The Thing That Walked In The Rain Page 2

  The rain pelted us unmercifully until we reached the cottage, but with the usual perversity of rainstorms, ceased almost as soon as we had attained shelter.

  “What was it?” I asked, as we stood there, making little pools on the floor of the screened porch.

  Mabrey mopped his wet face with his handkerchief. “God only knows!” he replied. “I’m willing to concede, however, that it wasn’t an anaconda. Let’s get into some dry things.”

  Anita retired to her father’s bedroom to change, while the professor and I went into the kitchen to discard our wringing wet garments, rub down, and put on dry ones.

  When we emerged into the living room once more we found Anita seated at her father’s desk. She had rumpled her dark-brown shingle-bobbed hair to dry it. and I thought she looked more beautiful than ever.

  “I’ve found something interesting,” she announced, "perhaps a key to the mystery. It’s father’s diary.”

  “A diary,” said the professor, “is a personal and sacred thing.”

  “But it says: ‘For my daughter, Anita, when I am gone,’ ” replied the girl, “and instructs me to communicate the contents to you, Uncle Charley.”

  “That’s different,” said the professor, settling himself comfortably and loading his pipe. “Suppose you read it to me.”

  “I’ll go out on the porch,” I said.

  “No, stay, Jimmie,” begged Anita. “There’s nothing secret about it. After all, even if there were, you are in this adventure with us—one of us. Sit down and smoke your pipe. I’ll read it to both of you.

  “The first part,” continued Anita, “tells Dad’s reason for coming here—to investigate the persistent legend of a terrible monster living in the crater lake. We all know that. He soon found the place of sacrifice and brought away some of the hydropolyps for examination in a temporary laboratory he had set up in a hut, while native workmen, under his direction, were building this house for him. Then he---”

  She was interrupted by the slam of the screen door and the sound of footsteps on the porch. Pedro stood, bowing in the doorway.

  “Pardon senorita y senores,” he said, “but three Indios come in strange dress. Almost they are ’ere. I await instructions.”

  “Find out who they are and what they want,” said Mabrey.

  Pedro bowed and departed, and we all went to the window to watch him meet the newcomers. Our two Misskitos, we noticed, arose at their approach and bowed very low. The strangers were attired in garments unlike anything worn today, except perhaps on feast days or at masquerades or pageants. One Indian, much taller than the other two, was more richly and gaudily attired. And into his feather-crown were woven the red plumes of the quetzal, the sacred bird whose plumage might be worn only by an emperor under the old regime.

  The tall red man spoke a few words to Pedro in an authoritative manner, and the latter, after making obeisance, turned and hurried back to us.

  “He ees the great Bahna, the holy one!” said Pedro. "He would ’ave speech weeth the senores.”

  “All right. We’ll see him,” replied Mabrey. “Send him in.”

  A few moments later Pedro bowed the tall Indian and his two companions into the room. The two shorter men stood with arms folded, one at each side of the doorway, but the tall man advanced to meet us.

  “I have come,” he said in English as good as our own, "to warn you to leave. You are in great danger.”

  “From whom do you bring the warning, and what is the danger?” asked the professor.

  The Indian’s face remained expressionless—immobile. “The great god, Nayana Idra, speaks through me. I am his prophet. Not so long ago I warned the man whom you came to seek. He would not heed my warning, and he is gone. So you seek fruitlessly. You dare the wrath of the Divine One in vain. Go now, before it is too late, or on your own heads let the blame rest for that which will follow.”

  “Am I to understand that you are theatening us with the vengeance of this fabulous monster living in your alleged bottomless lake?” asked the professor, a trace of anger in his voice. “You seem well educated, and I confess that I am puzzled by a man of your apparent learning professing such superstitions.”

  “I have studied the learning of your people,” replied Bahna, evenly, “but I have studied many things besides. You overreach yourself in calling them superstitions. They are the religion of my race, of which I am the hereditary leader. They are truths which you would neither appreciate nor understand. I have come to warn you, neither as a friend nor as an enemy, but solely as the mouthpiece of Nayana Idra, whom I serve.”

