Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (49 page)

But first I wanted to know rather more about what Pelletier had in that experienced head of his; Pelletier, who had looked all kinds of danger in the face in China, in Haiti, in this same Central American territory, in many other sections of the world.

‘Tell me what you think it is, Pelletier,’ I said, quietly, and stood there waiting for him to begin. He did not keep me waiting.

‘Before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, Canevin, and so set anatomy on the road to its present modern status, the older anatomists said that the human body contained four humours. Do you remember that? They were called the Melancholic, the Sanguine, the Phlegmatic, and the Choleric Humours – imaginary fluids! These, or the supposed combination of them, in various proportions, were supposed to determine the state and disposition of the medical patient. That was “science” – in the days of Nicholas Culpepper, Canevin! Now, in the days of the Mayo Brothers, that sort of thing is merely archaic, historical, something to smile at! But, never forget, Canevin, it
was
modern science – once! And, notice how basically true it is! Even though there are no such definite fluids in the human body – speculative science it was, you know, not empirical, not based on observation like ours of today, not experimental – just notice how those four do actually correspond to the various human temperaments. We still say such-and-such a person is “sanguine” or “phlegmatic”, or even “choleric”! We attribute a lot of temperament today to the ductless glands with their equally obscure fluids; and, Canevin, one is just about as close to the truth as the other!

‘Now, an analogy! I reminded you of that old anatomy to compare it with something else. Long before modern natural science came into its own, the old-timers, Copernicus, Duns Scotus, Bacon, the scientists of their day, even Ptolemy, had their four elements: air, earth, water and fire. Those four are still elements, Canevin. The main difference between now and then is the so-called “elemental” behind each of them – a thing with intelligence, Canevin, a kind of demigod. It goes back, that idea, to the Gnostics of the second and third centuries; and the Gnostics went back for the origins of such speculations to the once modern science of Alexandria; of Sumer and Accad; to Egypt, to Phrygia, to Pontus and Commagene! That gust of wind, Canevin – do you – ’

‘You think,’ I interrupted, ‘that an air-elemental is  . . . ?’

‘What more probable, Canevin? Or, what the ancients meant by an air-elemental, a directing intelligence, let us say. You wouldn’t attribute all this, Wilkes’s disappearance, all the rest of it, so far – ’ Pelletier indicated in one comprehensive gesture the tree, the circle of short grass, even the insectless ground and the birdless air – ‘to everyday, modern, material causes; to things that Millikan and the rest could classify and measure, and compute about – would you, Canevin?’

I shook my head.

‘I’m going up that tree after Wilkes,’ I said, and dropped my drill coat on the grass beside Pelletier. I laid my own sun-helmet on the ground beside him. I tightened my belt a hole. Then I started for the tree. I expected some sort of protest or warning from Pelletier. He merely said: ‘Wilkes got caught, somehow, up there, because he was taken off his guard, I should surmise. You know, more or less, what to expect!’

I did not know what to expect, but I was quite sure there would be something, up there. I was prepared. This was not the first time Gerald Canevin had been called upon to face the Powers of Darkness, the preternatural. I sent up a brief and fervent prayer to the Author of this universe, to Him Who made all things, ‘visible and invisible’ as the Nicene Creed expresses it. He, Their Author, was more powerful than They. If He were on my side . . .

I jumped for the limb up to which I had boosted Wilkes, caught it, got both hands around it, hauled myself up, and then, taking a deep breath, I started up among those still dryly rustling leaves in an atmosphere of deep and heavy shade where no breath of air moved . . .

I perceive clearly enough that in case this account of what happened to Wilkes and Pelletier and me ever has a reader other than myself – and, of course, Pelletier if he should care to peruse what I have set down here; Wilkes, poor fellow, crashed over the Andes, less than three months ago as I write this – I perceive that, although the fore-going portion of this narrative does not wholly transcend ordinary strangeness, yet, that the portion which is now to follow will necessarily appear implausible; will, in other words, strain severely that same hypothetical reader’s credulity to the utmost.

