"Gator God of the Feral Boys"

[dochermes]

"Gator God of the Feral Boys"

3/23/1948

Kuboweer=Okali Voodoo

I.

The silence of the pine woods hung heavy on Michael Hawk. Dark shadows seemed immovable as the weight of superstition that overhung this forgotten back-country. He had been forced to leave his Jeep a mile back. After leaving the hamlet of Chancellor, there were only back roads that at this time of year were best navigated on foot or horseback even today. Florida was way behind in the postwar building of highways.

Hawk quickened his pace. The dim trail wound tortuously between dense walls of giant trees. The mud road was impassable for a vehicle, choked with rotting stumps and new growth. Ahead of him it bent sharply.

Just under thirty, of average height but strongly built, Michael Hawk was wearing high leather boots, tough dungaree jeans and a short leather jacket over a flannel shirt. All his garments had been modified to include many small pockets and slits which held miniaturized tools and weapons. Everything from powerful pencil flashlights to smoke pellets to a spy camera the size of a finger were on his person for any possible contingency.

Hawk halted short, frozen to immobility. The silence had been broken at last by the unmistakable groan of a human being in agony. Only for an instant was Hawk motionless. Then he was gliding about the bend of the trail with the noiseless stride of excellent conditioning and long experience. A lifetime spent fighting wars and crime had hardened his nerves but he still had basic human feelings.

Hawk wore a double holster gunbelt, the left side holding a needle-barreled dart gun of his own crafting and the right side carrying a standard 1911 Colt 45 Automatic which appeared as if by magic in his right hand. His left involuntarily clenched the bit of paper that was responsible for his presence in that grim forest. That paper was a frantic appeal for aid. It was signed by Hawk's worst enemy, and contained the name of a woman he had not seen in years.

Hawk rounded the bend in the trail, every nerve tense and alert, expecting anything except what he actually saw. His startled eyes hung on the grisly object for an instant, and then swept the forest walls. Nothing stirred there. A dozen feet back from the trail visibility vanished in a ghoulish twilight, where anything might lurk unseen. Hawk dropped to his knee beside the figure that lay in the trail before him.

It was a man, spread-eagled on his back, hands and feet bound to four pegs driven deeply in the hard-packed earth; a bearded, hook-nosed, swarthy man. "Wilmer!", muttered Hawk. "Lathrop's servant!"

For it was not the binding cords that brought the glaze to the dying man's eyes. A weaker man than Hawk might have sickened at the mutilations which keen knives had wrought on the man's body. Hawk recognized the work of an expert in the art of torture. Yet a spark of life still throbbed in the tough frame of the man. Hawk's intense dark eyes grew bleaker as he noted the position of the victim's body, and his mind flew back to another, grimmer jungle, and a half-flayed outsider pegged out on a path as a warning to any who dared invade the forbidden realm.

He cut the cords, shifted the dying man to a more comfortable position. It was all he could do. He saw the delirium ebb momentarily in the bloodshot eyes, saw recognition glimmer there. Clots of blood caked the lower face. The lips writhed soundlessly, and Hawk glimpsed the bloody stump of a severed tongue.

The trembling fingers began scrabbling in the dust with dogged determination Hawk bent close, tense with interest, and saw crooked lines grow under the quivering fingers. With the last effort of an iron will, Wilmer was tracing a message in the characters of his own language. Hawk recognized the name: "Lathrop"; it was followed by "danger," and the hand waved weakly up the trail; then one final effort of the dragging finger traced "Mor—".

Suddenly the man was convulsed by one last sharp agony, the hand knotted spasmodically and then fell limp. Wilmer was beyond all pain.

Hawk rose, dusting his hands, aware of the tense stillness of the grim woods around him; aware of a faint rustling in their depths that was not caused by any breeze. He looked down at the mangled figure with involuntary pity, though he knew well how evil that man had been, an abusive brute had matched his master, Richard Lathrop. Well, it seemed that master and man had at last met their match in human fiendishness. But who, or what?

For a hundred years the Lathrops had ruled supreme over this back-country, first over their wide plantations and hundreds of slaves, and later over the downtrodden descendants of those slaves. Richard, the last of the Lathrop, had exercised as much authority over the pinelands as any of his autocratic ancestors. Yet from this country where men had bowed to petty tyranny for a century, had come that frenzied telegram that Hawk clenched in his coat pocket.

Stillness succeeded the rustling, more sinister than any sound. Hawk knew he was watched; knew that the spot where Wilmer's body lay was the invisible boundary that had been drawn for him. He believed that he would be allowed to turn and retrace his steps unmolested to the distant village. He knew that if he continued on his way, death would strikeat him suddenly and unseen. Turning, he strode back the way he had come as if cowed.

He made the turn and kept straight on until he had passed another crook in the trail. Then he halted, listened. All was silent. Quickly he drew the paper from his pocket, smoothed out the wrinkles and read, again, in the cramped scrawl of the man he hated most on earth:

"Michael: If you still love Brenda Brandt, for God's sake forget your hate and come to Lathrop Manor as quickly as the devil can drive you. Richard."

That was all. It reached him by telegraph in that Montana city where Hawk officially lived between his global trips. He would have ignored it, but for the mention of Brenda Brandt. That name had galvanized him to fly his private plane to Miami and from there to race in a rented Jeep and eventually here to this desolate mud road in the darkness.

Brenda Brandt had been the only woman who had ever broken through Hawk's hard emotionless shell to touch the heart beneath. Has he genuinely loved her? He thought so.

Replacing the telegram to a pocket, he left the trail and headed westward, pushing his powerful frame between the thickset trees. His feet made little sound on the matted pine needles. His progress was all but noiseless. As a child, he had been schooled by experts in many skills, including woodcraft. His uncle Robert had been determined to raise the world's premier criminologist and adventurer.

Three hundred yards from the old road he came upon an ancient trail paralleling the road. Choked with young growth, it was little more than a trace through the thick pines. He knew that it ran to the back of the Lathrop mansion. Perhaps the Feral Boys would not realize he knew about it and he could proceed unobserved. He hurried south along it, his ears whetted for any sound. Sight alone could not be trusted in that forest. The mansion, he knew, was not far away, now. As he glimpsed the Manor, a scream echoed out into the night. Hawk sprinted as fast as any athlete toward the building that loomed starkly up just beyond the straggling fringe of trees.

