2 The Thing
Rum-guzzler though he was, a soldier of fortune—a wild, barbaric throw-back, born a hundred years too late—Doctor Hugo Lamontaine was yet an occultist of international reputation and a physician of extraordinary ability. Possessed of a fortune which made him independent of his fellow-men, he followed the dictates of his own conscience, caring not a whit for the conventions. To him the esoteric practises of voodoo, obeah and demonology were open books; to study them he had followed his beard to the end of the world.
Tall and broad-shouldered, his hair as red as the blood that he had shed on a dozen foreign fields, possessing the whiskers of a Viking, slovenly in his attire, constantly spoiling for a fight or a frolic, he was a man to be reckoned with under any conditions.
His insatiable craving for knowledge had brought him to the little village of La Foubelle. Slumbering at the very edge of the gigantic morass, uncontaminated by the presence of outsiders, its French-Creole inhabitants had clung, leech-like, to the customs and superstitions of their ancestors. Close association with the blacks who, brought from West India as slaves at an early day, had revolted and fled to the interior of the swamp, had intensified these weird beliefs. La Foubelle was a virgin vein of folklore and heterodoxies, witchcraft and bizarre customs. Lamontaine had deliberately thrown himself into the midst of the lives of these near-barbarians. He had ingratiated himself to them and, by degrees, had been accepted as one of them. Eventually he had become not only their physician, but their confessor as well.
The day had brought more than its accustomed load of suffering. The heat had made the afflicted ones worse. Making his evening rounds, Lamontaine was filled with a premonition of death lurking close at hand. He had the narrow street to himself. Men and women talked in low, hushed whispers, huddling together, sheep-like, fearful of the darkness that had dropped like a pall. Frightened children clung to their mothers’ skirts, their black eyes beady with terror. From inside a tiny cottage came the sound of muffled sobs as a young mother rocked her first-born, slowly wasting away.
The bell in the little schoolhouse at the end of the lane clanged dolefully. Lamontaine halted in his tracks, his broad shoulders drooping like those of a defeated man. For the schoolhouse was also the church.
“Bong!... bong!... bong!... bong!”
He counted the strokes. When they passed sixteen, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. It meant that little Evelyn l’Brest was not the victim.
“Bong!... bong!... bong!”
He counted on until the strokes passed fifty. Then, as they continued their doleful monody, he lifted his shoulders and took up his walk again. It would be old Kenny Tolan, he told himself—Kenny Tolan, eighty-two and long ago marked as a victim by the grim reaper.
And deep in his pagan heart, Doctor Hugo Lamontaine breathed a little prayer of thanksgiving.
Evelyn l’Brest, the schoolmaster’s sweetheart, still lived. There was yet a chance.
Again he was halted by an agonized scream. It came from a cottage close at hand—the abode of Jacques d’Arcy, at the end of the side road. He whirled and dashed through the darkness in the direction of the low, thatched house with its single lighted window. A white, scared face stared at him through the darkness as a man rushed around the corner, his gun drawn, almost colliding with him in his mad rush. It was Pierre Le Front, the village constable.
“Mon Dieu!” the little man exclaimed. “You heard it, doctaire?”
Lamontaine nodded grimly. The constable by his side, he padded noiselessly over the soft earth between the rows of trees, covered with Spanish moss, that led to the d’Arcy home.
A man dashed toward them from the direction of the house. He saw them and, whirling, leaped into the thicket that banked the roadside. As he disappeared, he turned. Even though the moon was dead in the leaden sky, Lamontaine caught a glimpse of a lean, cadaverous face, of teeth over which the lips were drawn in a wolfish snarl, of deeply sunken eyes that glittered ominously.
The big physician seized the little constable by the shoulder, halting him with a violence that almost jerked him off his feet.
“Your gun! Quick!” he snarled.
He jerked the weapon from the officer’s hand and emptied it in the direction the fleeing man had taken. Then, dropping it at the astonished constable’s feet, he dashed madly in the same direction.
Le Front followed. He heard Lamontaine crash through the dank grass and underbrush that bordered the fetid swamp. Then came the sound of a bâteau as it swung out into the water... the creak of oars in their locks....
Lamontaine, his feet bogged by the mud, met the little man as he struggled through the tangled growth, and cursed fluently.