  “And who, pray tell, is Nayana Ira?”

  “Nayana,” said Bahna, with the air of a teacher lecturing a class, “is the Divine One, Creator of All Things. When he chooses to assume physical form he is Nayana Idra, the Terrible One, wreaking vengeance on those who have ignored or defied him.”

  “In his physical form,” said the professor, “what does he look like?”

  Bahna pointed to one of two great golden discs suspended in the pierced and stretched lobes of his cars. On it was graven a multi-headed serpent like that cut in the rock at the place of sacrifice.

  “This,” he said, “is man’s crude conception of his appearance.”

  “May I ask,” said Mabrey, “in what manner you received the message which you have conveyed to us from this alleged deity?”

  His features as inscrutable as ever, the Indian drew a roll of hand-woven cloth from beneath his garments. Then, glancing about him, as if looking for a place to spread it, he walked to the desk, behind which Anita was sitting, unrolled it, and laid it down before us.

  “There,” he said, “is the message. Heed it and you will live. Disregard it, and you will meet with a fate more terrible than you can imagine.”

  We looked at the cloth curiously. It was embroidered with hieroglyphic symbols resembling those cut in the face of the sacrificial altar.

  “When I awoke this morning,” said Bahna, “this magic cloth was spread over me. The message says: ‘Today there will come to the mountain three white strangers with their servants, to seek him on whom our vengeance had fallen. They are not of our people, and cannot understand our truths. Neither can they become our servants. You will warn them to leave, lest our wrath fall upon them.’ ”

  “You seem,” said the professor, “to have cooked up a most interesting, if unconvincing cock-and-bull story. If you are able to make yourself understood to Nayana, you may tell him for us that we will come and go as we please. And now, Bahna, I bid you good afternoon.” By not so much as the flicker of an eyelash did Bahna betray the slightest emotion. Folding his cloth, he replaced it under his clothing and marched majestically through the doorway, followed by the two men who had accompanied him. We watched the three until they disappeared in the jungle. Then the professor reloaded his pipe, lighted it, and sat down in his chair.

  “Now,” he said, “we can go on with the diary.” Anita sat down at the desk, reached for the diary, looked surprised, then alarmed, and searched fearfully, frantically through the books and papers on the desk. Then she sank back with a look of despair.

  “I'm afraid we can’t,” she said, weakly. “The diary is gone!”

  CHAPTER III The Thing That Walked in the Rain

  AFTER our evening meal, Professor Mabrey and I sat on the porch smoking our pipes and listening to the patter of the rain and to the almost incessant rumbling of thunder that had commenced with the advent of darkness. Anita was inside, looking through her father’s papers. The cook-fire of Pedro and the two Misskitos had sputtered and gone out, and I guessed that they were, by now, comfortably installed in the mosquito-bar draped hammocks they had swung in the hut.

  “This chap Bahna sure slipped one over on us,” I remarked, thinking of the episode of the afternoon, “Seems to me there must have been something important in that diary—something he was afraid to have us see.”

  “Undoubtedly,” replied the professor. “It was careless of me n
ot to watch. These natives are deucedly tricky.”

  “Speaking of natives,” I said, “I’ve been wondering if Bahna really is a native. He certainly doesn’t look like the other Indians here. And he’s educated.”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing, myself,” replied Mabrey. “Bahna is not a native name. I doubt if it is a proper name at all. Sounds more like a title. And his features were more Aryan than Mongoloid. With a turban instead of a feather crown he’d pass for a Hindu.”

  "Hasn’t it been determined that there is some connection between the religions and traditions of the Far East and those of the early American civilizations?” 1 asked. “Seems to me I’ve heard or read something of the sort.”