The young pines had invaded the once well-tended lawns. The whole place wore an aspect of decay. Behind the Manor, the barns, and outhouses which once housed slave families, were crumbling in ruin. The mansion itself seemed to totter above the litter, a creaky giant, rat-gnawed and rotting, ready to collapse at any untoward event. With the stealthy tread of a tiger Michael Hawk approached a window on the side of the house. From that window sounds were issuing that triggered all his instincts for danger.

Steeling himself for what he might see, he peered within.

II.




II.

He was looking into a great dusty chamber which might have served as a ballroom in earlier days. Its lofty ceiling was hung with cobwebs, its rich oak panels showed dark and stained. But there was a fire in the great fireplace—a small fire, just large enough to heat to a white glow the slender steel rods thrust into it.

But it was only later that Michael Hawk noticed the fire and the things that glowed on the hearth. His full attention was fixed on the master of the Manor. For the second time that day, he looked on a dying man.

A heavy beam had been nailed to the paneled wall, and from it jutted a rude cross-piece. From this cross-piece Richard Lathrop hung by cords about his wrists. His toes barely touched the floor, tantalizingly, inviting him to stretch his frame continually in an effort to relieve the agonizing strain on his arms. The cords had cut deeply into his wrists; blood trickled down his arms; his hands were purple and swollen almost to bursting. He was naked except for his trousers, and Hawk saw that already the white-hot irons had been horribly employed. There was reason enough for the deathly pallor of the man. Only his fierce vitality had allowed him thus long to survive the ghastly burns on his limbs and body.

On his breast had been burned a curious symbol and a cold trickle ran down Hawk's spine. For he recognized that symbol, and once again his memory raced back to a realm farther away than miles can measure. He remembered a clearing under the full moon where drums boomed in bonfire-lit darkness and naked priests of an abhorred cult carved a frightful symbol in quivering human flesh.

But the memory was only a flash. Hawk remained alert. Between the fireplace and the dying man squatted a thick-set Feral Boy, clad only in ragged, muddy trousers. That bullet-head was set squarely between those gigantic shoulders, like that of a frog, and he appeared to be avidly watching the face of the man on the cross-piece.

The Feral Boys never appeared in newspapers or magazine articles, and historians did not mention them. They were a secret shame of the Everglades. Refugees too wicked or too murderous to be accepted into the forming of the Seminoles had gathered into their own clan. They saw everyone else as deadly enemies. Over the decades, slowly increasing in numbers, the Feral Boys had only been encountered as they raided storehouses, stole from farms, raped and murdered travelers. Hawk had not yet met them.

Richard Lathrop's bloodshot eyes were like those of a tortured animal, but they were fully sane and conscious. He lifted his head painfully and his gaze swept the room. Outside the window, Hawk instinctively shrank back. He did not know whether Lathrop saw him or not. The man made no sign to betray the presence of the watcher to the Feral Boy who scrutinized him. Then the brute turned his head toward the fire, reaching a long sinewy arm toward a glowing iron. Lathrop's eyes blazed with a fierce and urgent meaning the watcher could not mistake. Hawk did not need the agonized motion of the tortured head that accompanied the look. With a tigerish bound he dove nimbly over the window-sill and in the room, even as the startled man shot erect, whirling with frantic agility.

Hawk had not drawn his gun. He dared not risk a shot that might bring other foes upon him. There was a butcher-knife in the belt that held up the man's trousers and it seemed to leap like a living thing into the hand of the Feral Boy as he turned. But in Hawk's hand gleamed a seven inch combat knife that had served him well in many a bygone battle.

His feet scarcely touched the floor inside before they were hurling him at the astounded Feral Boy. The man's eyes rolled wildly, the butcher-knife thrust forward with the swiftness of a striking cobra that would have disembowled a man whose reactions were less keen than those of Michael Hawk.

But the Feral Boy was up against an opponent who had been training obsessively since childhood. Hawk swerved the fraction of an inch necessary so that the long blade hissed under his arm-pit, slicing cloth but not skin. Simultaneously his serrated combat knife ripped across the Feral Boy's throat.

There was only a choking gurgle as the man fell, spouting bright arterial blood. Hawk had sprung back away from any possible final retaliatory stroke. Without emotion he surveyed his handiwork. The Feral Boy man was already dead, his head half severed from his body. That slicing sidewise lunge that slew in silence, severing the throat to the spinal column, had been taught to a teenage Michael Hawk by a Filipino kali master, one of a hundred experts hired to instruct him,

Hawk turned to Lathrop. He feared that the man had suffered the same mutilation that had rendered Wilmer speechless; but it was only suffering and shock that numbed Lathrop's tongue. Hawk cut his cords and eased him down on a worn old divan near by. Lathrop's body shivered like a fever victim's under Hawk's hands. He gagged, finding his voice.

"I knew you'd come!" he gasped, writhing at the contact of the divan against his seared flesh. "I've hated you for years, but I knew—"

Hawk's voice was harsh as the rasp of steel. "What did you mean by your mention of Brenda Brand? Is she in danger?"

A ghastly smile twisted the thin lips. "Yes, mortal danger! But she'll be dead by dawn, if you don't hurry. Quick! Brandy! There on the table, that beast didn't drink it all."

Hawk held the bottle to his lips; Lathrop drank avidly. Hawk wondered at the man's iron nerve. That he was in ghastly agony was obvious. He should be screaming in a delirium of pain. Yet he held to sanity and spoke lucidly, though his voice was a laboring croak.

"I haven't much time," he choked. "Don't interrupt. Save your curses till later. We both loved Brenda Brandt. She couldn't choose between us. Then, while you were chasing some serial killer in Belgium, you got a letter from her that told you she had chosen me. We got married right after that.

