VI
The Five Silver Bullets
Jaeger’s talk about the influence called hypnotism came back to my mind later, when I found myself outside in the chill moonglow, the revolver in my right hand, moving with quick stealth toward a distant sound of mouthy misery.
Of me he had made a champion, in this frontier strife of angels good and bad. Reiterating his insistence that my share in that uncanny adventure after Shiloh had made me somewhat immune to evil magic, he had given me the revolver and sent me forth. Where? And to do what? My head was clearing now, as after too much drink. I began to ponder the recent events with something of disgusted wonder at my own readiness to mix into what was surely no business of mine.
After all, I was strange in this Welcome Rock country. I had had no idea of staying more than the night through. I had no practical interest in any quarrels there, even quarrels incited by demons. But from the first I had taken a hand—charging those who flogged Peter Dole, wielding a saber in the parson’s parlor, and now stepping forth, gun in hand, to seek and battle the Flying Horned One.
I told myself that I was a fool. I entertained the thought of finding the through trail and tramping away from Welcome Rock. There were silver bullets in the gun. They might have some cash value to buy me breakfast, miles away—
The cries grew louder. They rose from beyond one of the leafless thickets that banded the country. From that point also came a musty glow of the green cold light. I heard a voice:
“No! We did our best! Don’t!”
Something struck, hard and heavy. The voice broke away from the words into a scream of agony.
As at the flogging earlier that night, I quickened my pace to a run. I was fully prepared to meddle yet again.
Beyond two or three belts of trees I came in sight of a round cleared space. Away off to one side rose the dark pinnacle that once had been called Fearful Rock, in whose shadow had been done strange matters. I lurked inside the thicket, watching what happened in the open.
There were gathered my late adversaries, only four of them now. They were wailing, posturing and wriggling, as though blows fell upon them. But it was well away from them that the punishment was dealt. There stood the Flying Horned One, or perhaps he hovered—in any case his feet touched the ground, and his wings may have fluttered slightly to hold him erect. From him came the unpleasant light. He was striking again and again with a stick, at dark objects that lay limp on the ground.
“No! No!” the voices begged him. “Strike no more, master!”
He ceased the blows, and flourished the stick at them. “You have had enough?” he demanded, in that uncouth horselike voice of his.
They assured him, tearfully, that they had.
“Then obey. Go back and kill—”
“We have no powers, no powers!” cried the plump woman who had held the five-fingered candle.
Her misshapen ruler made an impatient fluttering gesture with his umbrella wings. “This, I think, is your coat,” he said, and touched with the point of his stick one of the dark objects on the ground. I saw then that these objects were garments, cloaks or coats. The woman squealed and clasped her hands.
“Don’t beat on me again!” she sobbed.
To my mind came one of the most familiar legends about witches, the one about hurting at a distance. The wax image or portrait pierced with needles, the hair or nail-clipping burnt—yes, and the discarded garment beaten. I was seeing such a thing done.
“Abiam, dabiam, fabiam,” babbled the monster over his stick. It was a conjuration of some sort, I guessed; indeed, Jaeger told me later that a similar spell is included in Albertus Magnus. “True you speak,” he continued. “But you are bad servants.” I saw his long green eyes glitter. “Perhaps I should discard you and get others. You who summoned me among you, step forward.”
A fragile, oldish man came away from the others. His mask had been torn, probably in the fight, and his skin showed corpse-pale through the rent.
“I did according to the law and the books,” he quavered. “If we have served you badly, it was because we did not know how to serve. Teach us.”
The Flying Horned One put his arm-like upper limbs, that bore the wings, akimbo. The membranes drooped around him like an ugly living shawl. “You never asked if I wished to leave my own world,” he charged fiercely. “You did not wait to think if I was happy there or not. You haled me in among strange things and thoughts. You talk about serving me, but you meant that I should serve you. Huh? Deny it if you will!”
They did not deny it. I gathered that he referred to some ceremony which had brought him into existence among them. Of such things, too, I had heard.
Again he addressed the thin oldster. “Do as you did when you summoned me.”
There was a moment of scared silence. Then, “mean the circle, master? And the pentacle?”
“You will be sorry if I command you twice,” said the Flying Horned One.
The magic-maker hopped and fluttered like a frightened rabbit to obey. Stooping, with his dagger in hand, he traced on the ground a figure like a shallow-pointed star, about three yards across. As he did so he mumbled words, apparently one for each point. “Gaba,” he said loud enough for me to hear, and again “Tetragrammaton.” The other words I did not catch. Having finished the star, he traced a circle outside it. His comrades all moved back, but the winged monster hovered near, in some eagerness.
