The Arthur Machen Megapack: 25 Classic Works (32 page)

“Exactly. Drawn, you see, at a little distance from the first, almost on the same level, but slightly lower.”

“What on earth is one to make of it? It couldn’t have been done by the children; it wasn’t there last night, and they won’t pass for another hour. What can it mean?”

“I think the very devil is at the bottom of all this,” said Dyson. “Of course, one cannot resist the conclusion that these infernal almond eyes are to be set down to the same agency as the devices in the arrow-heads; and where that conclusion is to lead us is more than I can tell. For my part, I have to put a strong check on my imagination, or it would run wild.”

“Vaughan,” he said, as they turned away from the wall, “has it struck you that there is one point—a very curious point—in common between the figures done in flints and the eyes drawn on the wall?”

“What is that?” asked Vaughan, on whose face there had fallen a certain shadow of indefinite dread.

“It is this. We know that the signs of the Army, the Bowl, the Pyramid, and the Half-moon must have been done at night. Presumably they were meant to be seen at night. Well, precisely the same reasoning applies to those eyes on the wall.”

“I do not quite see your point.”

“Oh, surely. The nights are dark just now, and have been very cloudy, I know, since I came down. Moreover, those overhanging trees would throw that wall into deep shadow even on a clear night.”

“Well?”

“What struck me was this. What very peculiarly sharp eyesight, they, whoever ‘they’ are, must have to be able to arrange arrow-heads in intricate order in the blackest shadow of the wood, and then draw the eyes on the wall without a trace of bungling, or a false line.”

“I have read of persons confined in dungeons for many years who have been able to see quite well in the dark,” said Vaughan.

“Yes,” said Dyson, “there was the abbé in
Monte Cristo
. But it is a singular point.”

III

The Search for the Bowl

“Who was that old man that touched his hat to you just now?” said Dyson, as they came to the bend of the lane near the house.

“Oh, that was old Trevor. He looks very broken, poor old fellow.”

“Who is Trevor?”

“Don’t you remember? I told you the story that afternoon I came to your rooms—about a girl named Annie Trevor, who disappeared in the most inexplicable manner about five weeks ago. That was her father.”

“Yes, yes, I recollect now. To tell the truth I had forgotten all about it. And nothing has been heard of the girl?”

“Nothing whatever. The police are quite at fault.”

“I am afraid I did not pay very much attention to the details you gave me. Which way did the girl go?”

“Her path would take her right across those wild hills above the house; the nearest point in the track must be about two miles from here.”

“Is it near that little hamlet I saw yesterday?”

“You mean Croesyceiliog, where the children came from? No; it goes more to the north.”

“Ah, I have never been that way.”

They went into the house, and Dyson shut himself up in his room, sunk deep in doubtful thought, but yet with the shadow of a suspicion growing within him that for a while haunted his brain, all vague and fantastic, refusing to take definite form. He was sitting by the open window and looking out on the valley and saw, as if in a picture, the intricate winding of the brook, the grey bridge, and the vast hills rising beyond; all still and without a breath of wind to stir the mystic hanging woods, and the evening sunshine glowed warm on the bracken, and down below a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the stream. Dyson sat by the window as the day darkened and the huge bastioned hills loomed vast and vague, and the woods became dim and more shadowy; and the fancy that had seized him no longer appeared altogether impossible. He passed the rest of the evening in a reverie, hardly hearing what Vaughan said; and when he took his candle in the hall, he paused a moment before bidding his friend goodnight.

“I want a good rest,” he said. “I have got some work to do tomorrow.”

“Some writing, you mean?”

“No. I am going to look for the Bowl.”

“The Bowl! If you mean my punch-bowl, that is safe in the chest.”

“I don’t mean the punch-bowl. You may take my word for it that your plate has never been threatened. No; I will not bother you with any suppositions. We shall in all probability have something much stronger than suppositions before long. Good-night, Vaughan.”

The next morning Dyson set off after breakfast. He took the path by the garden-wall, and noted that there were now eight of the weird almond eyes dimly outlined on the brick.

