Hybrid Of Horror
A Complete Novelet of Fearsome Mystery by
John Coleman Burroughs and Jane Ralston Burroughs
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Chapter I: A Note from Hell
Mason would be as damned as I, cursed by seeing things occur that could not happen. We would be cursed by those fiery eyes, the long shrieks and the longer silences - cursed by the thing in the dungeon!
The fate of Mason I have never explained satisfactorily.
I am certain that the secret is locked forever in that little New England valley, buried in the ashes of old Gribold Manor.
We were rattling on our way to the place that first night. I was still temporarily elated, for I had become one thousand dollars richer that morning on account of Mason.
"Mason," I said, "if I were you I'd try to forget those legends and get a little rest. There'll be some simple, logical explanation that you've overlooked."
I settled comfortably on the green plush and through half squinted eyes studied the chiaroscuro parade of tree goblins and phone pole ogres as they chased each other by the train window. Idly I was trying to figure how many phone poles one could buy with a thousand dollars.
I felt Mason's little fear-round eyes quiver on me for a second.
"No, Gov'nor," he came in slowly. "Hit hain't right, that's wot. Hit hain't right!"
"What isn't right?" I asked.
""Yer takin' that thousan' dollars I was sent to give yer. Yer shouldn't of took hit!" Mason's lip corner twitched nervously. "Yer ought've locked me up in jail, kept me from goin' back there. That's wot yer ought to've done -- kept me away from that orful place!"
"It will be a sorry day, my friend," I replied, "when I refuse a thousand dollars in gold nuggets and then have my generous benefactor locked behind bars."
I had known Mason only twelve hours. In the quiet of dawn he had knocked at my studio door. Even then, after I had stumbled out of bed and let him in, he had seemed frightened. He gripped a tanned leather sack as if it might strike at him.
There was an uncanny sensation when I took that sack from Mason. I know good leather, and my fingers are trained to remember the feel of things. Once I had felt stuff like it in the forbidden crypt of a cannibal witch doctor. It was tanned human hide.
But my gruesome idea fled when I saw the contents of the bag. What I judged to be about a thousand dollars worth of gold nuggets poured out.
I tore open a scroll of parchment Mason handed me. The writing was large and bold.
Dear Renton
These nuggets are yours if you come at once to Gribold Manor. The Gribold Statue has been damaged. Only a competent sculptor can mend it. I make this offer to you because I have seen your work in the galleries of Edinburgh.
If you successfully heal the Statue of Gribold you may have the twin brother to this bag of gold. A life depends upon your succeeding. My servant will guide you to the Manor.
Rakor Gribold X
Master of Gribold Manor and Estates.
I had heard of the Gribold Statue myth. With the exception of the Gribolds, no man had set eyes upon it for two centuries. Exactly what the statue was no man knew. To see it was to die, hopelessly, horribly insane. My conclusion at the time was that stupid people or neurotics like Gribold's new little cockney servant believed such rot.
Myths did not bother me. One thousand dollars was already mine. An equal amount would soon follow. I needed every cent of it. Any man in similar circumstances would have made his way to Gribold Manor that night.
The train whistled drearily. I dug out the parchment and read it again. I noticed casually the queer use of the words "mend" and "heal" in regard to repairing the statue. The statement "a life depends upon your succeeding" puzzled me. My eyes kept returning to Rakor Gribold's tremendous signature. It was in reddish brown ink.
"Hit's writ in blood, that's wot hit his!" rasped Mason. "Hit's witch's blood!"
"If it's blood," I said, "it will be partly soluble in moisture."
I wet the tip of my finger, dragged it across the name. The stuff smeared.
"I told yer so, Gov'nor. Hit's witch's blood all right -- the witch of Gribold!"
Mason fell off into an exhausted sleep soon after that. I noted his sunken cheeks, the nervous twitches that pulled at his eyes and mouth even in slumber. Our ancient car was air-conditioned on the warm side, so Mason's head was pillowed on his coat. His rolled-up sleeves revealed a pair of thin tattooed forearms. In addition to a couple of nude mermaids, each arm bore the insignia of his Queen's navy. Like a giant black caterpillar in the moonlight, the train wove its lonely way up the steep slope. We were approaching a high valley where, Mason had told me, the village of Gribold nestled.
With a start, the little cockney awoke. His eyes clouded with the old terror. He pointed a shaking finger toward a dark mass on a wooded hill rising above the valley. As if he had been wound up and was powerless to stop himself, Mason began babbling.
"That's it," he said. "That's the place -- crouchin' on the 'ill lookin' over the village like a bloomin' beast of "Oly Writ. Hit's the livin' place of the Grimbold Stature!
Mason leaned closer.
"I've heard hit up there," he rasped monotonously. "I've heard hit -- that statue shriekin' at night. Hit's the voice o' the witch comin' outa the monster's throat. Blimey, I've trembled like a bloomin' wench lyin' there in bed, listenin' to eerie noises all over the place!"
Mason dragged a finger around under his collar.
"Hit's death to 'ear hit," he said.
"I'm a marked man. That's wot I am -- a marked man!"
I listened quietly, reserving my own opinions to feed my disgustingly normal outlook on such tripe.
Save for a lone brakeman awaiting the next train, the old Gribold Village station was dismally deserted. I shuddered, pulled up my coat collar against the biting mountain winds. Mason gathered the bags together. Then we trudged off through the village and finally hit a narrow, forlorn path leading up to Gribold Manor.
The way led through a forest of gnarled oak. It was a step climb and we had to stop often to rest. Our little lantern cast ugly black shadows. Mason stayed as close to me as possible and I noticed his eyes constantly striving to pierce the gloom about us.
We came at last to the forest's edge. One hundred yards ahead of us loomed the great manor, dark and lonesome. We sat down on our bags. Mason stared at the place for a long time before he started to whisper.
"Hit's old, Gov'nor, so old it scares yer. Two 'undred years old. The Archduke Gribold built the place for 'is bride, a village girl. They says she was lovely on the weddin' day, dressed in lavender and lace with snow-white skin an' pink cheeks. Bur Gord, Gov'nor, their first night in Gribold Manor --" Mason paused and drew a hand across his trembling mouth. Turrible screams came from the manor. Hit was 'is bride. She'd gone stark, ravin' mad -- that's wot she did." Mason gulped. "An' nobody hain't never knowed why!"
He clutched my arm and went on, his eyes staring at the place before us.
