Manly Wade Wellman

“ The horse was plunging and whinnying, but Lanark clutched its reins and got his foot into the stirrup. The bonfire seemed to be growing strangely brighter, and the mounted guerrillas were plainly discernible, raging and trampling among his disorganized men. Corporal Gray went down, dying almost under Lanark's feet. Amid the deafening drum-roll of shots, Sergeant Jager's bull-like voice could be heard: "Stop, thieves and horsemen, in the name of God!" It sounded like an exorcism, as though the Confederate raiders were devils. ”

“ Lanark squinted and made shift to read:
"'Any man may look lightly into heaven, to the highest star; but who dares require of the bowels of Earth their abysmal secrets?'"
"That is my stepfather's handwriting," whispered Enid, her head close to Lanark's shoulder.
He read on: "'The rewards of Good are unproven; but the revenges of Evil are great, and manifest on all sides. Fear will always vanquish love.'"
He grinned slightly, harshly. Jager remembered having seen that grin in the old army days, before a battle.
"I think we're being warned," Lanark said to his old sergeant. ”

“ Together they walked up on the resounding planks of the piazza. Lanark, his ungloved right hand swinging free beside his holster, knocked at the heavy front door with his left fist. There was no answer. He tried the knob, and after a moment of shoving, the hinges creaked and the door went open.
They walked into a dark front hall, then into a parlor with dust upon the rug and the fine furniture, and rectangles of pallor upon the walls where pictures had once hung for years. They could hear echoes of their every movement, as anyone will hear in a house to which he is not accustomed. ”

“ The Cavalry Patrol
Lieutenant Kane Lanark was one of those strange and vicious heritage-anomalies of one of the most paradoxical of wars—a war where a great Virginian was high in Northern command, and a great Pennsylvanian stubbornly defended one of the South's principal strongholds; where the two presidents were both born in Kentucky, indeed within scant miles of each other; where father strove against son, and brother against brother, even more frequently and tragically than in all the jangly verses and fustian dramas of the day. ”

“ The six guerrillas stirred into motion again, approaching and closing in. Lanark had them before him in a semi-circle.
"Stand!" he said again, and when they did not he fired, full for the center of that black beard in the forefront. The body of the guerrilla started and staggered—no more. It had been hit, but it was not going to fall. Lanark knew a sudden damp closeness about him, as though he stood in a small room full of sweaty garments. The six figures were converging, like beasts seeking a common trough or manger.
He did not shoot again. The man he had shot was not bleeding. ”

“ His voice was that of a prayerful man reading Scripture, and Lanark felt moved despite himself. Jager closed the book gently and kept it in his hand.
"Albertus Magnus has many such charms and assurances," he volunteered. "In this small book, less than two hundred pages, I find a score and more of ways for punishing and thwarting evil spirits, or those who summon evil spirits." He shook his head, as if in sudden wrath, and turned up his spectacled eyes. "O Lord!" he muttered. "How long must devils plague us for our sins?"
Growing calmer once more, he read again from the book of Albertus Magnus. ”

“ And she knew that the sides of the gulley, to north and south, could never be climbed. There was only the slope ahead to the eastward, up which Lanark must have gone. The thought of him strengthened her. If the two of them found the king-horror, the Nameless One, at the base of Fearful Rock, they could face it together.
She was aware that she had come out of the timber of the ravine.
All was moonlight here, painted by the soft pallor in grays and silvers and shadow-blacks. There was the rock lifted among the stars, there the stretch of clump-dotted plain—and here, almost before her, Lanark. ”

“ The two Mandifers, able to live or to counterfeit life by creeping from their skins at night, had perished as inexplicably as they had been resurrected. The guerrillas, too, whose corpses had challenged him, must be finding a grateful rest now that the awful semblance of life had quitted their slack, butchered limbs. And the blue fire that had burst forth in the midst of the old battle, to linger ghostwise for years; the horned image that Jager had broken; the seeming powers of the Long Lost Friend, as an amulet and a storehouse of charms—these were items in the strange fabric. ”

