Читать книгу The White Invaders (Sci-Fi Classic) - Ray Cummings - Страница 4

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The colored boy gazed at Don and me with a look of terror.

“But I tell you I seen it!” he insisted. “An’ it’s down there now. A ghost! It’s all white an’ shinin’!”

“Nonsense, Willie,” Don turned to me. “I say, Bob, what do you make of this?”

“I seen it, I tell you,” the boy broke in. “It ain’t a mile from here if you want to go look at it.”

Don gripped the colored boy whose coffee complexion had taken on a greenish cast with his terror.

“Stop saying that, Willie. That’s absolute rot. There’s no such thing as a ghost.”

“But I seen—”

“Where?”

“Over on the north shore. Not far.”

“What did you see?” Don shook him. “Tell us exactly.”

“A man! I seen a man. He was up on a cliff just by the golf course when I first seen him. I was comin’ along the path down by the Fort Beach an’ I looked up an’ there he was, shinin’ all white in the moonlight. An’ then before I could run, he came floatin’ down at me.”

“Floating?”

“Yes. He didn’t walk. He came down through the rocks. I could see the rocks of the cliff right through him.”

Don laughed at that. But neither he nor I could set this down as utter nonsense, for within the past week there had been many wild stories of ghosts among the colored people of Bermuda. The Negroes of Bermuda are not unduly superstitious, and certainly they are more intelligent, better educated than most of their race. But the little islands, this past week, were echoing with whispered tales of strange things seen at night. It had been mostly down at the lower end of the comparatively inaccessible Somerset; but now here it was in our own neighborhood.

“You’ve got the fever, Willie,” Don laughed. “I say, who told you you saw a man walking through rock?”

“Nobody told me. I seen him. It ain’t far if you—”

“You think he’s still there?”

“Maybe so. Mr. Don, he was standin’ still, with his arms folded. I ran, an’—”

“Let’s go see if he’s there,” I suggested. “I’d like to have a look at one of these ghosts.”

But even as I lightly said it, a queer thrill of fear shot through me. No one can contemplate an encounter with the supernatural without a shudder.

“Right you are,” Don exclaimed. “What’s the use of theory? Can you lead us to where you saw him, Willie?”

“Ye-es, of course.”

The sixteen-year-old Willie was shaking again. “W-what’s that for, Mr. Don?”

Don had picked up a shotgun which was standing in a corner of the room.

“Ain’t no—no use of that, Mr. Don.”

“We’ll take it anyway, Willie. Ready, Bob?”

A step sounded behind us. “Where are you going?”

It was Jane Dorrance, Don’s cousin. She stood in the doorway. Her long, filmy white summer dress fell nearly to her ankles. Her black hair was coiled on her head. In her bodice was a single red poinsettia blossom. As she stood motionless, her small slight figure framed against the dark background of the hall, she could have been a painting of an English beauty save for the black hair suggesting the tropics. Her blue-eyed gaze went from Don to me, and then to the gun.

“Where are you going?”

“Willie saw a ghost.” Don grinned. “They’ve come from Somerset, Jane. I say, one of them seems to be right here.”

“Where?”

“Willie saw it down by the Fort Beach.”

“To-night?”

“Yes. Just now. So he says, though it’s all rot, of course.”

“Oh,” said Jane, and she became silent.

She appeared to be barring our way. It seemed to me, too, that the color had left her face, and I wondered vaguely why she was taking it so seriously. That was not like Jane: she was a level-headed girl, not at all the sort to be frightened by Negroes talking of ghosts.

She turned suddenly on Willie. The colored boy had been employed in the Dorrance household since childhood. Jane herself was only seventeen, and she had known Willie here in this same big white stone house, almost from infancy.

“Willie, what you saw, was it a—a man?”

“Yes,” said the boy eagerly. “A man. A great big man. All white an’ shinin’.”

“A man with a hood? Or a helmet? Something like a queer-looking hat on his head, Willie?”

“Jane!” expostulated Don. “What do you mean?”

“I saw him—saw it,” said Jane nervously.

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “You did? When? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I saw it last night.” She smiled faintly. “I didn’t want to add to these wild tales. I thought it was my imagination. I had been asleep—I fancy I was dreaming of ghosts anyway.”

“You saw it—” Don prompted.

“Outside my bedroom window. Some time in the middle of the night. The moon was out and the—the man was all white and shining, just as Willie says.”

“But your bedroom,” I protested. “Good Lord, your bedroom is on the upper floor.”

But Jane continued soberly, with a sudden queer hush to her voice, “It was standing in the air outside my window. I think it had been looking in. When I sat up—I think I had cried out, though none of you heard me evidently—when I sat up, it moved away; walked away. When I got to the window, there was nothing to see.” She smiled again. “I decided it was all part of my dream. This morning—well, I was afraid to tell you because I knew you’d laugh at me. So many girls down in Somerset have been imagining things like that.”

