The Horror Megapack Page 6

  * * * *

  The next morning Connell thrust Amelia’s gift of chocolate cake and ca­shew nuts into the parcel compartment and headed down the west bank. He spent the forenoon searching small town jails as he worked his way down the Delta, but no news of Plato. His last chance was Venice, at the end of the highway.

  Venice was half a dozen shacks plus a general store not much larger than a piano box. The girl behind the coun­ter was uncommonly attractive. One of those substantial Cajun women, with luxurious curves, and plump, firm breasts as inviting as her amiable smile. Connell, however, managed to shift his glance to her dark eyes and began his oft repeated query concerning Plato and his red fliv­ver.

  Marie shook her head. Her eyes suddenly became somber as she said, “You’re too late.”

  “What do you mean?” Connell, catch­ing her by the wrist, felt her tremble.

  “I didn’t have any orange wine,” she began, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. “So he went back.”

  Something was distinctly salty.

  “You’d better tell me,” he said in a quiet voice that impelled her attention.

  Marie was wavering, but she was afraid. Finally she compromised, “We can talk better in back here.”

  Connell followed her to the rear of the tiny store. The crude, primitive room contained an oil stove, a small wooden table. In the further corner was a bed.

  “You won’t never see your man again,” began Marie, drawing up a chair for Connell. “Not with walking dead men like they got at Ducoin’s planta­tion.”

  “Walking dead men!” he echoed, leap­ing to his feet. “Who’s Ducoin? What—”

  But Connell’s query was cut short. The Cajun girl’s hand closed about his arm, drawing him to her side.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she whispered. Her dark, smouldering eyes were still haunted, but her lips suggested reasons for delay.

  Under other circumstances, Connell would have welcomed the hint, but something about her furtive glance and unnatural eagerness combined with her sinister remarks to repel him. But Connell made little progress. As he drew away, her arm slipped about his neck and her ripe, voluptuous curves pressed him closely as she pleaded, “Don’t go…I’m terribly scared…”

  She was. But Connell wasn’t. And that warm, plump body was as inflaming as orange wine. He drew her to him, stroked her black hair, caressed firm flesh that trembled at his touch, and tried to entice her further remarks about walking dead men.

  However, it did not work as he in­tended. His presence did reassure her, but the contact made his pulse pound like like a rivetting hammer, and the sudden rise and fall of her breasts showed that it was becoming mutual.…

  Marie’s dark eyes were no longer haunted by anything but a desire to get closer. Presently she forgot to brush away an exploring hand, and yielded her eager lips.

  And then Connell learned that the Delta offers more than orange wine.…

  * * * *

  It was close to sunset before he remembered Plato and renewed his inqueries.

  “Honest, I couldn’t help it,” Marie protested. “I didn’t have any wine left and just as that man was going to leave, in comes Ducoin with a load. And he tells Plato to come along, he’d fix him up. And I didn’t dare warn him.”

  “Wait till I get at Ducoin!”

  “Don’t!” implored Marie. “He’ll know I told you. And you can’t do nothing. Plato’s a walking corpse by now—and I’ll be one, too, if Ducoin finds out—”

  She tried to detain Connell, but he broke clear before her full-blown fasci­nations could conspire with her sinister hints. She had merely delayed the quest; and Connell headed up the river, toward that mysterious plantation.

  Ducoin’s house loomed up above the surrounding orange groves, nearly a quarter of a mile from the highway. Its remnants of white paint made it resem­ble a gaunt, ancient tomb. As Connell pulled up, he saw a Model T parked in a clump of shrubbery. Plato’s decrepit red Lizzie!

  And then Connell received a shock. A file of blacks emerged from the orange groves. Their black faces were vacant. They shambled toward the left wing of the house with the grotesque gait of animated dummies.

  The sodden, lifeless clump, clump, clump of their feet sounded like clods of earth dropping on a coffin. Their arms dangled limp as rags.

  Connell shuddered. No wonder that the ignorant Cajuns considered them walking dead men.

  Clump, clump, clump. The most pov­erty stricken and oppressed black labor­ers jest and chatter at the end of a day’s work; but these black men stalked in silence broken only by the shuffling crunch of their flat feet.

