The Eighth Green Man and Other Stories

1: The Dark Star-3

Alan stared, waiting with pulses beating heavy and slow, watching for the man to reappear. Abruptly he came. He was there on the battlemented roof of the Keep, his great red head and fiery beard sharply defined. He turned to look at Alan, flung up a great arm in menace or derisive greeting.

In that instant a sound of high hooting wind filled the Keep, shrieked through the barred windows, roared down the hollow shaft of the stairway. Alan whipped about, torch in hand, to see the door slam in his face. The wind dropped as he flung himself forward to pull and tug with mad violence at the clumsy ring of iron that formed a handle. As he vainly struggled, there was a sound of heavy footsteps coming from above, halting outside his door, moving on downward and out of hearing.

Silence, heavy and sightless as a grave's, closed down on the Keep and its prisoner.

The shock of it roused Alan like a blow in the face. He'd stood bemused, dreaming, hypnotized by a bit of painted wall and let himself be trapped. Tricked ! Some bit of ancient conjuring, some ingenious contraption in the chimney-flue had caused the illusion.

And the uproar of the wild and sudden wind ? He shrugged that problem off. Whoever worked the Picture fake could take care of that too!

He flashed his light up the chimney but could see nothing beyond bare, grimed old stones rising in rough crumbling perpendicular. He examined the rooms opening off the dining-hall; they were merely cells, unlighted, full of dust and rubble. He returned to the main room and looked up at the windows with careful, calculating eye; they were narrow, strongly barred, set high on the walls so that no arrow, glancing through, should strike a human target. No faintest hope from them, even could he climb like a fly or were possessed of the sharpest of files. Only an explosive could burst open his prison bars.

And now that cursed red-bearded man was at large while he was trapped and helpless here. What was the game? Robbery —the old plate at Gorm? Or jewels —would the beast go near Maisry, frighten her, hurt her? What had he plotted and planned as he hid here all those hours?

Not even hidden, though, Alan reflected. The creature had brazened it out on the battlements in full light. How was it no one but himself had seen ? The Earl had been standing beside him when... Hastily averting his mind's eye from the thought that leaped out of ambush to answer his question, Alan said aloud in clearest, concisest tones:

"That's an easy one! The old man's sight is failing!" and this in spite of knowing that only twelve months ago the Earl had once more carried off the Fofarshire trophy for target shooting at the annual sports. "And, after all, it's not likely that people who live here go poking about and staring as I've been doing. It's perfectly simple that I happened to be the only one to see that infernal tramp."

Other explanations buzzed in his brain and he beat them back like a cloud of noisome flies. There was no other explanation.

Maisry's words sounded in his memory. "Only some have the sight. Father hasn't got it, and that's why he's never seen Red Alastair and doesn't believe in the legend—but it's fact and no legend at all. I have the sight. And you have it too, Alan. I knew at once; I always recognize this wonderful, this terrible power in anyone else. You will see Red Alastair — most certainly you will see him — and that is why I can explain to you about his Picture that he lives in."

For some minutes Alan closed his eyes, recalled deliberately scenes and images and places he had left behind in America. He wanted to shake off illusion, to steady his swirling thoughts, to forget the dark disturbance that swelled and rose and battered at his sanity.

He thought of a holiday he had spent loafing in the sun and warm salt water in Florida. He remembered a day in the woods near a logging-camp when an angry she-bear had chased him as he made off with her cub. He saw himself rocking and smoking and yarning on the broad screened porches of his aunt's country-house in the White Mountains; flashed through the hours of last Christmas day, spent with old Friedland in New York... the fires and friends and brilliant dinner-table...

He opened his eyes on the Picture, and had the sensation of dropping from heaven to hell. On the road— returning, retreating to the misty Kaims of Vorangowl— the man was back again. But this time, and Alan watched with all his soul although he denied the thing he watched, a faint shadowy second figure followed after the man. Beyond a rocky cliff-face far up on the Kaims the red-haired figure halted, turned about to beckon the weary shadow that toiled after him, a shadow that grew clearer with every step it took. Suddenly Alan knew it.

"Maisry! Maisry! Maisry! Comeback— come back to me!"

His full-throated anguished cry beat and echoed against the high cold walls of his prison. Again, again he called. He must bring her back, he must, before she set foot on that high narrow trail skirting the precipice.

That meant death to her, lasting, damnable, eternal death. He was conscious of a single overmastering passion of determination to bring her back — back from the cliff-face where she would slip to darkness, where he would lose her in this world and the next.

With a new shock, he recognized that his will was locked with the will of the red-haired man who waited for Maisry beyond the cliff path. The Picture darkened. Mist rolled gray and baffling down from the heights, and in the leaden skies a dark star shone, a star of evil copper-red that changed the green woods and April grass to somber purples.

Old Jamie's warning darted across his memory: "The Dark Star is up over the Kaims of Vorangowl."