"What you didn't know is that the letter was forged. Yes I spent weeks copying her handwriting, making a thousand copies until I was satisfied. You, the great criminologist and expert in a hundred disciplines, fell for it! You never replied and she took your silence for disinterest. I swept her on a Pacific cruise and proposed.

"Go on," Hawk whispered in a voice not even he recognized.

"I couldn't help it," gasped the dying man. "She was the only woman I ever loved. I brought her here where I am as good as a king. I kept her isolated from the outside world. No one lives in this section except tenant farmers and a colony of Feral Boys."

"Oh, I'm glad you're dying," Hawk growled.

A spasm racked Lathrop, and blood started from his lips. His grin faded and he hurried on. "And then John Mordecai turned up. He's a sorcerer, he's one of the Feral Boys and he took over their leadership. Mordecai lusted for Brenda like an animal man in heat. I ordered him killed. Then I found that he was stronger than me. He'd made himself master of the Feral Boys to whom my word had always been law. He initiated them into his devilish cult—"

"Voodoo," muttered Hawk involuntarily. "I've seen it in Haiti."

"No! Voodoo is child's play compared to Kuboweer! Look at the symbol on my chest, where Mordecai burned it with a white-hot iron. You have been in Okali. You understand the brand of Kuboweer.

"Mordecai turned my Feral Boys against me. I tried to escape with Brenda and Wilmer. My own Feral Boys hemmed me in. I did smuggle a telegram through to the village by a man who remained faithful to me. They suspected him and tortured him until he admitted it. John Mordecai brought me his head!

"Before the final break, I hid Brenda in a place where no one will ever find her, except you. Mordecai tortured Wilmer until he confessed that I had sent for an old friend to help us. Then Mordecai sent his men up the road with what was left of Ahmed, as a warning to you if you came. It was this morning that they seized us; I hid Brenda last night. Not even Wilmer knew where. Mordecai tortured me to make me tell..." the dying man's hands clenched and a fierce passionate light blazed in his eyes. Hawk knew that not all the torments invented by sadists could ever have wrung that secret from Lathrop's thin lips.

"It was the least you could do," Hawk barked, his voice harsh with conflicting emotions. "I've lived in misery for three years because of your selfishness. And God knows how Brenda feels! You deserve to die. I can't find it in me to forgive you."

"Damn you, do you think I care about your forgiveness?" gasped the dying man. "So what? If Brenda didn't need your help, I'd like to see you dying as I'm dying and I'll be waiting for you in hell. But enough of this. Mordecai left me awhile to go up the road and assure himself that Wilmer was dead. This beast got to swilling my brandy and decided to torture me some himself.

"Now listen, Brenda is hidden in the Lost Cave. No one living knows of its existence except you and me....not even the Feral Boys. Long ago Wilmer and I put an iron door in the entrance, and now we're both dead men so the secret is safe. There's no key. You've got to open it by working certain knobs."

It was more and more difficult for the man to enunciate intelligibly. Sweat dripped from his face. "Run your fingers over the edge of the door until you find three knobs that form a triangle. Press each one, then pull on the bar. The door will open. Take Brenda and fight your way out. If anyone can save her, it's you...Ack!"

The voice rose to a shriek, foam spattered from the livid writhing lips, and Richard Lathrop heaved himself almost upright, then toppled limply back.
Hawk stared down at the still form. Normally in a crisis, he stayed cool and in control but right then his mind was a thunderstorm. He wheeled to hurtle from that room.

III.

A stranger stood in the doorway that opened upon the great outer hall, a tall pale man with reddish-blond hair and blue eyes. He wore a long duster which reached to his riding boots, and a battered Stetson was pushed far back on his head.

"Who the devil are you?" demanded Hawk, covering him with the Colt.

"Jes' old Barney Whitfield, buddy," answered the other in a local drawl. "I came to this place of devils at the urging of my brother, Dick, God rest him. In Tampa, the letter came to me. I hurried here like my tail was on fire and I came stealing through the woods, I saw Feral Boys dragging my brother's corpse to the river. I came here, seeking his master."

Hawk mutely indicated the dead man. The stranger took off his hat and pressed it to his chest in reverence. "Richard Lathrop. I never knew him but my brother worked for him," he said. "I want vengeance for my brother and my brother's master. Let me go with you."

"All right." Hawk was afire with impatience. He knew the fanatical loyalty of these backwoodsmen and how devoted they were to even the scoundrels they served. "Follow me."

With a last glance at the master of the Manor and the Feral Boy body sprawling like a human sacrifice before him, Hawk left the chamber of torture.

"I knowed you look familiar. I seen you in newsreels, you're Michael Hawk."

"That's right." With the newcomer at his heels, Hawk emerged into the girdling pines that slumbered in the still heat of the noon. Faintly to his ears a distant pulse of sound was borne by a vagrant drift of breeze. It sounded like the throb of a faraway drum.

"Come on!" Hawk strode through the cluster of outhouses and plunged into the woods that rose behind them. Here, too, had once stretched the fields that built the wealth of the aristocratic Lathrops; but for many years they had been abandoned. Paths straggled aimlessly through the ragged growth, until presently the growing denseness of the trees told the invaders that they were in forest that had never known the woodsman's ax. Hawk looked for a path. In the murk, he was frequently forced to use his flashlight but he found the faintpath he sought twisting through the trees.

They were forced to walk single file; the branches scraped their clothing, their feet sank into the carpet of pine needles. The land trended gradually lower. Pines gave way to cypresses, choked with underbrush. Scummy pools of stagnant water glimmered under the trees. Bullfrogs croaked, mosquitoes sang with maddening insistence about them. Again the distant drum throbbed across the pinelands.

Hawk shook the sweat out of his eyes. That drum roused memories well fitted to these somber surroundings. His thoughts reverted to the hideous scar seared on Richard Lathrop's naked breast. Lathrop had supposed that he, Hawk, knew its meaning; but he did not. That it portended Feral Boy horror and madness he knew, but its full significance he did not know.

