Читать книгу Chains of the Living Dead - Arthur Leo Zagat - Страница 3

Table of Contents

LAURA STANDISH blurted out her husband's name before she was fully awake. "Frank!" But there was no answer. Even before she realized just what it was that had awakened her, a chill, little quiver of dread brushed her spine.

The fire on the hearth, before which she had fallen asleep, was low and there was no other light in the huge, dark-ceilinged parlor. Good Lord! It was already night and Frank wasn't back yet! He was to have been gone only an hour, ample time to go down the hill to the General Store in the village and get some food for supper. She had been too tired after their long trip from the city to go with him, and he had seemed worried about leaving her here alone. Something must have...

A sound at the door brought Laura startled to her feet. He was here at last! Returning circulation needled her cramped legs so that she could not move. Frank had a key, but...

The rasp of flesh against wood, out there in the gloomy foyer, was somehow furtive. Heat beat out from the glowing logs in the fireplace, yet Laura shivered with queasy cold. Suddenly she knew it was the very stealthiness of that groping hand—the menace implicit in its quietness—that had awakened her. And suddenly, she knew also that she was afraid.

Someone was trying to get in! And it was not Frank! For a moment, panic swept over her, and she cowered back against the fireplace, so close that the hem of her dress began to scorch. She was alone in this musty, old country house, and the deep pine woods separated her by a good mile from the village. From any ordinary prowler, she was comparatively safe. Frank had insisted on making sure, before he went, that all windows were safely locked. He had made her promise to shoot home the two heavy bolts on the big, front door.

But there was something eerie about the way whatever it was outside fumbled at the barrier, a strange quality of blindness, of mindlessness. If only Frank was here, with his capable shoulders and easy confident smile! But he was gone, had been, for hours. Overwhelming dread seized Laura Standish as she listened to the aimless groping, the queer slithering sounds, along the stout pine of the door.

Had the Thing outside caught Frank unawares as he was hurrying back to her? Was his dear body even now a cold and mutilated corpse somewhere in the depths of the woods? Did the intruder know that she was alone, a helpless, unprotected, lovely morsel?

She fought herself back to a semblance of sanity. She must not think such thoughts! She forced her trembling voice into just the right mold of casual inquiry. Perhaps, if the prowler knew she were not afraid, if he thought there were others with her in the house...

"Who is there?" she called.

Still there was no answer. The latch! Oh God, the latch! It was rising in its cradle, slowly, with infinite stealth. She stared at its inexorable movement with eyes that were frozen with terror. A new sound came—a snuffling, whining eagerness. It held no human quality in its muffled breathing; it was more like the whimper of an animal to whom human doors are insoluble puzzles.

Laura exhaled slowly. She had forgotten; the bolts in their sockets would hold. The Thing outside seemed to realize that too. The whimper became an angry snarl that pierced the double thickness of the porch. Then silence reigned for an instant, silence during which Laura, still backed against the fire, felt the blood pound madly in her veins. Had the snuffling monster given up the attempt, gone away to its lair?

CR-R-RASH! The heavy door quivered and bent inward. The stout iron bolts strained against their sockets. A screw started from its spiral bed, and sawdust fell in a tiny cloud to the floor.

Smash! Crack! Crash!

Again and again came the terrific thumps. The great, pine door groaned and sagged under the impact of the repeated blows. Each thud was a sledgehammer smashing home against Laura's skull. She could not move, she could not breathe in her terror. No human being could break down that heavy, reinforced barrier. Slam! Her stiffened lips worked soundlessly. A screw, inches long, clattered to the floor. One iron socket dangled uselessly on the precarious thread of a single fastening.

A choked scream tore at her throat "Help! Frank! Help!" she cried in an agony of fear. Then dreadful realization clamored in her brain, sagged her limbs to a feral crouch. Frank, her husband, could not hear. Perhaps never again would he?!

She glared around with mounting madness. There was no hope, no escape for her. It was a small, summer cabin they had rented for the season, intent only on primitive seclusion and the cozy warmth of the two together alone. The ground floor was all one room—a timbered parlor with a gigantic native-stone fireplace for its kitchen. Overhead were two bedrooms, now empty and forlorn. There was no rear door through which she could flee, and her fingers twisting frantically at the window latches would bring the mysterious attacker down upon her.

Thick, ominous silence succeeded the smash of a heavy body against a weakening portal. The Thing had heard her cry for help, was waiting stealthily, flesh flattened against the rough pine. She could hear the slobbering wheeze of its breath, the whimpering sound in its throat.

Oh God! What dreadful monster was crouching out there, waiting for her to cry out again, resting before the final attempt that would bring the door and hinges and all crashing to the ground?

