The Eighth Green Man and Other Stories

1: The Dark Star Weird Tales, March 1937 ALAN CLOVA hid the winged exultant uprush of his emotion with habitual control. His face, thin to emaciation, dark and cleanly chiseled, was aloof and proud as a Pharoah's. It was hard to believe he was only thirty. So much experience, so much hard-earned knowledge, so much resolution and critical cool judgment was in his eyes. Beneath straight black brows they gleamed, steady, brilliant and serene. Here was a man of action no less than a man of intellect. Breeding, dignity, pride of race had molded the features, but they were Instinct with a tense fighting awareness that was the New World's gift to the Old. His cousin, David Wishart Clova, Earl of Glenhallion, narrowly observed his young kinsman. Hope stirred in him once more; hope he had thought was dead —dead and buried with his three sons beneath the sodden earth of Flanders. The words of the creed he had so often repeated in the little gray chapel on his estate, beat in his brain like the portentous opening bars of a tremendous symphony. "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come." The words had never passed his lips since 1916, when his third and youngest son fell— 1916, twenty years now. Now, looking at Alan's six feet five inches of brawn and muscle, the beliefs he had forsworn flashed up again. Here in the flesh once more was an heir to the great name, the centuries of tradition, the wild splendor of Glenhallion estates. Here, under the roof of Gorm Castle, stood a man who might well have been one of his own sons grown older, stronger, more mature. Resurrection!... Yes, it seemed a resurrection indeed. Alan stood at a great window looking out over Glenhallion estate, from walled grounds about the castle to meadow, forest, craggy hills, and far-distant sky whose April blue darkened to hazy grays and purples above the Kaims of Vorangowl. His absorbed gaze traveled from point to point, then came back to rest on a square gray tower within the grounds, ivy-hung and partly obscured by beech trees. He frowned at sight of a man who was pacing round its battlements. His appearance, a great hulking figure in outlandish-looking gray clothes, stirred a sudden cold antipathy in Alan and he turned abruptly back to the room and its two occupants. Lady Maisry, the Earl's only surviving child, sat by a log fire. She had a fragile look and shivered now and then at sound of the wind's bluster round the castle of Gorm. She looked, Alan thought, with her golden hair and green sheath dress, as if she had been transplanted from the daffodil-beds in the grounds below. Some unfathomable instinct of protection for her made him hesitate to speak of the man on the tower roof. He strolled back to the window. Yes, the man was there still, pacing to and fro, to and fro, a long cloak flapping in the wind, hair and beard flaming red in the evening light. Such a fury of rage shook Alan that it was a minute before he could command his voice. Then he asked, "Is that old tower a complete ruin? Or, do— do people live in it ?" Earl Glenhallion came over to the window. "Birds, bats, spiders! That's all you'll find living in the old Keep. Fine old stronghold, all that's left of the original castle; the rest was burned down about two hundred years ago. No, you'd not find man, woman, or child who'd go inside that tower for five minutes." "I'm going." Alan's remark had the effect of a pistol-shot on Lady Maisry. She got to her feet and moved quickly across to him, put a pleading hand on his arm. "No—no —no! You mustn't! It's dangerous, very dangerous. There's something... there's someone... you never know if—it skips some generations ! My father thinks it all nonsense, but... Alan almost promised never to set foot in the tower if it worried her. The distress in her gray eyes, the frightened pallor of her cheeks shook him. She interested and gripped his imagination profoundly. Yesterday's first impressions of her were strengthened by today's. Her clear ivory-pale skin, wide gray eyes, gold thick shining hair, gentle slow ease of every movement, and above all to his critical sensitive ear, her low deliberate exquisite voice, immensely charmed him. Beyond these things; though, rare as he had found such physical perfection, he was deeply aware of a mind fully as alive and equipped as his own, of a nature as exacting, and a will as inflexible. But there was something about her that puzzled him; he had the impression of a deeply hidden preoccupation which she dreaded might be discovered. "She looks as substantial as a dragonfly, but I believe she's made of steel covered with white velvet," he reflected. "I know that fragile-looking type of thoroughbred. She'd live through famine and earthquake— if she felt like living! I know horses and I know dogs, and that gives me a line on humans. She's letting go for some reason, and I'm going to know that reason." All the same he found it difficult to remember she wouldn't die easily as he met her panic-stricken eyes. A grim thought struck him. Was that man on the battlements her lover?