Robert E. Howard

“ From the black woods beside the trail rose a shriek of blood-curdling laughter. Slavering, mouthing sounds followed it, so strange and garbled that at first I did not recognize them as human words. Their inhuman intonations sent a chill down my spine.
"Dead men!" the inhuman voice chanted. "Dead men with torn throats! There will be dead men among the pines before dawn! Dead men! Fools, you are all dead!"
Ashley and I both fired in the direction of the voice, and in the crashing reverberations of our shots the ghastly chant was drowned. ”

“ Richard Brent started violently, and his face went livid.
"Who—what do you mean?" His voice cracked, unexpectedly falsetto. "What man?"
"I don't know. A fellow who manages to rip his victims like a hound——"
"A hound!" The words burst out in a scream. The change in Brent was hideous. His eyes seemed starting from his head; his hair stood up stiffly on his scalp, and his skin was the hue of ashes. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grin of sheer terror.
He gagged and then found voice.
"Get out!" he choked. "I see it, now! I know why you wanted to get into my house! You bloody devil! ”

“ I was lifting a revolver, but just then Adam Grimm whirled, and the sight of his face froze me into paralysis. What unguessed masters of nameless science dwell in the black towers of Yahlgan I dare not dream, but surely black sorcery from the pits of Hell went into the remolding of that countenance.
Ears, forehead and eyes were those of an ordinary man; but the nose, mouth and jaws were such as men have not even imagined in nightmares. ”

“ And suddenly complete delirium overcame Adam Grimm, and the laboring monotones shattered in a heart-stopping scream.
“First the girl!” shrieked Adam Grimm—or the thing that had been Adam Grimm. “The girl—to be slain as I have seen women slain in Mongolia—to be skinned alive, slowly—oh, so slowly! She shall bleed to make you suffer, Richard Brent—suffer as I suffered in black Yahlgan! She shall not die until there is no longer an inch of skin left on her body below her neck! Watch me flay your beloved niece, Richard Brent!” ”

“ Some such thoughts flitted vaguely through my mind that night as I groped along the narrow trail that wound through the deep pinelands. Such thoughts are likely to keep company with any man who dares invade, in the night, that lonely stretch of densely timbered river-country which the black people call Egypt, for some obscurely racial reason.
There is no blackness this side of Hell’s unlighted abyss as absolute as the blackness of the pine woods. ”

“ I turned squarely about, stood motionless in the black trail, staring back at the pinpoint of light which still winked through the trees. Peril hovered over the cabin in that tiny clearing, and it was no part of a white man to leave that girl with the protection of none but her half-lunatic uncle and his servant. Ashley looked like a fighter. But Brent was an unpredictable quantity. I believed he was tinged with madness. His insane rages and equally insane suspicions seemed to indicate as much. I had no sympathy for him. A man who would sacrifice his friend to save his own life deserves death. ”

“ The misshapen head dipped; a scream gurgled in Richard Brent’s throat as the hideous jaws locked. For a mad instant those two frightful visages seemed to melt together, to my horrified sight—the mad human and the mad inhuman. Then with a wild-beast gesture, Grimm threw up his head, ripping out his enemy’s jugular, and blood deluged both figures. Grimm lifted his head, with his dripping fangs and bloody muzzle, and his lips writhed back in a last peal of ghastly laughter that choked in a rush of blood, as he crumpled and lay still. ”

“ The bandages I have worn ever since I left Yahlgan were displaced by a branch and I had to kill the fool who was guiding me to your cabin. No man looks upon my face and lives, except Tope Braxton who is more like an ape than a man, anyway. I fell in with him shortly after I was fired at by the man Garfield, and I took him into my confidence, recognizing a valuable ally. He is too brutish to feel the same horror at my appearance that the other Negro felt. He thinks I am a demon of some sort, but so long as I am not hostile toward him, he sees no reason why he should not ally himself with me. ”