For, what I found when I went up the tree after Wilkes – spiritually prepared, in a sense, but without any knowledge of what I might encounter – was – well, it is probable that some two millennia, two thousand years or thereabouts had rolled over the jungles since that background Power has been directly exorcised. And yet, the memory of It had persisted without lapse among those semi-savage inhabitants such as howled and leaped in their agitation down there at the jungle’s rim at that very moment; had so persisted for perhaps sixty generations.

I went up, I should estimate, about as far as the exact center of the great tree. Nothing whatever had happened so far. My mind, of course, was at least partly occupied by the purely physical affair of climbing. At about that point in my progress upward among the branches and leaves I paused and looked down. There stood Pelletier, looking up at me, a bulky, lonely figure. My heart went out to him. I could see him, oddly foreshortened, as I looked straight down; his contour somewhat obscured by the intervening foliage and branches. I waved, and called out to him, and Pelletier waved back to me reassuringly, saying nothing. I resumed my climb.

I had got myself perhaps some fifteen feet or more higher up the tree – I could see the blue vault above as I looked straight up – when, quite as abruptly as that inexplicable wind-clap which had scattered our lunch, the entire top of the tree began suddenly, yet as though with a sentient deliberation, to constrict itself, to close in on me. The best description of the process I can give is to say that those upper branches, from about the tree’s midst upward, suddenly squeezed themselves together. This movement coming up toward me from below, and catching up with me, and pressing me upon all sides, in a kind of vertical peristalsis, pushed me straight upward like a fragment of paste through a collapsible tube!

I slid along the cylinder formed by these upper branches as they yielded and turned themselves upward under the impact of some irresistible pressure. My pace upward under this mechanical compulsion was very rapidly accelerated, and, in much less time than is required to set it down, I flew straight up; almost literally burst out from among the slender topmost twigs and leaves as though propelled through the barrel of some monstrous air-gun; and, once clear of the tree’s hindering foliage and twigs, a column of upward-rushing air supporting me, I shot straight up into the blue empyrean.

I could feel my senses slipping from my control as the mad pace increased! I closed my eyes against the quick nausea which ensued, and fell into a kind of blank apathy which lasted I know not how long, but out of which I was abruptly snatched with a jar which seemed to wrench every bone and muscle and nerve and sinew in my body.

Unaccountably, as my metabolism slowly readjusted itself, I felt firm support beneath me. I opened my eyes.

I found myself in a sitting position, the wrenching sensations of the jar of landing rapidly dissipating themselves, no feeling of nausea, and, indeed, incongruous as such a word must sound under the circumstances being related, actually comfortable! Whatever substance supported me was comparatively soft and yielding, like thick turf, like a pneumatic cushion. Above me stretched a cloudless sky, the tropical sky of late afternoon, in these accustomed latitudes. Almost automatically I put down my hand to feel what I was resting upon. My eyes, as naturally, followed my hand’s motion. My hand encountered something that felt like roughly corrugated rubber, my eyes envisaged a buff-colored ground-surface entirely devoid of vegetation, a surface which, as I turned my head about curiously, stretched away in every direction to an irregular horizon at an immense distance. This ground was not precisely level, as a lawn is level. Yet it showed neither sharp elevations nor any marked depressions. Quite nearby, on my right as I sat there taking in my novel surroundings, two shallow ravines of considerable breadth crossed each other. In one direction, about due south I estimated from the sun’s position, three distant, vast, and rounded elevations or hummocks raised themselves against the horizon; and beyond them, dim in the far distance, there appeared to extend farther south vague heights upon four gradually rising plateaus, barely perceptible from where I sat. I was in the approximate center of an enormous plain the lowest point of which, the center of a saucer-like terrain, was my immediate environment; the reverse conformation, so to speak, of the great circle about the tree.

‘Good God!’ said a voice behind me. ‘It’s Canevin!’