— was she hiding him there from the Earl? "Why do you feel like that about the tower?" he asked. Her father drew her to him, an arm about her shoulders. "She's had a queer life here in this old castle. You must forgive her fancies, Alan! The legend about that old Keep dies hard. Everyone on the estate swears by it. Maisry believes it, too." "Just what is the legend ?" "A-a-ah! Hrumph!" The older man stalked over to the window and glowered at the gray Keep. "They say it's haunted by an ancestor of ours, who lived some two hundred years ago. He was known as the Red Earl of Glenhallion, or Red Alastair, because of his flaming red beard." Alan felt his heart jump as if a mine had exploded under the polished flooring under foot. He tried to keep his glance from the old tower, and failed. He must look again; perhaps the setting sun had dazzled him, given a false illusion. He joined the Earl; his keen gazed followed the other's look. A clear shaft of light struck across the glen from over the high moorland of Vorangowl and picked out the tower like a searchlight; every ivy-leaf stood out like carved metal, every irregularity of weathered stone showed up, discolorations of dripping rain from the roof, the gold patina of lichen, the rusty brown of winter leaves lodged in iron-barred windows— all was mercilessly clear. And, on the breast-high battlemented wall that ran round the roof, a man leaned with face directly turned to Alan and the castle window at which he stood. The man's hair and beard flamed red as torchlight. "The story of Red Alastair does us no credit," went on the Earl. "He was a wild, dissolute, savage man, from all the records. You can read him up in the library if you're interested. But as to haunting the Keep— that's nonsense, the talk of ignorant peasants, the sort of story that people like to invent about any old ruin." "So no one lives there, no one climbs up to the roof to look round, not for any reason?" Alan's voice was harsh. "No one. It stands there as you see it now— deserted! I've been up, of course. Jamie has the key— the only key. When I succeeded to Glenhallion there were constant scandals and wild tales because visitors were allowed to go over the Keep and explore it. I locked up the place, and since then there've been no more tales of ghosts and people being pushed off battlements or crushed behind doors and all the rest of it. I've not been inside for a year or more, and certainly no one else has. A good specimen of Tenth Century architecture it is, and that's all. If you see Red Alastair when you go over it, let me know. I rule here now; he's had his turn and made a very bad job of it, by all accounts." The two men turned back to the fire, the Earl chuckling, Alan feeling more angry, more stupidly bewildered than he'd ever felt in his whole vigorous sane existence. He believed in ghosts no more than he believed in the Divine Right of kings; and he connected both beliefs with forgotten centuries when people had no bathrooms, enjoyed heretic burnings in place of cinemas and nightclubs, and fought for "the Glory of God" or some other such unpractical cause. He thrust the whole thing out of his mind for future cogitation. Maisry was watching him with painful anxiety, as if she divined his inner discomfort. He was determined to share it with no one, and made up his mind to investigate the Keep before he slept that night. In order to get the legend as it was bandied about the countryside before reading up a literary account, he tried to extract information from the dose-mouthed Jamie, who valetted him as he dressed for dinner. Jamie shied away from the subject like a nervous horse from a white flapping sheet. "It's not good to talk of him, not about this time of year, my lord." The man spoke the broad Scots of the countryside, and became almost unintelligible as his agitation and embarrassment increased. Alan turned to the big swinging mirror on his dressing-table, pretending to examine his chin. He saw the reflected Jamie glance over his shoulder. "Why at this time of year, especially?" "Eh, my lord?— you that'll be next Earl of Glenhallion to be asking that!" The thin dark face turned from the mirror with a smile, so pleasant and friendly a smile that the old servant relaxed to it with: "It's not you I'll be blaming, my lord; it's those that brought you up so far from your own land and kinsmen. You that were born to all this!" "But I wasn't! When I was born, exactly seven other heirs came before me." "It's the Earl will be telling you all the family history, him and her Ladyship. It's not for me to be havering of the gentry." "Tell me at least why April's a bad time to discuss Red Alastair? Must a ghost be in season like grouse or blackcock ?" "Wheest, wheest for pity's sake, my lord! You can't tell what's abroad these evenings. The master hasn't 'the sight'; he could go up into the Keep this very night and not see a thing to fright him. But there's others can— aye, there's others can see! And I tell you this, my lord: the Dark Star is up over the Kaims of Vorangowl again." "You mean the high moors at the head of the glen?" "No. Not the moors you've seen. The star's in the Picture, the cursed thing he left in the Keep. Aye, the Picture I'm meaning of the moors and the cliff where the bride he stole from another man jumped to her death." A deep sonorous booming distracted Jamie from his confidences. "That's the dinner gong, my lord. I'll not weary you with my tales now. It's all writ In black and white, and every word's true, for all the master's fleering at the legend." When he made his way down to the lofty, shadow-filled dining-hall, exasperation had rubbed Alan's temper rather raw. "Am I crazy—or am I crazy?" he demanded of himself, one hand lightly sliding over the broad baluster-rail for the sensuous pleasure of touching the lovely seasoned wood, undesecrated by varnish, worn by time. His reason was floundering and plunging in heavy seas of unfamiliar and unpalatable sensations, ideas and thoughts. "And, so far, there's nothing in the facts to justify my going up in the air like this," he complained to himself. "Even if I did see— and most certainly I did—a red-bearded man, what of it? They exist— especially here in Scotland; it's almost the hallmark of a Scot. Maybe porridge produces red beards! Jamie's daft about his old legend. Now there's a picture to reckon with, and a dark star, and a lady friend of Red Alastair's! Can you beat it ? Even a Hollywood director couldn't think up this one. But the man— the man on the tower..." A fighting look came into his dark eyes. "Revolting sight! Don't quite know why— but somehow— filthy ! Reminded me of that fat one in Paris, sitting like a blotchy swollen spider in his den, waiting for his doped girls to be brought along— bah! I'll get Red Beard! Hunt the hairy brute right off the map."