A question flashed through my thoughts. “Malcolm,” I said, “what did these people feed on here? There’s no place for cultivation of foodstuffs.”
He faced me with that damned smile of his again. “Bubastis was, I told you, a ghoul-goddess. The priests and worshippers emulated her.”
A wave of repulsion swept over me. I wanted very much to turn back, but Malcolm strode resolutely ahead, and he beckoned imperiously, leading on to further horrors. We entered pits.
Our lights, while strong enough to penetrate ordinary darkness, proved eerily dim amidst these black and eldritch walls through which we now wandered. Bat-like shadows basked and hovered just outside the luminance of our torches, and occasionally dispersed to hint at what lay behind. At first I was irritated by the lack of illumination, but I was soon to give thanks that it was no brighter. As it was, I saw more than enough; for in this third room, Malcolm allowed me to examine some of the mummies.
What unnatural life had festered and flourished here in the black bosom of the earth? That first coffin held its own answer. I clawed the lid from the case and peered at what lay within. The thing was perfectly embalmed, and as I unwrapped it with trembling haste, the face came into view. It crumbled, thank heaven, almost immediately, but not until I saw the malformed creature within.
Two dead eyes stared from the rigid face of a dark-skinned priest. Two dead eyes set in a forehead withered with decay—a forehead from which protruded the hideous, misshapen head of a tiny serpent!
“Skin-grafting,” I gasped, weakly.
“No. Look closer.” Malcolm’s voice was grave, but I knew he smiled.
I looked again, as the air putrefied that withered countenance before my eyes.
I reeled. It was unmistakable, though sanity clutched vainly for another explanation. There was nothing to do but face the monstrous truth—that serpent’s head actually grew on the mummy’s brow. And since it, too, was mummified—but I dared not finish the thought. Malcolm again supplied the ghastly answer.
“It was alive, when he was.”
Malcolm was right. The priests had mated animals with humans. We opened other cases; that is Malcolm did, while I stood fixed and fascinated beside him. There was a Pan-thing, with a horned forehead and a face that even through centuries still held a goatish leer. In one spot we discovered a fiendish trinity—three dwarfed and stunted faces on a single head and neck. The most frightful ravings of archaic mythology were all duplicated here—gargoyle, chimera, centaur, harpy—parodied in the Gorgonic features of leering, long-dead priests.
Then there was the section farther on with the bodies. Lycanthropic sights were revealed as Malcolm hacked away the case-coverings. The stench of natron hung like a miasma above the violated sarcophagi of creatures with human heads and the mummified bodies of apes. There was a hoofed horror with vestigial remnants of a tail, and a Ganeesha-like thing with the enormous trunk of an elephant. Some of those we saw were evidently failures: noseless, eyeless, faceless freaks with extra arms; and finally an awful corpse without limbs, whose swollen neck grew into a gaping, headless maw. All mercifully dissolved into dust after a moment.
Malcolm and I stumbled down a sable spiral of rock-hewn stairs. The memory of those things in the crypts above buzzed in my brain; else I would not have ventured on into the seething, slithering darkness in which our very shadows drowned.
The winding walls of the shaft we descended were gelid black in the glare of our lights, but they were not bare. There were pictures—more Egyptian art, but not conventional ideographic work like that in the catacombs above. These sketches were disturbingly different, with great, sprawling figures, like those traced by an idiot in sand. Once again we viewed the monsters I was trying to forget; the snake-men, the satyr-creatures, the deformed cacodemons we found in the upper tombs. But now we saw them pictured in life, and it was worse than any imagining. These caricatures of humanity were shown while engaging in certain acts, and the deeds they performed were evil. There were scenes which told an ancient story all too well—glimpses of the living monsters sacrificing to their gods, and gratifying their lusts. Among these were pictures of normal men; high priests, I suppose, and they were mingled with the beast-herd in lechery so perverted that it sickened me.
I turned the light of my torch away from the walls and went blindly forward down the remaining stairs.