I turned sharply to the one direction my few seconds’ scrutiny had failed to include. There, not twenty feet away, sat Wilkes the pilot. He had found his jacket! He was wearing it, in fact. That, queerly enough, was my first mental reaction to having a companion in this weird world to which I had been transported. I noted at that moment, simultaneously with seeing Wilkes, that from somewhere far beneath the surface of the ground there came at regular intervals a kind of throbbing resonance as though from some colossal engine or machine. This pulsing, rhythmical beat was not audible. It came to me – and to Wilkes, as I checked the matter over with him later – through the sense of feeling alone. It continued, I may as well record here, through our entire stay in this world of increasing strangeness.

‘I see you have recovered your coat,’ said I, as Wilkes rose and stepped toward me.

‘No doubt about it!’ returned Wilkes, and squared his angular shoulders as though to demonstrate how well the jacket fitted his slender figure.

‘And what do you make of – this?’ he asked, with a comprehensive gesture including the irregular, vegetationless, buff-colored terrain all about us.

‘Are we in the so-called “fourth dimension”, or what?’

‘Later,’ said I, ‘if you don’t mind, after I get a chance to think a bit. I’ve just been shot into this place, and I’m not quite oriented!’ Then: ‘And how did you manage to get yourself up here? I suppose, of course, it’s
up
!’

There is no occasion to repeat here Wilkes’s account of his experience in the tree and later. It was identical with mine which I have already described. Of that fact I assured Wilkes as soon as he had ended describing it to me.

‘This – er – ground is queer enough,’ remarked Wilkes. ‘Look at this!’

He opened his clasp-knife, squatted down, jabbed the knife into the ground half an inch or so, and then cut a long gash in what he had referred to as the ‘ground’. In all conscience it was utterly different from anything forming a surface or topsoil that I had ever encountered. Certainly it was not earth as we know it. Wilkes cut another parallel gash, close beside his first incision, drew the two together with his knife at the cut’s end, and pried loose and then tore up a long narrow sliver. This, held by one thin end, hung from his hand much as a similarly shaped slice of fresh-cut kitchen linoleum might hang. It looked, indeed, much like linoleum, except that it was both more pliable and also translucent.

‘I have another sliver in my pocket,’ said Wilkes, handing this fresh one to me. I took the thing and looked at it closely.

‘May I see yours?’ I asked Wilkes.

Wilkes fished his strip out of a pocket in that soiled silk jacket and handed it to me. He had it rolled up, and it did not unroll easily. I stretched it out between my hands, holding it by both ends. I compared the two specimens. His was considerably dryer than mine, much less pliable. I said nothing. I merely rolled up Wilkes’s strip and handed it back to him.

‘I’ve stuck right here,’ remarked Wilkes, ‘ever since I landed in this Godforsaken place, if it is a place, because, well, because there simply didn’t seem to be anything else to do. The sun has been terrific. There’s no shade of any kind, you see, not a single spot, as far as you can see; not any at all on the entire damned planet – or whatever it is we’ve struck! Now that you’ve “joined up”, what say to a trek? I’d agree with anyone who insisted that anything at all beats standing here in one spot! How about it?’

‘Right,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s make it either north or south – in the direction of those hummocks, or, up to the top of that plateau region to the south’ard.’

‘O. K. with me,’ agreed Wilkes. ‘Did you, by any blessed chance, bring any water along when you came barging through?’

I had no water, and Wilkes had been here more than an hour in that pitiless glare without any before my arrival. He shook his head ruefully.

‘Barring a shower we’ll have to grin and bear it, I imagine. Well, let’s go. Is it north, or south? I don’t care.’

‘South, then,’ said I, and we started.

Our way took us directly across one of the intersecting depressions in the ground which I have mentioned. The walking was resilient, the ground’s surface neither exactly soft nor precisely hard. It was, I remember thinking, very much like a very coarse crêpe-rubber sole such as is used extensively in tennis and similar sports shoes. As we went down the gradual slope of that ravine the footing changed gradually, the color of underfoot being heightened by an increasingly reddish or pinkish tinge, and the surface becoming smoother as this coloration intensified itself. In places where the more general corrugations almost disappeared, it was so smooth as to shine in the sun’s declining rays like something polished. In such stretches as we traversed it was entirely firm, however, and not in the least slippery, as it appeared to be to the eye.