The Weird Fiction Megapack Page 19

  A faint blue flicker snapped from her extended finger—the pistol fell from a flaccid hand. Commnenus seemed totally paralyzed. Heldra’s magic held him completely in thralldom.…

  I snapped into activity and scooped up the gun.

  “Followed me, did you?” I snarled.

  “Wait, Jarl Wulf!” Heldra’s tone was frankly amused. “No need for you to do aught! Mine is the blood-feud, mine the blood-right! And ere I finish with yon Michael Commnenus, an ancient hate will be surfeited, and an ancient vengeance, too long delayed, will be consummated.”

  “Heldra,” I began, for dread seized me at the ominous quality of her words, “I will not stand for this affair going any farther! I—”

  “Be silent! Seat yourself over there against the wall and watch and hear, but move not nor speak again, lest I silence you forever!”

  A force irresistible hurled me across the cave and set me down, hard, on a flat rock. I realized fully that I was obeying her mandate—I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even move my eyelids, so thoroughly had she inhibited any further interference on my part.

  * * * *

  Paying no further attention to Commnenus for the moment, she crossed over to me, bent and kissed me on my lips, her sapphire eyes laughing into my own blazing, wrathful eyes.

  “Poor dear! It is too bad, but you made me do it. I wanted you to help me all the way through this tangled coil—but you have been so difficult to manage! Yet in some ways you have played into my hands splendidly. Yes, even to bringing the Hel-stone back to me—and I would not care to lose that for a king’s ransom. And I put it into yon fool’s head to be wakeful tonight, and see you regain the Hel-stone, and follow you—and thus walk into my nice little trap.

  “And now!”

  She whirled and faced Commnenus. And for all that he was spellbound, in his eyes I read fear and a ghastly foreknowledge of some dreadful fate about to be meted out to him at her hands.

  She picked up the flashlight he had dropped and extinguished it with the dry comment:

  “We need a different light here—the Hel-light from Hela’s halls!” And at her word, a most peculiar light pervaded the cave, and there was that about its luminance that actually affrighted. Again she spoke:

  “Michael Commnenus, you utterly vile worm of the earth! You know that your doom is upon you—but as yet you know not why. O beast lower than the swine! Harken and remember my words even after eternity is swallowed up in the Twilight of the Gods! You are a modern, and know not that the self, the soul, is eternal, undying, changing its body and name in every clime and period, yet ever the same soul, responsible for the deeds of its bodies. You have even prated of your soul—when in fact, you are the property of the soul!

  “Watch, now!” She pointed to the cave entrance. “Behold there the wisps of sea-fog gathering; and gradually will come the rising tide. And on the curtain of that cold, swirling mist, behold the pictures of the past—a past centuries old; a past wherein your craven, treacherous soul sinned beyond all pardon!

  “Look you, too, Jarl Wulf Red-Brand, so that in all the days remaining to you upon Earth, you may know that his doom was just, and that Heldra is but executing a merited penalty! And while the shuttles of the Norns weave the tapestry of the sin of this Cornmnenus, I will tell all the tale of his crimes.

  “In Byzantium reigned the emperor, Alexander Commnenus. Secure he was on his throne, guarded by the ponderous axes and the long swords of the Varangians, the splendid sons of the Norse-lands, who had gone a-viking. Trusted and loved were the Varangs by the emperor, and oft he boasted of their fidelity, swearing on the cross of Constantine that to the last man would his Varangs perish ere one would flinch a step from over-whelming foes, citing in proof their battle-cry:

  “‘Valhalla! Valhalla! Victory or Valhalla!’

  “Into the harbor of the Golden Horn sailed the viking long-ship, the Grettir. Three noble brothers owned her—Thorfinn, Arvid, Sven. With them sailed their sister…her fame as an Alrunamaid, prophetess and priestess, was sung throughout the Norse-lands. No man so low but bore her reverence. Sin it was to cast eyes of desire on any Alruna, and the sister of the three brothers was held especially holy.

  “Between the hands of the Emperor Alexander Commnenus, the three brethren placed their hands, swearing fealty for a year and a day. Thirty fighting-men, their crew, followed wherever the three brothers led. And the great emperor, hearing of their war-fame from others of the Varangian guard, gave the brothers high place in his esteem, and held them nigh his own person.