To me, this was certainly a new light on the matter. I think that both Don and I, and certainly the police, had vaguely been of the opinion that some very human trickster was at the bottom of all this. Someone, criminal or otherwise, against whom our shotgun would be efficacious. But here was level-headed Jane telling us of a man standing in mid-air peering into her second-floor bedroom, and then walking away. No trickster could accomplish that.

“Ain’t we goin’?” Willie demanded. “I seen it, but it’ll be gone.”

“Right enough,” Don exclaimed grimly. “Come on, Willie.”

He disregarded Jane as he walked to the door, but she clung to him.

“I’m coming,” she said obstinately, and snatched a white lace scarf from the hall rack and flung it over her head like a mantilla. “Don, may I come?” she added coaxingly.

He gazed at me dubiously. “Why, I suppose so,” he said finally. Then he grinned. “Certainly no harm is going to come to us from a ghost. Might frighten us to death, but that’s about all a ghost can do, isn’t it?”

We left the house. The only other member of the Dorrance household was Jane’s father—the Hon. Arthur Dorrance, M.P. He had been in Hamilton all day, and had not yet returned. It was about nine o’clock of an evening in mid-May. The huge moon rode high in a fleecy sky, illumining the island with a light so bright one could almost read by it.

“We’ll walk,” said Don. “No use riding, Willie.”

“No. It’s shorter over the hill. It ain’t far.”

We left our bicycles standing against the front veranda, and, with Willie and Don leading us, we plunged off along the little dirt road of the Dorrance estate. The poinsettia blooms were thick on both sides of us. A lily field, which a month before had been solid white with blossoms, still added its redolence to the perfumed night air. Through the branches of the squat cedar trees, in almost every direction there was water visible—deep purple this night, with a rippled sheen of silver upon it.

We reached the main road, a twisting white ribbon in the moonlight. We followed it for a little distance, around a corkscrew turn, across a tiny causeway where the moonlit water of an inlet lapped against the base of the road and the sea-breeze fanned us. A carriage, heading into the nearby town of St. Georges, passed us with the thud of horses’ hoofs pounding on the hard smooth stone of the road. Under its jaunty canopy an American man reclined with a girl on each side of him. He waved us a jovial greeting as they passed.

Then Willie turned us off the road. We climbed the ramp of an open grassy field, with a little cedar woods to one side, and up ahead, half a mile to the right, the dark crumbling ramparts of a little ancient fort which once was for the defense of the island.

Jane and I were together, with Willie and Don in advance of us, and Don carrying the shotgun.

“You really saw it, Jane?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought I did. Then I thought that I didn’t.”

“Well, I hope we see it now. And if it’s human—which it must be if there’s anything to it at all—we’ll march it back to St. Georges and lock it up.”

She turned and smiled at me, but it was a queer smile, and I must admit my own feelings were queer.

“Don’t you think you’re talking nonsense, Bob?”

“Yes, I do,” I admitted. “I guess maybe the whole thing is nonsense. But it’s got the police quite worried. You knew that, didn’t you? All this wild talk—there must be some basis for it.”

Don was saying, “Take the lower path, Willie. Take the same route you were taking when you saw it.”

We climbed down a steep declivity, shadowed by cedar trees, and reached the edge of a tiny, almost landlocked, lagoon. It was no more than a few hundred feet in diameter. The jagged, porous gray-black rocks rose like an upstanding crater rim to mark its ten-foot entrance to the sea. A little white house stood here with its back against the fifty-foot cliff. It was dark, its colored occupants probably already asleep. Two rowboats floated in the lagoon, moored near the shore. And on the narrow strip of stony beach, nets were spread to dry.

“This way, Mister Don. I was comin’ along here, toward the Fort.” Willie was again shaking with excitement. “Just past that bend.”

“You keep behind me.” Don led us now, with his gun half raised. “Don’t talk when we get further along, and walk as quietly as you can.”

The narrow path followed the bottom of the cliff. We presently had the open sea before us, with a line of reefs a few hundred yards out against which the lazy ground swell was breaking in a line of white. The moonlit water lapped gently at our feet. The cliff rose to our right, a mass of gray-black rock, pitted and broken, fantastically indented, unreal in the moonlight.

“I seen it—just about there,” Willie whispered.

Before us, a little rock headland jutted out into the water. Don halted us, and we stood silent, gazing. I think that there is hardly any place more fantastic than a Bermuda shorefront in the moonlight. In these little eroded recesses, caves and grottoes one might expect to see crooked-legged gnomes, scampering to peer at the human intruder. Gnarled cedars, hanging precariously, might hide pixies and elves. A child’s dream of fairyland, this reality of a Bermuda shorefront.

“There it is!”

