Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (7 page)

Tefere decided after a while, as he lay staring at his companion, that the latter's moroseness as likely due to disappointment over his failure to find the treasure. However, he had to admit, it was not like Arpad to be disappointed or downcast under such circumstances. After all, he had only recently suffered the loss of his wife Christine, and still pressed on with this assignment. Arpad did not speak again, but sat glaring before him as if he saw something invisible to others. Somehow, there was a shadowy fear in his aspect. Tefere continued to watch him, and saw that the guides, impassive and cryptic, were also watching him, as if with some obscure expectancy. The riddle was too much for Tefere, and he gave it up after a while, lapsing into a restless, fever-turbulent slumber from which he awakened at intervals to see the set face of Arpad, dimmer and more distorted each time with the slowly dying fire and the invading shadows.

Tefere felt stronger in the morning: his mind was clear, his pulse tranquil once more; and he saw with mounting concern the indisposition of Arpad, who seemed to rouse and exert himself with great difficulty, speaking hardly a word and moving with sluggishness. He appeared to have forgotten his announced project of returning toward the Orinoco, and Tefere took entire charge of the preparations for departure. His companion's condition puzzled him more and more—apparently there was no fever and the symptoms were wholly ambiguous. However, on general principles, he administered a stiff dose of quinine to Arpad before they started.

The paling saffron of dawn sifted upon them through the jungle tops as they loaded their belongings into the dugouts and pushed off down the slow current. Tefere sat near the bow of one of the boats, with Arpad in the rear, and a large bundle of orchid roots and part of their equipment filling the middle. The two guides occupied the other boat, together with the rest of the supplies.

It was an uneventful journey. The river wound like a sluggish olive snake between dark, interminable walls of forest from which the goblin faces of orchids leered. There were no sounds other than the splash of paddles, the furious chattering of monkeys and petulant cries of fiery colored macaws. The sun rose above the jungle and poured down a tide of brilliance.

Tefere rowed steadily, looking back over his shoulder at times to address Arpad with some casual remark or friendly question. The latter, with dazed eyes and features queerly pale and pinched in the sunlight, sat dully erect and made no effort to use his paddle. He offered no reply to the queries of Tefere, but shook his head at intervals with a sort of shuddering motion. After a while he began to moan thickly, as if in pain or delirium.

They went on in this manner for an hour. The heat grew more oppressive between the stifling walls of jungle. Tefere became aware of a shriller tone in the moans of his companion. Looking back, he saw that Arpad had removed his sun-helmet, seemingly oblivious of the heat, and was clawing at the crown of his head with frantic fingers. Convulsions shook his entire body; the dugout began to rock dangerously as he tossed to and fro in agony. His voice mounted to a high pitched shrieking.

Tefere made a quick decision. There was a break in the lining of forest and he headed the boat for shore immediately. The guides followed, whispering between themselves and eyeing the sick man with glances of apprehensive awe and terror that puzzled Tefere. He felt that there was some dark and unsettling mystery about the whole affair, and he could not imagine what was wrong with Arpad. He went through in his mind all the known manifestations of malignant tropical diseases but among them, he could not recognize the thing that assailed his companion.

Having gotten Arpad ashore on a narrow beach without the aid of the guides, who seemed unwilling to approach the sick man, Tefere administered a heavy hypodermic injection of morphine from his medicine chest. This appeared to ease Arpad's suffering and the convulsions ceased. Tefere, taking advantage of their remission, proceeded to examine the crown of Arpad's head.

He was startled to find, amid the thick disheveled hair, a hard and pointed lump that resembled the tip of a horn, rising under the still-unbroken skin. Worse, as he probed the area, it seemed to grow beneath his fingers.

At the same time, abruptly and mysteriously, Arpad opened his eyes and appeared to regain full consciousness; for a few minutes he was more his normal self than at any time since his return from the ruins. He began to talk, as if anxious to relieve his mind of some oppressing burden. His voice was peculiarly thick and toneless, but Tefere was able to follow his mutterings and piece them together.