“ Breathless silence followed that cry, a silence in which the forest seemed to hold its breath and the darkness shut in more blackly still.
Again the scream was repeated, this time closer. Then I heard the pound of bare feet along the trail, and a form hurled itself at me out of the darkness.
My revolver was in my hand, and I instinctively thrust it out to fend the creature off. The only thing that kept me from pulling the trigger was the noise the object was making—gasping, sobbing noises of fear and pain. It was a man, and direly stricken. ”

“ Jim Tike was dead, lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his red-dabbled limbs sprawling drunkenly. I stared uneasily at the surrounding forest that hid the thing that had killed him. That it was a man I knew; the outline, in the brief light of the match, had been vague, but unmistakably human. But what sort of a weapon could make a wound like the merciless champing of great bestial teeth? I shook my head, recalling the ingenuity of mankind in the creation of implements of slaughter, and considered a more acute problem. ”

“ As for artificial skill, Tope would have torn the average boxer or wrestler limb from limb. Man-developed science alone could not have withstood the blinding speed, tigerish ferocity and bone-crushing strength that lurked in Tope Braxton's terrible thews.
It was like fighting a wild beast, and I met him at his own game. I fought Tope Braxton as the rivermen fight, as savages fight, as bull apes fight. Breast to breast, muscle straining against muscle, iron fist crushing against hard skull, knee driven to groin, teeth slashing sinewy flesh, gouging, tearing, smashing. ”

“ I would have already killed Garfield myself, but he was too strong, too handy with his gun. You might have learned a lesson from these people, Richard Brent. They live hardily and violently, and they are tough and dangerous as timber wolves. But you—you are soft and over-civilized. You will die far too easily. I wish you were as hard as Garfield was. I would like to keep you alive for days, to suffer.
"I gave Garfield a chance to get away, but the fool came back and had to be dealt with. ”

“ If a murderous criminal besides Tope Braxton were abroad in the piney woods, there was all the more reason for warning the men in that lonely cabin. As for my own danger, I was already more than halfway to the cabin. It would scarcely be more dangerous to advance than to retreat. If I did turn back, and escape from Egypt alive, before I could rouse a posse, anything might happen in that isolated cabin under the black trees.
So I left Jim Tike’s body there in the trail, and went on, gun in hand, and nerves sharpened by the new peril. ”

“ Deep in the mazy pine labyrinth, a white man and his servant lived alone, and it was the duty of any man to warn them that a red-handed killer might be skulking about their cabin.
I was foolish, perhaps, to be traveling on foot; but men who wear the name of Garfield are not in the habit of turning back on a task once attempted. When my horse unexpectedly went lame, I left him at one of the Negro cabins which fringe the edge of Egypt, and went on afoot. Night overtook me on the path, and I intended remaining until morning with the man I was going to warn—Richard Brent. ”

“ Brent," interposed Ashley. "He helped us, in the woods."
"He's a devil!" raved Brent, clinging to his gun, though not trying to lift it. "He came here to murder us! He lied when he said he came to warn us against a black man. What man would be fool enough to come into Egypt at night, just to warn a stranger? My God, has he got you both fooled? I tell you, he wears the brand of the hound!"
"Then you know he's here!" cried Ashley.
"Yes; this fiend told me, trying to worm his way into the house. God, Ashley, he's tracked us down, in spite of all our cleverness. We have trapped ourselves! ”

“ Dimly I made out the slender figure of a woman; her face was like a pale blossom in the gloom.
"Yes, it's you, all right," Ashley grunted. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to warn Brent about Tope Braxton," I answered shortly; I do not relish being called on to account for my actions to anybody. "You've heard about it, naturally. If I'd known you were in town, it would have saved me a trip. What are you-all doing on foot?"
"Our horses ran away a short distance back," he answered. "There was a dead negro in the trail. But that's not what frightened the horses. ”