“Shall I say the rest?” quavered the circle-tracer.
“Not unless you wish to bring me a brother among you,” replied the Flying Horned One, and it was plain that his hearers had no such wish. “Say only the first part.”
There came forth a flood of gibberish, spoken by the old man with both forefingers uplifted. The others joined in briefly at the end, chanting as if at prayer. I saw the lines that the knife had marked suddenly grow more plain and hot-looking—the star was outlined as in rosy brightness, like a figure of heated wire; and the circle gleamed blue-green, like a tracing of phosphorus.
“Look!” commanded the winged master, in a voice that made my flesh change position on my bones. “Is it—”
“The door!” hoarsely finished the magician. “It is ready to be opened unto us.”
“Yes,” agreed the Flying Horned One. “Opened unto you. Speak on.”
The magician fronted his glowing diagram. His words became spaced and cadenced, like verse from some ponderous tragedy:
“Fear is stronger than love!
“Serve those above with joy! Serve those below with terror!
“For those above, a sacrifice of one white sheep! For those below, a sacrifice of two black sheep!
“For those above, a sacrifice of one white slave! For those below, a sacrifice of two black slaves!”
“The door opens,” the others intoned.
It was more like a wall, dark and gloom-clotted, that showed itself in the center of the star-circle diagram. From it rose, lazily, a thin little veil of vapor.
“Enough,” decreed the Flying Horned One, and suddenly shot out his two upper talons to seize the shoulders of the magician.
I heard a thin choking squeal for mercy. The Flying Horned One lowered his wings about the man he had grasped, and I could only guess what happened to that man under their jagged shadow. It was sufficiently horrible, I make no doubt. Lifting the revolver, I fired my first shot.
It missed its mark, for I heard it strike a tree-trunk beyond. The three companions of the magician heard my shot and turned toward its sound. Not so the monster who ruled them, for he extended his wings and with a single beat of them rose into air. In all four of his talons he gripped the limp form of the magician. I am sure that I saw blood on that form—dark wetness, anyway. Two great flops carried the victim above the diagram and its inner opening. The talons let go, and the body fell into the hole, away from sight.
“Ohhh!” intoned the others, as if it were part of the ritual. Probably they were entranced, half delirious, unable to see their peril. Their lord flew back at and among them.
“In after him,” he grunted, and seized two of them by their necks.
I fired a second shot, more carefully. It tore a hole through one of those wing membranes. For a moment I saw the tear, quite large and ragged, and moonlight through it. Then the Flying Horned One had dashed his two captives at the hole, one after the other. They vanished. I could swear that the hole gulped at and seized them, like a hungry, knowing mouth.
I came into the open, firing twice more. But my hand trembled, and both bullets went wide. This revolver, with which Jaeger had killed so coolly and capably at our earlier fight, was doing very little for me. Then I ran close. The Flying Horned One had seized the last of his worshippers, the fat woman, and twitched her in front of him as I fired a fifth time.
She caught my bullet, and whether it inflicted a slight or serious wound I cannot say. The Flying Horned One whinnied, and tossed her after the others. She, too, was vanished. I faced the dark winged silhouette, with not a dozen yards between us.
“You, too, have power,” the inhuman voice addressed me levelly. “Power, but not wit. Do not use the weapon again, it is empty.”
That much was truth. Jaeger had loaded it with five charges, the hammer being down on an empty chamber. I poised the gun to use as a club, and came slowly forward. The winged form moved to meet me.
“You have escaped,” and the voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Nothing that I said, or my slaves did, harmed you. Man, have you lived in more worlds than one, like me?”
I made no reply. I could think of none. Two talons reached out to clutch at me.
Then we struggled and fought. He tore at my face and at my chest, as though he would rend my flesh away. I struck with my fists and the clubbed revolver, but made no impression. His substance did not seem to have any true resistance, yet I knew that he had strength and weight.
“At my leisure, in another place—I will examine you,” he told me, and heaved me toward the glowing diagram.
I grabbed him close to the elbow-joints, and we both fell heavily toward the black hole.
I struck the ground first, and there was a flash of fire, real or imaginary. Too, there was a little breathless shriek, out of the dark face of my adversary. Suddenly all weight and grip was gone from me.
I set up. The diagram was no more than knife-edges in the moonlight. The hole—there was no hole any more, only hard earth. Of the Flying Horned One was nothing to be seen.
Jaeger, then had been right. Power to resist evil magic kept me safe. Endeavoring to carry me away, the Flying Horned One had fallen alone into the hole and had, so to speak, pulled the hole in after him.
Rising, I wondered if I should consider myself the victor.