Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer SSC (17 page)

 
          
"Light
it at
midnight
,"
he said, "and carry it forward. It'll go out at the place where you'll
find your wish. Understand?"

 
          
We
said we understood.

 
          
"Then
good day to you all," said Aram Harnam.

           
Nobody felt the need of sleep that
night. At
eleven o'clock
by Mr. Hoje's big silver turnip watch, we started out to cross the ridge to
Black Pine Hollow. Clay went first, with a lantern. Reed Barnitt followed, with
the candle. Then me, with my guitar slung on my back because I had a notion to
carry it along, and a grubbing hoe in my hand. Then Mr. Hoje with a spade, and
Mr. Eddy last of all with a crowbar. Sarah Ann watched us from the door, until
we got out of her sight.

 
          
Not
much of a trail led to Black Pine Hollow, for folks don't go there much. Last
night's hoot owls were at it again, and once or twice we heard rattlings to
right and left, like things keeping pace with us among the bushes. Down into
the hollow we went, while a breeze blew down on us, chill for that time of
year. I thought, but didn't sing out loud:

 
          
In the pines, in the pines,

 
          
Where the sun never shines,

 
          
And I shiver when the wind blows cold. . . .

 
          
"Where's
this mine?" asked Reed Barnitt.

 
          
"I
can find it better than Clay," called Mr. Hoje. He pushed ahead and took
the lantern. The light showed duller and duller, the deeper we went into the
hollow; it showed a sort of dim brown, the way you'd think that moonless night
was trying to smother it. Around us crowded the black pines the hollow was
named after. For my own comfort I reached back and tweaked a silver
guitar-string, and it rang so loud we all jumped.

 
          
"Now,"
said Mr. Hoje, after a long, long while, "I think this must be it."

 
          
He
turned off among a thick bunch of the blackest-looking pines, and held the
lantern high. Hidden there behind the trees rose a rock face like a wall, and
in the rock was a hole the size of a door, but uneven. Vines hung down around
it, but they looked dead and burnt out. As we stood still and looked, there was
a little timid foot-patter inside.

 
          
"Let's
pray that's no rat," said Clay. "Rats in mines are plumb bad
luck."

           
"Shoo," said his daddy,
"let's hope it's nothing worse than just a rat."

 
          
Reed
Barnitt shoved forward. "I'm going in," he said through his teeth,
"and I sure enough don't want to go in alone."

 
          
We
went in together. Gentlemen, it was so black in that mine, you'd think a hunk
of coal would show white. Maybe the lantern was smoking; it made just a pool of
dim glow for us. Reed Barnitt struck a match on the seat of his pants and set
it to the yarny wick of that five hundred dollar candle. It blazed up clean and
strong, like the light Reed Barnitt had made in the middle of the star when it
cast the spell. We saw where we were.

 
          
Seemed
as if once there'd been a long hallway cut in the brown rock, but rocks had
fallen down. They lay one on top of the other before us, shutting us away from
the hall, so that we stood in a little space not much bigger than Mr. Hoje's
front room. To either side the walls were of brown stone, marked by cutting
tools—those Ancients had made their way through solid rock—and underfoot were
pebbles. Some were quartz, like Mr. Hoje had said. Everything was quiet as the
inside of a coffin the night before judgment.

 
          
"The
flame's pointing," Reed Barnitt called to us. It did point, like a burning
finger, straight into the place. He stepped toward those piled rocks, that made
something like steps to go up, and we moved with him. I don't think anybody
wanted to go over the rocks and beyond. The blackness there made you feel that
not only nobody had ever been in there, but likewise nobody could ever go; the
blackness would shove him back like a hand.

 
          
I
moved behind Reed Barnitt with the others. The light of the candle shone past
his blocky body and wide hat, making him look like something cut out of black
cloth. Two-three steps, and he stopped, so quick we almost bumped him.
"The light flutters," he said.

 
          
It
did flutter, and it didn't point to the piled rocks, but to the wall at their
right. When Reed Barnitt made a pace that way, it winked out. We all stood
close together in the dim lantern light.

 
          
Reed
Barnitt put his hand on the rock wall. It showed ghost white on the brown. His
finger crawled along a seamy crack.

 
          
"Dig
there," he said to us.

 
          
By
what light the lantern showed, I shoved the pick end of the grubbing hoe into
the crack and gouged. Seemed to me the whole wall fought me, but I heaved hard
and the crack widened. It made a heavy spiteful noise somewhere. Mr. Eddy drove
in the point of his bar and pulled down.

 
          
"Come
help me, Clay," he called. "Put your man on this."

 
          
The
two pulled down with their long tall bodies, then together they pushed up. My
heart jumped inside me, for a piece of rock the size of a table top was moving.
I shoved on the hoe handle. Reed Barnitt grabbed the free edge of the moving
piece, and we laid into it —then jumped back just in time.

 
          
The
big loose chunk dropped like the lid of a box. Underneath was dark dirt. Mr.
Eddy drove the bar point into it.

 
          
"Light
that candle thing again," he asked Reed Barnitt.

 
          
Reed
Barnitt struck another match and tried. "Won't light," he said.
"We've got our hand right on the treasure."

