled up among that firewood. Old Jacob disturbed it, and it bit him. Nothin’ supernatural about that.”
After a short silence he said, in a different voice, “That was the first time I ever saw a rattler strike without singin’ and the first time I ever saw a snake with a white crescent moon on its head. ”
They were turning into the main road before either spoke again.
“You think that the mulatto Joan has skulked in the house all these years?” Griswell asked.
“You heard what old Jacob said,” answered Buckner grimly. “Time means nothin’ to a zuvembie.”
As they made the last turn in the road, Griswell braced himself against the sight of Blassenville Manor looming black against the red sunset. When it came into view he bit his lip to keep from shrieking. The suggestion of cryptic horror came back in all its power.
“Look!” he whispered from dry lips as they came to a halt beside the road. Buckner grunted.
From the balustrades of the gallery rose a whirling cloud of pigeons that swept away into the sunset, black against the lurid glare….
III
THE CALL OF ZUVEMBIE
Both men sat rigid for a few moments after the pigeons had flown.
“Well, I’ve seen them at last,” muttered Buckner.
“Only the doomed see them, perhaps,” whispered Griswell. “That tramp saw them–”
“Well, we’ll see,” returned the Southerner tranquilly, as he climbed out of the car, but Griswell noticed him unconsciously hitch forward his scabbarded gun.
The oaken door sagged on broken hinges. Their feet echoed on the broken brick walk. The blind windows reflected the sunset in sheets of flame. As they came into the broad hall Griswell saw the string of black marks that ran across the floor and into the chamber, marking the path of a dead man.
Buckner had brought blankets out of the automobile. He spread them before the fireplace.
“I’ll lie next to the door,” he said. “You lie where you did last night.”
“Shall we light a fire in the grate?” asked Griswell, dreading the thought of the blackness that would cloak the woods when the brief twilight had died.
“No. You’ve got a flashlight and so have I. We’ll lie here in the dark and see what happens. Can you use that gun I gave you?”
“I suppose so. I never fired a revolver, but I know how it’s done.”
“Well, leave the shootin’ to me, if possi
ble.” The sheriff seated himself cross-legged on his blankets and emptied the cylinder of his big blue Colt, inspecting each cartridge with a critical eye before he replaced it.
Griswell prowled nervously back and forth, begrudging the slow fading of the light as a miser begrudges the waning of his gold. He leaned with one hand against the mantelpiece, staring down into the dust-covered ashes. The fire that produced those ashes must have been built by Elizabeth Blassenville, more than forty years before. The thought was depressing. Idly he stirred the dusty ashes with his toe.
Something came to view among the charred debris–a bit of paper, stained and yellowed. Still idly he bent and drew it out of the ashes. It was a note-book with moldering cardboard backs.
“What have you found?” asked Buckner, squinting down the gleaming barrel of his gun.
“Nothing but an old note-book. Looks like a diary. The pages are covered with writing–but the ink is so faded, and the paper is in such a state of decay that I can’t tell much about it. How do you suppose it came in the fireplace, without being burned up?”
“Thrown in long after the fire was out,” surmised Buckner. “Probably found and tossed in the fireplace by somebody who was in here stealin’ furniture. Likely somebody who couldn’t read.”
Griswell fluttered the crumbling leaves listlessly, straining his eyes in the fading light over the yellowed scrawls. Then he stiffened.
“Here’s an entry that’s legible! Listen!” He read:
“‘I know someone is in the house besides myself. I can hear someone prowling about at night when the sun has set and the pines are black outside. Often in the night I hear it fumbling at my door. Who is it? Is it one of my sisters? Is it Aunt Celia? If it is either of these, why does she steal so subtly about the house?
Why does she tug at my door, and glide away when I call to her? Shall I go to the door and go out to her? No, no! I dare not! I am afraid. Oh God, what shall I do? I dare not stay here–but where am I to go?’”
“By God!” ejaculated Buckner. “That must be Elizabeth Blassenville’s diary! Go on!”
“I can’t make out the rest of the page,” answered Griswell. “But a few pages further on I can make out some lines.” He read:
“‘Why did the negroes all run away when Aunt Celia disappeared? My sisters are dead. I know they are dead. I seem to sense that they died horribly, in fear and agony. But why? Why? If someone murdered Aunt Celia, why should that person murder my poor sisters? They were always kind to the black people.
Joan–’” He paused, scowling futilely.
“A piece of the page is torn out. Here’s another entry under another date–at least I judge it’s a date; I can’t make it out for sure.
“‘–the awful thing that the old negress hinted at? She named Jacob Blount, and Joan, but she would not speak plainly; perhaps she feared to–’ Part of it gone here; then: ‘No, no! How can it be? She is dead–or gone away. Yet–she was born and raised in the West Indies, and from hints she let fall in the past, I know she delved into the mysteries of the voodoo. I believe she even danced in one of their horrible ceremonies–how could she have been such a beast? And this–this horror. God, can such things be? I know not what to think. If it is she who roams the house at night, who fumbles at my door, who whistles so weirdly and sweetly–no, no, I must be going mad. If I stay here alone I shall die as hideously as my sisters must have died. Of that I am convinced.’”
The incoherent chronicle ended as abruptly as it had begun. Griswell was so engrossed in deciphering the scraps that he was not aware that darkness had stolen upon them, hardly aware that Buckner was holding his electric torch for him to read by. Waking from his abstraction he started and darted a quick glance at the black hallway.
“What do you make of it?”