“Six days more,” he said to himself, but as he thought over the theory he had formed, he shrank, in spite of strong conviction, from such a wildly incredible fancy. He struck up through the dense shadows of the wood, and at length came out on the bare hillside, and climbed higher and higher over the slippery turf, keeping well to the north, and following the indications given him by Vaughan.

As he went on, he seemed to mount ever higher above the world of human life and customary things; to his right he looked at a fringe of orchard and saw a faint blue smoke rising like a pillar; there was the hamlet from which the children came to school, and there the only sign of life, for the woods embowered and concealed Vaughan’s old grey house. As he reached what seemed the summit of the hill, he realised for the first time the desolate loneliness and strangeness of the land; there was nothing but grey sky and grey hill, a high, vast plain that seemed to stretch on for ever and ever, and a faint glimpse of a blue-peaked mountain far away and to the north. At length he came to the path, a slight track scarcely noticeable, and from its position and by what Vaughan had told him he knew that it was the way the lost girl, Annie Trevor, must have taken. He followed the path on the bare hill-top, noticing the great limestone rocks that cropped out of the turf, grim and hideous, and of an aspect as forbidding as an idol of the South Seas; and suddenly he halted, astonished, although he had found what he searched for. Almost without warning the ground shelved suddenly away on all sides, and Dyson looked down into a circular depression, which might well have been a Roman amphitheatre, and the ugly crags of limestone rimmed it round as if with a broken wall. Dyson walked round the hollow, and noted the position of the stones, and then turned on his way home.

“This,” he thought to himself, “is more than curious. The Bowl is discovered, but where is the Pyramid?”

“My dear Vaughan,” he said, when he got back, “I may tell you that I have found the Bowl, and that is all I shall tell you for the present. We have six days of absolute inaction before us; there is really nothing to be done.”

IV

The Secret of the Pyramid

“I have just been round the garden,” said Vaughan one morning. “I have been counting those infernal eyes, and I find there are fourteen of them. For heaven’s sake, Dyson, tell me what the meaning of it all is.”

“I should be very sorry to attempt to do so. I may have guessed this or that, but I always make it a principle to keep my guesses to myself. Besides, it is really not worth while anticipating events; you will remember my telling you that we had six days of inaction before us? Well, this is the sixth day, and the last of idleness. Tonight I propose we take a stroll.”

“A stroll! Is that all the action you mean to take?”

“Well, it may show you some very curious things. To be plain, I want you to start with me at nine o’clock this evening for the hills. We may have to be out all night, so you had better wrap up well, and bring some of that brandy.”

“Is it a joke?” asked Vaughan, who was bewildered with strange events and strange surmises.

“No, I don’t think there is much joke in it. Unless I am much mistaken we shall find a very serious explanation of the puzzle. You will come with me, I am sure?”

“Very good. Which way do you want to go?”

“By the path you told me of; the path Annie Trevor is supposed to have taken.”

Vaughan looked white at the mention of the girl’s name

“I did not think you were on that track,” he said. “I thought it was the affair of those devices in flint and of the eyes on the wall that you were engaged on. It’s no good saying any more, but I will go with you.”

At a quarter to nine that evening the two men set out, taking the path through the wood, and up the hill-side. It was a dark and heavy night, the sky was thick with clouds, and the valley full of mist, and all the way they seemed to walk in a world of shadow and gloom, hardly speaking, and afraid to break the haunted silence. They came out at last on the steep hill-side, and instead of the oppression of the wood there was the long, dim sweep of the turf, and higher, the fantastic limestone rocks hinted horror through the darkness, and the wind sighed as it passed across the mountain to the sea, and in its passage beat chill about their hearts. They seemed to walk on and on for hours, and the dim outline of the hill still stretched before them, and the haggard rocks still loomed through the darkness, when suddenly Dyson whispered, drawing his breath quickly, and coming close to his companion,

“Here,” he said, “we will lie down. I do not think there is anything yet.”

