It was at the entrance of the second floor corridor that I struck the first of my desultory supply of matches, and by its light discovered a placard nailed to the wall. The thing was yellow with age and hardly legible. In the drab light of the match I had difficulty in reading it--but, as far as I can remember, the notice went something like this:
WAREHOUSE RULES
1. No light shall be permitted in any room or corridor, as a prevention against fire.
2. No person shall be admitted to rooms or corridors unless accompanied by an employee.
3. A watchman shall be on the premises from 7 P.M. until 6 A.M.
He shall make the round of the corridors every hour during that interval, at a quarter past the hour.
4. Rooms are located by their numbers: the first figure in the room number indicating its floor location.
I could read no further. The match in my fingers burned to a black thread and dropped. Then, with the burnt stump still in my hand, I groped through the darkness to the bottom of the second ramp.
Room 4167, then, was on the fourth floor--the topmost floor of the structure. I must confess that the knowledge did not bring any renewed burst of courage! The top floor! Three black stair-pits would lie between me and the safety of escape. There would be no escape! No human being in the throes of fear could hope to discover that tortured outlet, could hope to grope his way through Stygian gloom down a triple ramp of black stairs. And even though he succeeded in reaching the lower corridors, there was still a blind alley-way, sealed at the outer end by a high grating of iron bars....
Escape! The mockery of it caused me to stop suddenly in my ascent and stand rigid, my whole body trembling violently.
But outside, in the gloom of the street, M. S. was waiting, waiting with that fiendish glare of triumph that would brand me a man without courage. I could not return to face him, not though all the horrors of h.e.l.l inhabited this gruesome place of mystery. And horrors must surely inhabit it, else how could one account for that fearful thing on the grating below? But I had been through horror before. I had seen a man, supposedly dead on the operating table, jerk suddenly to his feet and scream. I had seen a young girl, not long before, awake in the midst of an operation, with the knife already in her frail body. Surely, after those definite horrors, no _unknown_ danger would send me cringing back to the man who was waiting so bitterly for me to return.
Those were the thoughts pregnant in my mind as I groped slowly, cautiously along the corridor of the upper floor, searching each closed door for the indistinct number 4167. The place was like the center of a huge labyrinth, a spider-web of black, repelling pa.s.sages, leading into some central chamber of utter silence and blackness. I went forward with dragging steps, fighting back the dread that gripped me as I went farther and farther from the outlet of escape. And then, after losing myself completely in the gloom, I threw aside all thoughts of return and pushed on with a careless, surface bravado, and laughed aloud.
So, at length, I reached that room of horror, secreted high in the deeper recesses of the deserted warehouse. The number--G.o.d grant I never see it again!--was scrawled in black chalk on the door--4167. I pushed the half-open barrier wide, and entered.
It was a small room, even as M. S. had forewarned me--or as the dead mind of that thing on the grate had forewarned M. S. The glow of my out-thrust match revealed a great stack of dusty boxes and crates, piled against the farther wall. Revealed, too, the black corridor beyond the entrance, and a small, upright table before me.
It was the table, and the stool beside it, that drew my attention and brought a m.u.f.fled exclamation from my lips. The thing had been thrust out of its usual place, pushed aside as if some frenzied shape had lunged against it. I could make out its former position by the marks on the dusty floor at my feet. Now it was nearer to the center of the room, and had been wrenched sidewise from its holdings. A shudder took hold of me as I looked at it. A living person, sitting on the stool before me, staring at the door, would have wrenched the table in just this manner in his frenzy to escape from the room!
The light of the match died, plunging me into a pit of gloom. I struck another and stepped closer to the table. And there, on the floor, I found two more things that brought fear to my soul. One of them was a heavy flash-lamp--a watchman"s lamp--where it had evidently been dropped. Been dropped in flight! But what awful terror must have gripped the fellow to make him forsake his only means of escape through those black pa.s.sages? And the second thing--a worn copy of a leather-bound book, flung open on the boards below the stool!
The flash-lamp, thank G.o.d! had not been shattered. I switched it on, directing its white circle of light over the room. This time, in the vivid glare, the room became even more unreal. Black walls, clumsy, distorted shadows on the wall, thrown by those huge piles of wooden boxes. Shadows that were like crouching men, groping toward me. And beyond, where the single door opened into a pa.s.sage of Stygian darkness, that yawning entrance was thrown into hideous detail. Had any upright figure been standing there, the light would have made an unholy phosph.o.r.escent specter out of it.
I summoned enough courage to cross the room and pull the door shut.
There was no way of locking it. Had I been able to fasten it, I should surely have done so; but the room was evidently an unused chamber, filled with empty refuse. This was the reason, probably, why the watchman had made use of it as a retreat during the intervals between his rounds.
But I had no desire to ponder over the sordidness of my surroundings. I returned to my stool in silence, and stooping, picked up the fallen book from the floor. Carefully I placed the lamp on the table, where its light would shine on the open page. Then, turning the cover, I began to glance through the thing which the man before me had evidently been studying.
And before I had read two lines, the explanation of the whole horrible thing struck me. I stared dumbly down at the little book and laughed.
Laughed harshly, so that the sound of my mad cackle echoed in a thousand ghastly reverberations through the dead corridors of the building.