In the very extremity of her fear, Laura found new strength. She must see what it was that had come out of the night, that sought terrible entrance into the lonely cabin. She must see—before it was too late. Her limbs were no longer part of her. They moved her away from the dull-red embers of the hearth, across a long, interminable expanse of flooring, where the shadows ebbed and flowed with each flicker of the dying flames, toward the thick-curtained window that gave on the porch. One dreadful thought swelled and swelled inside her skull until the thin bone ached and reeled under its impact.

Why was the attacker slamming with unhuman strength against the door; why had he not forced an easier entrance through a window?

She shrank desperately from the sinister implications of that thought; she spewed it out like an unclean thing. Outside, the whimper grew to an eager, slavering whine. It had heard her slow, tortured progress across the floor. It was waiting for her to open the door!

The thought rocked her consciousness, made her senses reel and swim. She tore at the heavy stuff of the curtain with terror-strong hands. It swung back to disclose a long, narrow panel of corpse-white luminance. A cold, dead moon struggled to pierce the dense, black shadows of the pines, the taller gloom of the hemlocks. A little beyond, where the old lumber road bent in an arc past the house, the victorious beams bunched in an irregular patch of leprous white.

But Laura saw only the crouching Thing on the porch. It was flattened against the tottering door as if it were listening, waiting. A slanting dart of moonlight spread shudderingly over its massive frame, bathed it in an eerie glow that paralyzed her limbs, exploded red horror in her brain.

And as if it had heard the moan that tore involuntarily from her pallid lips, the monster sprang away from the door, turned its head.

For one, long, terrible moment their eyes met, locked. Dear God, it was a man! But a man such as Laura had never seen before. No light of human reason showed in those glaring eyeballs, or softened the bestial madness of that ape-like face. Yellow froth dripped from the corners of the slobbering mouth, and the thick spume gurgled audibly in the throat. Worn, tattered pants and an even more tattered shirt of indistinguishable hue covered the barrel-thickness of the body. Long, hairy arms dangled almost to the ground.

Laura tried to shrink back, but could not. Her hand gripped the curtain as if glued. Her muscles were beyond control. She knew now that the man outside was mad; stark, irretrievably mad. Prayers, pleas for mercy, could not penetrate that distorted brain. She was beyond all help, all human aid.

The madman whirled on bare, misshapen feet like a cat. His right hand, hidden in the shadows, swung into view. Great God in Heaven! The moon glinted with unholy glee on a broad band of greyish metal that encircled his powerful wrist, and sprayed in a shower of frozen light on the chain that dangled therefrom. The last link showed jagged, broken edges of metal where it had been snapped in two.

Laura felt herself fainting, yet she did not fall. She tried to tear her hand away from the revealing curtain, to run madly, anywhere, away from that awful sight. But a nightmare paralysis held her in icy embrace. The madman had been chained, like a wild beast, like a slave! He had broken away with superhuman strength to roam the wild woods, to find her, a hapless victim for his maniacal will!

The creature thrust his manacled hand toward the window in a strange gesture. The links rattled hideously. He opened his thick lips and a curious whimpering, like that of a beaten dog, spewed from his mouth. As if—almost as if he were imploring her to open the door, to let him in.

Terror flared in Laura's eyes. She dared not, she must not. It was the cunning born of a diseased mind, luring her to destruction. The maniac seemed to sense her loathing, to read her great fear aright. A change came over his bestial face. His lips snarled back to show yellowed teeth; he lunged against the already battered portal. There was a great rending sound. The loosened bolt flew with a doomful thud to the floor. Only one shaky bolt remained between her and his raging lust.

He heaved back again, shoulder arched for the final blow. Laura came to desperate life. Little sobs whimpered in her throat, cataracts of ceaseless blood made turbulent noise in her ears. Her unlocked fingers flew to the catch on the window, tugged frantically at its rusty iron. If only she could twist the stubborn metal, swing up the window in one swift heave, and catapult her slender body through the opening just as the madman rushed in the door, perhaps...

The maniac hunched forward, heedless of her puny efforts. His darkened mind could not associate the window with entrance or exit. In seconds, he would be through, upon her shrinking body. And still the window catch, imbedded with all of Frank's lean strength, refused to give. With sudden, awful clarity she knew it would not open.

The flame of hideous triumph glowed on the madman's brute face. His shoulder bent against the portal. It tottered, split. The night air swirled through the crack with beating wings. Laura shrieked, and lifted her small white fist to smash out the pane of glass.

Clank! Thud—thud! Clank!

Wild hope swept like a consuming blaze through Laura's shaking form. She was saved! That thudding noise was from the old lumber road. It was the sound of many men, slogging along through the rutted dirt. She would shout, she would shriek, she would pour all her desperate terror into one last cry. They would come running, those unseen, blessed men; they would rescue her from this obscene Thing outside. Perhaps even—her bursting heart bounded even more madly than before—Frank was with them, hurrying them back to save his Laura.