Only once before had he seen that symbol, in the horror-haunted adjacent realm of Okali, into which few outsiders had ever ventured, and from which even fewer had ever escaped alive. Michael Hawk was among that number, and even he had only penetrated the fringe of that abysmal land of jungle and swamp. He had not been able to plunge deep enough into that forbidden realm either to prove or to disprove the ghastly tales men whispered of an ancient cult surviving from the Darthan Age of the worship of a monstrosity.

No word had passed between the two men since they had left the Manor. Hawk plunged on through the vegetation that choked the path. A fat, blunt-tailed moccasion slithered from under his feet and vanished. Water could not be far away; a few more steps revealed it. They stood on the edge of a dank, slimy marsh from which rose a miasma of rotting vegetable matter. Cypresses shadowed it. The path ended at its edge. The swamp stretched away and away, lost to sight swiftly in twilight dimness.

"What now?" asked Barney. "Are we supposed to swim this morass?"

"It's full of bottomless quagmires," answered Hawk. "It would be suicide for a man to plunge into it. Not even the swampmen have ever tried to cross it. But there is a way to get to the hill that rises in the middle of it. You can just barely glimpse it, among the branches of the cypresses, see? Years ago, when Lathrop and I were young, we discovered an old Indian path, a secret submerged road that led to that hill. There's a cave in the hill, we call it Lost Cave and a woman is imprisoned in that cave. I'm going to it. Do you want to follow me, or to wait for me here? The path is a dangerous one."

"Hell yes, I'll go," answered Barney.

Hawk nodded in appreciation, and began to scan the trees about him. Presently he found what he was looking for a faint blaze on a huge cypress, an old mark, almost imperceptible. Confidently then, he stepped into the marsh beside the tree. He himself had made that mark, long ago. Scummy water rose over his shoe soles, but no higher. He stood on a flat rock, or rather on a heap of rocks, the topmost of which was just below the stagnant surface. Locating a certain gnarled cypress far out in the shadow of the marsh, he began walking directly toward it, spacing his strides carefully, each carrying him to a rockstep invisible below the murky water. Ali ibn Barney followed him, imitating his motions.

Through the swamp they went, following the marked trees that were their guide-posts. Hawk wondered anew at the motives that had impelled the ancient builders of the trail to bring these huge rocks from afar and sink them like piles into the slush. The work must have been stupendous, requiring no mean engineering skill. Why had the Indians built this broken road to Lost Island? Surely that isle and the cave in it had some religious significance to the red men; or perhaps it was their refuge against some stronger foe.

At one point, the current was too swift and the footing too unsure. Hawk uncoiled a thirty-foot length of silk line he wore fixed across his back. The collapsible grappling hook snapped open. Hawk snagged a cypress on firmer ground and told Barney to follow as he tugged himself across the water. Once they were on better footing, Hawk folded the grabble and returned the silk cord across his back.

"Dayum, that thing cut up my hands something awful," Barney complained. "How'd you do it?"

Hawk made no reply but set out again. The going was slow; a misstep meant a plunge into marshy ooze, into unstable mire that might swallow a man alive. The island grew out of the trees ahead of them—a small knoll, girdled by a vegetation-choked beach. Through the foliage was visible the rocky wall that rose sheer from the beach to a height of fifty or sixty feet. It was almost like a granite block rising from a flat sandy rim. The pinnacle was almost bare of growth.

Hawk was intense, his breath coming in quick gasps. As they stepped upon the beach-like strip, Barney paused and drew a flask from his pocket.

"Drink a little brandy, pal," he urged, touching the rim to his own lips. "You sure earned it."

Hawk knew that Barney thought his evident agitation was a result of exhaustion. But he was scarcely aware of his recent exertions. It was the emotions that raged within him. The thought of Brenda Brandt, whose face had haunted his troubled dreams for three dreary years, being trapped within that bleak stone block. He took a good gulp of the liquor, scarcely tasting it, and handed back the flask.

"Come on!" he said.

The pounding of his own heart was suffocating, drowning the distant drum, as he thrust through the choking vegetation at the foot of the cliff. On the gray rock above the green mask appeared a curious carven symbol, as he had seen it years ago, when its discovery led him and Richard Lathrop to the hidden cavern. He tore aside the clinging vines and fronds, and his breath sucked in at the sight of a heavy iron door set in the narrow mouth that opened in the granite wall.

Hawk's fingers were trembling as they swept over the metal, and behind him he could hear Barney breathing heavily. Some of the his excitement had imparted itself to the stranger. Hawk's hands found the three knobs, forming the apices of a triangle—mere protuberances, not apparent to the sight. Controlling his jumping nerves, he pressed them as Lathrop had instructed him, and felt them click under pressure. Then, holding his breath, he grasped the bar that was welded in the middle of the door, and pulled. Smoothly, on oiled hinges, the massive portal swung open.

They looked into a wide tunnel that ended in another door, this a grille of steel bars. The tunnel was not dark; it was clean and roomy, and the ceiling had been pierced to allow light to enter, the holes covered with screens to keep out insects and reptiles. But through the grille he glimpsed something that sent him racing along the tunnel, his heart almost bursting through his ribs. Barney was close at his heels.

The grille-door was not locked. It swung outward under his fingers. He stood motionless, almost stunned with the impact of his emotions.

His eyes were dazzled at a sight he had never hoped to see again. A sunbeam slanted down through the pierced rock roof and struck mellow fire from the glorious profusion of golden hair that flowed over the white arm that pillowed the beautiful head on the carved oak table.

IV.


"Brenda!"

Hearing that cry, the girl started up, staring wildly all about. "Michael? Michael!" she echoed his calk. Then she was in his arms, her white arms clutching him in a frantic embrace, as if she feared he was an illusion that might vanish from her.

For the moment the world went away for Michael Hawk. He was stunned with the overwhelming realization of a dream he had thought dead and vanished for ever.

When he could think coherently again, he shook himself like a man coming out of a trance. He was in a wide chamber, cut in the solid rock. Like the tunnel, it was illumined from above, and the air was fresh and clean. There were chairs, tables and a hammock, carpets on the rocky floor, cans of food and a water-cooler. Lathrop had not failed to provide for his captive's comfort. Hawk glanced around at Barney, and saw him waiting beyond the grille. Considerately he had not intruded upon their reunion.