It was a book of horror, of fantasy. A collection of weird, terrifying, supernatural tales with grotesque ill.u.s.trations in funereal black and white. And the very line I had turned to, the line which had probably struck terror to that unlucky devil"s soul, explained M. S."s "decayed human form, standing in the doorway with arms extended and a frightful face of pa.s.sion!" The description--the same description--lay before me, almost in my friend"s words. Little wonder that the fellow on the grating below, after reading this orgy of horror, had suddenly gone mad with fright. Little wonder that the picture engraved on his dead mind was a picture of a corpse standing in the doorway of room 4167!
I glanced at that doorway and laughed. No doubt of it, it was that awful description in M. S."s untempered language that had made me dread my surroundings, not the loneliness and silence of the corridors about me.
Now, as I stared at the room, the closed door, the shadows on the wall, I could not repress a grin.
But the grin was not long in duration. A six-hour siege awaited me before I could hear the sound of human voice again--six hours of silence and gloom. I did not relish it. Thank G.o.d the fellow before me had had foresight enough to leave his book of fantasy for my amus.e.m.e.nt!
I turned to the beginning of the story. A lovely beginning it was, outlining in some detail how a certain Jack Fulton, English adventurer, had suddenly found himself imprisoned (by a mysterious black gang of monks, or something of the sort) in a forgotten cell at the monastery of El Toro. The cell, according to the pages before me, was located in the "empty, haunted pits below the stone floors of the structure...." Lovely setting! And the brave Fulton had been secured firmly to a huge metal ring set in the farther wall, opposite the entrance.
I read the description twice. At the end of it I could not help but lift my head to stare at my own surroundings. Except for the location of the cell, I might have been in they same setting. The same darkness, same silence, same loneliness. Peculiar similarity!
And then: "Fulton lay quietly, without attempt to struggle. In the dark, the stillness of the vaults became unbearable, terrifying. Not a suggestion of sound, except the sc.r.a.ping of unseen rats--"
I dropped the book with a start. From the opposite end of the room in which I sat came a half inaudible scuffling noise--the sound of hidden rodents scrambling through the great pile of boxes. Imagination? I am not sure. At the moment, I would have sworn that the sound was a definite one, that I had heard it distinctly. Now, as I recount this tale of horror, I am not sure.
But I am sure of this: There was no smile on my lips as I picked up the book again with trembling fingers and continued.
"The sound died into silence. For an eternity, the prisoner lay rigid, staring at the open door of his cell. The opening was black, deserted, like the mouth of a deep tunnel, leading to h.e.l.l. And then, suddenly, from the gloom beyond that opening, came an almost noiseless, padded footfall!"
This time there was no doubt of it. The book fell from my fingers, dropped to the floor with a clatter. Yet even through the sound of its falling, I heard that fearful sound--the shuffle of a living foot! I sat motionless, staring with bloodless face at the door of room 4167. And as I stared, the sound came again, and again--_the slow tread of dragging footsteps, approaching along the black corridor without_!
I got to my feet like an automaton, swaying heavily. Every drop of courage ebbed from my soul as I stood there, one hand clutching the table, waiting....
And then, with an effort, I moved forward. My hand was outstretched to grasp the wooden handle of the door. And--I did not have the courage.
Like a cowed beast I crept back to my place and slumped down on the stool, my eyes still transfixed in a mute stare of terror.
I waited. For more than half an hour I waited, motionless. Not a sound stirred in the pa.s.sage beyond that closed barrier. Not a suggestion of any living presence came to me. Then, leaning back against the wall with a harsh laugh, I wiped away the cold moisture that had trickled over my forehead into my eyes.
It was another five minutes before I picked up the book again. You call me a fool for continuing it? A fool? I tell you, even a story of horror is more comfort than a room of grotesque shadows and silence. Even a printed page is better than grim reality!
And so I read on. The story was one of suspense, madness. For the next two pages I read a cunning description of the prisoner"s mental reaction. Strangely enough, it conformed precisely with my own.
"Fulton"s head had fallen to his chest," the script read. "For an endless while he did not stir, did not dare to lift his eyes. And then, after more than an hour of silent agony and suspense, the boy"s head came up mechanically. Came up--and suddenly jerked rigid. A horrible scream burst from his dry lips as he stared--stared like a dead man--at the black entrance to his cell. There, standing without motion in the opening, stood a shrouded figure of death. Empty eyes, glaring with awful hate, bored into his own. Great arms, bony and rotten, extended toward him. Decayed flesh--"
I read no more. Even as I lunged to my feet, with that mad book still gripped in my hand, I heard the door of my room grind open. I screamed, screamed in utter horror at the thing I saw there. Dead? Good G.o.d, I do not know. It was a corpse, a dead human body, standing before me like some propped-up thing from the grave. A face half eaten away, terrible in its leering grin. Twisted mouth, with only a suggestion of lips, curled back over broken teeth. Hair--writhing, distorted--like a ma.s.s of moving, b.l.o.o.d.y coils. And its arms, ghastly white, bloodless, were extended toward me, with open, clutching hands.
It was alive! Alive! Even while I stood there, crouching against the wall, it stepped forward toward me. I saw a heavy shudder pa.s.s over it, and the sound of its sc.r.a.ping feet burned its way into my soul. And then, with its second step, the fearful thing stumbled to its knees. The white, gleaming arms, thrown into streaks of living fire by the light of my lamp, flung violently upwards, twisting toward the ceiling. I saw the grin change to an expression of agony, of torment. And then the thing crashed upon me--dead.
With a great cry of fear I stumbled to the door. I groped out of that room of horror, stumbled along the corridor. No light. I left it behind, on the table, to throw a circle of white glare over the decayed, living-dead intruder who had driven me mad.