"Mean an' cruel 'e became, the archduke did, an' him an' 'is mad wife they ruled the manor and estate like divils down Hades way. They 'ad a wee one, finally. A little boy, an' 'e later inheritated the estate an' carried on the Gribold name. But before that --" Mason whispered the next words very softly. "The archduke's wife became bewitched! She was a young 'un but blimey, they says she appeared like an old wizened woman.
"Then the archduke vanished! Some says the witch of Gribold done it with 'er divil's brew in the basement of the place. Sore 'cause 'e drove 'er mad, she changed 'im -- 'ardened 'im into stone."
I could scarcely hear his next words.
"The Gribold Statue, Gov'nor -- hit's the archduke hisself changed to stone, locked for a century an' a half in a dungeon of the old manor. Hit's the witch of Gribold I've listened to, shriekin' at night -- an' the voice comes out o' the statue's mouth! It shrieks when it's hungry, wails like a banshee until Rakor Gribold lets it out to roam the countryside searchin' for meat -- meat fer itself an' its master -- human meat!"
Mason buried his head in his hands and rocked back and forth. I had never seen such terror and I felt sorry for the man. But I couldn't understand then.
Before we got up to go on, I asked him a question, one that I had no business to ask.
"Why," I asked, "if Gribold Manoris so distasteful to you, are you coming back to it? Why didn't you take the bag of gold and, well, scram?"
His answer startled me.
"Hit's 'is eyes, that's wot hit is. Hit's 'is eyes. Blimey, they wouldn't let me. Oh, God, how I've tried to beat it, anywhere. I'd even go ack to the old country, enlist again in the navy. But I can't. Hit's 'is eyes. They ain't human. You'll see, Gov'nor!"
I know now that he was talking of Rakor Gribold, the man I was soon to meet.
Fifty feet from the huge doorway, Mason dropped the bags and shrank behind me, clutching my coat to save himself from collapsing to the ground. A shrill cry had cut the night like a knife stab. It was the voice of an incredibly agonized woman.
"That shriek, every night hit's like that! O Gord, wot is hit?"
Mason sank to the ground, grasping my knees.
I jerked myself free and started for the manor. I covered the huge stone steps in five leaps. The wail had subsided into a chant when I reached the oak-paneled portal. The door was moving open.
I rushed into the hall to be met by sudden silence. It was as uncanny as the cry had been.
A mildewed odor of stagnant age wafted up on chilling drafts from somewhere below. I opened my mouth to shout, closed it again quickly. Far down the hallway I heard the groaning hinges of another door. I listened. I could hear running footsteps.
Then I fell forward, Something had racked violently against my back and things began falling all around. I sprang to my feet. Mason lay on the floor behind me, bags scattered all over the place. He had rushed through the door and collided with me.
Someone was laughing.
I have never heard a laugh with less mirth. It was cruel, insane laughter. And it came from over my shoulder!
Turning, I saw the dim form of a huge man standing two feet from me. He flicked a match, lit a candle held in one hairy hand. It lighted his face from beneath.
And what a face!
Once, in a museum I had seen the reconstruction of a Piltdown man, an abysmal brute who was an early link between and ape and a hume. Now this living counterpart loomed before me.
Mason had pulled his punches when he described Raker Gribold.
Chapter II: Master of the Manor
The man bowed low, in apelike mimicry of an ancient human greeting.
"Good evening, David Renton. I welcome you to the cozy hospitality of Gribold Manor."
I drew back involuntarily. Speech shouldn't have flowed so easily from the mouth of an atavism like that. And his breath! God, it was as fetid as though he had been dead for centuries.
A cross between a snarl and a frozen smile lifted the corner of his flabby mouth, revealing a dirty, yellow fang. I was immediately struck by the prominence of the supra orbital ridges and the short, receding forehead -- the indication of an extremely thick skull. His round, owl-like eyes gleamed like twin holes into hell. The short cane he grasped in one hairy hand seemed to be fashioned of some greenish stone. It had been broken, leaving a wicked, jagged end.
"I trust you enjoyed my concert, Mr. Renton?" the rasping voice went on. "I often have them, much to the discomfort of my splendid servant here."
Rakor Gribold shuffled over to Mason, and poked him with his cane.
"Get up and take our guest's bags to his room, you stupid fool! What do I pay you for -- to sleep on the floor?" Mason cowered as the giant, bearded figure of the Master of Gribold threatened him with his boot.
"Gribold," I interrupted, "if you don't mind, I'd like to see the statue you want me to repair."
I found myself struck with a strong desire to get the job over, collect that extra thousand, and get out. Gribold came close to me again. He blew in my face and grinned. Then he shuffled off sown the hallway.
I took a thick tallow from a nearby stand, lit it, and followed Rakor Gribold down into the dungeons.
Tortuous winding corridors led ever downward. The air was damp with the chill of a lonely grave. Strange noises whirred through the hanging moss and roots. Bats, I thought. Carefully I shaded the candle with my hand.
I slipped suddenly. The candle fell, rolled away into a tunnel off the main corridor. I cursed, wiped the slime from my clothes and groped after the flickering light. It had rolled against the rusty bars of a tiny cell.
I clutched the tallow firmly and turned to go on. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something white. I swung around, held the candle high. Mutely staring down at me was the bleached skull of some long dead human There came a mirthless chuckle behind me. Gribold was fingering his necklace of teeth.
"An ancient enemy of the Gribolds," he purred. "It was an exquisite torture. They hung him on the wall -- very carefully, so he wouldn't strangle. Then they covered his body with molasses. Our little friends did the rest."
Gribold pointed to the walls and beams supporting the roof of the tunnel. They were covered with a pulsing blackness. I drew back as something fell on my hand. I brushed it off, crushed it under my heel. It was a shiny, black cockroach!
Gribold slashed at the beauty of a fragile moss-flower with his broken cane.
"Of course, Mr. Renton, you realize that this was done in centuries past. We don't think of doing those things in this day."
He moved to the main corridor. I followed, noting with relief that the tremendous beams and the supporting walls of the main tunnel were free of the repulsive insects. But each side tunnel seemed to move with a hideous life of its own. Now and then flickering lights would start and disappear in the murky darkness.
The cobblestones under my feet had been worn into a trough like path by Gribold's ancestors. The hollows between the stones were filled with puddles of black water that blinked up like evil eyes as the light of the candle glanced over them.
There was a sharp turn and the corridor ended. Rakor Gribold stood before a huge iron door. He fumbled under his thick robe, drew forth a key, fitted it into the lock. It was then that I noticed the curiously voluminous clothing that covered him from neck to foot.
The door moved slowly inward, sighing as though it were eternally weary of being opened and shut.
When Rakor Gribold entered the chamber, I felt an urge to turn and run. The evil that poured out of the room was as potent as the smell.