"Three years!" the girl was sobbing. "Three years of my life wasted. I knew you'd come! I knew it! But we must be careful, my darling. Richard will kill you if he finds us, he'll kill us both!"

"He's beyond killing anyone," answered Hawk. "But just the same, we've got to get out of here."

Her eyes flared with new alarm. "Yes, Mordecai! Richard was terrified of him. That's why he locked me in here. He said he'd sent for you. I was afraid for you—"

"Barney!" Hawk called. "Come in here. We're getting out of here now, and we'd better take some water and food with us. We may have to hide in the swamps for..."

Unexpectedly, Hawk felt his body go numb. His vision blurred. Consciousness did not entirely leave him, but a strange paralysis gripped him. He dropped like a discarded piece of clothing on the stone floor. Helpless, he sprawled there, helplessly staring up and unable to even move his head. Brenda was struggling frenziedly in the grasp of the man he had known as Barney Whitfield, now terribly transformed. "You poor trusting fool!" he laughed. "Now you understand. I'm John Mordecai!"

"You've killed him!" the girl sobbed hysterically, striving vainly to break away from the cruel fingers that prisoned her delicate wrists.

"He's not dead yet," laughed the stranger. "The fool drank brandy tinged with a drug found only in the Okali jungles. It takes several minutes to kick in."

"Please do something for him!" she begged.

The fellow laughed brutally. "Why should I? He has served his purpose. Let him lie there until the worms have picked his bones. I should like to watch that but we will be far away before nightfall." His eyes blazed with the bestial gratification of possession. The sight of this beauty struggling in his grasp seemed to rouse all the lust in the man. Hawk's wrath and agony found expression only in his bloodshot eyes. He could not move hand or foot.

"It was well I returned alone to the Manor," laughed the warlock. "I stole up to the window while this fool talked with Richard Lathrop. The thought came to me to let him lead me to the place where you were hidden. It had never occurred to me that there was a hiding-place in the swamp. I was already dressed like the inbred scum of this state.

"But enough. We must go. The drum has been muttering all day. The Feral Boys are restless. I promised them a sacrifice to Zemba. I was going to use the servant, but by the time I had tortured out of him the information I desired, he was no longer fit for a sacrifice. They'd like to have you for the Bride of Zemba, but they don't know I've found you. I have a motor-boat hidden on the river five miles from here..."

"Let me go! I'll kill myself before I let you take me."

"I have a drug which will make you like a dead woman," he said. "You will lie in the bottom of the boat, covered by sacks. When I board the steamer that shall bear us from these shores, you will go into my cabin in a large, well-ventilated trunk. You will know nothing of the discomforts of the voyage. You will awake in Okali—"

He was fumbling in his shirt, necessarily releasing her with one hand. With a frenzied scream and a desperate wrench, she tore loose and sped out through the tunnel. Mordecai plunged after her, bellowing. Hawk listened to it all in futile rage. The girl would plunge to her death in the swamps, unless she remembered the guide-marks. Perhaps it was death she sought, in preference to the fate planned for her by the fiendish Feral Boy.

They had vanished from his sight, out of the tunnel; but suddenly Brenda screamed again, with a new poignancy. To Hawk's ears came an excited jabbering of Feral Boy gutturals. Mordecai's accents were lifted in angry protest while Brenda was sobbing hysterically. The voices were moving away.

Hawk got a vague glimpse of a group of figures through the masking vegetation as they moved across the line of the tunnel mouth. He saw Brenda being dragged along by half a dozen giant Feral Boys typical pineland dwellers, and after them came John Mordecai, his hands waving eloquently in dissension. That glimpse only, through the fronds, and then the tunnel mouth gaped empty and the sound of splashing water faded away through the marsh.

V.


V.

In the brooding silence of the cavern, Michael Hawk lay staring blankly upward, aching with self-reproach. What a fool he was to be taken in so easily! Yet, how could he have known? He had never seen Mordecai. He had supposed the warlock would be a recognizable Feral Boy, with coarse black hair and ruddy skin tones. There had been hints that the Feral Boys had bred with outsiders so often that many of them no longer looked like Indians but could appear to be of any race or background while still holding allegiance to their Hidden Nation.

The presence of those Feral Boys meant they had followed him and Mordecai. They had seized Brenda as she rushed from the cave. Mordecai's evident fear bore a hideous implication, he had said the Feral Boys wanted to sacrifice Brenda. Now she was in their hands. The warlock was losing control of them.

Giving up to a feeling of hopelessness was simply not in Michael Hawk's nature. Many times he had survived when logically he had no chance. Now, he took deeper breaths to draw in oxygen and clear his head.

Life was stealing back through his dead limbs. They stung with returning circulation. Frantically he encouraged that sluggish flow. Laboriously he worked his extremities, his fingers, hands, wrists and finally, with a surge of wild triumph, his arms and legs. Perhaps Mordecai's hellish drug had lost some of its power through age. More likely, Hawk's unusual stamina threw off the effects as another man could not have done. Unrelenting daily exercise since childhood had driven him to the upper limits of human ability.

The tunnel door had not been closed, and Hawk knew why. They did not want to shut out the rats and insects which would soon dispose of a helpless body. Already the pests were beginning to turn up.

Hawk rose at last, staggering drunkenly, but with his vitality surging more strongly each second. When he tottered from the cave, no living thing met his glare. Hours had passed since the Feral Boys had departed with their prey. He strained his ears for the drum. It was silent. Stumbling at first but getting more sure-footed every minute, he splashed along the rock-trail that led to firm ground. Had the Feral Boys taken their captive back to the death-haunted Manor, or deeper into the pinelands?

Their tracks were thick in the mud, half a dozen pairs of bare feet. There were also the narrow prints of Brenda's shoes, the marks of Mordecai's rawhide slippers. He followed them with practiced ease as the ground grew higher and harder. Lessons in tracking from an elderly Apache had stayed with him well.