The caverns below were immense; perhaps they were the product of a great air-bubble in the earth’s inner crust. The floor of this pit stretched off into interminable burrows beyond, each gaping its black and hungry mouth. And before each mouth there was a little pile of bones. Bones, osseous dust; a shamble of skulls. Even from a distance I could see the marks of gnawing teeth in the splintered death’s-heads.
There had been pictures on the wall—pictures of beast-men feeding on human flesh, on one another. Perhaps those buried in the tombs above were the human experiments; then these bones represented the other, nearly animal, creatures. Just how near the old priests had approached to their idea of godhead I dared not surmise. Many of the bones before me hinted of ghastly spawnings between beast and man.
It was then that I saw the altar. A bare black stone reared up in the center of the cavern floor; a stark, shining surface that sprang from the rock beneath. But the place where it met the floor was entirely buried beneath bones.
These were no disarticulated skeletons; these osseous fragments before the sinister altar! These were fresh bones! And among the shredded, fleshy remnants that clung to them were tattered bits of cloth and leather—cloth and leather!
What did it mean? The priests of Bast died, and their creatures devoured one another after them. But what did they sacrifice to on the black altar; what lurked in the ebon burrows beyond, that still crept forward to feast? And who fed it?
“There’s no dust on this floor,” I found myself whispering. “No dust.”
He glared into my eyes, as he gripped my wrists. “There’s no dust where things still move around.
“Yes, tremble. It’s well you do. You’re not the first to follow me down these stairs in the past six months; those bones tell their own story. I’ve shown some of the local people this spot.
“You see, the god is hungry. The god needs food. At first I was afraid, but now I know that if I please the god with sacrifices it will not harm me. Perhaps in time it will teach me the secrets of the dead old priests, and then I shall know many things. But the god needs blood.”
Before I was able to struggle or resist he had me up against the black altar, and we fought knee-deep in gleaming bones.
I screamed until his hands grasped my throat and choked me. But even as I fought him, my brain battled against its own fears.
A phrase from some book flashed through my head. “Ghoul—Chewer of Corpses.”
Malcolm lifted me on the altar, then turned his head and gazed across the charnel chamber to the burrows. He called, shouted, in unintelligible gibberish that resembled the tongue of ancient Egypt.
Then came the rustling from the black openings beyond. Something was waddling into view out of the pits; something emerged.
Chewer of Corpses!
With the strength of the doomed I leapt from the altar, and my fist crashed into Malcolm’s face. He toppled across the black slab as I turned and ran across the cavern to the stairs. But by the time I reached it the thing had completely emerged; emerged, and stalked across the floor to the altar-stone where Malcolm lay. And it lifted him, though he moaned when he felt his body being dangled in those flabby paws. He hung like a broken doll, while the thing bent its rugose head and opened its mouth.
Chewer of Corpses!
That is what I sobbed as I turned and fought my way up those dark, basaltic stairs. And when the sudden shock of sunlight burst upon my face at the entrance to the ledge, I weakly murmured the words as I sank into unconsciousness.
I was strangely calm when I recovered. I managed the climb to the top of the cliff, and even made the mile j
ourney across the moor. Weak as I was, I packed and caught a train at the village station.
Only that night did I sink into the fevered dreams that have made life an unbearable torment ever since. I was a sick man on the boat, and when I reached New York I shut up my apartment forever.
I can only surmise as to the termination of the affair. Whether Malcolm’s disappearance is ascribed to me I do not know; whether the disputed fate of the rustics he lured to death has been forgotten, I cannot say. Nor does it really matter.
What does matter is the necessity for immediate investigation of the horror below those moors; that blasphemy that broods beneath.
Now I know what those unholy wizards meant to do; why they mated beasts and men. I know what they wished to create to rule over them, and what they did create at the last—the thing that still lives in the farther pit.
It came rustling out of the darkness in the pit; the great blind thing that seized Malcolm as he lay on its altar. It grasped him in cruel claws, and gnawed or nuzzled at his throat. It was the Chewer of Corpses.