Then I saw the pit.
It was in the center of the floor. From its cavernous depths billowed red flames and a sickening odor that I can compare only to burning flesh. Boiling sluggishly in a massive iron pot hanging over the pit was a nauseous mass that gurgled and belched green fumes.
Suspended from chains that disappeared into a seemingly endless ceiling were a dozen bleached skeletons. They swung, still articulated, on giant hooks. I shrank from the wanton torture that must have taken place there.
The room was so dry that it almost crackled. Feeling a peculiar roundness under my feet, I looked down. I drew in my breath. The floor was paved with human skulls! Hell would have a floor like this.
Carved in the nearest wall were symbols of the Black Arts, and a map of forgotten secrets of the Gribold blood cults. Old musty books stood on a shelf -- black books of the Faith's Kingdom.
Again my eyes were drawn to the cauldron. Through the smoke and flames I thought I saw a figure bent over the boiling mass. A witchlike thing stirred the brew with a human leg bone! I had a confused glimpse of red glaring eyes, matted hair, incredibly wrinkled skin, a loose mouth moving over stained fanged teeth. But even as I peered closer, the figure seemed to dissolve. I reasoned that the smoke from the pit and the steam from the brew had caused an optical illusion.
Rakor Gribold was lighting giant candles at one end of the room. He stepped aside.
I quickly joined him at the base of a thronelike pedestal. I looked up, gasped! Before me crouched the famous Statue of Gribold!
Never had I seen such realism used to depict so fantastic a subject. It looked human, but the hideous grotesqueness of the thing made the human qualities uncanny. If it were standing, I judged it would be about the size if Rakor Gribold. The torso and legs were human. But the features were so insanely cruel that I found myself marveling at the hands that had modeled them. I saw some intangible expression, perhaps a similar facial angle, that reminded me of the bearded Rakor Gribold.
The creature on the pedestal had four arms. Two were short and two were long. ONe of the long arms had been broken off at the elbow. Gribold pointed to the broken joint.
"This is why I needed you, a sculptor, to mend my little pet."
He stroked the hideous head as though he were caressing his dog. I examined the broken stub.
"How was the arm broken?" I naturally asked. "Do you have the piece?"
My answer was a crooked smile from the Master of Gribold Manor.
"Tomorrow you will start to work," he said. "It will be quite cozy for you down here. But of course you will have to work by oil light."
I was about to protest. Working by oil light in a smelly dungeon would be a hardship for any artist, but for two thousand dollars I could endure it. I'd repair the Statue's arm twice as fast as any other sculptor could, and beat it away from that fantastically horrible place.
As we left the dungeon, I caught sight of Mason scurrying around a sharp turn of the corridor. A fierce light flared up in Gribold's eyes. I saw that yellow fang bared again.
My room was on the second floor at the head of the stairs. I was tired and scarcely noticed much about it when I climbed into the huge old bed. I did remember to lock the door, however.
The clock at the foot of the stairs bonged twice. I awoke with a start, listening intently.
There was a soft shuffling just outside my door. I sprang from my bed, flipped the lock and yanked the door open.
Mason was standing there, like a frightened dog.
"They're starin' at me again, Gov'nor. Borin' into me. Just like they do every night!" He clutched at my arm. "Can't yer do something? Make 'em stop?"
In an attempt to quiet the fellow, I drew him into the room and closed the door. I shook his arm.
"What's staring at you?" I asked.
"Hit's 'is eyes again -- They're tryin' to make me go down to that dungeon," Mason whispered fiercely in my ear. "To that place in the basement where that statue is. Keep me in here, Gov'nor. Don't let me go!"
The fellow seemed sincere enough in his belief that Gribold's eyes were hypnotizing him. I didn't have the heart to make him go down again to his lonely room off the kitchen.
The remainder of the night I listened to Mason's explosive snores and pondered over the man's strange terror. I found myself becoming aware of that same sensation of being watched by someone unseen. Only in this case it was my very thoughts that seemed to be under cold scrutiny by some hidden evil force.
I attributed the feeling to Mason and the power of suggestion. Finally, just as the first rooster was awakening, I fell asleep.
That morning at breakfast, the iron knocker banged on the front door. Its thunder reverberated through the manor, rousing all the dormant echoes from the dungeons. I felt sure that I could never accustom myself to that frightful din.
Mason, still worried, came in a moment later.
A man to see yer, Gov'nor. 'E said 'e'd wait outside."
Puzzled, I went to the front door. I saw a wizened man with ferret eyes, pulling impatiently at a large black mustache.
"Follow me," the man said crisply in a cracked voice.
I followed him obediently out the door. When we were some distance from the manor he stopped.
"I'm the sheriff from Gribold village' he barked. Then he dug a bony paw into his coat pocket and pulled out a small automatic, cold and blue. "Take it," he said suddenly.
Surprise must have been evident on my face as I took the gun. The sheriff conjured a water-logged toothpick from behind a golden facade of dentistry and blew it into space.
"That gun," he remarked. "Yuh can't kill nothin' much with it -- but yuh can use it to call me up here with!"
The sheriff next produced a package of gum. He undressed each piece and stuffed them all into his mouth. Then he dabbed at his bald head with a pink handkerchief.
"I dunno what yer business is here," he said, after a pause. "An' I don't say as I give a damn. But I ain't hankerin' to have any more people around here showin' up vanished!"
I still must have appeared unconscious of what he was driving at, but he kept right on chewing and talking.
"Shoot that gun off I give yuh three times if yuh need me, son, an' don't ferget it. I'll hear it down at the office an' hot-foot right up here."
"I don't understand," I finally managed. "Why should I need you?"
"They's legends," he said, "among the villagers an' farmer folk 'bout this place. They says the Gribolds has always been meat eaters. It's part o' their religion, an' well -- some of the stories is pretty goll durned screwy. Others? I dunno. I'm sheriff. I'm supposed to deal in facts."
The sheriff paused to adjust his cud of gum.
"All I know is people come into this place and they don't never come out. Farmers are murdered hereabouts or they just disappear. I've come up here umpty-nine times with warrants, questioned Gribold an' tried to search the damn place. But all I can ever find is rats, cockroaches and a thousand smells. So this is just in case.
The sheriff peered about the gardens to make sure we were still alone. Then he drew out a red bandanna tied into a sack. He dumped out on his hand what looked like some green pieces of stone.
"In the dead o' night, a week back,' he whispered, "a farmer down yonder, 'Plow' Hendricks they call him, woke up to see somethin' peerin' at him through the window. He grabbed his shotgun and blasted away. The critter, whatever it was, beat it. But here's a queer thing about it." The sheriff bounced the greenish pieces of stone in his hand. "I found these goll durned things all over the ground by that farmer's window!"