He might have missed the spot where they turned off the dim trail but for the fluttering of a bit of silk in the faint breeze. Brenda had brushed against a tree-trunk there, and the rough bark had shredded off a fragment of her dress. The band had been headed east, toward the Manor. At the spot where the bit of cloth hung, they had turned sharply southward. The matted pine needles showed no tracks, but disarranged vines and branches bent aside marked their progress, until Hawk, following these signs, came out upon another trail leading southward.

Here and there were marshy spots, and these showed the prints of feet, bare and shod. Hawk ran full tilt along the trail, in full possession of his faculties at last. His holsters still held both the dart gun and the automatic. Mordecai had not had an opportunity to disarm him after striking that treacherous blow. Both the warlock and the Feral Boys believed him to be lying helpless back in Lost Cave. That, at least, was to his advantage.

He kept straining his ears in vain for the drum he had heard earlier in the day. The silence did not reassure him. In a Voodoo sacrifice drums would be thundering, but he knew he was dealing with something even more ancient and abhorrent than voodoo. Mordecai had brought with him Kuboweer, the worship of the Halarim... Draldros, Margoth and Grelok. Fear and awe of those primal beings went back to the Darthan Age of thirty thousand years ago.

He had seen no Feral Boy cabins. He knew these were farther to the east and south, most of them huddling along the banks of the river and the tributary creeks. It was the practical instinct of the Feral Boy to build his habitation by a river.

Following that winding path through the twilight dimness of the big pines, Hawk did not find time to marvel that Feral Boys from the depths of the Florida homeland had stretched across the country to breed and flourish everywhere from Cape Cod to Montana. There were Feral Boys who looked and sounded Chinese or Negro or Swedish but their hearts and souls belonged to the Hidden Nation. Mordecai was proof of that.

The trend of the trail was away from the river. The land sloped very gradually upward, and all signs of marsh vanished. The trail widened, showing signs of frequent use. This meant prudence was needed. At any moment he might meet someone. He took to the thick woods alongside the trail, and forced his way onward, each movement sounding cannon-loud to his whetted ears. Sweating with exertion in the humidity, he came presently upon a smaller path which meandered in the general direction he wished to go. The pinelands were crisscrossed by such paths.

He followed it with greater ease and stealth, and presently, coming to a crook in it, saw it join the main trail. Near the point of junction stood a small log cabin, and between him and the cabin squatted a big Feral Boy. This man was hidden behind the bole of a huge pine beside the narrow path, and peering around it toward the cabin.

Obviously he was spying on someone, and it was quickly apparent who this was, as John Mordecai came to the door and stared despairingly down the wide trail. The Feral Boy watcher stiffened and lifted his fingers to his mouth as if to sound a far-carrying whistle, but Mordecai shrugged his shoulders helplessly and turned back into the cabin again. The Feral Boy relaxed, though he did not alter his vigilance.

What this portended, Hawk did not know, nor did he pause to speculate. At the sight of Mordecai, Hawk fought down a surge of murderous rage. He must not lose control. He must remain cold and calculating if he was going to win this desperare battle.

A panther stealing upon its kill would have made more noise than Hawk did in his glide down the path toward the squatting Feral Boy. He was aware of no personal animosity toward the man, who was but an obstacle in his path of vengeance. Intent on the cabin, the Feral Boy did not hear that stealthy approach. Oblivious to all else, he did not move or turn until the pistol butt descended on his skull with a crunch that stretched him out lifeless among the pine needles

Hawk crouched above his motionless victim, listening intently. There was no sound near by but suddenly, far away, there rose a long-drawn bellow that shuddered and died away. The blood ran icy in Hawk's veins. Once before he had heard that sound—in the low forest-covered hills that fringe the borders of forbidden Okali. What it was he did not know but the explanation offered by the shuddering Skullhunters had been too unsettling to accept. They called it the voice of the Gator God.

Stung to action, Hawk rushed down the path and hurled himself bodily against the back door of the cabin. Although his jacket still held some of the miniature smoke bombs and grenades, he did not use them. For the first time, his self-control had slipped and he acted on instinct.

The door crashed inward under the impact. He landed nimbly on his feet inside, crouching, hand resting on the butt of his automatic.


VI.

But only one man was in there to face him, John Mordecai, who sprang to his feet with a startled gasp. Vaulting across the room, Hawk's fierce hands locked about the warlock's throat. Mordecai was borne backward by the hurtling impact, and the men crashed together over a camp cot, smashing it to ruins. As they tumbled on the dirt floor, Hawk set himself to kill his enemy with his bare fingers.

The warlock was a tall man, wiry and strong. But against Michael Hawk, he had no chance. He was hurled about like a sack of straw, battered and smashed savagely against the floor, and the iron fingers that were crushing his throat sank deeper and deeper until his tongue protruded from his gaping lips and his eyes were bulging from their sockets. With death no more than a hand's breadth from the warlock, Hawk managed to restrain himself. He had never gone berserk like that before.

Easing his terrible grip a trifle, he asked in an icy cold voice, "Where is the girl? Quick, before I kill you!"

Mordecai coughed and fought for breath, "The Feral Boys!" he gasped. "They have taken her to be the Bride of Zomak! I could not prevent them. They demand a sacrifice. I offered them you, but they said you were paralyzed and would die anyway. They were cleverer than I thought. They followed me back to the Manor from the spot where we left Lathrop's servant in the road.

"They are out of control! They've gone mad with blood-lust. I had forgotten that not even a priest of Okali can control them when the fire of worship runs in their veins. I am their priest and master, yet when I sought to save the girl, they forced me into this cabin and set a man to watch me until the sacrifice is over. You must have killed him; he would never have let you enter here."

With a chill grimness, Hawk picked up his pistol from where he dropped it when launching his attack.

"You came here pretending to be Richard Lathrop's friend," he said unemotionally. "To get possession of Brenda Brandt, you made devil-worshippers out of the Feral Boy people. You deserve death for that. But it is because of your scheming that Brenda Brandt is about to die, and that's the reason that I'm going to blow out your brains."