  Following the file came a white man who wore boots and riding breeches. His heartless, handsome face was tanned and deeply lined. Intelligent but relent­less. His dark eyes were as cryptic as his smile as he confronted Connell.

  “Looking for someone?”

  “Yes. A man named Plato,” said Connell. “Are you Pierre Du­coin?”

  “That’s the name,” admitted the taskmaster. “But there are no strangers on this plantation.”

  The more Connell saw of Ducoin, the less he liked him. There was something uncanny about the man.

  As Connell hesitated, something compelled him to glance towards the veranda that ran the full length of the house, some ten feet above the ground level. Framed by a French window was a girl whose dark eyes and lovely, deli­cate features for an instant made him forget that she was clad only in a chiffon robe which, half parted, revealed enticing glimpses of silken legs, and a body to which clung the caressing haze of sheer fabric that betrayed slender, olive-tinted curves…the amorous inward sweep of her waist…pert breasts that any hand larger than her own could con­ceal.…

  Her lips were silently moving, and she was gesturing for him to leave at once. But she had overlooked her own loveliness. Connell was staying.

  “I’m Walt Connell, and I think you’re mistaken,” was the retort. “Let me talk to your men. One of them might know about him.”

  That play was better than making a liar of Ducoin by mentioning Plato’s flivver, half concealed in the shadows.

  For a moment Ducoin’s eyes flared with a light that Connell was certain could not be the reddish sunset glow; his aquiline features tightened, then sud­denly he smiled and amiably agreed.

  “Do that in the morning. Too late now. This plantation reaches all the way out to the bay, and most of my crew is quartered at the further end. Take us an hour or more to go out, and it’s getting dark. Make yourself at home—there is plenty of room here, and you can look in the morning.”

  A grim-faced black woman served dinner in a vast, high-ceiled room facing the west. Fried chicken, Creole gumbo, rice, and corn bread. All tastily seasoned, except for an utter lack of salt. Connell, reach­ing for the only shaker on the table, then not­iced it contained only pepper.

  “Sorry,” apologized Ducoin, “but we’ve run all out of salt. It’s rather primitive down here on the Delta. We shop only once a week.”

  * * * *

  Dinner, despite Ducoin’s easy cordi­ality, was a decided strain. Con­nell was wondering at the absence of the lovely girl who had warned him.

  “Working many men?” he asked.

  “A dozen or two,” Ducoin carelessly answered. “Haitians, mostly—sullen, stolid brutes, but good workers.”

  He changed the subject. Connell was relieved when the woman served them night-black, chicory-tinctured coffee, and a pony of excellent brandy.

  Ducoin re­marked, “We turn in early here. Plan­tation hours begin before sunrise. Aunt Célie will show you your room. In the morning, you can make the rounds with me.”

  Connell followed the grim-faced woman down the hallway. Her morose, stolid demeanor confirmed Ducoin’s comment on the temperament of his workers; yet Connell was distinctly perturbed. And as the door closed behind Aunt Célie, he received a distinct shock.

  The moon was rising, casting a shim­mering, silvery glow over the black ex�
�panse of open fields. Men were at work, digging and hoeing. Utterly unheard of, a night shift on a plantation. Connell heard the thudding blows of their imple­ments, but not a murmur, not a spoken word.

  There wasn’t an overseer, yet they toiled on, methodically, as though motor driven, never pausing to lean on their hoes for a breathing spell. They ad­vanced in an unwavering line, grotesque­ly combining the precision of military drill with the uncouth, ungainly move­ments of dummies.

  Connell shivered and shook his head. Questioning such unnatural creatures would be futile. One glimpse of them and Plato would have taken to his heels. He wondered if his servant might not have abandoned his flivver, frightened out of all reason by the uncanny spec­tacle of Africans working without song and chatter.

  A soft, furtive stirring in the hall just outside of his room made him start violently. Something softly slink­ing down the hall had paused at his door. By the moon glow that penetrated the shadows, he saw the scarcely perceptible motion of the knob. Something was stealthily seeking him. A silent bound brought Connell to the fireplace, and out of the moonglow. His trembling fin­gers closed on a pair of massive tongs.