  “It is a subject,” he replied, “on which ethnologists have never agreed. It’s pretty generally conceded, I believe, that all American Indians are members of the Mongolian race—blood brothers of the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetians, Tartars, and other related peoples of the Old World. Students of symbology have found evidence which seems to link all the great civilizations of antiquity. And Colonel James Churchward has correlated them all as evidence that the first civilization developed in a huge continent called Mu, situated in the Pacific Ocean, and, like the fabulous continent of Atlantis, sinking beneath the waves after its mystic teachings, had prevailed in the Americas, the then still flourishing Atlantis, Greece, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, India and other coexistent civilizations.

  “The royal race of Incas, it is said, more nearly resembled Aryans than Mongols, while many of the Aztecs had a strongly Semitic cast of countenance. It’s a pity that the destructive fanaticism of the conquering Spaniards made it impossible for us to learn more than a very small part of the religions and traditions of these peoples. According to our recent tricky visitor, as well as our own observations, there must have existed here at one time a cult worshipping Nayana, or Nayana Idra, a many-headed serpent.”

  “Which brings us,” I replied, “to the consideration of what we saw in the lake during the shower this afternoon. I’m positive that I saw several green, snake-like things of immense size, waving above the water. You saw it, too, as did Anita.”

  “The whole thing,” said the professor, “smacks of the magic of India. Standing in the midst of a crowd, a Hindu fakir throws a rope up in the air. To every member of that crowd it appears to stand stiffly erect while he climbs to its top. But to the eye of a camera, it is lying stretched out on the ground while the fakir creeps its length on all fours. Mass hypnotism. The same thing is true of the trick of growing a rose from a seed in a few minutes, while playing a hautboy. The rose simply does not exist, except in the minds of the audience. And neither, I am convinced, does the monster we saw this afternoon have any existence, except, perhaps in the minds of the credulous natives who have been taught to believe in it. We have been hoaxed, and I, for one, don’t propose to give any credit to the reality of the thing.”

  “It certainly looked real enough to me,” I said, “and there wasn’t any fakir in sight to hypnotize us.”

  “He wouldn’t need be in sight,” replied the professor. “Our minds were all prepared for the thing before it happened—our imaginations keyed to the highest pitch. A fertile field for the mass hypnotist.”

  AT this moment, Anita, who had been standing in the doorway for some time listening to our discussion, came out on the porch.

  “I’ve just found something,” she said, “which proves that my father believed in the reality of the Nayana Idra.”

  “What is it?” asked the professor.

  “A short time ago I went into the bedroom for a handkerchief. Dad’s khaki jacket was hanging there, and I noticed a book protruding from the pocket. It was his notebook, done in pencil, and very sketchy and incomplete. But I'm sure that if we can guess some of the things that are implied by these notes we can find the key to the mystery, which Bahna stole when he took the diary. Evidently the notations in the diary were mostly elaborations of these notes, written in ink in order that a complete and permanent record might be preserved.”

  “And you say he believed in the existence of the monster?”

  “Without a doubt. Listen to this:

  “ ‘-Another native stolen from village last night during rain. Went to see tracks. Like those of enormous serpents—many of them.’

  “And here’s a note made some days later:

  “ ‘Saw it for first time today, during shower. Great green arms writhing above water. Heard sound. Turned and strange Indian was standing behind me. Seemed to materialize from nowhere. Must be secret entrance in rock. Dressed like ancient high priest. Name Bahna, Called thing “Nayana Idra.” Warned me away. I laughed. Went on fishing my specimens from the reservoir to take back for observation. When I looked again he had disappeared.’ ”

  “Which goes to prove my hypnotic theory," said the professor. “Bahna was standing behind him, influencing his imagination with his subtle art when he thought he saw the monster.”

  “Here’s a note made a week later,” said Anita.

  “ ‘Some trouble to decipher characters. Mystic symbols to be read only by adepts of inner circle. Will figure out formula yet. Tried the ipecacuanha. Hydras all dead. Must have been too strong. Ancient high priests clever biologists and chemists. Created and destroyed own gods at will. Must try weaker solution. May have been modified by something else.’ ”

  “What do you make of that, professor:” I asked.

  “It seems that my friend, the doctor, was on the wrong track,” said the professor. “He thought the things real instead of phantasies. He should have called the ancient priests clever psychologists instead of biologists.”