“Mon Dieu!” the constable panted.
“Who was it? And what happened?”
“It was Aaron Kronk!” Lamontaine snarled.
From far out in the fetid waters of the swamp came a harsh, sinister laugh.
Constable Le Front dropped to his knees and crossed himself.
Aaron Kronk! Little wonder Pierre Le Front turned a shade paler under his coating of tan. Aaron Kronk! Master of diablerie and king of devils! He it was who, only a few weeks earlier, masquerading as the infamous Gilles de Laval, Baron de Retz, the blue-bearded monster of the Middle Ages, had involved himself in a saturnalia of blood from which only the bravery and occult knowledge of Lamontaine had rescued the community. Even now, two of his intended victims were in the hospital at New Orleans recovering from their injuries; the old house on the peninsula where he had made his headquarters was a mass of charred embers and smoke-stained masonry.
They hurried back toward the house of Jacques d’Arcy. Once more the wild shrieks assailed their ears, speeding their footsteps. Mingled with the screams was a low, gurgling moaning. It grew fainter as they approached. By the time they reached the low, whitewashed gate, it had ceased.
The front door was thrown hurriedly open and a white face peered out at them, terror written in every lineament.
In a rustic wicker chair in the low-ceilinged room an old woman was weaving backward and forward, shrieking hysterically. Around her stood three other women—two of them neighbors, one a daughter. A fourth had opened the door.
They greeted the newcomers with gasps of relief.
“On connait l’ami au besoin—a friend is known in time of need!” the younger woman exclaimed. “Eet ees ze doctaire!”
Lamontaine seized her by the shoulder.
“What happened?” he snapped.
She twisted her tattered handkerchief about her fingers nervously.
“Zat I do not rightly know,” she finally managed to ejaculate. “Père d’Arcy, he ees dying, we theenk. We were weeth heem. We hear a noise outside. We look through ze window. Zere was a face peering een at us—a horrible face, doctaire. Eet was ze face of le Diable.”
She stopped, shuddering like one who suffers from the ague. Lamontaine glared at her and she continued.
“We scream. Zen ze awful face disappear and through ze window come ze shape—ze shapeless shape! Lak’ a ghos’ eet was—wizout form, yet eet had ze form! Oui, I cannot explain eet, doctaire!”
She broke off her recital and gave way to shuddering sobs, her face buried in her hands. Lamontaine seized her by the shoulder again and shook her roughly. The old woman recommenced her hysterical howling.
“Talk!” Lamontaine snapped, shaking the woman until her teeth chattered. “Time is of value now. Talk!”
The woman ceased her convulsive sobbing and looked at the big physician pathetically.
“Eet was awful—horrible!” she said finally. “Père d’Arcy, he give ze wild scream. Ze theeng—ze awful theeng—drop upon heem like ze great veil. Jacques, he moan again and again. Zen, ze moan, eet, too, stop. We have rush out and we are here. We are afraid of ze theeng. Zen you come——”
Lamontaine shoved her aside and, darting to the door of the sickroom, seized the knob and jerked it open.
The room was in darkness, yet the light, shining through the open door from the outer room, was strong enough to reveal the scene that was being enacted. Even Lamontaine, inured though he was to death and violence, shrank back.
Old Jacques d’Arcy lay upon the floor by the side of the bed. His face, glaring up at them, was twisted into a horrible contortion, the eyes protruding as if they had been squeezed from their sockets. His body was shriveled into a million wrinkles; it was like a toy balloon that has been deflated.
Over the dead man was a form—a strange, gossamer-like wraith, vague, shadowy, indistinct. The physician had an impression of malignant eyes glaring at him—of a slit of a mouth drawn back into a wolfish snarl. Yet there were no eyes—no mouth. The thing was shapeless.
Recovering himself, Lamontaine took a step forward. The hellish thing seemed about to spring at him. Then it drew back as if reluctant to leave the body of its victim.
Slowly it dissolved itself—floating away like a bit of vapor, through the open window.
Lamontaine turned to the others who stood shuddering in the doorway. The old woman took up her hysterical wailing again.
A faint odor filled the room. It was strange, indistinguishable, horrible, nauseating. It was the odor of death.
The thing from beyond, gorged with vitality, had reached a point in its development where it was visible to human eyes.