“ Lanark was sure of that. How much of the power and motivity of the worship had been exerted by the Nameless One that now must continue nameless, how much of it was Persil Mandifer's doing, how much was accident of nature and horror-hallucination of witnesses, nobody could now decide. As Jager had suggested, it was probably as well that part of the mystery would remain. Things being as they were, one might pick up the threads of his normal human existence, and be happy and fearless. ”

“ Lanark looked up from the page. His face was earnest and, in a way, humble.
"I'm constrained to believe in many unbelievable things. If my experience tonight truly befell me, then I must believe in charms of safety. Supernatural evil like that must have its contrary supernatural good."
Jager pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and smiled in his beard. "I have heard it told," he said, "that charms and spells work only when one believes in them." ”

“ Lanark's lean fingers crushed Jager's coarser ones.
"Let's be gone," urged Lanark at once, but the preacher shook his head emphatically.
"Slowly, slowly," he temporized. "Cool your spirit, and take council. He that ruleth his temper is greater than he that taketh a city." Once more he put out his hand for the cream-colored volume of Albertus Magnus, and began to search through it.
"Do you think to comfort me from that book?" asked Lanark.
"It has more than comfort," Jager assured him. "It has guidance." ”

“ With one foot he turned the coffin-box upon its side. Lanark took a quick stride backward, just in time to prevent the ruddy form from dropping out upon his toes. A moment later, Jager had spurned the thing. It broke, with a crashing sound like crockery, and two more trampling kicks of the sergeant's heavy boots smashed it to bits.
"Stop!" cried Lanark, too late. "Why did you break it? I wanted to have a good look at the thing."
"But it is not good for men to look upon the devil's works," responded Jager, almost pontifically.
"Don't advise me, sergeant," said Lanark bleakly. ”

“ Jager took a position beside him, and, just behind the sergeant, Enid Mandifer stood.
Lanark self-consciously turned over his clutter of thoughts, searching for odds and ends of his youthful religious teachings. "'Man that is born of woman hath but short time to live, and is full of misery'," he managed to repeat. "'He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower'." As he said the words "cut down," he remembered his saber-stroke of the night before, and how he had shorn away a man's hand. That man, with his heavy black beard, lay in this trench before them, with the severed hand under him. ”

“ Larue's voice chuckled, and Enid ran, toward where Lanark had been fighting. That would be more endurable than this mad dream forced upon her. Anything would be more endurable. Twigs and thorns plucked at her skirt like spiteful fingers, but she ripped away from them and ran. She came into another clearing, a small one. The moon, striking between the boughs, made here a pool of light and touched up something of metal.
It was Lanark's revolver. Enid bent and seized it. ”

“ One farmer of the vicinity, who had ridden with Quantrill, had twice met strollers after dusk, and had recognized them for comrades whom he knew to be dead.
"And the center of this devil's business," concluded Jager, "is the farm that belonged to Persil Mandifer." He drew a deep, tired-sounding breath. "As the desert is the habitation of dragons, so is it with that farm. No trees live, and no grass. From a distance, one can see a woman. It is Enid Mandifer."
"Where is the place?" asked Lanark directly. ”

“ They were men, all right, standing each upon two legs, waving each two arms. No, one of them had only an arm and a stump. Had not one of Quantrill's men—yes! It came to the back of Jager's mind that Lanark himself had cut away an enemy's pistol hand with a stroke of his saber. Again he reflected that there had been six dead guerrillas, and that six were the forms treading so strange a measure yonder. He began to crawl forward again. Sweat made a slow, cold trickle along his spine. ”

“ At that instant his eyes fell upon the nearest of the two pallid, empty skins, which lay full in the moonlight. He forgot everything else. For he knew that collapsed face, even without the sharp stiletto-like bone of the nose to jut forth in its center. He knew that narrowness through the jowls and temples, that height of brow, that hair white as thistledown.
Persil Mandifer's skull had been inside. It must have been there, and living, recently. Jager's left hand crept out, and drew quickly back as though it had touched a snake. The texture of the skin was soft, clammy, moist ... fresh! ”

“ Frantically he struggled up out of that grave, and barely had he come to his knees on the ground above, when his horse snorted and jerked its bridle free from his grasp. Lanark sprang up, tingling all over. Across the trench, black and broad, stood a human—or semi-human—figure. ”