"The pit! The pit!" said Arpad. "The infernal thing that was in the pit, in the deep crypt…! I wouldn't go back there for the treasure of a dozen El Dorados… I didn't tell you much about those ruins, Tefere. Somehow it was hard—impossibly hard—to talk.

"I guess the guide knew there was something wrong with the ruins. He led me to the place… but he wouldn't tell me anything about it; and he waited by the riverside while I searched for the treasure.

"Great grey walls there were, old; they loomed and leaned at mad, unnatural angles, threatening to crush the trees about them. And there were columns, too: thick, swollen columns the likes of which I had never seen, on which, abominable carvings the jungle had not wholly screened from view.

"There was no trouble finding that accursed burial pit. The pavement above had been broken through quite recently, I think. A big tree had pried it with its roots; one of the flags had been tilted back on the pavement and another had fallen through into the pit. There was a large hole whose bottom I could see dimly in the light. Something glimmered at the bottom; but I could not be sure what it was.

"I had taken along a coil of rope, as you remember. I tied one end of it to a main root of the tree, dropped the other through the opening and went down like a monkey. When I got to the bottom I could see little at first in the gloom, except the whitish glimmering all around me, at my feet. Something that was brittle crunched beneath my feet when I began to move. I turned on my flashlight and saw that the place was littered with bones. Human skeletons lay tumbled everywhere. They must have been removed long ago… I groped around amid the bones and dust but couldn't find anything of value, not even a bracelet or a finger-ring on any of the skeletons.

"It wasn't until I thought of climbing out that I noticed in one of the corners—nearest to the opening in the roof—ten feet above my head it hung, and I had almost touched it unknowingly when I descended the rope.

"It looked like lattice-work at first. Then I saw that the lattice was partly formed of human bones—a complete skeleton, like that of a warrior. A pale withered thing grew out of the skull, like a set of fantastic antlers ending in myriads of long and stringy tendrils that had spread upward till they reached the roof. They must have lifted the skeleton or body along with them as they climbed.

"I examined the thing with my flashlight. It must have been a plant of some sort and apparently it had started growing in the cranium: some of the branches had issued from the crown, others through the eye holes, the mouth and the nose holes to flare upward. And the roots of the thing had gone downward, trellising themselves on every bone. The very toes and fingers were ringed with them, and they drooped in writhing coils. Worst of all, the ones that had issued from the toe-ends were rooted in a second skull, which dangled just below, with fragments of the broken-off root system.

"The sight made me feel more than a little nauseated at the inexplicable mingling of the human and the plant. I started to climb the rope, in a feverish hurry to get out, but the thing fascinated me and I couldn't help pausing to study it a little more when I had climbed halfway. I leaned toward it too fast, I guess, and the rope began to sway, bringing my face lightly against the leprous, antler-shaped boughs above the skull.

"Something broke and I found my head enveloped in a cloud of powder. The stuff settled on my hair… my beautiful raven-haired Chrissie-Lou who had always taken such care, would have been horrified; it got into my nose and eyes, nearly choking and blinding me. I shook it off as well as I could. Then I climbed on and pulled myself through the opening…"

The effort of narration had been too heavy a strain and Arpad lapsed into disconnected mumblings. The mysterious malady returned and his delirious ramblings were mixed with groans of torture and cries to Chrissie-Lou. But at moments he regained a flash of coherence.

"My head! My head!" he muttered. "There must be something in my brain, something that grows and spreads; I can feel it there taking root!"

The dreadful convulsions began once more and Arpad writhed uncontrollably, shrieking with agony. Tefere, sick at heart and shocked by his sufferings, abandoned all effort to restrain him and took up the hypodermic. With much difficulty, he managed to inject a triple dose and Arpad grew quiet by degrees, and lay with open glassy eyes, breathing heavily. Tefere for the first time noticed the odd protrusion of Arpad's eyeballs, which seemed to start from their sockets, making it impossible for the lids to close and lending the drawn features an expression of horror. It was as if something were pushing Arpad's eyes from his head.