There on the altar it crouched, ten feet tall—the mockingly human figure, like that of the lioness-creatures pictured on the walls. The giant, human figure, but oh! that head! . . .
The thing that killed him was the cat-goddess of Bubastis!
The Mannikin
This fine tale bears hints of inspiration from both “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Thing on the Doorstep”, both listed by Bloch as among his favorites. Simon Maglore seems to be both Whateley twins at once, one visible, one invisible. The nature of the relationship between Simon and his tormentor seems to presage stories like “Lucy Comes to Stay”, “Enoch”, and even Psycho, since Norman Bates, too, is beset by the urgings of an inner counterpart.
The name “Simon Maglore” suggests the “lore” of Simon Magus, the sorcerer who opposed both the Evangelist Philip and the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter 8 and in the later Acts of Peter.
The eerie-sounding book De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis (“The Eating of the Dead in their Tombs”) is no invention by Bloch. Raufft’s 1734 work expounds the legend that entombed corpses hungrily devour their shrouds, even their own putrefying flesh.
The Mannikin
by Robert Bloch
Mind you, I cannot swear that my story is true. It may have been a dream; or worse, a symptom of some severe mental disorder. But I believe it is true. After all, how are we to know what things there are on earth? Strange monstrosities still exist, and foul, incredible perversions. Every war, each new geographical or scientific discovery, brings to light some new bit of ghastly evidence that the world is not altogether the sane place we fondly imagine it to be. Sometimes peculiar incidents occur which hint of utter madness.
How can we be sure that our smug conceptions of reality actually exist? To one man in a million dreadful knowledge is revealed, and the rest of us remain mercifully ignorant. There have been travelers who never came back, and research workers who disappeared. Some of those who did return were deemed mad because of what they told, and others sensibly concealed the wisdom that had so horribly been revealed. Blind as we are, we know a little of what lurks beneath our normal life. There have been tales of sea-serpents and creatures of the deep; legends of dwarfs and giants; records of queer medical horrors and unnatural births. Stunted nightmares of men’s personalities have blossomed into being under the awful stimulus of war, or pestilence, or famine. There have been cannibals, necrophiles, and ghouls; loathsome rites of worship and sacrifice; maniacal murders, and blasphemous crimes. When I think, then, of what I saw and heard, and compare it with certain other grotesque and unbelievable authenticities, I begin to fear for my reason.
But if there is any sane explanation of this matter, I wish to God I may be told before it is too late. Doctor Pierce tells me that I must be calm; he advised me to write this account in order to allay my apprehension. But I am not calm, and I never can be calm until I know the truth, once and for all; until I am wholly convinced that my fears are not founded on a hideous reality.
I was already a nervous man when I went to Bridgetown for a rest. It had been a hard grind that year at school, and I was very glad to get away from the tedious classroom routine. The success of my lecture courses assured my position on the faculty for the year to come, and consequently I dismissed all academic speculation from my mind when I decided to take a vacation. I chose to go to Bridgetown because of the excellent facilities the lake afforded for trout-fishing. The resort I chose from the voluminous array of hotel literature was a quiet, peaceful place, according to the simple prospectus. It did not offer a golf-course, a bridle-path, or an indoor swimming-pool. There was no mention made of a grand ballroom, an eighteen-piece orchestra, or formal dinner. Best of all, the advertisement in no way extolled the scenic grandeur of the lake and woods. It did not polysyllabically proclaim that Lake Kane was “Nature’s eternal paradise, where cerulean skies and verdant wilderness beckon the happy visitor to taste the joys of youth.” For that reason I wired in a reservation, packed my bag, assembled my pipes, and left.