  “Their sister, the Alruna-maid, was treated as became her rank and holy repute. Aye! Even in Christian Byzantium respect and honor were shown her by the priests of an alien belief. But one man in Byzantium aspired more greatly than any other, Norseman or Byzantine, had ever dared.

  “A Commnenus he, grand admiral of Byzantium’s war fleet, nephew to the emperor, enjoying to the full the confidence and love of his imperial uncle. Notorious for his profligacy, he cast his libertine eyes on the Norse Alruna-maid, but with no thought of making her his wife. Nay! ’Twas only as his Leman he desired her.… So, he plotted.…

  “The three brothers, Thorfinn, Arvid, Sven, with their full crew, in the long-ship Grettir were ordered to sea to cruise against certain pirates harrying a portion of the emperor’s coasts.

  “Every man of the Grettir’s crew died the deaths of rats—poison in the water-casks!… They died as no Norseman should die, brutes’ deaths, unfit for Valhalla and the company of heroes who had passed in battle! And their splendid bodies, warped and distorted by pangs of the poison, were cast overside as prey for sharks, by two creatures of this grand admiral, whom he had sent with the three brothers as pilots knowing the coast. They placed the drug in the casks, they flung over the dead and dying, they ran the Grettir aground and set fire to her—but his was the command—and his the crime!”

  And as Heldra told the tale, in a voice whose dreary tones made the recital seem even worse—the watching Commnenus and I saw clearly depicted on the curtain of the mist, each separate incident.… Heldra turned to the wildly glaring Michael.

  “There was but one person in all Byzantium who knew the truth,” she screamed in sudden frenzy. “I give back for a moment your power of speech. Say, O fool! Coward! Niddering! Who am I?”

  Abruptly she tore off the somber cloak and stood in all her loveliness, enhanced by every ornament she once had worn for my pleasure in beholding her thus arrayed.

  A cry of unearthly terror broke from the staring Commnenus. His voice was a strangled croak as he gasped:

  “The Alruna-maid, Heldra! The red-haired sea-witch—sister to the three brothers, Thorfinn, Arvid, Sven!”

  “Aye, you foul dog! And me you took at night, after they sailed away, and me you shut up where my cries for aid could not be heard; and me you would have despoiled—me, the Alruna-maid, sworn to chastity! Me you jeered at and reviled, boasting of your recent crimes against all that the Norse-folk hold most sacred!

  “Yet I escaped from that last dreadful dungeon wherein you immured me—how?

  “By that magic known to such as I, I called upon the empress of the Underworld, Hela herself, and pledged her my service in return for indefinitely continued life, until I could repay you and avenge the heroes denied the joys of Valhalla—by you!

  “And now—comes swiftly the doom I have planned for you…you who now remember!”

  Heldra spoke truly. Swiftly it came! Sitting where I was, I saw it plainly, a great dragon-ship with round shields displayed along her gunwales, with a big square sail of crimson embroidered in gold, with long oars dipping and lifting—in faint, ghostly tones I could hear the deep-sea rowers chanting, “Duch! Hey! Sa-sa-sa! Hey-sa, Hey-sa, Hey-sa, Hey-sa!” and knew it for the time-beat rowing-song of the ancient vikings!

  The whole picture was limned in the cold sea-fires from whence that terrible viking ghost-ship had risen with its crew of long-dead Norsemen who were not dead—the men too good for Hel, an
d denied Valhalla.…

  Straight to the mouth of the cave came the ghost-ship, and its crew disembarked and entered. Heldra cried out in joyous welcome:

  “Even from out of the deeps, ye heroes, one and all, have ye heard my silent summons, and obeyed the voice of your Alruna from old time! Now your waiting is at an end!

  “Yonder stands the Commnenus. That other concerns ye not—but mark him well, for in a former life he was Jarl Wulf Red-Brand! See, on his left hand is still the old silver ring with its runes of Ragnar Wave-Flame!”

  The ghost-vikings turned their dead eyes on me with a curious fixity. One and all, they saluted. Evidently, Jarl Wulf must have been somebody, in his time. Then ignoring me, they turned to Heldra, awaiting her further commands. Commnenus they looked at, fiercely, avidly.

  Heldra’s voice came, heavily, solemnly, with a curious bell-like tone sounding the knell of doom incarnate:

  “Michael Commnenus! This your present body has never wrought me harm, nor has it harmed any of these. It is not with your body that we hold our feud. Wherefore, your body shall go forth from this cave as it entered—as handsome as ever, bearing no mark of scathe.

