Moon of Skulls Read online

  The girl was a much higher type than the thick-lipped, bestial West Coast Negroes to whom Kane had been used. She was slim and finely formed, of a deep brown hue rather than ebony; her nose was straight and thin-bridged, her lips were not too thick. Somewhere in her blood there was a strong Berber strain.

  Kane spoke to her in a river dialect, a simple language he had learned during his wandering, and she replied haltingly. The inland tribes traded slaves and ivory to the river people and were familiar with their jargon.

  “My village is there,” she answered Kane’s question, pointing to the southern jungle with a slim, rounded arm. “My name is Zunna. My mother whipped me for breaking a cooking-kettle and I ran away because I was angry. I am afraid; let me go back to my mother!”

  “You may go,” said Kane, “but I will take you, child. Suppose another lion came along? You were very foolish to run away.”

  She whimpered a little. “Are you not a god?”

  “No, Zunna. I am only a man, though the color of my skin is not as yours. Lead me now to your village.”

  She rose hesitantly, eyeing him apprehensively through the wild tangle of her hair. To Kane she seemed like some frightened young animal. She led the way and Kane followed. She indicated that her village lay to the southeast, and their route brought them nearer to the hills. The sun began to sink and the roaring of lions reverberated over the grasslands. Kane glanced at the western sky; this open country was no place in which to be caught by night. He glanced toward the hills and saw that they were within a few hundred yards of the nearest. He saw what seemed to be a cave.

  “Zunna,” said he haltingly, “we can never reach your village before nightfall and if we bide here the lions will take us. Yonder is a cavern where we may spend the night —”

  She shrank and trembled.

  “Not in the hills, master!” she whimpered. “Better the lions!”

  “Nonsense!” His tone was impatient; he had had enough of native superstition. “We will spend the night in yonder cave.”

  She argued no further, but followed him. They went up a short slope and stood at the mouth of the cavern, a small affair, with sides of solid rock and a floor of deep sand.

  “Gather some dry grass, Zunna,” commanded Kane, standing his musket against the wall at the mouth of the cave, “but go not far away, and listen for lions. I will build here a fire which shall keep us safe from beasts tonight. Bring some grass and any twigs you may find, like a good child, and we will sup. I have dried meat in my pouch and water also.”

  She gave him a strange, long glance, then turned away without a word. Kane tore up grass near at hand, noting how it was seared and crisp from the sun, and heaping it up, struck flint and steel. Flame leaped up and devoured the heap in an instant. He was wondering how he could gather enough grass to keep a fire going all night, when he was aware that he had visitors.

  Kane was used to grotesque sights, but at first glance he started and a slight coldness traveled down his spine. Two black men stood before him in silence. They were tall and gaunt and entirely naked. Their skins were a dusty black, tinged with a gray, ashy hue, as of death. Their faces were different from any Negroes he had seen. The brows were high and narrow, the noses huge and snout-like; the eyes were inhumanly large and inhumanly red. As the two stood there it seemed to Kane that only their burning eyes lived.

  He spoke to them, but they did not answer. He invited them to eat with a motion of his hand, and they silently squatted down near the cave mouth, as far from the dying embers of the fire as they could get.

  Kane turned to his pouch and began taking out the strips of dried meat which he carried. Once he glanced at his silent guests; it seemed to him that they were watching the glowing ashes of his fire, rather than him.

  The sun was about to sink behind the western horizon. A red, fierce glow spread over the grasslands, so that all seemed like a waving sea of blood. Kane knelt over his pouch, and glancing up, saw Zunna come around the shoulder of the hill with her arms full of grass and dry branches.

  As he looked, her eyes flared wide; the branches dropped from her arms and her scream knifed the silence, fraught with terrible warning. Kane whirled on his knee. Two great black forms loomed over him as he came up with the lithe motion of a springing leopard. The fetish stave was in his hand and he drove it through the body of the nearest foe with a force which sent its sharp point out between the Negro’s shoulders. Then the long, lean arms of the other locked about him, and white man and black man went down together.