I took some of the pieces and examined them closely. What at first I had taken to be a green igneous stone now looked like some soft plastic material that had hardened.
"Ever notice anything like that around in the manor?" the sheriff questioned.
I shook my head and handed him back the pieces. He wrapped them up again carefully in his bandanna and slipped the sack into his pocket.
"I just wondered," he said. "I'll be leavin' now. Watch yourself, son, an' remember them three shots if yuh need me.
"That farmer," I asked quickly, just as he turned to go. "Was he able to describe what he had seen looking in at him that night?"
"Well, yeah," admitted the sheriff. "But every prowler 'round these parts fits the same description -- like it's allus been since I was a kid an' my ole man afore me."
"What description?"
"Just as Plow Hendricks said, the critter he seen lookin' in at him had four arms!"
I slipped the automatic into my coat pocket. The sheriff turned and ambled off down the trail toward the village.
Chapter III: The Fearful Workroom
Rakor Gribold was waiting for me at the door. We went immediately to the dungeons. I saw that Gribold had set up some oil lanterns around the statue. They illuminated the crouching figure, but only served to make the surrounding darkness more Stygian.
Rakor Gribold stood by with folded arms while I made a careful examination of the statue. As I had suspected the night before, it was not chiseled stone. It seemed to be a composition what I was completely unfamiliar with. The arm should be repaired with the same material. Gribold moved over to the cauldron.
"This is what you will need," he said, anticipating my question.
He brought an iron dish filled with some of the substance from the cauldron. It was a remarkably light plastic, and of the same greenish hue as the statue -- and strangely like the greenish pieces of stone the sheriff had picked up. I hardened and modeled easily.
I found it impossible to become absorbed in my work. LIke an unclean servant of Belial, Rakor Gribold hung over my shoulder. His rancid panting irritated me almost beyond endurance. He scarcely spoke a word, merely grunting with satisfaction as the work progressed. His eyes continually feasted on the hideous statue. He caressed it, drooled on its squat hand.
The murky chamber, the crouching horror on the pedestal and Rakor Gribold suddenly became synonymous with everything that was inhuman and evil. I dropped the tool I was working with. A timid knocking sounded at the door. Sweating with relief, I turned from the statue. Rakor Gribold yelled fiercely as he saw the latch slip.
"Put that tray down outside, you blundering idiot, and stay out! Stay out, I say!"
The tray clattered to the floor. Cursing softly to himself, Gribold crept across the room. He jabbed the sharp broken end of his cane viciously through the large keyhole. If Mason had been there, he would have been blinded. I shuddered. This whole business was getting on my nerves.
Gribold put the tray on an improvised table and grabbed a chicken leg. The meat was gone in one gulp. Gribold tossed the bone to a far corner of the room. There was a sharp squeal, a scurrying of feet. I saw beady, unblinking eyes gather from every corner of the room to stand just outside the feeble circle of light. Gribold talked to them, flung them bones and bits of meat. It occurred to me that the rats had always been there, waiting for bones and meat!
I forced myself to eat something, lit a cigarette.
Gribold's eyes blazed. With one bound he reached me, struck the cigarette from my hand into the fire.
"You fool! Would you take the chance of destroying the statue with a careless cigarette tossed too near it?"
Then he calmed himself, but with difficulty. I stared at the hideous, mouthing face. The man was insane.
Gribold was muttering apologies, placating me, but I determined to double my energy and finish the statue's arm. Why was he so afraid of a cigarette when that pit was always burning, filled with flames?
That night at dinner it was the same thing again -- the horrible wolfing of meat in one form or another. I felt my appetite dwindling away before the carnivorous voracity of Rakor Gribold.
Mason came in wit the wine on a tray. I noticed that the cockney was even more haggard than he had been the night before. He was trembling so violently that I wondered if he had seen a ghost.
He poured my wine and moved around the table to serve Gribold. His trembling upset the bottle and it rolled off the tray, striking the table. Its contents poured over the Master of Gribold.
Gribold jerked to his feet. He flung his chair spinning to the wall. His face was a contorted replica of the statue in the dungeon. He seized the unfortunate man by the scruff of his neck. One mighty arm held the petrified servant dangling in mid-air. Gribold swung him gently back and forth. Mason's face started to get purple. I arose, suddenly angry, and advanced toward my host. Then Gribold flung Mason ten feet across the room to slam into the door and roll out of sight into the pantry.
"Now stay out, you incompetent fool. That was our last blunder."
Gribold roared with laughter. The sound made me collapse suddenly into a nearby chair. The man was the devil's twin. His laughter came straight from the sulfurous depths of hell.
Sometime after midnight I awoke. The old manor was vibrating with sound. It took me a moment to come to my senses. Then I realized what I had heard. A man's scream of mortal agony had set the echoes reverberating through the corridors. Even now I could still faintly hear it rolling away through the vast halls and rooms.
I grabbed up my robe, paused to light a candle, and rushed down the stairs. The light from my candle flickered and almost went out. I stopped, shielding it carefully with my hand. The shadows on the ceiling and walls were hideous, threatening ghouls reaching for the trail light that was my only guide.
The house was silent, chill, like a huge galleon at the bottom of the sea. The same chill, the same awful silence hung over the evil Manor.
Down through the long corridor to the kitchen I ran, through the back pantry to Mason's tiny room. It seemed as though time stood still. There was a breathlessness, a suspensive waiting for the same noise to break the spell. I called aloud.
"Mason! Mason, are you all right?"
Mocking, echoing voices mimicked me, flinging the words away into the darkness.
Mason's room was empty, the floor ajar. Suddenly I thought of the dungeon. Mason had mentioned the irresistible attraction it had for him. Could he have gone down there tonight?
And then came that same inexplicable sensation of eyes watching my every thought -- the cold scrutiny of my brain by some hidden evil force. Somehow, the thought of searching the corridors, peering into the dungeon for Mason, seemed fearfully alluring.
I found myself running through the kitchen, down the long hallway to the massive oak door that led to the dungeons.
Dodging the dank pools an d low hanging moss, I hurried through the corridor. There were hundreds of bats beating wildly through the moss and roots near the beamed ceiling. They dived a me, emitting eager shrilling noises. The candle attracted them. It was all I could do to beat them off.
I passed the cell where the bones hung, rounded a sharp turn. The door to the forbidden room was closed. I tested it. It was locked. I felt relief sweeping over me. Mason hadn't gone in.