  “But your niddering soul, O most accursed, shall be drawn from out its earthly tenement this night and given over to these souls you wronged, who now await their victim and their vengeance! And I tell you, Michael Commnenus, that what they have in store for you will make the Hades of your religion seem as a devoutly-to-be-desired paradise!” Heldra stepped directly before Commnenus. Her shapely white arms were outstretched, palms down, fingers stiffly extended. A queer, violet-tinged radiance streamed from her fingers, gradually enveloping Commnenus—he began to glow, as if he had been immersed and had absorbed all his body could take up.…

  Heldra’s voice took on the tone of finality:

  “Michael Commnenus! Thou accursed soul, by the power I hold, given me by Hela’s self, I call you forth from your hiding-place of flesh—come ye out!”

  The living body never moved, but from out its mouth emerged a faint silvery-tinted vapor flowing toward the Alruna-maid, and as it came, the violet glow diminished. The accumulating sit-very mist swirled and writhed, perceptibly taking on the semblance of the body from whence it was being extracted. There remained finally but a merest thread of silvery shimmer connecting soul and body. Heldra spoke beneath her breath:

  “One of you hew that cord asunder!”

  A double-bladed Norse battle-ax whirled and a ghostly voice croaked: “Thor Hulf!”

  Thor, the old Norse war-god, must have helped, for the great ghost-ax evidently encountered a solid cable well-nigh as strong as tempered steel. Thrice the ax rose and fell, driven by the swelling thews of the towering giant wielding it, ere the silver cord was broken by the blade.

  A tittering giggle burst from the lips of the present-day Michael Commnenus.

  I realized with a sudden sickness at the pit of my stomach that an utterly mindless imbecile stood there, grinning vacuously!

  “That Thing,” Heldra said, coldly scornful as she pointed to the silvery shining soul, “is yours, heroes! Do with it as ye will!”

  Two of the gigantic wraiths clamped their great hands on its shoulders. It turned a dull leaden-gray, the color of abject fear. Cringing and squirming, it was hustled aboard the ghostly dragon-ship. The other ghost-vikings went aboard, taking their places at the oars yet they waited. Heldra turned to me.

  “Be free of the spell I laid upon you!” Her tone was as gentle as it had been in her sweetest moments while she dwelt in my home as my niece.

  I gasped, rose and stretched. I wanted to be angry—and dared not. I’d seen too much of her hellish powers to risk incurring her displeasure. And reading my mind, she laughed merrily.

  Then her cool, soft, white arms went about my neck, her wondrous sapphire eyes looked long and tenderly into mine—and I will not write the message I read in those softly shining orbs. Once again her silvery voice spoke:

  “Jarl Wulf Red-Brand! John Craig! I am the grand-daughter of Ragnar Wave-Flame! And once I went a-viking with my three brothers, to far Byzantium. You know that tale. Now, once I said that Ragnar Wave-Flame never died. Also, I said that I had dived into her sea-cave and lain in her arms—and now I tell you the rest of that mystery: with her breath she entered this my body where ever since we have dwelt as one soul. I needed aid in seeking my vengeance, for it was after I’d escaped the clutches of the Commnenus, and had passed through adventures incredible while making my way back to the Norse-lands—and my spirit was very bitter. And when I sought her council, Ragnar helped.

  “This now do I ask of you: Do you, as I have sometimes thought, love me as a man loves a maid? Reflect well, ere you answer, and recall what I once showed you in a mirror—I am older than you! So, knowing that, despite my witcheries of the long, bitter past, and those of tonight, would you take me, were you and I young once more?”

  “By all the gods in Valhalla, and by all the devils in Hela’s halls: yes!” My reply was given without need of reflecting, or counting cost.

  “Then, in a day to come, you shall take me—I swear it!”

  Full upon my mouth she pressed her scarlet lips, and a surging flame suffused my entire body. Yet it was life—not death. Against my chest I felt the pressure of her swelling breasts, and fires undreamable streamed from her heart to mine. Time itself stood still. After an aeon or so she unwound her clinging arms from about my neck and turned away, and with never a backward glance she entered that waiting, ghostly dragon-ship. The oars dipped.…

  “Duch! Hey! Sa-sa-sa! Hey-sa! Hey-sa! Hey-sal Hey-sa!” and repeated…and again…until the faint, ghostly chant was swallowed by distance.…

  I left the cave.