See, already the monster had heard, was afraid! He whirled away from the sagging, half-open door. He darted back into the shadows, a crouched, dim-seen animal. Whimpers of fear rumbled in his hairy throat.

Fierce joy surged through her veins. She thrust back the heavy shrouded curtain. She raised her clenched fist to slam against the glass; she opened her mouth to cry for help.

But the cry choked back in her throat with a sudden tautness of muscles; her hand fell like a leaden weight to her side. A horrible thought had seared her brain and clogged her veins with ice. Clank! Clank! Much louder now, nearer, coming down the mountain. Clank! Clank! Beating out a steady, slogging rhythm, a strange, Satanic music. One—two—one—two! March, march. Clash of metal on metal. One foot up; other foot down! Clank—clank!

Laura caught at the window sill to keep from falling. Her scalp was a squeezing cap of horror; her lungs fought for breath. She knew now what caused that eerie sound. It was the chains of manacled men, marching Things coming down the mountain after her. Coming to help their fellow monster, coming to cut off all hope of her escape!

On and on they came, still invisible, still shrouded by the dark-massed pines, chains clanking, metal ringing in horrible unison. The madman in the shadows stirred, whined, and was gone into the night like a ghost called back to its grave. But she knew why he went. He was joining that hideous Tout of his fellows, summoning them with slobbering whimpers to the attack.

She stood at the window like immovable stone, left hand still frozen to the curtain hem. Her brain shrieked madly: "Run, while there is yet time. Out the door, into the woods, anywhere before they come for you!" But her muscles were tight knots of flesh, and her skin, a leaded coffin.

Now it was too late. The ominous clank of the chains burst upon her frozen senses with a wild, triumphant chant. Out there, where the road bent in an arc, and the moonlight lay in a splotch of scabby, leprous white on the grey dirt, a figure moved. For one moment it stopped and lifted its head, laved in the cold, dead spotlight of Hell's own theater.

Great God in Heaven! The face that turned toward the house, as if it saw her fear-rigid at the window, was the face similar to that of the madman who had just slunk away from her porch. The glare was gone from this one's eyes, the snarl from his flabby lips. His huge, knotted shoulders bowed forward in abject servitude, as if crushed under unutterable weights. The links of the manacle encircling his wrist stretched back into the blackness from which he had stepped. A new band of metal enclosed the thickness of his ankle.

For a moment he hesitated, brutish face vacant with the quenched embers of madness. Then, a strange hissing sound from the rear, and he jerked forward his head, hunched shoulders, and stepped into the blackness of eternity.

Clank—thud—clank! Laura's heart was pounding so she had not sensed the momentary cessation of that Devil's march. The dual chains writhed across the dead white patch of moon like disembodied serpents, endless, gleaming with unholy luster. All her faculties were concentrated on that small spot of light. What was coming next, what dreadful portent to snap the bonds of her reason?

The links jerked taut. Another figure lurched forward into the moon, blinked, raised his head. Black, mindless eyes bored into her very soul, shriveled it to nothingness. Mad, mad, every one of them! Madmen, chained to each other like wild beasts, marching along the road like slaves to some dreadful auction block! Hate distorted his stubbled countenance; mad lust leered at her from under a mop of uncut hair. His chains clanked startlingly, he lurched toward the house with sudden motion. He had seen the terrified girl at the window.

Again that sinister, hissing sound. He jerked backward, the links stiff as ramrods. Unutterable terror flared like sheet lightning over his hideous, lecherous face. His head bent low, his shaggy form strained forward. The chains resumed their rhythmic clanking, and darkness swallowed him whole.

Clank, clink, clank! Oh God, was there no end? More chains writhing through the moon-flooded spot; another bowed and mindless figure, stumbling through the patch, blind and weary, not pausing in his staggering pace, not lifting his head. Black night enfolded him too. And still another figure moved into the light, shaking his head from side to side, leaping upward with little grotesque hops, jerked downward by the restraining metal, mouth wide in horrible, soundless chuckle. He was even more dreadful in his mindless mirth than the others.

And still the double chains writhed backward into the night. An endless, marching army of the damned, hell's creatures clanking their way from blackness to blackness. Laura could stand it no longer. Her throat was a strangling fire, her body a shivering lump of ice. Madness plucked at her own brain, leered at her with eyes like those of the manacled Things, invited her with loathsome whispers to join that procession of the doomed.

With the last grim shreds of her reason she held back the shrieks, held back from rushing out into the night. The road bent in a sharp curve around the house. The clanking madmen now enfolded her, hemmed her in on three sides. Behind was the grim, precipitous up-thrust of Superstition Mountain. Soon they would turn, creep forward through the murk, spring upon her with horrid slaverings.

Her heart rapped out a last desperate tattoo, then stopped altogether. Everything stopped; every process of her being. The room, the night, the earth, the universe, froze like a run-down clock. This was death, or worse...