“ No answer; but the form came on in a rush, and as I groped for a match, it was almost upon me. I struck the match—with a ferocious snarl the figure hurled itself against me, the match was struck from my hand and extinguished, and I felt a sharp pain on the side of my neck. My gun exploded almost involuntarily and without aim, and its flash dazzled me, obscuring rather than revealing the tall man-like figure that struck at me; then with a crashing rush through the trees my assailant was gone, and I staggered alone on the forest trail. ”

“ Each of us was aware of only one desire, one blind crimson urge to kill with naked hands, to rend and tear and maul and trample until the other was a motionless mass of bloody flesh and splintered bone. ”

“ What—what are we to do?"
"What can we do except lock ourselves in and fight to the last?" shrieked Brent. His nerves were in frightful shape.
"Please tell me what it is all about?" pleaded the trembling girl.
With a terrible despairing laugh Brent threw out his arm, gesturing toward the black woods beyond the faint light. "A devil in human form is lurking out there!" he exclaimed. "He has tracked me across the world, and has cornered me at last. Do you remember Adam Grimm?"
"The man who went with you to Mongolia five years ago? But he died, you said. You came back without him." ”

“ They know things that no modern even dares to guess. They know more about plastic surgery, for instance, than all the scientists of the world put together. They understand glands, as no European or American understands them; they know how to retard or exercise them, so as to produce certain results—God, what results! Look at me! Look, damn you, and go mad!”
I glided about the cabin until I reached a window, and peered through a crack in the shutter.
Richard Brent lay on a divan in a room incongruously richly furnished for that primitive setting. ”

“ No natural creature could have crossed that room under that raking hail of close-range lead. At that distance I could not miss. He reeled at each impact, but he did not fall until I had smashed home the sixth bullet. Then he crawled on, beast-like, on hands and knees, froth and blood dripping from his grinning jaws. ”

“ None knows better than they how to alter a man. Black magic? Bah! Those devils are the greatest scientists in the world. What little the Western world knows about science has leaked out in little trickles from those black mountains. ”

“ Among the black mountains of Inner Mongolia, where no white man had ever penetrated, our expedition was attacked by fanatical devil-worshippers—the black monks of Erlik who dwell in the forgotten and accursed city of Yahlgan. Our guides and servants were killed, and all our stock driven off but one small camel.
"Grimm and I stood them off all day, firing from behind the rocks when they tried to rush us. That night we planned to make a break for it, on the camel that remained to us. But it was evident to me that the beast could not carry us both to safety. One man might have a chance. ”

“ His thick lips froze in a killer’s mirthless grin as he squinted along the barrel of the pistol in his right hand. My whole body went tense, as I sought desperately for a loophole to save my life. My legs were not tied, but my hands were manacled, and a single movement would bring hot lead crashing through my brain. ”

“ Poor girl, it must have been like a nightmare to her; to have been snatched out of her sheltered urban life and dropped down in a country strange and primitive to her, among people whose ways seemed incredibly savage and violent, and into a bloody episode of wrong and menace and vengeance. The deep pinelands of the Southwest seem strange and alien enough at any time to the average Eastern city-dweller ”

“ We had to come on on foot. It's been a pretty nasty experience. From the looks of the negro I judge a pack of wolves killed him, and the scent frightened the horses. We've been expecting an attack any minute."
"Wolves don't hunt in packs and drag down human beings in these woods. It was a man that killed Jim Tike."
In the waning glow of the match Ashley stood staring at me in amazement, and then I saw the astonishment ebb from his countenance and horror grow there. Slowly his color ebbed, leaving his bronzed face as ashy as that of his master had been. The match went out, and we stood silent. ”

“ He say if I help him kill some folks, he help me git away. He take and throw bomb into de cabin; dat bomb don’t kill dem folks, just paralyze ’em. I watchin’ de trail, and hit you when you come back. Dat man Ashley ain’t plumb paralyze, so Mistuh Grimm, he take and bite out he throat like he done Jim Tike.”
“What do you mean, bite out his throat?” I demanded.
“Mistuh Grimm ain’t a human bein’. He stan’ up and walk like a man, but he part hound, or wolf.” ”