John Mordecai shuddered. "She is not dead yet," he gasped, great drops of perspiration dripping from his ashy face. "She will not die until the moon is high above the pines. It is full tonight, the Blood Moon of Okali. Don't kill me. Only I can save her. I know I failed before. But if I go to them, appear to them suddenly and without warning, they'll think it is because of supernatural powers that I was able to escape from the hut without being seen by the watchman. That will impress them.

"You can't save her, Hawk. You might shoot a few Feral Boys, but there would still be dozens left to kill you and her. But I have a plan—yes, I am a priest of Okali. As a young man, I made it to realm of Okali. I learned many secrets of black magic. When I came back to the world, I brought a Zomak with me.

"Let me save Brenda Brandt!" He was clawing at Hawk, shaking as if with an ague. "Spare my life for her sake. I will play fair with you both, I swear it! Let me save her! We can fight for her later, and I'll kill you if I can."

The frankness of that statement swayed Hawk more than anything else the warlock could have said. It was a desperate gamble but after all, Brenda would be no worse off with John Mordecai alive than she was already. She would be dead before midnight unless something was done swiftly.

"Where is the place of sacrifice?" demanded Hawk.

"Three miles away, in an open glade," answered Mordecai. "South on the trail that runs past my cabin. All the Feral Boys are gathered there except my guard and some others who are watching the trail below the cabin. They are scattered out along it, the nearest out of sight of my cabin, but within sound of the loud, shrill whistle with which these people signal one another.

"This is my plan. You wait here in my cabin, or in the woods, as you choose. I'll avoid the watchers on the trail, and appear suddenly before the Feral Boys at the House of Zomak. A sudden appearance will impress them deeply, as I said. I know I can not persuade them to abandon their plan, but I will make them postpone the sacrifice until just before dawn. And before that time I will manage to steal the girl and flee with her. I'll return to your hiding-place, and we'll fight our way out together."

Hawk laughed. "Do you think I'm an utter fool? You'd send your Feral Boys to murder me, while you carried Brenda away as you planned. I'm going with you. I'll hide at the edge of the clearing, to help you if you need help. And if you make a false move, I'll shoot you dead, if it's the last deed in my life."

The warlock's murky eyes glittered, but he nodded acquiescence.

The sun was setting and twilight was stealing over the pinelands as Hawk and his strange companion stole through the shadowy woods. They had circled to the west to avoid the watchers on the trail, and were now following on the many narrow footpaths which traced their way through the forest. Silence reigned ahead of them,

A few stars were blinking out, and shadows crept through the thick woods, blurring the trunks of the trees that melted together in darkness. Hawk knew they could not be far from the House of Zomak. He sensed the close presence of a throng of people, though he heard nothing.

Mordecai, ahead of him, halted suddenly, crouching. Hawk stopped, trying to pierce the surrounding mask of interlacing branches.

"What is it?" muttered the white man, reaching for his pistol.

Mordecai shook his head, straightening. Hawk could not see the stone in his hand, caught up from the earth as he stooped.

"Do you hear something?" demanded Hawk.

Mordecai motioned him to lean forward, as if to whisper in his ear. Caught off his guard, Hawk bent toward him. Even so, he realized the treacherous warlock's intention a split-second too late. The stone in Mordecai's hand crashed sickeningly against the back of Hawk's head and Hawk went down like a slaughtered ox. Mordecai sped away down the path to vanish like a ghost in the gloom.


VII.

In the darkness of the woodland path Hawk stirred at last, and staggered groggily to his feet. That desperate blow would have crushed his skull if it had landed more directly. Lucky to wake up at all, he thought. His head throbbed horribly and his eyesight was blurred but his strongest sensation was burning scorn at himself for having again fallen victim to John Mordecai. And yet, who would have suspected that move? He knew Mordecai would kill him if he could, but he had not expected an attack before the rescue of Brenda. The fellow was dangerous and unpredictable as a cobra. Had his pleas to be allowed to attempt Brenda's rescue been but a ruse to escape death at the hands of Hawk?

Hawk stared dizzily at the stars that gleamed through the ebon branches, and sighed with relief to see that the moon had not yet risen. The pinewoods were dark enough to hide any atrocities.

Hawk had reason to be grateful for the rugged constitution he had earned by constant exercise and discipline. Twice that day had John Mordecai outwitted him, and twice Hawk's iron frame had survived the attack. His guns were still in their holsters, his knife in its sheath. Mordecai had not paused to search, had not paused for a second stroke to make sure of Hawk's death. Perhaps there had been a tinge of panic in the warlock's actions.

Well, this did not change matters. He believed that Mordecai would make an effort to save Brenda for himself. This was no time to falter, with the girl's life at stake. He walked laboriously down the path in the gloom, getting stronger with each moment.

He came upon the glade almost before he knew it. The moon hung in the low branches, blood-red, high enough to illumine it and the throng of Feral Boy people who squatted in a vast semicircle about it, facing the moon. Their eyes gleamed red in the shadows, their features were emotionless masks. None spoke. No head turned toward the bushes behind which he crouched.

He had vaguely expected blazing fires, a blood-stained altar, drums and the chant of maddened worshippers. That would be what happened with the Voodoo he had witnessed. But this was millennia older than Voodoo, and there was a vast gulf between the two cults. There were no fires, no altars. In the real world, he had sought in vain for the rituals of Okali. Now he looked upon them within forty miles of the spot where houses were bright with electric lights and families sat around the radio at night without a clue what horrors lurked in the darkness.

In the center of the glade the ground rose slightly to a flat level. On this stood a heavy iron-bound stake that was indeed but the sharpened trunk of a good-sized pine driven deep into the ground. And there was something living chained to that stake which caused Hawk to catch his breath in horrified unbelief.

He was looking upon Zomak, a god of Okali. Legends had told of such creatures, wild tales drifting from the borders of the forbidden country, repeated by shivering natives about fires, passed along until they reached the ears of skeptical outsiders of this world. Hawk had never really believed the stories, though he had once gone searching for the being they described.