  He watched the door soundlessly swing inward. A nebulous spindle of whiteness cleared the edge of the jamb: a spectral, shimmering whiteness that for an instant froze Connell’s blood. Then he saw the intruder was the girl who had warned him.

  She paused to close the door, and as she turned from the threshold Connell for the first time realized how lovely she was. Her tiny feet were bare, and her shapely legs, gleaming like ivory ex­clamation marks through the sheer, gauzy fabric of her nightgown, blossomed in­to seductive curves that fascinated Con­nell.

  The vagrant breeze shifted, drawing the misty fabric closer, revealing her per­fections as though she were clad in no more than bare loveliness. The filmy silk clung to the inward curve of her waist, and caressed the firm, delicious roundness of her breast. She was a lovely unreality in the vague light that made her face a sweet, pallid mask, and her black hair a succession of gleaming highlights.

  She advanced a pace before she saw Connell.

  “Leave at once.” As she spoke, she caught his arm. She was trembling vio­lently.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s not too late,” she whispered as Connell seated himself, and drew her to the arm of his chair. “My uncle is out putting the night shift to work. “I’m Madeline Ducoin.”

  “I came here to get a man named Plato,” in­sisted Connell.

  “He’s one of them now,” said Made­line, shuddering. “A walking corpse.”

  “That’s absolute rot! How can a dead man walk?”

  “You saw them, didn’t you?” Made­line countered, sighing and shaking her head.

  As she leaned toward the window and gestured at the macabre figures that toiled in the moonlight, her dark hair caressed Connell’s cheek, and he felt the supple flex of her slender body. Made­line at least was real in the moon-haunted glamour. His arms closed about her, and drew her to his knee. She was still trem­bling, but at his touch, she snuggled up like a contented kitten.

  Pillowing her head on his shoulder, she looked up and repeated, “Please leave, before it’s too late.”

  Connell laughed softly and said, “Nev­er had a better reason for staying.”

  For a moment they crossed glances in the moonlight. His arms tightened about her, and she did not draw away. And then as though by common impulse, their lips met, and Connell felt the ecsta­tic shiver that rippled down her silk clad body. She tried to catch his wrist, brush aside the hand that caressed the gleam­ing curves of her thigh.

  Her inarticulate murmur of protest, breathed in Connell’s ear, further in­flamed his blood, and his possessive caresses for the moment brushed aside the hovering presence of mystery and horror. Each seemed to feel that the other was a haven of reality in the devil-haunted plantation.

  The lacy hem of her gown was creep­ing clear of her knees. Connell’s kisses were stifling her murmured protests. Madeline’s breath came in ever quick­ening gasps. She was clinging to him, the pressure of her firm young breasts telling him that she really did not want him to desist.

  If Ducoin was making the rounds of his spectral plantation where black au­tomatons tilled the fields by moonlight, there was no hurry. Connelly’s ardent caresses were calling to the surface all the fire and passion of Madeline’s Latin blood. She was lonely and frightened, and his purposeful persistence thrilled and assured her. Her final protest ended in a sigh and a murmur and a silky em­brace that became as possessive as Connell’s enfolding arms.

  “We’ll soon leave, darling.” As he emerged from his chair, she still clung to him.

  “Aunt Célie is asleep.” Her whisper was an invitation. “And Uncle Pierre won’t be back for quite a while.…”

  She caught his hand.

  “You’ll take me with you, won’t you?” Madeline murmured, flinging back her disarrayed dark hair, and extending al­luring arms. “When we leave.…”

  “I’ll take you away from here, for­ever and always,” he promised.

  For a long time their murmurings mocked the horrors that marched blindly across the spreading fields of the moon flooded Delta. Finally Madeline slipped from Connell’s arms, and ges­tured toward the moon blot on the floor.

  “It’s getting late, sweetheart,” she whispered. “We’ll go to New Orleans as soon as I can pack up.”