 
          
I
reckoned that's the moment we all believed we had it. So far we'd worried and
bothered, but now we stopped, and just worked. Clay took the spade from Mr.
Hoje, and I swung my hoe. He scooped out the dirt I loosened. We breathed hard,
watching or working. Suddenly:

 
          
"John,"
said Clay, "didn't I hear that hoe-blade hit metal?"

 
          
I
slammed it into the dirt again, hard as I could. Clay scooped out a big
spadeful. Bright yellow glimmered up out of the dark dirt. Clay grabbed into
it, and so did his daddy. I had my mouth open to yell, but Reed Barnitt yelled
first.

 
          
"God
in the bushes! Look up there!"

 
          
We
looked. Reed Barnitt had turned away from our work, and he pointed up those
step-piled rocks. On the top rock of them stood something against the choking
blackness.

 
          
It
stood up the height of a man, that thing, but you couldn't make sure of its
shape. Because it was strung and swaddled over with webby rags. They stirred and
fluttered around it like gray smoke. And it had a hand, and the hand held a
skull, with white grinning teeth and eyes that shone.

 
          
"It's
an Ancient!" Reed Barnitt yelled, and the thing growled, deep and hungry
and ugly.

 
          
Clay
dropped his spade. I heard the clink and jangle of metal pieces on the floor
pebbles. He gave back, and Mr. Hoje and Mr. Eddy gave back with him. I stood
where I was, putting down my hoe. Reed Barnitt was the only one that moved
forward.

           
"Stay away from us," he
sort of breathed out at the ragged-gray thing.

 
          
It
just pushed out the skull at him, and the skull's eye-lights blinked and
glared. Reed Barnitt backed up.

 
          
"Let's
get out of here," he choked, "before that Ancient—"

 
          
He
didn't know we'd found the treasure, his eyes had been on whatever the thing
was. He was for running, but I wasn't.

 
          
In
my mind I saw the peculiar things I'd faced before this. The Ugly Bird . . .
One Other . . . Mr. Loden who might have lived three hundred years but for me
... Forney Meechum whose dead ghost had fled from me. I'd even seen the
Behinder that nobody's ever reckoned to see, and I'd come back to tell of it. I
wouldn't run from that gray-raggedy thing that held a skull like a lantern.

 
          
I
shrugged my guitar in front of me. My left hand grabbed its neck and my right
spread on the silver strings, the silver that's sure sudden death to
witch-stuff. I dragged a chord of music from them, and it echoed in there like
a whole houseful of guitar-men helping me. And I thought the thing up there
above shuddered, and the skull it held wabbled from side to side, trying maybe
to say no to me.

 
          
"You
don't like my music?" I said to it, and swept out another chord and got my
foot on the bottom step-stone.

 
          
"John!"
came Reed Barnitt's sick voice. "Take care—"

 
          
"Let
that thing take care!" I told him and moved up on the rocks.

 
          
The
gray thing flung the skull at me. I dodged, and felt the wind of the skull as
it sailed grinning past, and I heard it smash like a bottle on the floor behind
me. For a moment that flinging hand stuck out of the gray rags.

 
          
I
knew whose hand it was, black-furry like a spider.

 
          
"
Aram
Harnam!" I yelled out, and let my
guitar fall to hang by its string, and I charged up those stairs of stones.

 
          
Reed
Barnitt was after me as I got to the top.

 
          
"It's
a put-up show!" I was shouting, and grabbed my hands full of rags. Reed
Barnitt clamped onto my arm and flung me down the step-stones so I almost fell
flat on the floor. But rags had torn away in my grip, and you could see Aram
Harnam's face, all a thicket of hair and beard, with hooked nose and shining
eyes.

 
          
"What's
up?" hooted out Mr. Eddy.

 
          
"Aram
Harnam's up!" I yelled to him and the others. "Sold us that
candle-thing, then came here to scare us out!" I pointed. "And Reed
Bamitt's in it with him!"

 
          
Reed
Barnitt, on the top stone beside Aram Harnam, turned around, his eyes big in
his white face. I got my feet under me to charge back up at those two.

 
          
But
then I stopped, the way you'd think roots had sprung from my toes into the
rock. There were three up there, not two.

 
          
That
third one looked at first glimpse like a big, big man wearing a fur coat; until
you saw the fur was on his skin, with warty muscles bunching through. His head
was more like a frog's than anything else, wide in the mouth and big in the eye
and no nose. He spread his arms and put them quiet-like round the shoulders of
Reed Barnitt and Aram Harnam, and took hold with his hands that had both webs
and claws.

 
          
The
two men he touched screamed out like animals in a snap-trap. I sort of reckon
they tried to pull free, but those two big shaggy arms just hugged them close
and hiked them off their feet. And what had come to fetch them, it fetched them
away, all in a blink of time, back into that darkness no sensible soul would dare.

 
          
That's
when we four others up and ran like rabbits, dropping the lantern.

 
          
We
got back to Mr. Hoje's, and lighted a lamp there, and looked at those two
handfuls of metal pieces Clay and Mr. Eddy had grabbed and never turned loose.