  The driveling idiot who had been Michael Commnenus was already gone. Later, the gossip ran that he’d “lost his mind,” and that his embassy had returned him to his own land. None ever suspected, or coupled me or my “niece” with his affliction. And he himself had absolutely no memory—had lost even his own name when his soul departed!

  But within a month, I sold my cottage, packed and stored all my belongings until I could find a new location, where I’d be totally unknown; and then I went away from where I had dwelt for years—and with urgent reason.

  The fire with which Heldra had imbued me from her breath and breast was renewing my youth! My hair was shades darker, my wrinkles almost gone; my step was brisker, I looked to be nearer forty than almost sixty. So marked was the change that the villagers stared openly at what seemed at least a miracle…tongues were wagging…old superstitions were being revived and dark hints were being bandied about.… So I finally decided to leave, and go where my altered appearance would cause no comment.

  I wonder if—

  VINE TERROR, by Howard Wandrei

  Roman Sholla stood perfectly still on his front sidewalk, bewildered. He blinked a few times, and opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. Then he thrust his still unlighted pipe into his pocket and ran.

  There was reason enough for his fright. Sholla, proprietor of South’s Cut-Rate Supplies, lived on the outskirts of the community below the hill on which stood the glass, stone, and metal faced South Experimental Laboratories.

  It was about twenty minutes past seven when Sholla issued from his front door, in his hand a pipe, which he loaded methodically with a poking forefinger. He proceeded down his front walk, at which point he produced a match from his side pocket and struck it on the mailbox nailed to the oak tree. But the tree wasn’t there. It had moved, moved out of reach. The earth was shouldered aside. At the base of the huge, broken-barked bole was what seemed to be a wake of turf.

  “Fo’ fo’teen years,” he explained excitedly to Eric Shane, who lived across the street, “I strike m’ match on the tree. You see me do it. What is happen?” He looked around belligerently at the little group that had collected, and which had drifted back to the scene of the novelty.

  “I tell you what. I come down the w
alk and put out my hand to the postbox to strike the match. Every morning just the same. Eric will tell you so. But now I can’t reach it,” he said, his voice trembling. “Look for yourself. The tree has move’ away from the sidewalk!” He pointed passionately at the base of the tree with his unlighted pipe. Before it, between the little huddle of men and the tree, was a plowed furrow, like a short, fresh grave.

  Wiry, dark little Fred Yanotsky, who had once inspected ore at the Ashton mills, was looking up at the laboratories on the hill above Sholla’s house.

  “You vill find vhy up d’ere, I t’ink,” he said malignantly. “No good come of machines. I know. I work wit’ machines for ten, twelve year. Many funny t’ings happen. Funny t’ings.” His voice trailed off ominously.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Sholla contemptuously. “You talk like crazy. Because you catch yourself in the wheels one time, whose fault was it? You want to hang the big stamp, maybe, or the digger? P’r’aps you like to burn those generator’ up there, like witches in the old country?”

  “I do know,” said Yanotsky slowly, shaking his head. “I see some awful funny t’ings.” He looked up balefully at the power plant, and fingered the mutilations of the arm that had been caught in the mill machinery many years ago.

  “Ay,” spoke up an old bearded fellow, Papa Freng. “What has happened to the game? Tell me, Roman Sholla.”

  “The game?” said Sholla. “How do you mean?”

  “The game, the small game. What has happened to all the rabbits? Where are the squirrels that used to come to my window for nuts, all summer and all winter? I tell you, there has been no small game seen here these three months, nor the small green snakes, even. Roman Sholla, what of the birds?”

  “Birds? What are you talking about, papa? Up there is a bird, now.” He pointed off at a slow-winged turkey buzzard of remarkable size, a really gigantic specimen, that was pursuing a low, undulating flight toward the wood that surrounded the hill and the laboratories. The five men at the oak tree turned and eyed the bird warily as though they were watching Judgment approach. The buzzard passed nearly overhead, somewhat to the right of Sholla’s house, and side-winged into a wide spiral as it prepared to alight in the trees half-way between the house and the laboratories on the hill. Its trailing legs dropped a trifle, the wings spread umbrella-wise, and momentarily it disappeared from view among the foliage. Sholla turned to Papa Freng triumphantly, saying,