Willie’s sibilant whisper dispelled my roaming fancy. We all turned to stare behind us in the direction of Willie’s unsteady finger. And we all saw it—the white shape of a man down near the winding path we had just traversed. A wild thrill of fear, excitement, revulsion—call it what you will—surged over me. The thing had been following us!

We stood frozen, transfixed. The shape was almost at the water level, a hundred feet or so away. It had stopped its advance; to all appearances it was a man standing there, calmly regarding us. Don and I swung around to face it, shoving Jane and Willie behind us.

Willie had started off in terror, but Jane gripped him.

“Quiet, Willie!”

“There it is! See it—”

“Of course we see it,” Don whispered. “Don’t talk. We’ll wait; see what it does.”

We stood a moment. The thing was motionless. It was in a patch of shadow, but, as though gleaming with moonlight, it seemed to shine. Its glow was silvery, with a greenish cast almost phosphorescent. Was it standing on the path? I could not tell. It was too far away; too much in shadow. But I plainly saw that it had the shape of a man. Wraith, or substance? That also, was not yet apparent.

Then suddenly it was moving! Coming toward us. But not floating, for I could see the legs moving, the arms swaying. With measured tread it was walking slowly toward us!

Don’s shotgun went up. “Bob, we’ll hold our ground. Is it—is he armed, can you see?”

“No! Can’t tell.”

Armed! What nonsense! How could this wraith, this apparition, do us physical injury!

“If—if he gets too close, Bob, by God, I’ll shoot. But if he’s human, I wouldn’t want to kill him.”

The shape had stopped again. It was fifty feet from us now, and we could clearly see that it was a man, taller than normal. He stood now with folded arms—a man strangely garbed in what seemed a white, tight-fitting jacket and short trunks. On his head was a black skull cap surmounted by a helmet of strange design.

Don’s voice suddenly echoed across the rocks.

“Who are you?”

The white figure gave no answer. It did not move.

“We see you. What do you want?” Don repeated.

Then it moved again. Partly toward us and partly sidewise, away from the sea. The swing of the legs was obvious. It was walking. But not upon the path, nor upon the solid surface of these Bermuda rocks! A surge of horror went through me at the realization. This was nothing human! It was walking on some other surface, invisible to us, but something solid beneath its own tread.

“Look!” Jane whispered. “It’s walking—into the cliff!”

There was no doubt about it now. Within thirty feet of us, it was slowly walking up what must have been a steep ascent. Already it was ten feet or more above our level. And it was behind the rocks of the cliff! Shining in there as though the rocks themselves were transparent!

Or were my senses tricking me? I whispered, “Is it back of the rocks? Or is there a cave over there? An opening?”

“Let’s go see.” Don took a step forward; and called again:

“You—we see you. Stand still! Do you want me to fire at you?”

The figure turned and again stood regarding us with folded arms. Obviously not Don’s voice, but his movement, had stopped it. We left the path and climbed about ten feet up the broken cliff-side. The figure was at our level now, but it was within the rocks. We were close enough now to see other details: a man’s white face, with heavy black brows, heavy features; a stalwart, giant figure, six and a half feet at the least. The white garment could have been of woven metal. I saw black, thread-like wires looped along the arms, over the shoulders, down the sides of the muscular naked legs. There seemed, at the waist, a dial-face, with wires running into it.

The details were so clear that they seemed substantial, real. Yet the figure was so devoid of color that it could have been a light-image projected here upon these rocks. And the contour of the cliff was plainly visible in front of it.

We stood gazing at the thing, and it stared back at us.

“Can you hear us?” Don called.

Evidently it could not. Then a sardonic smile spread over the face of the apparition. The lips moved. It said something to us, but we heard no sound.

It was a wraith—this thing so visibly real! It was apparently close to us, yet there was a limitless, intervening void of the unknown.

It stood still with folded arms across the brawny chest, sardonically regarding us. The face was strangely featured, yet wholly of human cast. And, above all, its aspect was strangely evil. Its gaze suddenly turned on Jane with a look that made my heart leap into my throat and made me fling up my arms as though to protect her.

Then seemingly it had contemplated us enough; the folded arms swung down; it turned away from us, slowly stalking off.

“Stop!” Don called.

“See!” I whispered. “It’s coming out in the open!”

The invisible surface upon which it walked led it out from the cliff. The figure was stalking away from us in mid-air, and it seemed to fade slowly in the moonlight.

“It’s going!” I exclaimed. “Don, it’s getting away!”

Impulsively I started scrambling over the rocks; unreasoningly, for who can chase and capture a ghost?

Don stopped me. “Wait!” His shotgun went to his shoulders. The white shape was now again about fifty feet away. The gun blazed into the moonlight. The buckshot tore through the stalking white figure; the moonlit shorefront echoed with the shot.

When the smoke cleared away, we saw the apparition still walking quietly forward. Up over the sea now, up and out into the moonlit night, growing smaller and dimmer in the distance, until presently it was faded and gone.

A ghost?

We thought so then.