  “But what of the ancient formula? And what was he doing to the hydras with the ipecacuanha?” I asked.

  “The formula was probably a lot of mummery he replied, “like burning incense in a temple, or like the magic philters which still persist in our time and are efficient only to the extent that they inspire faith or wield the power of suggestion. The fact that they used ipecacuanha in this formula it not significant, as I see it. It contains emetine, a powerful emetic or an active poison, according to the dosage. I can understand that the hydras would be killed by a strong solution, as it is known to be particularly destructive to amoeboid life.”

  “But where do these strange hydras fit in:” “Accessories to the mummery, somehow,” lie replied, “Possibly living miniature replicas of the fabulous monster, to assist in establishing belief in the creature, Giving color and mystery to the thing, like the doves of Isis, or the white dove that supposedly whispered heavenly secrets in the ear of Mohammed, while extracting a pea therefrom.”

  “Here is a later note about the hydras,” said Anita. “ ‘Weaker solution killed all but one. Put this under glass. Gonads seem to have atrophied. Died shortly after return to solution. Something wrong.' ”

  “It seems to me,” I said, “that the doctor was convinced there was some connection between the hydras and this mystery, and that he was experimenting to find out what it was. Evidently he had some ancient documentary evidence of the mystical nature to go on.”

  “And being mystical in nature,” retorted Mabrey, “it was probably as unreliable as it was unscientific.”

  At this moment our discussion was broken into by a loud shriek of fear and agony from the direction of the hut. Peering out through the screen, I made out, by the almost constantly recurring flashes of lightning, two figures running as if the very devil were after them. One plunged into the jungle and the other came dashing toward the cottage.

  Then I heard a final, despairing shriek, which seemed to come from high in the air. Looking upward I beheld, silhouetted against the background of lightning-illuminated clouds, an enormous thing taller than a tree, with hundreds of branches, or legs. It appeared like some gigantic tumble-weed walking on its branches through the jungle with terrific, Brobdingnagian strides. And waving helplessly above the tree-tops in the grip of one of these branches was the lim
p and helpless figure of one of our Misskitos.

  Meanwhile, the man who had been running toward the cottage arrived—bolted up the steps and through the door. It was Pedro.

  “Maria Madre save us all!” he panted, his eyes rolling with terror. “Eet’s come! Eet took Jose! Reached through the door and jerked heem out of his hammock! Hide! Hide queeck, or eet weel get you all!” Without stopping to think I dashed out of the house, unholstering my colt forty-five. Then I emptied its six chambers at the great trunk, swaying there above the tree-tops. Whether or not I hit it I do not know. There was no apparent effect. But an enormous tentacle came slithering down toward me, then another and another, blindly searching the clearing like exploring earthworms.

  “Come in here, you fool!” shouted Mabrey. “Come in, I tell you!”

  As if in a daze, I stood there, unheeding, watching the mostrosity that towered above me. Then a great, green, snaky thing struck me, knocked me down. Stinging, numbing pains shot through me. I was up in an instant, but it found me again—wrapped around my body, pinioning one arm—a band of stinging, burning agony. I pounded it ineffectually with my empty gun.

  Mabrey leaped out a machete* gleaming in his hand. I was swung swiftly upward. The machete flashed, and I was dropped flat on my back in the mud. Big as I am, Mabrey caught me up and half carried half dragged me into the house, that severed, stinging, snakey thing still wrapped around me. He flung me savagely on the floor of the living room, and hurriedly closed all the doors and windows. The snakey arm relaxed, and I got up, still in excruciating agony from that stinging, nettle-like embrace.

  *A large sword-like knife used to cut wood, clear paths in the jungle and do other things.

  Immense slimy tentacles were sliding over the roof, exploring the walls, pressing on the window panes. The arm that held me was writhing on the floor, a viscous green fluid oozing from the severed stump. It filled the room with a musty, unclean smell—a sickening charnel odor, as if an ancient tomb had been desecrated.