Murgunstrumm and Others Read online

  MURGUNSTRUMM AND OTHERS

  Hugh B. Cave

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2011 / The Estate of Hugh B. Cave

  Copy-edited by: Legion

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

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  OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS BOOKS BY HUGH B. CAVE:

  NOVELS:

  Serpents in the Sun

  Conquering Kilmarni

  The Cross on the Drum

  Lucifer's Eye

  The Evil

  The Evil Returns

  Shades of Evil

  The Nebulon Horror

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  Contents

  Foreword

  Murgunstrumm

  The Watcher in the Green Room

  The Prophecy

  The Strange Death of Ivan Gromleigh

  The Affair of the Clutching Hand

  The Strange Case of Number 7

  The Isle of Dark Magic

  The Whisperers

  Horror in Wax

  Prey of the Nightborn

  Maxon's Mistress

  Dead Man's Belt

  Boomerang

  The Crawling Curse

  Purr of a Cat

  Tomorrow is Forever

  The Ghoul Gallery

  The Cult of the White Ape

  The Brotherhood of Blood

  The Door of Doom

  The Death Watch

  The Caverns of Time

  Many Happy Returns

  Ladies in Waiting

  The Grisly Death

  Stragella

  Foreword

  This book was conceived back in January, 1972, when its editor, Karl Edward Wagner, happened to see a story of mine in Good Housekeeping. Karl wrote to the magazine, asking whether the Hugh Cave whose name appeared on the story might be the Hugh B. Cave who used to write for the pulps. For years I had written for The Saturday Evening Post, American, Redbook, Country Gentleman and other slickpaper magazines under the old name, but for reasons known only to themselves, Good Housekeeping's editors had dropped the middle initial. (The "B" by the way, in case you're curious, stands for "Barnett".)

  Good Housekeeping replied to Karl's letter saying yes, their Cave was indeed the pulp-writer from way back when, and Karl wrote to me at the address they gave him. After a pleasant exchange of letters he inquired whether anyone had ever put together a volume of my old pulp stories, especially those from such magazines as Weird Tales, Strange Tales, and the many shudder publications. If not, would I look with favor on such a venture or was I one of those writers who, having moved from the pulps into the slicks and books, preferred not to remember the old days of work done in too big a hurry for low, low rates.

  I was in an awkward position. When I was writing those pulp stories back in the thirties and early forties—under various names I must have done about 800 of them-1 had proudly saved a copy of every story. But in the early sixties I lost every one of those copies in a fire. Every one of them, God's truth. I couldn't, therefore, read some of them over and decide from my reaction to them what to say in reply to Karl's suggestion. I could only explain my position and ask him what he thought of the stories.

  He came back with: "You wrote some excellent weird-fantasy stories. A good example is Murgunstrumm, which you did for the last issue of Strange Tales. I doubt if many readers today have read this, and yet I would consider it a classic paced with a relentless ferocity that few writers have ever brought off." And in another letter: "Your stories were head and shoulders over the bulk of the weird-menace field; considering how fast you must have turned them out, it's astonishing how well-crafted they were. Stories like Death Stalks the Night are classic examples of the pulp formula, and display far superior writing than was usually given this type of story."

  (You see what I'm doing here, Karl, old boy? Passing the buck to you, just in case.) Justin Case, by the way, was a pen-name of mine in the old pulp days. Ah, we had fun then with pen-names and sly jokes.

  So . . . after a further exchange of letters, Karl Wagner and I reached an understanding as follows: He, not I, would select the best of my old weird-fantasy stories. (I hadn't any copies of them anyway.) Lee Brown Coye would illustrate them. (Wonderful!) "Turning Coye loose on something like this is like giving a straight razor to a psychopath," Karl wrote. "This is going to be quite a book. For sheer unrestrained horror, I don't think there's ever been anything like it. You and Coye together ought to flood the coronary care units all across the country!"

  From Lee Brown Coye himself came some marvelous letters including one that contained a remark about rabbits. "Your stuff really turns me on, and I wish I could do nothing else. I bought two black rabbits a few weeks ago and named them Mulvahey's Ghost and Jum Peters from your Dead Man's Belt, which I was making drawings for at the time. They are fine rabbits."

  As I said above, we had fun in the old pulp days. It seems we still can. And to me, after a writing career that began in high school and is still going on at age 66, the enjoyment part is important.

  One final word, please. When Karl Wagner first suggested this volume, I made up my mind that I would not be persuaded to change these old stories in order to "improve" them. Being a writer himself (a mighty good one) Karl did not even suggest that I do so, bless him. I am convinced that if stories such as these have any lasting value, it is in revealing the kind of work we young pulp-writers were doing in those days when rates were low and one had to make a typewriter smoke in order to keep eating. I was just out of high school when I sold my first pulp story, and about thirty when I moved on to books and the slicks. Perhaps I could make some of these stories more readable by reworking them today. But they wouldn't be authentic then, would they?