  The talon-like nails of the black were tearing at his face, the hideous red eyes staring into his with a terrible threat, as Kane writhed about and, fending off the clawing hands with one arm, drew a pistol. He pressed the muzzle close against the black’s side and pulled the trigger. At the muffled report, the Negro’s body jerked to the concussion of the bullet, but the thick lips merely gaped in a horrid grin.

  One long arm slid under Kane’s shoulders, the other hand gripped his hair. The Englishman felt his head being forced back irresistibly. He clutched at the other’s wrist with both hands, but the flesh under his frantic fingers was as hard as wood. Kane’s brain was reeling; his neck seemed ready to break with a little more pressure. He threw his body backward with one volcanic effort, breaking the deathly hold. The black was on him and the talons were clutching again. Kane found and raised the empty pistol, and he felt the black man’s skull cave in like a shell as he brought down the long barrel with all his strength. And once again the writhing lips parted in fearful mockery.

  And now a near panic clutched Kane. What sort of man was this, who still menaced his life with tearing fingers, after having been shot and mortally bludgeoned? No man, surely, but one of the sons of Satan! At the thought Kane wrenched and heaved explosively, and the close-locked combatants tumbled across the earth to come to a rest in the smoldering ashes before the cave mouth. Kane barely felt the heat, but the mouth of his foe gaped, this time in seeming agony. The frightful fingers loosened their hold and Kane sprang clear.

  The black man with his shattered skull was rising on one hand and one knee when Kane struck, returning to the attack as a gaunt wolf returns to a wounded bison. From the side he leaped, landing full on the black giant’s back, his steely arms seeking and finding a deadly wrestling hold; and as they went to the earth together he broke the Negro’s neck, so that the hideous dead face looked back over one shoulder. The black man lay still but to Kane it seemed that he was not dead even then, for the red eyes still burned with their grisly light.

  The Englishman turned, to see the girl crouching against the cave wall. He looked for his stave; it lay in a heap of dust, among which were a few moldering bones. He stared, his brain reeling. Then with one stride he caught up the voodoo staff and turned to the fallen Negro. His face set in grim lines as he raised it; then he drove it through the black breast. And before his eyes, the giant body crumbled, dissolving to dust as he watched horror-struck, even as had crumbled he through whom Kane had first thrust the stave.

  3. Dream Magic

  “Great God!” whispered Kane; “these men were dead! Vampires! This is Satan’s handiwork manifested.”

  Zunna crawled to his knees and clung there.

  “These be walking dead men, master,” she whimpered. “I should have warned you.”

  “Why did they not leap on my back when they first came?” asked he.

  “They feared the fire. They were waiting for the embers to die entirely.”

  “Whence came they?”

  “From the hills. Hundreds of their kind swarm among the boulders and caverns of these hills, and they live on human life, for a man they will slay, devouring his ghost as it leaves his quivering body. Aye, they are suckers of souls!

  “Master, among the greater of these hills there is a silent city of stone, and in the old times, in the days of my ancestors, these people lived there. They were human, but they were not as we, for they had ruled this land for ages and ages. The ances
tors of my people made war on them and slew many, and their magicians made all the dead men as these were. At last all died.

  “And for ages have they preyed on the tribes of the jungle, stalking down from the hills at midnight and at sunset to haunt the jungle-ways and slay and slay. Men and beasts flee them and only fire will destroy them.”

  “Here is that which will destroy them,” said Kane grimly, raising the voodoo stave. “Black magic must fight black magic, and I know not what spell N’Longa put hereon, but —”

  “You are a god,” said Zunna decidedly. “No man could overcome two of the walking dead men. Master, can you not lift this curse from my tribe? There is nowhere for us to flee and the monsters slay us at will, catching wayfarers outside the village wall. Death is on this land and we die helpless!”

  Deep in Kane stirred the spirit of the crusader, the fire of the zealot — the fanatic who devotes his life to battling the powers of darkness.

  “Let us eat,” said he; “then we will build a great fire at the cave mouth. The fire which keeps away beasts shall also keep away fiends.”

  Later Kane sat just inside the cave, chin rested on clenched fist, eyes gazing unseeingly into the fire. Behind in the shadows, Zunna watched him, awed.