But I had to look through the keyhole . . .
The room was hazy, filled with a luminous smoke. Faintly I saw a figure at the cauldron. It was stirring the brew with mighty sweeps of the leg bone. First it was the witch. Then it had four arms. Finally it was Gribold bending over the stream. I rubbed my eyes. Why were all those impressions leaping at me? I looked again.
Steam, thick and fetid, poured out of the cauldron. No figure bent over it. I tried to see more of the room, the pedestal, the statue. My eye caught the glinting lights on the floor. The rats were out again. Then I heard them. They were squealing, fighting viciously over some dark mass on the floor near the fire-pit.
Suddenly, as though something had deliberately extinguished it, my candle flame went out. The whir of wings swept my head and face. The candle wick glowed briefly and died.
Fear swept through my veins. I stumbled ot my feet, ran blindly forward. I crashed into the wall a the sharp turn. It jarred me back to my senses. I slowed down, concentrating on the corridors, the branching tunnels, any sort of landmark. I could make it. It would just take a little time.
Waving my arms in front of my face, I groped slowly along. The cobblestones were a help. The side tunnels were all planked with wood. I could feel the difference if my feet didn't freeze. I had lost a slipper in my blind flight. The slimy pools of the corridor were unpleasant, but at least I knew that I was on the right track.
Then I lost my balance and crashed to the floor. I had stepped on a huge toad. I felt it squash through my toes. I almost screamed as the gelatinous mess oozed over my foot.
I floundered forward, dragging my foot over the cobblestones, trying to free it from the mucosity of the entrails.
The swooping bats, the toad, the darkness, all contributed to my hypnagogic state. I forgot the cobblestones by which I had been guiding myself through the damned place. I ran, stumbling, cursing, dashing my face and body against unresisting walls.
The pain of my cuts and bruises finally slowed me down again. I groped against a wall, panting, hurt, cursing the day that Mason had brought me the money and letter. It would take more than two thousand to pay me for this. Welcome anger poured over me, replacing my blind panic.
And then I felt it. The wall was moving under my bare hands! I could feel it move where I had slumped against it to rest. It crackled, rustled. The stench was nauseating.
My God, I had leaned against the cockroach wall!
I flung myself forward, fell into the arms of a thing that was huge, muscular beneath its baggy clothing. Several arms seemed to grasp me. Rakor Gribold's voice cut into the nightmare of my thoughts.
"Are you lost, Mr. Renton?"
He struck a match, lit a candle. Then he guided me out of the cockroach tunnel, into the main corridor. I was numb. I couldn't think. I could hardly move. Gribold helped me thorough the long hallways, up the stairs to my room.
I flung myself on the bed, too exhausted to care whether or not I had picked up any cockroaches, that my foot was still slippery with toad slime. I fell into a deep sleep. My last conscious thoughts were:
"What had Rakor Gribold been doing in the dungeons? Could he see in the dark like any nocturnal creature?"
Next morning I awoke to find myself stiff and sore. In the light of the new day, my reactions of the night before seemed unexplainable. I had never had nerve trouble before, had never experienced a powerful phobia like the one that had driven me so near to madness the night before.
Mason's disappearance was not mysterious at all, I reasoned. He had probably taken the night train out of Gribold village. He was so anxious to go that he hadn't bothered about the few possessions I had seen in his room I had rather liked Mason in spite of his perpetual terror. I would miss him.
I would finish the work by evening and leave the following morning.
I went immediately to the dungeon. Gribold unlocked the door for me and disappeared. I didn't see him again until that night at dinner.
Working steadily all morning, I was grateful for once of the deep silence of the place. The work progressed rapidly. I felt my old joy of accomplishment returning. Around noon, I began to get a little hungry and wondered why Mason did not bring the tray. Then I remembered that he had gone. So I worked on.
I was finally ready for the finishing touches -- those little cuts, the adding of a wrinkle or tracing a vein, perhaps the smoothing and defining of minor forms. Those are the intangible factors that make art approach reality.
Before I began, I stood back to look at the figure as a whole. How hideous it was, yet awe inspiring, too! It seemed to be the embodiment of all the evil grotesqueness of this world and the next.
It crouched as though about to spring. Two of the muscular arms and hands were curled about the base of the pedestal. The other two were curled about the base of the pedestal. The other two were curved forward, bent at the elbow, the fingers clenched as though to strangle the air between. The squat head was thrust forward with quivering intentness. The eyes seemed to glitter, the mouth to drool.
For some reason I thought of Mason, poor Mason. I shook myself free of the spell of the thing. Why had I said poor Mason? He was probably miles from here by now, looking forward to joining the Queen's Navy again.
I forced myself to laugh, swung my arms about, relaxing the tired and sore muscles. Then I started to work again.
The rats seemed to be quieter than usual. I didn't hear them scratching and squealing as they had done the previous day.
Only once during the day did my nerves go back on me again. I had been working on the closed hand, rounding the knuckles. I was using a sharp pointed instrument of fine steel that I had invented for the numerous bits of detail in the final stage of reconstruction. I had struck the tool in the forearm of the statue to have it handy.
Suddenly I heard a faint clawing noise at the door. I turned to see what it was. A great rat was dragging a bone across the floor. I threw a piece of the plastic stuff at it. The rat scurried away into the darkness of the room.
When I turned back and reached for my tool, it was clenched in the hand I had been working on! I was sure I had left it stuck in the forearm. But my nerves were still shaky from the night before. I must have experienced a brief period of amnesia. I had to get out of this place before I really did break . . . .
Two hours later, I was through. At least my work was as near complete as any artist will ever admit. I gathered up my tools, gave the statue a farewell glare and went up to my own room.
Not having eaten all day, I was as ravenous as GRibold that night at dinner. I as aware that he was watching me constantly. When I told him the statue was done, he seemed in high spirits, grinning and chuckling to himself. The meat juices trickled through his beard, dripped off his chin in a greasy stream.
He began questioning me about th e meat. Did I like it? Was it tender enough for me? He seemed unusually concerned and I felt myself getting unaccountably angry at him. I worried over the meat, pulling it here and there in the gravy. It seemed more fibrous than usual, but hunger is a great factor for overcoming the aversion to slightly unpalatable food.
I had almost cleared my plate. There remained only a chunk of fat with a small piece of meat stuck to it. I dug my fork into the fat. It fell apart.
Then I saw it, floating half submerged under the fat in the gravy. I poked my fork at it tentatively. Here again my imagination flooded my reason with a horrible thought. The peristaltic muscles of my stomach began to reverse their digestive action.
I flung my chair back from the able and ran out of the dining hall.