  I recently began doing this kind of story again, by the way. First loves die hard. Ladies in Waiting is one of the new ones. If you can't tell the difference, it must mean . . . well, never mind.

  Have fun, anyway.

  Hugh B. Cave

  Pompano Beach, Florida May, 1976

  Murgunstrumm

  1. 3A.M.

  The night hours are terrifying in that part of the country, away from traveled roads and the voices of sane men. They bring the moan of lost winds, the furtive whisper of swaying trees, the agony wail of frequent storms. They bring madness to men already mad, and fear and gibbering and horrible screams of torment. And sometimes peals of wild hideous laughter a thousand times worse.

  And with the dread of darkness, that night, came other fears more acute and more terrifying, to clutch viciously at the man who sought to escape. Macabre horrors of the past, breeding anew in the slough of his memory. Visions of the future, huge and black before him. Grim dread of detection!

  The square clock at the end of the long corridor, radium-dialed for the guard's benefit, told him silently that the hour was 3 A.M. The hour when darkness deepens before groping dawn; when man is so close to that other-world of mystery that a mere closing of his eyes,
a mere clutching of the subconscious, brings contact with nameless shapeless entities of abhorrent magnitude. The hour when the night watch in this grim gray structure, and the solitary guard on the outer walls, would be least alert. His hour, for which he had waited seven months of eternity!

  His eyes were wide, staring, fearful. He crept like a cat along the corridor, listening for every separate sound. Somewhere in the tiers above him a man was screeching violently, thumping on a locked door with frenzied fists. That would be Kennery, whom they had dragged in only a week ago. They had warned him to be still at night, poor devil. In the morning he would learn the awful loneliness and silence of solitary confinement. God! And men like that had to go on living, had to wait for death, slowly!

  He prowled forward again, trembling, hugging the wall with thin fingers. Three more corridors now and he would be in the yard. He clutched the key feverishly, looking down at it with hungry eyes. The yard, then the last great gate to freedom, and then…

  His groping hands touched a closed door. He stopped abruptly. Over his head hung the number 23. The V. D. ward. And he shuddered. Someone was mumbling, laughing, inside—Halsey, the poor diseased idiot who had been here eighteen endless years. He would be on hands and knees, crawling over the floor, searching for beetles. He would seek and seek; and then, triumphant at last, he would sit for hours on his cot, holding a terrified insect cupped in his huge hands while he laughed gleefully at its frantic struggles.

  Sickness surged over the fugitive's crouching body. He slunk on again quickly. God, he was glad when that mad caterwauling was smothered by a bend in the corridor! It clung in his brain as he tiptoed to the end of the passage. He fingered the key savagely. Eagerness glared in his eyes.

  That key was his. His own! His own cunning had won it. During the past month he had obtained an impression of every separate lock between him and escape. Furtively, secretly, he had taken chewing-gum forms of every infernal slot. And no one knew. No one but Martin LeGeurn, Ruth's brother, who had come once each week, on visiting day, and carried the impressions back to the city, and had a master key made. A master key! Not successful at first. But he himself, with a steel nail file, had scraped and scraped at the thing until it fitted. And now, tonight . . . .

  He descended the staircase warily, feeling his way every step. It was 3:10 now. The emergency ward would be open, with its stink of ether and its ghastly white tables on wheels. He could hide there until the guard passed. Every move according to schedule!

  The door was open. He crept toward it, reached it, and stopped to peer anxiously behind him. Then he darted over the threshold and clung silently to the wall, and waited.

  Hours passed. Frantic hours of doubt and uncertainty. Strange shapes came out of nowhere, out of his distorted mind, to leer and point at him. God! Would those memories never die? Would the horrors of that hour of madness, seven months gone, torment him forever, night after night, bringing back visions of those hideous creatures of living death and the awful limping thing of the inn? Was it not enough that they had already made a soul-twisted wreck of him and sent him to this black house of dread? Would they—

  Footsteps! They were audible now, approaching down the corridor outside. They came closer, closer. They scuffed past with an ominous shf-shf-shf, whispering their way. With them came the muffled clink of keys, dangling from a great ring at the guard's belt. And the sounds died away.

  The fugitive straightened up and stepped forward jerkily. And then he was running wildly down the passage in the opposite direction. A massive door loomed before him. He flung himself upon it, thrusting his own key into the lock. The door swung open. Cold, sweet air rushed into his face. Outside lay the yard, bleak, empty, and the towering walls that barred the world beyond.

  His terror was gone now. His movements were mechanical and precise. Silently he locked the barrier behind him and slunk sideways along the wall of the building. If he made the slightest sound, the slightest false move, those glaring, accusing, penetrating searchlights would clank on and sweep the enclosure from one end to the other. The great siren would scream a lurid warning for miles and miles around, howling fiendishly that Paul Hill had escaped.

  But if he went cautiously, noiselessly, he would be only a part of the darkness. There was no moon. The night was like pitch. The guard on the wall would not see.

  A step at a time he moved along the stone, hesitating before each venture. Now a hundred feet lay between him and the gate. Now fifty; and the guard had not heard. Now twenty....