He saw Maisry move forward, saw Red Alastair beckon with insistent hand. Deathless love. Deathless hate. The twin fires leaped up, all his conscious being focused to a single point—to conquer Red Alastair.

He knew his antagonist, acknowledged him at last. He knew his own weapon too. His only weapon. The Will. A clean strong sword that all hell tried to tear from his grasp.

And now Maisry was coming back, back to him from the dark cliff, from engulfing mists, from Red Alastair, slowly, moving wraith-like past wood and glen and through the enfolding trees in the grounds at last. As she vanished, she turned to smile at him.

His torch fell from his nerveless hand. He sagged to the ground, huddled with head on knees; he felt old and worn and done. His next recollection was of light at the windows. Dawn, and the high sweet note of skylarks on the wing.

And the Picture showed a fresh and verdant April evening, an empty road wound up over far-distant heights, a clear tender sky shone above all. It was a magic tender exquisite study of a northern spring. Alan looked and experienced emotions he had never dreamed of possessing.

"And that was her dream! That child caught— held — dragged to hell!

"Maisry!" he addressed the Picture as if she were still on the road before his eyes. "Forgive me. My faithlessness, my stupidity. You shall never tread that road again. It is my fight now. It is between me and Red Alastair. And— I— will — win."

The last words fell with slow, deadly emphasis, a vow abruptly extinguished, the echo of the last word torn from his lips by an inferno of wind. The Keep rocked in its fury, vibrating ominously to its high tremendous shriek.

He turned to the door, prepared for assault, and was faced by a new shock of surprise. The door stood wide open. Cool morning air, bearing a tang of pine and freshness of young wet leaves and grass, met him as he ran to the lower floor, to find the outer door unlocked and opened to the misty morning.

Soberly, slowly, thankfully he returned to Gorm, deeply aware that the Keep was solitary now; no need to search. Its demon was not there. For the moment there was no enemy, no battlefield.

There was only Maisry, and he must go to her.

iii

"AND MAISRY ?" Alan looked at the breakfast table laid for two and his eyes lost their eagerness. "Not joining us. Cousin David ?"

"No. Her maid says she had a bad night. I don't know what to make of it; these last weeks she's altered beyond recognition. I've tried to persuade her to go away for a change. Our local man, Doctor Shields, says she's well enough but makes no effort; he thinks there's something on her mind."

Alan regarded the fish on his plate with a stern frown. He'd been doing some hard, intensive thinking and saw a gleam of light on the very dark horizon of his thoughts.

"I met a chap on the ship coming over. Lives in Stirling. Several people on board knew him well. Seems he's made a great reputation as a nerve specialist. Broome, Eliot Broome's his name."

The Earl's unhappy face lightened.

"Ah, that's a household word in Scotland, and in other countries too. A nerve-man, yes! I didn't think of him for Maisry. D'you suppose she..."

"It's hard to do anything but guess. This fellow Broome impressed me more than anyone I've met in years. Got to know him fairly well— y'know how it is on board ship. We yarned several nights away together. Made a good team for discussions, as he always took a diametrically opposite viewpoint from mine. I'm for fact, the proven fact."

His voice weakened as he proclaimed his lifelong standard. How foolishly short It fell of measuring up with last night's phenomenon!

"Maisry might be upset, imagine there was something seriously wrong if I called in Broome."

"Let me go to Stirling and talk to him. I could bring him back as a friend, not introduce him professionally. Let him see Maisry off guard."

It was quickly arranged. By ten o'clock, Alan was speeding along the road south, a great relief in his mind that there was someone likely to listen to his fantastic, improbable story and discuss it without prejudice. So far as he knew Eliot Broome, the impossible and fantastic interested him profoundly. If only he'd come, and at once! Maisry must not endure last night's horror again.

He found Broome at home, and the specialist listened with immense concentration.

"Yes, I can come, and now!" he said. "I returned by an earlier ship than I had intended— meant to finish off some laboratory experiments before seeing patients. A few days in retreat, y'know. But this won't wait an hour; we'll talk on the drive back."

After lunch, at which Maisry did not appear, the Earl took the two younger men into his study. The father's idea was that Maisry needed a change of scene, that she was moping here at Gorm; and it was evident he knew nothing of her dream, or the fear that shadowed her life. He would strongly have resented the idea of his daughter sharing the vulgar superstitions of the countryside; he appreciated Red Alastair as a picturesque legend but not as an existent contemporary.

After their conference, Alan took his ally over to the Keep.

"God ! It's altered again!"

Alan, who had made straight for the Picture, regarded it with angry incredulity.

"It was a clear late afternoon scene when I left it. There was no figure. Just bare spring landscape. Now the man's back in it again! He was right up in the mist when I first saw this infernal thing; I thought it a clever dodge of the painter— that solitary tiny figure emphasized the vast desolate moor. Now— look at that, will you!"