“I know the place,” said Vaughan, after a moment. “I have often been by in the daytime. The country people are afraid to come here, I believe; it is supposed to be a fairies’ castle, or something of the kind. But why on earth have we come here?”

“Speak a little lower,” said Dyson. “It might not do us any good if we are overheard.”

“Overheard here! There is not a soul within three miles of us.”

“Possibly not; indeed, I should say certainly not. But there might be a body somewhat nearer.”

“I don’t understand you in the least,” said Vaughan, whispering to humour Dyson, “but why have we come here?”

“Well, you see this hollow before us is the Bowl. I think we had better not talk even in whispers.”

They lay full length upon the turf; the rock between their faces and the Bowl, and now and again, Dyson, slouching his dark, soft hat over his forehead, put out the glint of an eye, and in a moment drew back, not daring to take a prolonged view. Again he laid an ear to the ground and listened, and the hours went by, and the darkness seemed to blacken, and the faint sigh of the wind was the only sound.

Vaughan grew impatient with this heaviness of silence, this watching for indefinite terror; for to him there was no shape or form of apprehension, and he began to think the whole vigil a dreary farce.

“How much longer is this to last?” he whispered to Dyson, and Dyson who had been holding his breath in the agony of attention put his mouth to Vaughan’s ear and said:

“Will you listen?” with pauses between each syllable, and in the voice with which the priest pronounces the awful words.

Vaughan caught the ground with his hands, and stretched forward, wondering what he was to hear. At first there was nothing, and then a low and gentle noise came very softly from the Bowl, a faint sound, almost indescribable, but as if one held the tongue against the roof of the mouth and expelled the breath. He listened eagerly and presently the noise grew louder, and became a strident and horrible hissing as if the pit beneath boiled with fervent heat, and Vaughan, unable to remain in suspense any longer, drew his cap half over his face in imitation of Dyson, and looked down to the hollow below.

It did, in truth, stir and seethe like an infernal caldron. The whole of the sides and bottom tossed and writhed with vague and restless forms that passed to and fro without the sound of feet, and gathered thick here and there and seemed to speak to one another in those tones of horrible sibilance, like the hissing of snakes, that he had heard. It was as if the sweet turf and the cleanly earth had suddenly become quickened with some foul writhing growth. Vaughan could not draw back his face, though he felt Dyson’s finger touch him, but he peered into the quaking mass and saw faintly that there were things like faces and human limbs, and yet he felt his inmost soul chill with the sure belief that no fellow soul or human thing stirred in all that tossing and hissing host. He looked aghast, choking back sobs of horror, and at length the loathsome forms gathered thickest about some vague object in the middle of the hollow, and the hissing of their speech grew more venomous, and he saw in the uncertain light the abominable limbs, vague and yet too plainly seen, writhe and intertwine, and he thought he heard, very faint, a low human moan striking through the noise of speech that was not of man. At his heart something seemed to whisper ever “the worm of corruption, the worm that dieth not,” and grotesquely the image was pictured to his imagination of a piece of putrid offal stirring through and through with bloated and horrible creeping things. The writhing of the dusky limbs continued, they seemed clustered round the dark form in the middle of the hollow, and the sweat dripped and poured off Vaughan’s forehead, and fell cold on his hand beneath his face.

Then, it seemed done in an instant, the loathsome mass melted and fell away to the sides of the Bowl, and for a moment Vaughan saw in the middle of the hollow the tossing of human arms. But a spark gleamed beneath, a fire kindled, and as the voice of a woman cried out loud in a shrill scream of utter anguish and terror, a great pyramid of flame spired up like a bursting of a pent fountain, and threw a blaze of light upon the whole mountain. In that instant Vaughan saw the myriads beneath; the things made in the form of men but stunted like children hideously deformed, the faces with the almond eyes burning with evil and unspeakable lusts; the ghastly yellow of the mass of naked flesh; and then as if by magic the place was empty, while the fire roared and crackled, and the flames shone abroad.