Tefere, trembling with sudden weakness and terror, felt that he was in some nightmare. He could not believe the story Arpad had told him. Assuring himself that his companion had been ill throughout with the incubation of some strange fever, he stooped over and found that the horn-shaped lump on Arpad's head had now broken through the skin.

Surreality took over as he stared at the object that his prying fingers had revealed amid the matted hair. It was unmistakably a plant-bud of some sort, with folds of pale green and bloody pink that seemed about to expand. The thing issued from above the center of the skull.

 Nausea swept upon Tefere and he recoiled from the lolling head, averting his gaze. His fever was returning, there was a deep ache in all his limbs and his eyes blurred with a miasmal mist.

He fought to subdue his illness. He could not give way to it; he had to fight on, stay with Arpad and the guides until they reached the nearest trading station.

Through sheer determination his eyes cleared and he felt a resurgence of strength. He looked around for the guides and saw, with a start, that they had vanished. Peering further, he observed that the dugout used by the guides had also disappeared. He and Arpad had been deserted. Perhaps the guides had known what was wrong with the sick man and had been afraid. They were gone, and had taken much of the camp equipment and most of the provisions with them.

Tefere turned once more to the body of Arpad, quelling his repugnance. Resolutely he drew out his clasp knife and, stooping over the stricken man, he excised the protruding bud, cutting as close to the scalp as he could with safety. The thing was unnaturally tough and rubbery; it exuded a thin, sanguineous fluid and Tefere shuddered when he saw its internal structure, full of nerve-like filaments, with a core that suggested cartilage.

He flung it aside, quickly, on the river sand. Then, lifting Arpad in his arms, he lurched and staggered toward the remaining boat. Alternately carrying and dragging his burden, Tefere reached the boat at last. With the remainder of his failing strength he propped Arpad in the stern against the pile of equipment.

Tefere's fever was mounting apace. After much delay and with tedious, half-delirious exertions, he pushed off from the shore and rowed intermittently until the fever mastered him wholly and the oar slipped from oblivious fingers…

Tefere awoke in the yellow glare of dawn, his senses comparatively clear. His illness had left a great languor, but his first thought was of Arpad. He twisted about and sat facing his companion.

Arpad still reclined, half sitting, half lying against the pile of blankets. His knees were drawn up, his hands clasping them as if in rigor. His features had grown as stark and ghastly as those of a dead man; however, the thing that caused Tefere to gasp with horror was –

During the interim of Tefere's delirium and his lapse into slumber, the monstrous plant bud had grown again with rapidity from Arpad's head. A loathsome pale-green stem was mounting thickly and had started to branch like antlers after attaining a height of six or seven inches.

More than this, similar growths had issued from the eyes and their stems, climbing vertically across the forehead, had entirely displaced the eyeballs. They were branching like the thing from the crown. The antlers were all tipped with pale vermilion. They quivered, nodding rhythmically in the warm, windless air. From the mouth another stem protruded, curling upward like a long and whitish tongue. It had not yet begun to divide.

Tefere closed his eyes to shut out the sight. In his mind’s eye, he still saw the cadaverous features, the climbing stems that quivered against the dawn like ghastly hydras. They seemed to be waving toward him, growing and lengthening as they did so. His eyes snapped open with a start of new terror—that the antlers were actually taller than they had been a few moments previous.

After that he sat watching them in a sort of baleful hypnosis. The illusion of the plant's visible growth and freer movement increased upon Tefere. Arpad, however, did not stir and his parchment face appeared to shrivel and fall in, as if the roots of the growth were draining his blood, devouring his very flesh in their hunger.

Tefere wrenched his eyes away and stared at the river shore. The stream had widened and the current had grown more sluggish. He tried to figure out their location, looking vainly for some familiar landmark in the monotonous dull-green cliffs of jungle that lined the margin.

His mind began to wander with an odd inconsequence, coming back always, in a sort of closed circle, to the thing that was devouring Arpad. With a flash of scientific curiosity he found himself wondering to what genus it belonged. It was neither fungus nor pitcher plant, nor anything that he had ever encountered or heard of in his explorations. It must have come, as Arpad had suggested, from an alien world: it was nothing that the earth could conceivably have nourished.