“What I’ve suspected all the time,” answered Buckner. “That mulatto maid Joan turned zuvembie to avenge herself on Miss Celia. Probably hated the whole family as much as she did her mistress. She’d taken part in voodoo ceremonies on her native island until she was ‘ripe,’ as old Jacob said. All she needed was the Black Brew–he supplied that. She killed Miss Celia and the three older girls, and would have gotten Elizabeth but for chance. She’s been lurkin’ in this old house all these years, like a snake in a ruin.”
“But why should she murder a stranger?”
“You heard what old Jacob said,” reminded Buckner. “A zuvembie finds satisfaction in the slaughter of humans. She called Branner up the stair and split his head and stuck the hatchet in his hand, and sent him downstairs to murder you. No court will ever believe that, but if we can produce her body, that will be evidence enough to prove your innocence. My word will be taken, that she murdered Branner. Jacob said a zuvembie could be killed…in reporting this affair I don’t have to be too accurate in detail.”
“She came and peered over the balustrade of the stair at us,” muttered Griswell. “But why didn’t we find her tracks on the stair?”
“Maybe you dreamed it. Maybe a zuvembie can project her spirit–hell! Why try to rationalize something that’s outside the bounds of rationality? Let’s begin our watch.”
“Don’t turn out the light!” exclaimed Griswell involuntarily. Then he added: “Of course. Turn it out. We must be in the dark as”–he gagged a bit–“as Branner and I were.”
But fear like a physical sickness assailed him when the room was plunged in darkness. He lay trembling and his heart beat so heavily he felt as if he would suffocate.
“The West Indies must be the plague spot of the world,” muttered Buckner, a blur on his blankets. “I’ve heard of zombies. Never knew before what a zuvembie was. Evidently some drug concocted by the voodoo-men to induce madness in women. That doesn’t explain other things, though: the hypnotic powers, the abnormal longevity, the ability to control corpses–no, a zuvembie can’t be merely a madwoman. It’s a monster, something more and less than a human being, created by the magic that spawns in black swamps and jungles–well, we’ll see.”
His voice ceased, and in the silence Griswell heard the pounding of his own heart. Outside in the black woods a wolf howled eerily, and owls hooted. Then silence fell again like a black fog.
Griswell forced himself to lie still on his blankets. Time seemed at a standstill. He felt as if he were choking. The suspense was growing unendurable; the effort he made to control his crumbling nerves bathed his limbs in sweat. He clenched his teeth until his jaws ached and almost locked, and the nails of his fingers bit deeply into his palms.
He did not know what he was expecting. The fiend would strike again–but how? Would it be a horrible, sweet whistling, bare feet stealing down the creaking steps, or a sudden hatchet-stroke in the dark?
Would it choose him or Buckner? Was Buckner already dead? He could see nothing in the blackness, but he heard the man’s steady breathing. The Southerner must have nerves of steel. Or was that Buckner breathing beside him, separated by a narrow strip of darkness? Had the fiend already struck in silence, and taken the sheriff ’s place, there to lie in ghoulish glee until it was ready to strike?–a thousand hideous fancies assailed Griswell tooth and claw.
He began to feel that he would go mad if he did not leap to his feet, screaming, and burst frenziedly out of that accursed house–not even the fear of the gallows could keep him lying there in the darkness any longer–the rhythm of Buckner’s breathing was suddenly broken, and Griswell felt as if a bucket of ice-water had been poured over him. From somewhere above them rose a sound of weird, sweet whistling….
Griswell’s control snapped, plunging his brain into darkness deeper than the physical blackness which engulfed him. There was a period of absolute blankness, in which a realization of motion was his first sensation of awakening consciousness. He was running, madly, stumbling over an incredibly rough road.
All was darkness about him, and he ran blindly. Vaguely he realized that he must have bolted from the house, and fled for perhaps miles before his overwrought brain began
to function. He did not care; dying on the gallows for a murder he never committed did not terrify him half as much as the thought of returning to that house of horror. He was overpowered by the urge to run–run–run as he was running now, blindly, until he reached the end of his endurance. The mist had not yet fully lifted from his brain, but he was aware of a dull wonder that he could not see the stars through the black branches. He wished vaguely that he could see where he was going. He believed he must be climbing a hill, and that was strange, for he knew there were no hills within miles of the Manor. Then above and ahead of him a dim glow began.
He scrambled toward it, over ledge-like projections that were more and more and more taking on a disquieting symmetry. Then he was horror-stricken to realize that a sound was impacting on his ears– a weird mocking whistle. The sound swept the mists away. Why, what was this? Where was he?
Awakening and realization came like the stunning stroke of a butcher’s maul. He was not fleeing along a road, or climbing a hill; he was mounting a stair. He was still in Blassenville Manor! And he was climbing the stair!
An inhuman scream burst from his lips. Above it the mad whistling rose in a ghoulish piping of demoniac triumph. He tried to stop–to turn back–even to fling himself over the balustrade. His shrieking rang unbearably in his own ears. But his will-power was shattered to bits. It did not exist. He had no will. He had dropped his flashlight, and he had forgotten the gun in his pocket. He could not command his own body. His legs, moving stiffly, worked like pieces of mechanism detached from his brain, obeying an outside will. Clumping methodically they carried him shrieking up the stair toward the witch-fire glow shimmering above him.
“Buckner!” he screamed. “Buckner! Help, for God’s sake!”
His voice strangled in his throat. He had reached the upper landing. He was tottering down the hallway.
The whistling sank and ceased, but its impulsion still drove him on. He could not see from what source the dim glow came. It seemed to emanate from no central focus. But he saw a vague figure shambling toward him. It looked like a woman, but no human woman ever walked with that skulking gait, and no human woman ever had that face of horror, that leering yellow blur of lunacy–he tried to scream at the sight of that face, at the glint of keen steel in the uplifted claw-like hand–but his tongue was frozen.