Staggering up to my quarters, I retched miserably, fell on my bed, completely unnerved.
The thing that my fancy had pictured floating, half submerged in my gravy, was a purple tattoo mark. The mark of the Queen's Navy had once been on Mason's forearm!
Chapter IV: Four Arms of Hell
For hideous minutes I was deathly sick. But then a lifetime habit of logical reasoning began to exert its therapeutic effect on my stomach. What I had mistaken for a tattoo mark floating in my gravy was merely the purple brand often seen on certain cuts of meat, especially port.
I felt much better after that. Now sleep began to steal in on me. Faintly I heard the sound of Rakor Gribold shuffling past my door to his bedroom down the hall. Then I fell asleep.
Several hours later I awoke, listening to the front door as it groaned on its ancient hinges. I felt certain that Gribold had not left his room. I would have heard him pass my door, unless of course, he had crept by, which he would have not reason to do.
I hurried across the room to the window. It was only a small, barred opening overlooking a short field. One hundred yards away was Gribold Forest.
Little icy chills started creeping after each other up my back My knees weakened. My heart thundered. The light of a low moon sent a long, grotesque shadow stabbing across the field. I followed that shadow to its source.
There, clutching a short stick in one of its hands, and shuffling across the field to disappear into the woods, was the four armed statue of Gribold come to life!
Frantically I rubbed my eyes. Could it have been another illusion like the witch at the cauldron? But I had seen it come from the house. Should I awaken Gribold? As far as I knew, we were the only ones in t he place.
Then the trembling started. My hands shook. The nerves in my body caused my muscles to twitch uncontrollably as though volts of electricity were shooting through me. Had I locked the door? I tested it. I ran back to the window, then back to the door. I listened through the keyhole. The silence was so complete that the throbbing of my own heart seemed like the distant roaring of surf.
Then I felt those cold eyes, peering into my mind again, into the depths of my soul!
I crept back to the window. Had the thing returned? Did it have any meat?
If I could only get out of the place. If only I could have foreseen.
There was a faint scuffling noise in the hall. I crept away from the door on my hands and knees, knelt at the window, looked out.
Nothing. It must have been rats in the hall. It had to be. I thought of things the sheriff had told me -- The little pieces of green stuff that Plow Hendricks had shot off the creature peering in his window were bits of the statue's arm I had been called to fix! With what I already knew, I fitted together the legends, the tales of the statue.
It hunted for meat, human meat for itself and its master.
All the poor victims probably ended up in the dungeon. I thought of the boiling cauldron -- of Mason, poor thin little Mason and his tattooed arms floating beside each other in a nauseous, plastic green stew! My mind was groping around in vicious mazes like a tortured animal in a cage.
I tried to calm myself, get my once logical mind to working again. Would the statue find another victim? I found myself wishing wit mad intensity that the thing would return and have a corpse in its arms!
Mason was gone. There was no more meat. If the statue failed to find any, I would be the next. I would be the meat that Rakor Gribold and his pet would devour with lustful greediness. Now that my work on the statue was completed, the thing could use its four arms once more.
Then I saw it again.!
I strained forward in the gloom, pressing my face against the iron bars. Was there something slung over its shoulder?
No. It clutched only the short stick with which it had set out.
Dully I watched its shuffling glide across the field, into the garden. Again I heard the agonized hinges. Then silence again.
God, what silence!
Something was passing my room, going down stairs. I moved to the door, turned the key, opened it. For a moment I was an animal, wondering at things I heard but could not see. My fear made me strangely curious. I just wanted to see.
And I saw. The thing I saw penetrated even my terror-ridden brain. It was descending the stairs. It passed through a brilliant shaft of moonlight. I saw its semi-draped figure, four arms growing out of its hideous green body. It glowed in the darkness after it had passed through the moonlight like a phosphorescent monster from the awful depths of the sea.
I slammed and bolted the door. Drunkenly I reeled against the wall, sweat running from every pore on my body.
The thing I had seen descending the stairs, four-armed and green was -- Rakor Gribold!
I staggered to my bed and lay there trembling, conscious only of fear that writhed and mouthed at me from every corner and shadow of the room. Fear stripped every shred of common sense and logic from my mind.
How long I lay there I have no way of knowing. Slowly I began to hear again. My senses began to return. I could see the room as a room, not a torture chamber of untold misery. I could hear sounds as they probably were, not the vagaries of a madman.
I heard music, beautiful, melodious music. Soft at first, then swelling, mounting, ti grew hideous until I knew what it was. A female voice was piercing through the manor like a great stabbing knife -- a sickening chant of death. Echoing and re-echoing until an unintelligible jargon whined monotonously up from the dungeons below, it was like a never beginning and never ending din that would drive me eventually to the depths of depravity. Then it gradually subsided. It became the monotonous incantation of some medieval witch conjuring all the rotting devils of her mystic creed.
Fro an eternity the chant continued. But instead of going mad, my thoughts became more coherent. Reason again erected a bulwark against the thundering, destroying waves of terror. Reason told me that Rakor Gribold was some sort of four-armed hybrid or freak that coincidence and the greenish moonlight made resemble the Gribold Statue.
In the daytime it would be a simple matter for him to hide his extra arms beneath loose clothing. Perhaps the trait was inherited and all the Gribolds since the archduke had been four armed.
That would explain the legend of the archduke's bride going insane on their wedding night. She had probably killed him in a fury of horror, then modeled his likeness with some plastic hardening material. Accidentally she must have evolved the stuff in her cauldron as she dabbled in the black art of her insane witchcraft.
The Gribold Statue was as inanimate as the cauldron itself in that lower dungeon, and only a fool would believe otherwise. It was Rakor Gribold with his broken cane, and not the statue that I had seen crossing the filed. I even found myself explaining away the death chant that was rising up from t he dungeons below.
Gribold was probably fond of music. The tones came from some female songstress on a phonograph record somewhere in the house. Echoes and re-echoes would account for the unintelligible jargon.
Suddenly it was quiet again. The music had stopped. Everything had stopped. I hung suspended in limitless space. Then something must have moved, because the stairs began to creak and groan, one by one. Something was mounting to the top, slowly, heavily ascending one step at a time.
All the framework of my cold, beatific reasoning during the past few minutes tottered and collapsed about me. I saw sections of myself floating in the cauldron, rats gnawing at the parts of my body that Gribold did not want.
The thing on the stairs came on. I heard it fumble at my door. It poked at the keyhole.
The key fell to the floor. There was a scratching noise like a wire being shoved under to drag out the key.
The door slowly opened. I lay motionless on my bed.