  Connell followed her, and watched her hastily bundle together odds and ends selected from her wardrobe. A strange, mad night. Going in search of a man and finding this incredible arm­ful of loveliness. It was all fantasy, but Connell’s lips still tingled from the fire of her kisses. Let Pierre Ducoin keep the secret of the uncanny walking dead men. Plato would eventually appear with some wild story accounting for his ab­sence. It was utterly incredible that he would have lingered long enough to have left any clues. Amelia’s African guile had fairly bludgeoned Connell into this mad search.

  He watched Madeline dressing in the moon glamour. Once he reached New Orleans with that delicious loveliness, he would pension Plato for life.

  They stole through the shadows of the orange grove to Connell’s coupé. He took Madeline’s suitcase and raised the turtle back. Something was stirring in the baggage compartment.

  “Mon Dieu!” gasped Madeline.

  “Is that you, Mr. Walt?” whispered a familiar woman’s voice. Amelia Jones emerged. “Did you get Plato?”

  Then she saw Madeline, and her voice trailed into reproachful indefiniteness. Connell was betraying his colored folks.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I just followed,” said Amelia. “In case that no good man didn’t want to come home.”

  Her plump, comely face was agleam with perspiration. It was a wonder she had not suffocated in the stuffy baggage compartment during that long search down the Delta. Connell helplessly glanced at Madeline who was nervously fingering his arm. Amelia painfully clambered out of the turtle back.

  “Get back in there, Amelia,” Connell abruptly ordered. “I’ll fix the top.”

  But the woman shook her head.

  “No, sir, Mr. Walt. I’m goin’ to find him myself. I knows you’re too busy, and I’m much obliged for the ride.” Her glance shifted, and she saw the familiar model T. “That’s Plato’s Ford. I’ll get him. Don’t you wait here no longer, Mr. Walt.”

  Amelia’s contradictory blend of stub­bornness and humility got under Connell’s skin. He couldn’t sell his niggers down the river that way; neither could he leave Madeline another night in that fiend-haunted plantation house. But his indecision was costly.

  Dark forms slipping from the shad­ows closed in on them. Ducoin’s black laborers! Their eyes were not blind, but staring, unfocused and unseeing. Their faces were utterly devoid of expression. Walking dead men, moving with the slow, horrible motion of animated corpses.

  “Get back, you devils!” snarled Connell
, thrusting aside a clutching hand and driving home with his fist; but it was like hammering the trunk of a tree. Not a gasp, not a grunt, not a change of expression. Madeline screamed as other hands clutched her.

  Though Connell’s fists crunched against bony faces, and chunked wrist deep into leathery stomachs, he made no more impression than on tackling dum­mies. Kicking, slugging, and gouging as the tangle of voiceless black men overwhelmed him, Connell’s brain be­came a vortex of horror. He knew now why the Cajuns called them walking corpses.

  They could not be alive. There was no resentment or wrath at his frantic, sav­age blows. Somewhere he heard a ter­rified wailing and a scurrying. Amelia was taking cover. The walking corpses seemed unaware of her presence.

  Madeline’s outcries were throttled. As Connell vainly battled, he caught glimp­ses of her silk clad legs flailing in the moonlight, heard the ripping of cloth as her ensemble was torn to ribbons by her captors. Then he was smothered by the irresistible rush. A sickening, musty, charnel stench stifled him. Iron muscles, leathery bodies, exhaling the odor of in­cipient decay, yet more powerful than any living thing, crushed him to the border of unconsciousness. They seized him and Madeline as though they were logs, and hauled them up the veranda stairs and into Madeline’s room.

  Connell heard Pierre Ducoin’s familiar voice.

  “Too bad,” he ironically commented as the blacks dropped their burdens, and pinned Connell to the floor with their bony knees. “Aunt Célie told me some­thing was going on.”

  Then he turned to the corpse men, and spoke in a purring, primitive language, more rudimentary than any Haitian patois: the old savage dialect of Guinea.

  They bound Connell’s hands and feet to a chair, and flung Madeline care­lessly across her bed. Though half con­scious, she was stirring and moaning, and instinctively trying to draw her tattered ensemble down about her hips. And then Aunt Célie appeared, black, sombre and malignant. The sinister black woman knelt beside the hearth and struck light. In a moment she had a fire kindled and was heaping it with charcoal.