  “God of Hosts,” Kane muttered, “grant me aid! My hand it is which must lift the ancient curse from this dark land. How am I to fight these dead fiends, who yield not to mortal weapons? Fire will destroy them — a broken neck renders them helpless — the voodoo stave thrust through them crumbles them to dust — but of what avail? How may I prevail against the hundreds who haunt these hills, and to whom human life-essence is Life? Have not — as Zunna says — warriors come against them in the past, only to find them fled to their high-walled city where no man can come against them?”

  The night wore on. Zunna slept, her cheek pillowed on her round, girlish arm. The roaring of the lions shook the hills and still Kane sat and gazed broodingly into the fire. Outside, the night was alive with whispers and rustlings and stealthily soft footfalls. And at times Kane, glancing up from his meditations, seemed to catch the gleam of great red eyes beyond the flickering light of the fire.

  Gray dawn was stealing over the grasslands when Kane shook Zunna into wakefulness.

  “God have mercy on my soul for delving in barbaric magic,” said he, “but demonry must be fought with demonry, mayhap. Tend ye the fire and awake me if aught untoward occur.”

  Kane lay down on his back on the sand floor and laid the voodoo staff on his breast, folding his hands upon it. He fell asleep instantly. And sleeping, he dreamed. To his slumbering self it seemed that he walked through a thick fog and in this fog he met N’Longa, true to life. N’Longa spoke, and the words were clear and vivid, impressing themselves on his consciousness so deeply as to span the gap between sleeping and waking.

  “Send this girl to her village soon after sun-up when the lions have gone to their lairs,” said N’Longa, “and bid her bring her lover to you at this cave. There make him lie down as if to slumber, holding the voodoo stave.”

  The dream faded and Kane awoke suddenly, wondering. How strange and vivid had been the vision, and how strange to hear N’Longa talking in English, without the jargon! Kane shrugged his shoulders. He knew that N’Longa claimed to possess the power of sending his spirit through space, and he himself had seen the voodoo man animate a dead man’s body. Still —

  “Zunna,” said Kane, giving the problem up, “I will go with you as far as the edge of the jungle and you must go on to your village and return here to this cave with your lover.”

  “Kran?” she asked naïvely.

  “Whatever his name is. Eat and we will go.”

  Again the sun slanted toward the west. Kane sat in the cave, waiting. He had seen the girl safely to the place where the jungle thinned to the grasslands, and though his conscience stung him at the thought of the dangers which might confront her, he sent her on alone and returned to the cave. He sat now, wondering if he would not be damned to everlasting flames for tinkering with the magic of a black sorcerer, blood-brother or not.

  Light footfalls sounded, and as Kane reached for his musket, Zunna entered, accompanied by a tall, splendidly proportioned youth whose brown skin showed that he was of the same race as the girl. His soft dreamy eyes were fixed on Kane in a sort of awesome worship. Evidently the girl had not minimized the white god’s glory in her telling.

  He bade the youth lie down as he directed and placed the voodoo stave in his hands. Zunna crouched at one side, wide-eyed. Kane stepped back, half-ashamed of this mummery and wondering what, if anything, would come of it. Then to his horror, the youth gave one gasp and stiffened!

  Zunna screamed, bounding erect.

  “You have killed Kran!” she shrieked, flying at the Englishman who stood struck speechless.

  Then she halted suddenly, wavered, drew a hand languidly across her brow — she slid down to lie with her arms about the motionless body of her lover.

  And this body moved suddenly, made aimless motions with hands and feet, then sat up, disengaging itself from the clinging arms of the still senseless girl.

  Kran looked up at Kane and grinned, a sly, knowing grin which seemed out of place on his face somehow. Kane started. Those soft eyes had changed in expression and were now hard and glittering and snaky — N’Longa’s eyes!

  “Ai ya,” said Kran in a grotesquely familiar voice. “Blood-brother, you got no greeting for N’Longa?”

  Kane was silent. His flesh crawled in spite of himself. Kran rose and stretched his arms in an unfamiliar sort of way, as if his limbs were new to him. He slapped his breast approvingly.