I didn't realize that I could hold my breath so long. My body felt as though the long dead witch of Gribold had turned it to stone. Now, out of the dark shadow of the doorway, something began creeping to my bed. IN the faint light from the moon I could see it hovering nearer me.
It seemed to glow greenishly. It was monstrous. Three arms rose up like hideous snakes. The fourth hand grasped the heavy, broken cane of Rakor Gribold! It raised for the death stroke . . . .
With a clenching effort I jerked my benumbed arm and shoved my hand under the pillow. I touched cold steel. It helped break the paralyzing spell that had taken my body. I was positive now that the thing was Rakor Gribold, and that he was hungry. The gun the sheriff had given me would save my life. I would kill Rakor Gribold --
I raised the weapon. Three blasts of yellow light ripped out from its muzzle.
Three round holes appeared in Gribold's forehead just above the left eye. I lowered the gun, waiting for the man to crash to the floor.
Rakor Gribold didn't stop! The slow glide to my bed continued. An odor of rotting meat rolled over me. I flung the gun at the leering face and scrambled beneath the outstretched arms. He lunged a me with the cane. I tore the stick from his grasp, shattered it over his head. Then I drove my fist into his face and gasped aloud with pain.
My knuckles crashed with terrific force against a face that felt like hard clay!
Out into the hall I raced, down the stairs. The thing shuffled after me as swiftly as a great cat. Again panic, clammy and grim, seized me. I reached the front door, struggled with the bolt, pounded at the panels. It would not move.
I turned and ran down the hall toward the entrance to the lower dungeons. I tried to swerve into the kitchen. The thing almost caught me again. I had to dive through the basement door.
Then I realized it was deliberately herding me into the dungeons down to the forbidden room!
I ran now for my life and sanity. One slip and all hope would be gone. Frantically I pitched through the darkness protecting my face as best I could. I seemed to remember the various turns, the pools of water. I avoided them fairly well.
All the time the fetid, panting breath of the thing drew closer. I caught a gleam of light ahead. The door to the forbidden room must be open. I felt hope sweep over me like a breath of fresh air.
If I could reach the room ahead of Gribold, I could barricade the door with the cauldron. I sprinted around the last sharp turn, paused, scooped up a rough cobblestone and hurled it with all my strength. There was a noise like stone hitting stone, and the thing paused!
Fifty feet ahead of me was the partly open door to the forbidden room. In a few leaps I could make it.
Then I tripped over something that squealed and bit me. Down I sprawled full length on the slimy cobblestones. The momentum of my body scraped me along my belly. Stagnant water splashed into my face. I could taste its bitterness. Lie forms squirmed under me, kicked, croaked and crawled.
I slipped again when I tried to get up, crashing down heavily on my elbow. A hand, hard and stony, plunged out of the semi-gloom. It cracked down on my head, jerked me up by my hair. I dangled in space.
Nauseous blasts of foulness blew into my face. Now form the depths of that creature's throat pealed forth the blatant shrieks I had heard twice before in Gribold Manor. Still holding me up by the hair, it began swinging me back and forth, timing the motion to a subdued rhythm of the first horrible cries.
When I kicked and clawed, two other arms came out to hold me in viselike rigidity. But never once for long, hideous minutes did my body cease its measured sway in space. My body was the swinging pendulum of a human metronome.
Gradually increased the crescendo of that chant. Recurring with greater frequency were the beats. And my body was moving closer to that diabolical face in the gloom . . . .
Death, certain and terrible peered at me two feet away. Fiery, cruel eyes seared into my brain -- the same eyes that had haunted me for the past two days in the manor.
But it was the nearness of death that temporarily cleared my brain. It transformed me from a clawing, kicking bit of insanity to a reasoning man again.
The creature gripped me in three hands! The other hand I could see held to one side, as if it were wounded.
Wounded? Of course it was wounded. The and, wrist and forearm were the same I had repaired during my stay at Gribold Manor! As yet the arm had not healed. It would hurt to use it, now that it was fired with life and feeling.
I wriggled my arm loose and grabbed out for that wrist!
Chapter V: Battle for Life
My fingers closed on what felt like hardened crust. I knew that beneath the superficial layer of hardness the plastic material had not yet completely solidified.
My strong sculptor's hands clamped with powerful tenacity. I twisted the wrist suddenly.
There was a shriek of bellowing pain and I was dropped.
In that instant of freedom I lunged backward into the forbidden room and slammed the door.
The key was on the inside. I turned it, ripped off my coat. It protected my hands a little as I pulled and shoved the giant cauldron over to barricade the door. The boiling green mess spilled out all over the floor, hissing and steaming. But at last the vat was in place.
I leaned against the wall. No sound came from the corridor outside. I could hear only the hissing of the stuff on the floor and the crackling of the flames in the pit.
My eyes moved over, past the hanging skeletons, to look at the empty pedestal where the statue had been.
But the pedestal was not empty!
Crouching there as it had always been, I could see the dim outlines of the statue of Gribold!
I drew a hand across my eyes but the illusion still persisted. Relief swept over me. It had been Rakor Gribold, after all, who had pursued me down from my room through the corridors and dungeons. It was Gribold who had crept toward me in m room.
But the three bullet holes?
I had seen them appear one by one just as I had fired the gun -- three round bullet holes just above the left eye.
My explanation? I had none, unless the man's unusually thick skull was not completely penetrated by the small .22 caliber bullet. Perhaps the lead had not entered the cranial cavity nor pierced the brain.
But then I saw the stuff on the floor. I moved ever closer. It was a green viscous fluid that was collecting in the crack between two of the skulls that composed the floor. My eyes followed the stream toward the base of the pedestal, up the dais to another little pool of the stuff at the statue's feet. I followed the green drops up, up to the base of the chin, where they dripped off the hideous face.
On the forehead my eyes stopped. A sudden, choking cloud of smoke poured out of the cauldron. I gasped, rubbing at my burning eyes!
Green ichor was oozing out of what appeared to be -- three round bullet holes just above the left eye!
I have only a faint recollection of my escape from t he dungeon. I must have upset the cauldron as I hurled it away from the door. The brew ignited as it came into contact with the flames in the pit. A strong draft nursed the flames when I flung wide the door. They pursued me, crackling and spitting, up through the long, winding corridors to the main floor.
The front door was partly open when I finally dragged myself up to it. fresh air was pouring in.
I reeled down the huge, stone steps. A voice called out below me.
"Stop!"
Then came a shot, sharp and clear. Something was shuffling swiftly toward me on the gravel walk. I threw myself to the side of the path. The thing lurched by me, breathing heavily and groaning. I lay there half dazed, watching it scramble like a huge spider up the steps toward the blazing manor.
I staggered to my feet as the little wizened sheriff puff ed up beside me, clutching a smoking revolver. He had turned ghastly white. But his hand was steady enough. He raised the gun and fired at the apparition that leered down at us from the top landing. I was certain the bullet had found its mark.
But the sheriff fired until his gun was empty and still the thing at the top of the steps never moved. It stood there, silhouetted against the yellow flames that were belching out of the open door at its back. The head was raised and the four arms were outstretched as if in supplication to the heavens.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is it Gribold?"
"Dunno," the sheriff replied tensely.
We were standing below, at some little distance from t he bottom of the steps. The creature ws well above us, with the flames in back. It was impossible to recognize the features.
"I heard yuh fire three shots," yelled the sheriff above the roaring flames. "I hoofed it up here as quick as I could an' bumped square into that thing streakin' down the path. It turned around an' ran back, but wouldn't stop when I ordered. So I had to shoot. Could o' sworn I hit it!"
"Look!" I cried.
The flames were now leaping out around it, engulfing the thing in great yellow waves. Even where we were standing, some distance away, the head was terrific.
I was getting so dizzy that I had to lean against the sheriff for support. I could feel him take in a deep breath.
"Come down here, Gribold!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
The thing on the landing looked down. Then out of its mouth rose that same ungodly wail I had heard before -- the thrill cry of a woman tortured by agony!
For a long, hideous moment that cry stabbed out through the night, chilling my nerves even in the face of the almost unbearable heat.
I could still hear the cry even after the thing had turned. It leaped through the open doorway and was swallowed up in that blazing inferno. I thought I could still hear it faintly, while the sheriff was half carrying, half dragging me away from the manor. I had collapsed to the ground at his feet.
Persistently that cry rang in my ears for over two months after they had taken me to the sanitarium. When I was finally able to speak coherently, I was invited to describe in detail my experiences to the psychiatrist in residence.
On the day scheduled for my dismissal from the sanitarium, I entered the doctor's office. The morning paper was clutched in my hand. He waved me cordially into the big chair by his desk.
He listened attentively to my story and examined the letter I had originally received from Rakor Gribold. The doctor was especially interested in the skin sack containing the gold nuggets. He declared it to be human skin, as I had suspected.
"From my observation of you here in the sanitarium," he said, "I am convinced that you are telling me exactly what you saw or heard occur at Gribold Manor. There is only one unclear point in your story, which I'll speak of later. There I believe our vision was distorted by the nervous tension to which you were being subjected. Otherwise I think it is a true account of actual experiences."
"You believe, then, that Rakor Gribold was four armed? I asked.
"Yes. The Gribold family, since the archduke, has probably exhibited a recessive quadrumanous tendency appearing only in the male offspring. The old archduke's bride was undoubtedly driven insane when she became aware of her husband's deformity on their wedding night. Her insanity was mistaken by the villagers as bewitchment and Gribold Manor and its occupant s were henceforth shunned.
"Believing the stories of her own bewitchery, this insane woman began dabbling in the Black Arts. When her little son was born four armed, she realized the full horror of the Gribold curse. She probably killed her husband and modeled his likeness with some plastic hardening substance that she had concocted in the cauldron after the formulas in her old witchcraft books.
"This would be the famous Statue of Gribold, perhaps seen at various times by carpenters or masons called up to repair the aging manor. They must have begun the superstition. Because the Gribolds were shunned, they were unable to get food honestly from the village market or from the farmers. So they were forced to go forth at night and steal livestock or whatever they could lay their hands on.
"Ostracized from the mores of society, the step to cannibalism for the Gribolds was a natural one. They could recognize little difference between men and beasts. So cannibalism became inculcated in their religion. It was passed down by the old witch as part of necessity. Human meat is very nourishing and the hunting of it would greatly relieve the monotony of their stranded existence in the lonely manor."
I was following the doctor's opinions very closely.
"Then you believe that Rakor Gribold's plan, after he ate Mason, was to include me on his menu?"
Undoubtedly," replied the doctor. "You were doomed to Mason's fate. But not until you had finished repairing the statue, which he had called you to 'mend' or 'heal,' as e put it in his letter to you. HIs reference in t he letter to 'a life depends upon our succeeding' indicates that Gribold himself believed the statue to be alive. He paid you, incidentally, with some of the old archduke's vast treasure.
"How the statue's wrist was broken we'll never know. But when you were fighting Gribold and twisted his wrist he bellowed with pain. It had been injured coincidentally, probably when Plow Hendricks, the farmer, fired his shotgun at Gribold, who was out hunting for meat and was peering in at the farmer.
With the exception of one point, that sounded reasonable.
"But the pieces of green stuff that the sheriff picked up next morning outside of Plow Hendricks' window -- " I asked. "What were they?"
"Undoubtedly pieces from Gribold's cane, which he carried as a weapon. The spraying buckshot form Henricks' shotgun lodged in Gribold's wrist and shattered the upper part of his cane at the same time. You said the cane was apparently fashioned not of wood or metal, but of a greenish stone that had been broken.
"The cane was probably made from the same stuff as the statue -- material that was highly inflammable, as proved by the speed with which it ignited when you spilled the cauldron into the flaming pit. That's why cigarettes were taboo around the statue. Also, Gribold must have had the ability to make his voice assume a feminine quality."
"But the bullet holes?" I said. "I saw them appear in the creature's forehead when I fired! And I saw them later in identically the same place on the statue's head."
"This latter point is the one place where your story strays from fact," said the doctor slowly. "The bullet holes appeared in Gribold's forehead because he had an extremely thick skull, and you were firing .22 caliber bullets. They lodged in t eh thick supraorbital structure. But when you though you saw these same holes in the statue's forehead in the dungeon, your vision was obscured by the smoke and flames pouring out of the pit. And furthermore, Mr. Renton, your nerves were near the breaking point.
"Probably this one delusion, more than anything else, was responsible for your long confinement here in this sanitarium." The doctor rose and extended his hand. "Good-bye, Mr. Renton -- and good luck."
I shook hands with the doctor and thanked him. Before I turned to leave I handed him the newspaper I had brought in with me. I pointed to an obscure news item on the back page.
Gribold Village was stunned by the double murder of its sheriff and a farmer known as "Plow" Hendricks here last night. Both men were clubbed death while asleep in their homes near the outskirts of the village. Their assailant is unknown.
"Interesting coincidence," I remarked, and walked out.
The End
Table of Contents
Chapter II: Master of the Manor