  His breath caught in his throat as he darted across the final ten feet. Flat against the last barrier of all, he fumbled with the huge lock. His fingers turned the key with maddening slowness, to muffle any fatal thud. Then, putting his shoulder to the mass, he pushed. The big gate inched outward.

  Without a sound he squeezed through the narrow aperture. His teeth were clenched; his lips tasted of blood. But he was out, outside! No one had seen him! Feverishly he pushed the great block of iron back into place. On hands and knees he crawled along the base of the wall, crawled and crawled, until the guard's turret was only a grim gray blur against the black sky. Then, rising abruptly to his feet, he stumbled into the well of darkness beyond.

  "Thank God!" he whispered hoarsely. And then he was hacking, slashing his way through tangled black underbrush, with huge trees massed all about him and the inky sky blotted out overhead.

  2. Armand LeGeurn

  No one that night, saw the disheveled gray-clad figure that stumbled blindly from the woods and slunk silently, furtively down the state road. No one saw the unholy lust for freedom in his eyes, or the thin whiteness of his compressed lips.

  He was violently afraid. He turned continually to glance behind him. But his fists were clenched viciously. If that hideous siren sounded now, when he was so close to ultimate freedom, they would never take him back there alive. Never! Once before, during his seven hellish months of confinement, the siren had screamed. That was the time Jenson—foolish, idiotic Jenson, mad as a hatter—had scaled the walls. The bloodhounds had uncovered his hiding place in the heart of the woods, and he had been dragged back, whimpering, broken.

  But not this time! This time the escaped fugitive was no madman. Horror, not madness, had thrust him into that den of cackling idiots and screeching imbeciles. Stark horror, born of an experience beyond the minds of men. Horror of another world, a world of death and undead demons. And tonight, at four o'clock, Martin LeGeurn would be waiting at the crossroads, with a car. Martin would not be late.

  Paul Hill began to run. On and on he ran. Once he turned abruptly and plunged into the edge of the woods as a passing bus roared up behind him. Then, as the bus bellowed past, he leaped to the shoulder of the road again, racing frantically.

  A sob of relief soughed through his lips as he rounded the last sharp bend and saw, far ahead, a pair of stationary headlights glaring dimly toward him. He stumbled, caught himself. His legs were dead and heavy and aching sullenly, but he lurched on. And then he was gripping the side of the car with white nerveless hands, and Martin LeGeurn was dragging him into the seat.

  There was no delay now. Everything had been arranged! The motor roared sharply. The roadster jerked forward and gathered momentum. The clock on the dash said five minutes past four. By five o'clock they would be in the city. The city, and Ruth, and—and then he would be free to finish it in his own way. Free to fight!

  He fumbled with the leather bag under his feet.

  "Why didn't Ruth come to see me?"

  "Listen!" Martin LeGeurn said sibilantly.

  Paul stiffened. He heard it. The sound was a moaning mutter, trembling on the still air, somehow audible above the drone of the motor. It rose higher, clearer, vibrating like a living voice. Paul's fingers dug cruelly into the leather seat cushion. The color seeped out of his face.

  He knew that sound. It was a lurid screaming now, filling the night with shrill significance. The night watch had discovered his absence. He had blundered so
mewhere. Some door left open; some twist of unforeseen fate—and now, up there in the tower, a black-faced fiend was whirling the handle of the great siren faster and faster, gloating over its hellish voice. The same awful wail had seared the countryside when Jenson had fled into the woods, four months ago.

  A terrible shudder shook Paul's body. He cringed against his companion. Courage left him. Incoherent mumblings came from his mouth.

  "They know," Martin said jerkily. "In ten minutes the road will be patrolled. Every car will be stopped. Get into your clothes. Quick!"

  Paul stiffened. Suddenly he sat erect, fists clenched savagely.

  "They'll never take me back! I'll kill them! Do you hear? I'll kill them all!"

  Then he was tearing at the leather bag between his knees. He got it open, dragged out the light brown suit and tan shirt, the necktie and shoes. Feverishly, as the car rushed on at reckless speed with Martin LeGeurn hunched over the wheel, he ripped off his asylum garb and struggled into the other. Deliberately he stuffed the gray clothes into the bag, and snapped the lock.

  "Get off this road. Take the first right."

  Martin glanced at him quickly, frowning.

  "It's madness. If we hurry, they may not—"

  "We can't make it. The state police will—"

  "But if we turn off—"

  "I know the way,! Tell you! Let me drive!"

  Martin's foot jammed on the brake. Even before the car had trembled to a stop, Paul snapped his door open and leaped out. And he was no longer a ghastly spectre in gaunt gray as he stumbled in the glare of the headlights. He was a lean, powerful young man, decently dressed, resolute and determined and fighting viciously to overcome his own natural terror. He slid behind the wheel without a word. The car shot forward again under more expert hands. Roaring over the crest of the hill, it swerved suddenly to the right and lumbered into a narrow sub-highway of dirt and gravel.