“ His eyes were bright and hot, and his face pale to the roots of his beard. When he spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper:
"That was a spell to control witches, in the name of Lucifer, king of hell. Didn't I say that this book was evil?"
"You must forget that," Lanark counseled him soberly. "I will admit that the book might cause sorrow and wickedness, if it were in wicked hands; but I do not think that you are anything but a good man."
"Thank you," said Jager simply. He rose and went to his table, then returned with an iron inkpot and a stump of a pen. "Let me have your right hand." ”

“ Lanark had had enough of this high-handed civilian's airs. He made a motion with his left hand to Corporal Gray, whose carbine-barrel glinted in the light from the house as it leveled itself at Mandifer's skull-head.
"You're under arrest," Lanark informed the two men.
The bigger one growled, the first sound he had made. He threw his enormous body forward in a sudden leaping stride, his gross hands extended as though to clutch Lanark. ”

“ Lanark fairly snapped back. "What can you think of me, Jager, when you suggest that I might let things stand as they are?"
The frontier preacher massaged his shaggy jowl with thoughtful knuckles. "You have been a man of war and an officer of death," he said heavily. "God taught your hands to fight. Yet your enemies are not those who perish by the sword." ”

“ There was a power to be worshipped, to be feared, to be fed with young women. She must go—no, this sort of belief was wrong. It had no element of decency in it, it was only beaten into her by the spell of the pendulum-swinging charm. Yet she had heard certain directions, orders as to what to do.
"You will act in the manner I have described, and say the things I have repeated, tonight at sundown," Mandifer informed her, as though from a great distance. "You will surrender yourself to the Nameless One, as it was ordained when first you came into my possession." ”

“ Then he turned and limped rapidly away, raging at the feeling of defeat that had him by the back of the neck. Then, as he reached his horse he found himself glad to be leaving the spot, even though Enid Mandifer remained behind, alone. He cursed with a vehemence that made the roan flinch, untied the halter and mounted. Away he rode, to the magnified clatter of hoofs. He looked back, not once but several times. Each time he saw Enid Mandifer, smaller and smaller, standing beside the bench under the naked tree. ”

“ Curtis had chosen him as sagely as he had chosen Lanark.
Staying in the open as much as possible, the party advanced upon the rock. They found it standing above a soft, grassy hollow, which in turn ran eastward from the base of the rock to a considerable ravine, dark and full of timber. As they spread out to the approach, they found something else; a house stood in the hollow, shadowed by the great pinnacle.
"It looks deserted, sir," volunteered Jager, at Lanark's bridle-elbow. "No sign of life."
"Perhaps," said Lanark. "Deploy the men, and we'll close in from all sides. ”

“ Lanark almost snatched the book. "Any weapon must be used. And I doubt if Albertus Magnus was evil. Wasn't he a churchman, and didn't he teach Saint Thomas Aquinas?" He leafed through the beginning of the book. "Here's a charm, Jager, to be spoken in the name of God. That doesn't sound unholy."
"Satan can recite scripture to his own ends," misquoted Jager. "I don't remember who said that, but——"
"Shakespeare said it, or something very like it," Lanark informed him. "Look here, Jager, farther on. Here's a spell against witchcraft and evil spirits." ”

“ Lanark's uniform had been replaced by a soft hat and black frock coat, his face was browner and his mustache thicker, and his cheek bore the jaggedly healed scar of the guerrilla pistol-bullet. He was richer, too; the death of his older brother, Captain Douglas Lanark of the Confederate artillery, at Chancellorsville, had left him his father's only heir. Yet he was recognizable as the young lieutenant who had ridden into this district four years gone. ”

“ A chuckle drifted to him, a contemptuous burble of sound; he thought of what Enid had said about divining her stepfather's mockery. Again the chuckle, dying away toward the left.
But up ahead came more noise of motion, and this was identifiable as feet—heavy, measured tramping of feet. New and stupid recruits walked like that, in their first drills. So did tired soldiers on the march. And the feet were coming his way.
Lanark's first reaction to this realization was of relief. Marching men, even enemies, would be welcome because he knew how to deal with them. ”