  “Me N’Longa!” said he in the old boastful manner. “Mighty ju-ju man! Blood-brother, not you know me, eh?”

  “You are Satan,” said Kane sincerely. “Are you Kran or are you N’Longa?”

  “Me N’Longa,” assured the other. “My body sleep in ju-ju hut on Coast many treks from here. I borrow Kran’s body for while. My ghost travel ten days march in one breath; twenty days march in same time. My ghost go out from my body and drive out Kran’s.”

  “And Kran is dead?”

  “No, he no dead. I send his ghost to shadowland for a while — send the girl’s ghost too, to keep him company; bimeby come back.”

  “This is the work of the Devil,” said Kane frankly, “but I have seen you do even fouler magic — shall I call you N’Longa or Kran?”

  “Kran — kah! Me N’Longa — bodies like clothes! Me N’Longa, in here now!” he rapped his breast. “Bimeby Kran live along here — then he be Kran and I be N’Longa, same like before. Kran no live along now; N’Longa live along this one fellow body. Blood-brother, I am N’Longa!”

  Kane nodded. This was in truth a land of horror and enchantment; anything was possible, even that the thin voice of N’Longa should speak to him from the great chest of Kran, and the snaky eyes of N’Longa should blink at him from the handsome young face of Kran.

  “This land I know long time,” said N’Longa, getting down to business. “Mighty ju-ju, these dead people! No, no need to waste one fellow time — I know — I talk to you in sleep. My blood-brother want to kill out these dead black fellows, eh?”

  “’Tis a thing opposed to nature,” said Kane somberly. “They are known in my land as vampires — I never expected to come upon a whole nation of them.”

  4. The Silent City

  “Now we find this stone city,” said N’Longa.

  “Yes? Why not send your ghost out to kill these vampires?” Kane asked idly.

  “Ghost got to have one fellow body to work in,” N’Longa answered. “Sleep now. Tomorrow we start.”

  The sun had set; the fire glowed and flickered in the cave mouth. Kane glanced at the still form of the girl, who lay where she had fallen, and prepared himself for slumber.

  “Awake me at midnight,” he admonished, “and I will watch from then until dawn.”

  But when N’Longa finally shook his arm, Kan
e awoke to see the first light of dawn reddening the land.

  “Time we start,” said the fetish-man.

  “But the girl — are you sure she lives?”

  “She live, blood-brother.”

  “Then in God’s name, we cannot leave her here at the mercy of any prowling fiend who might chance upon her. Or some lion might —”

  “No lion come. Vampire scent still linger, mixed with man scent. One fellow lion he no like man scent and he fear the walking dead men. No beast come; and” — lifting the voodoo stave and laying it across the cave entrance — “no dead man come now.”

  Kane watched him somberly and without enthusiasm.

  “How will that rod safeguard her?”

  “That mighty ju-ju,” said N’Longa. “You see how one fellow vampire go along dust alongside that stave! No vampire dare touch or come near it. I gave it to you, because outside Vampire Hills one fellow man sometimes meet a corpse walking in jungle when shadows be black. Not all walking dead men be here. And all must suck Life from men — if not, they rot like dead wood.”

  “Then make many of these rods and arm the people with them.”

  “No can do!” N’Longa’s skull shook violently. “That ju-ju rod be mighty magic! Old, old! No man live today can tell how old that fellow ju-ju stave be. I make my blood-brother sleep and do magic with it to guard him, that time we make palaver in Coast village. Today we scout and run; no need it. Leave it here to guard girl.”

  Kane shrugged his shoulders and followed the fetish-man, after glancing back at the still shape which lay in the cave. He would never have agreed to leave her so casually, had he not believed in his heart that she was dead. He had touched her, and her flesh was cold.

  They went up among the barren hills as the sun was rising. Higher they climbed, up steep clay slopes, winding their way through ravines and between great boulders. The hills were honeycombed with dark, forbidding caves, and these they passed warily, and Kane’s flesh crawled as he thought of the grisly occupants therein. For N’Longa said: