Chapter IX: The Nameless Horror

It was the first time we had had any freedom since our arrival. Ren had not returned with Jim. If the king were really dead, there would be a great confusion at the castle. They might be detained indefinitely.

Sonya would not wait. “A few hours only,” she urged. “Then we will be back. I will leave a message for my cousin and your friend.”

The first shock of Dr. Weatherby’s death was over. There was no advantage in the girls remaining here.

We started finally. On the lower floor of the house we found long dark cloaks and donned them, with a queerly flat, mound-shaped hat for me and light scarfs to cover the girls’ heads. The lower door was open. Ren had left it so, knowing that Sonya would stay with us.

Technically we were prisoners. But Sonya paid scant ceremony to that now. The king was dead: our oath of allegiance to the nation would be taken for granted.

“My allegiance goes to you,” Dolores said naively. “You girls.”

Alice nodded.

“Yes,” said Sonya. “But do not say so openly. And you, my friend, Leonard—you are a man—be careful what you say if you have any sympathy for our cause.”

Sympathy! How mild a word, as again visions of what she had told us sprang before me!

In this residential section of the city there was at this hour no traffic in the street. The shouting crowd had disappeared. Sonya led us to the main street level. The pedestrian bridges were above us.

An unnatural silence seemed to hang about the dark, somnolent city, as though it only seemed sleeping and was wide awake. A tenseness was in the air. The houses were dark, but in almost every window I fancied that figures were watching, faces peering out.

We avoided the lights. Mounted the hill for a block or two, then turned into a very narrow street of shadows.

The houses here, the back of houses, I assumed, were blank, two-storied walls.

We passed each of them hurriedly. My heart was thumping. Sonya had said that these were merely back entrances to inner courtyards of the houses. But it seemed, to my sharpened fancy, that in every one some horrible lurking thing was waiting to spring upon us.

Sonya was leading. She was taking us through a back way to her home, to get the vehicle that would transport us to the island. We were nearing the end of the alley; it opened ahead of us into a broad street with a dim glow of light illumining it. To our right, just ahead, was a courtyard entrance: a yawning cave-mouth of emptiness.

We had almost reached it when Sonya abruptly halted, checked our advance as though she had struck some invisible barrier, stopped, and shrank backward, pressing against us. And her hand in terror was over her mouth to stifle a scream.

I saw it then, what she was seeing. A thing, something monstrous, lurking in the blackness of that cave-like house entrance, a thing huge, of vague, grotesque outline, an upright thing, with a great balloon-like head, bobbing from side to side, two eyes glowing in the darkness. And below them, where a neck might have been, two other smaller eyes, green, blazing points of fire.

In all my veins the blood seemed freezing, prickling needle-points of ice exuding through my pores, my scalp prickling at the hair-roots. I was stricken with fright and horror. But an instinct, so that I scarcely realized what I was doing, made me pull Sonya soundlessly backward, sweep all three of the girls behind me and downward. And as they sank to the pavement, I crouched tense in front of them.

The thing seemingly had not heard us, or seen us. It advanced out of the darkness of the doorway; in the dimness of the outside light I saw it more clearly, a thing like a great upright animal, ten feet tall, perhaps, and monstrously cast in human mold, with thick, bent legs. It had a long, thick trunk with wide, powerful shoulders and a deep, bulging chest, and arms that dangled nearly to its knees.

Its head, no wider than its powerful neck, was small, round, and flat on top. There seemed a face; its tiny blazing eyes were plain in the darkness.

A two-headed thing! The small head was bent forward. Behind it, as though astride of the shoulders, was another head, balloon-like: huge, wider than the shoulders, a head seemingly inflated, distended. A large flat face. The thing took a step. Its large head wobbled as it moved.

My hand behind me kept the girls motionless. The thing came to the end of the narrow street, emerged into the glow of light there. It did not pause—the light obviously was not to its liking—it bounded sidewise, noiseless on padded feet, and was gone into the shadows.

But in that instant under the light, I had seen it more clearly. A giant, gorilla-like figure. A man! Black hair seemed upon its body, but the body was partially clothed. And I fancied I had seen a belt strapped about its waist, with dangling weapons.

The bobbling head astride upon its shoulders was very different from the rest of the thing. A bloated membrane? I got that impression. It seemed a smooth, dead-white skin; I thought I had seen distended veins on it.

And as the powerful body leaped, I fancied I saw thin little arms, four of them, hanging inert from the bloated head.

It was gone. I breathed again. Behind me the huddled girls were shuddering. At my ear Sonya was whispering,

“The Nameless Horror!”