I was more than satisfied with the place when I arrived. Bridgetown is a small, rustic village; a quaint survival of older and simpler days. Situated on Lake Kane itself, it is surrounded by rambling woods, and sloping, sun-splashed meadows where the farm-folk toil in serene content. The blight of modern civilization has but dimly fallen upon these people and their quiet ways. Automobiles, tractors, and the like are few. There are several telephones, and five miles away the State Highway affords easy access to the city. That is all. The homes are old, the streets cobbled. Artists, suburban dilettantes and professional aesthetes have not yet invaded the pastoral scene. The quota of summer guests is small and select. A few hunters and fishers come, but none of the ordinary pleasure-hunting crowd. The families thereabout do not cater to such tastes; ignorant and unsophisticated as they are, they can recognize vulgarity.
So my surroundings were ideal. The place I stayed at was a three-story hostelry on the lake itself—the Kane House, run by Absolom Gates. He was a character of the old school; a grizzled, elderly veteran whose father had been in the fishery business back in the sixties. He, himself, was a devotee of things piscatorial; but only from the Waltonian view. His resort was a fisherman’s Mecca. The rooms were large and airy; the food plentiful and excellently prepared by Gates’ widowed sister. After my first inspection, I prepared to enjoy a remarkably pleasant stay.
Then, upon my first visit to the village, I bumped into Simon Maglore on the street.
I first met Simon Maglore during my second term as an instructor back at college. Even then, he had impressed me greatly. This was not due to his physical characteristics alone, though they were unusual enough. He was tall and thin, with massive, stooping shoulders, and a crooked back. He was not a hunchback in the usual sense of the word, but was afflicted with a peculiar tumorous growth beneath his left shoulder-blade. This growth he took some pains to conceal, but its prominence made such attempts unsuccessful. Outside of this unfortunate deformity, however, Maglore had been a very pleasant-looking fellow. Black-haired, gray-eyed, fair of skin, he seemed a fine specimen of intelligent manhood. And it was this intelligence that had so impressed me. His class-work was strikingly brilliant, and at times his theses attained heights of sheer genius. Despite the peculiarly morbid trend of his work in poetry and essays, it was impossible to ignore the power and imagination that could produce such wild imagery and eldritch color. One of his poems—The Witch Is Hung—won for him the Edsworth Memorial Prize for that year, and several of his major themes were republished in certain private anthologies.
From the first, I had taken a great interest in the young man and his unusual talent. He had not responded to my advances at first; I gathered that he was a solitary soul. Whether this was due to his physical peculiarity or his mental trend, I cannot say. He had lived alone in town, and was known to have ample means. He did not mingle with the other students, though they wou
ld have welcomed him for his ready wit, his charming disposition, and his vast knowledge of literature and art. Gradually, however, I managed to overcome his natural reticence, and won his friendship. He invited me to his rooms, and we talked.
I had then learned of his earnest belief in the occult and esoteric. He had told me of his ancestors in Italy, and their interest in sorcery. One of them had been an agent of the Medici. They had migrated to America in the early days, because of certain charges made against them by the Holy Inquisition. He also spoke of his own studies in the realms of the unknown. His rooms were filled with strange drawings he had made from dreams, and still stranger images done in clay. The shelves of his bookcases held many odd and ancient books. I noted Ranfts’ De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis (1734); the almost priceless Cabala of Saboth (Greek translation, circa 1686); Mycroft’s Commentaries on Witchcraft; and Ludvig Prinn’s infamous Mysteries of the Worm.
I made several visits to the apartments before Maglore left school so suddenly in the fall of ’33. The death of his parents called him to the East, and he left without saying farewell. But in the interim I had learned to respect him a good deal, and had taken a keen interest in his future plans, which included a book on the history of witch cult survivals in America, and a novel dealing with the psychological effects of superstition on the mind. He had never written to me, and I heard no more about him until this chance meeting on the village street.
He recognized me. I doubt if I should have been able to identify him. He had changed. As we shook hands I noted his unkempt appearance and careless attire. He looked older. His face was thinner, and much paler. There were shadows around his eyes—and in them. His hands trembled; his face forced a lifeless smile. His voice was deeper when he spoke, but he inquired after my health in the same charming fashion he had always affected. Quickly I explained my presence, and began to question him.