“That is because you do not fully understand the terrible threat of the creature!” cried Cullum. “It must be destroyed, Nathan, before it can commit more of its evil. It’s just begun, I tell you!”
Buttrick put out his hand to steady Cullum, who was becoming agitated again. “What evil? What are you talking about, Laurence?”
“Do you remember that first night I called you—how frantic I was?” The doctor nodded. “And do you remember Rupel Oldham?”
Buttrick involuntarily winced. Oldham had been found lying in a foot of stagnant water near a fire-road through Mohegan Swamp. Buttrick had signed the death-certificate of the aged muskrat trapper. The body had been badly mutilated, and a look of utter horror was indelibly stamped on its face.
“You don’t mean—that?” asked Buttrick, pointing toward the wall.
Cullum nodded. “It broke out,” he said helplessly. “We had underestimated its strength, and it burst through the wooden door which the steel door you saw later replaced. Amadee and I followed it as quickly as we could. It was dark. The spring rains had muddied the ground.” Cullum’s voice became dreamy as he relived the gruesome event.
“At first Amadee and I didn’t know where to look. We stood in the drive, he with the bullwhip and myself carrying the lantern. It could have gone off in any direction. But then—then we heard the nighthawks crying over Mohegan Swamp in the valley behind the estate. A terrible, fierce sound, Nathan. They were swarming as though mad.
“We ran through the forest on the fire-road. The sound of the birds got louder, more shrill, until we could see against the gray sky the place over which they were swarming. I remember wishing that I had had the presence of mind to bring a pistol. But then the light from the lantern showed us its form ahead. Oh Nathan, Oldham had come down to check his traps, and it caught him there in the mud and scummy water. When we ran up it was—feeding!
“Amadee lashed it with the whip, and it drew back. I saw that we could do nothing for Oldham. The expression on his face—terrible. Between the two of us we drove the creature back to the house and into the Crib. It was more docile then, feared the bite of the whip more than now.” Cullum paused and wet his lips with the sherry. “But the atrocity so unsettled me that I had to call you for relief, or I would have lost my mind.
“We should have recognized this murderous act as an unmistakable sign that it was approaching its maturity, Nathan. But we thought the killing of Oldham was an accident, a chance encounter. No more than a month later, Arnold, my groundskeeper, passed away. He was the last of the servants, save Amadee. At night the beast broke out again. I was awakened by the nighthawks massing over the house. The coffin lay within the parlor. That thing had overturned it, and was tearing, slashing…” Cullum clenched his fists in agony. “Do you understand what I’ve been living with, Nathan? Do you wonder that my nerves are gone?”
Buttrick stirred uncomfortably. He was being drawn into the macabre web of Cullum’s narration. The doctor began to feel unsafe sitting only a few yards away from the tapestry. How may times had he entered the decaying drawing-room to treat the master of Cullum House, oblivious to the existence of a horror separated from him by only a few inches of plaster and lath?
“We then knew,” continued Cullum, “that its ghastly appetite had been whetted. We realized that these events were not mere chance. The evil thing mothered by my father’s second wife—I cannot call her my stepmother—had reached its maturity. For a week after we interred Arnold it screamed. I shall hear its cries until my ears are stopped by death. Ravenous, ferocious howls which sounded even beyond the walls of the house. Amadee and his bullwhip could not control it. I stuffed my ears with cotton, took laudanum, drank myself into unconsciousness—everything failed. That hideous keening could not be suppressed. It was then, at the end of my wits, that I made the decision for which, if ever a man were damned, I shall be. I had to stop the screaming, Nathan, do you understand that?”
Buttrick shook his head slowly, scarce daring to consider what awful revelation he would hear next.
“I ordered Amadee—ah, even now I cannot bring myself to pronounce the words!” Cullum fought visibly to control his rising emotion. He sprang from the settee and paced the room. “Amadee, in addition to being my only servant, is also,” he blurted the words out, “custodian of the Sabbathday Burial Ground. Do you understand my meaning?”
“Then the bones in the chamber, and those fibers—hanks of hair?” Buttrick asked incredulously.
“How many evenings have I slumped in that very chair, listening to that beast at its unholy supper! How often have I considered suicide, anything to free me of this vile guardianship. Even Amadee has become infected by it—I truly believe he enjoys tending the creature and disciplining it with his bullwhip. He derives a sense of power from those duties. The old man thinks me weak and scorns me because my nerves cannot stand the strain. But what a burden—God help me, I am the protector of a ghoul!”
A long silence followed the impassioned confession. The room had become oppressively thick-atmosphered. Buttrick opened the French doors which led to a terrace and thence the drive. The sky was yet aglow, and only the drone of frogs at Mohegan Swamp heralded the approach of night. The birds roosting in the trees about the house had not yet begun their darkling flights.
The doctor turned and addressed Cullum. “Is there any danger that it will break out again, Laurence?”
“The steel door has thus far resisted its attempts,” he replied. “Occasionally it hurls itself at the door for an hour at a time. Its ferocity is appalling. But the door and its frame remain fast.” The heir sighed deeply. “Yet a mere steel door cannot be sufficient to hold such a malignant evil. It must be destroyed, Nathan, and quickly. I can no longer protect the town from its appetite. And now that I have discovered the Cullum secret to you, I feel that if we do not act soon the thing will be at large, with no one to stop it. For it heard me betray it, I am sure, and craves my death.”
Buttrick was convinced. Now his mind no longer operated in accord with the civilized virtues of reason and mercy. His own experience that day at Cullum House, and his host’s desperate words, had brought to life within him the savage’s fear of the unknown. He agreed to assist in the extermination of the creature, and swore that no word of the proceedings would ever pass his lips.
Since Cullum assured him that he could spend another night in the house with the Hell-Child, Buttrick decided to return to Sabbathday. On the morrow he would return to the estate to plan the destruction and interment of the beast, for they would need daylight to dig its unholy resting place.
On the portico of the mansion beneath the arched jawbones, Cullum seized Buttrick’s hand in a firm grip. “I only wish my father had taken this course in the beginning,” he said. “Then perhaps he, Emma, and myself would have been spared the blight which has sapped our lives.” He ran his hand along the cool ivory of the curving white monoliths. “I know that wherever he is, my father approves the action we must take.”
Buttrick nodded in silent agreement. He bade the heir a good night, and turned his team onto the darkness of Windham Road. As he left the grounds of the estate, the nighthawks were beginning their evening clamor. Their rasping cries banished the peace of the autumn evening. After his return to the bungalow the doctor lay sleepless, distracted by vivid mental phantasms of what he had heard and witnessed that evening. Each time he closed his eyes the scene in the Crib flashed across the screen of his conscious mind in all its loathsome detail. He could not erase from his memory the glowering countenance of the Hell-Child, a face so evil it seemed impossible that flesh and bone could be tortured into receiving the stamp of such malignancy. Buttrick could well understand why Captain Hugh had disclaimed parentage of the child.