The thing chained to the stake was an reptile, but such an reptile as the world at large never dreamed of, even in nightmares. Its ridged green hide was was thick as armor plates. Standing upright, on its bent, gnarled legs, it would be as tall as a man, and much broader and thicker. The mighty tail dragged on the ground behind it. The head was that of a huge alligator with the long jaws armed with rows of fangs. But the skull had an expanded upper part like a forehead. Behind those unblinking eyes, intelligence showed as the beast glared at its captors.

This was Zomak, the creature sacred to the Skullhunters of the realm of Okali. A monstrosity, a violation of an accepted law of nature. Zooologists would have laughed or shuddered at the idea of a bipedal alligator.

But now Hawk knew that such creatures dwelt in Okali and were worshipped from fear. Okali had many abnormal beasts which were never produced by natural selection but which had been created by the sorcery of the Darthim. Griffins, Centaurs, Thunderbirds, Speaking Apes, Manticores and more... horrors only known in the real world as myths which reflected the little known reality.

Zomak looked massive beyond the stature of normal alligators. Hawk doubted if even the sturdy Army automatic at his hip would have any effect on it. He wondered by what dark and devious means John Mordecai had trapped the monster and brought it from Okali to Florida.

But now something was happening in the glade, heralded by the shaking of the brute's chain as it thrust forward its nightmarish head and tugged to be free.

From the shadows of the trees came a file of Feral Boys, men and women, naked except for a mantle of animal hides thrown over the shoulders of each. They formed a semicircle at a safe distance from the chained brute, and sank to their knees, bending their heads to the ground before him. Thrice this motion was repeated. Then, rising, they formed two lines, men and women facing one another, and began to dance in their strange way.

They hardly moved their feet at all, but all other parts of their bodies were in constant motion, twisting, rotating, writhing. The rhythmical movements had no connection at all with the Voodoo dances Hawk had covertly witnessed. This dance was disquietingly suggestive of hidden purpose.

No sound came from the dancers, or from the other Feral Boys squatting about the ring of trees. But the reptile, apparently infuriated by the continued movements, lifted his head and sent into the night the frightful bellowing Hawk had heard once before that day. He had heard it years ago in the hills that border Okali. The brute plunged to the end of his heavy chain, gnashing his fangs, The dancers fled like spume blown before a gust of wind. They scattered in all directions and then Hawk stood up in his hiding place.

From the deep shadows had come a pale figure, naked except for a mantle of deerhide across his shoulders. On his golden hair sat a circlet of beaten gold In his hand he brandished a gilded femur topped by a human skull wrapped in gold leaf, the scepter of the high priests of Okali.

Behind him came a pitiful figure which made Hawk wince in pain to see.

Brenda had been drugged. Her face was that of a sleep-walker; she seemed not aware of her peril that she was naked. She walked like a robot, mechanically responding to the urge of the cord tied about her white neck. The other end of that cord was in John Mordecai's hand, and he half dragged her toward the horror that squatted in the center of the glade.

Mordecai's face was ashy in the moonlight that now flooded the glade with molten silver. Sweat beaded his skin. His eyes gleamed with fear and ruthless determination. And in a staggering instant Hawk knew that the man had failed, that he had been unable to save Brenda, and that now, to save his own life from his suspicious followers, he himself was dragging the girl to the gory sacrifice.

No vocal sound came from the cultists, but hissing intake of breath sucked through their lips, and the rows of bodies swayed like reeds in the wind. The great reptile reared up to his full height. He grunted with frightful eagerness, gnashing his great fangs that yearned to sink into that soft pink flesh. The Gator God surged against his chain, and the stout post quivered. In the bushes, Hawk stood frozen, paralyzed by the imminence of horror. And then John Mordecai stepped behind the unresisting girl and gave her a callous push that sent her reeling forward to pitch headlong on the ground under the monster's talons.

But Hawk was already attacking. The usual anesthetic darts wouldn't even be noticed by this monster, so he extended his right arm and blasted away with the big Colt 45. The great reptile shrieked and reeled back a step, clapping misshapen paws to its head.

For an instant the throng crouched frozen where they were. Then before any could move, the reptile wheeled, seized the chain in both hands and snapped it with a wrench that twisted the heavy links apart as if they had been string.

John Mordecai stood directly before the wounded brute, paralyzed in his tracks. Zomak bounded forward with his arms swinging wildly. Mordecai went down under him, disemboweled instantly by the razorlike talons, his head crushed to a crimson pulp as a hind paw stepped down with five hundred pounds behind it.

Ravening, the monster charged at the Feral Boys, clawing and ripping and smiting. In complete panic, the cultists scrambled over one another in their mad flight. Men and women went down under those shearing talons, were dismembered by those gnashing fangs. Most of the worshippers were killed by their god. The last of the howling wretches found refuge among the trees. The sounds of their blundering flight drifted back.


Hawk had leaped from his covert even as he had fired. Unnoticed by the terrified Feral Boys, and himself barely aware of the slaughter raging around him, he raced across the glade toward the pitiful white figure that lay limply beside the iron-bound stake.

"Brenda!" he cried, gathering her to him. Languidly she opened her cloudy eyes. She was in shock. He held her close, heedless of the screams and devastation surging about them. Slowly recognition grew in those lovely eyes.

"Michael!" she murmured, incoherently. Then she screamed, clung to him, sobbing hysterically. "Michael! They told me you were dead! The Feral Boys! The horrible Feral Boys! They're going to kill me! They were going to kill Mordecai too, but he promised to sacrifice—"

"It's okay, it's okay." He subdued her frantic tremblings. "It's all right, now—" Abruptly he looked up into the grinning bloodstained face of nightmare and death. The great reptile had ceased to rend his dead victims and was slinking toward the living pair in the center of the glade. Blood oozed from the wound in its sloping skull that had maddened it.

Hawk sprang toward it, shielding the prostrate girl; his pistol spurted flame, pouring a stream of lead into the mighty breast as the beast charged.

On it came, and his confidence waned. Bullet after bullet he sent crashing into its vitals, but it did not halt. Now he dashed the empty gun full at the monster's head without effect. With a lurch, it had him in its grasp. As the giant arms closed crushingly about him, Hawk managed to dig into his left jacket pocket and came up with a metal sphere the size of a cherry tomato. Directly into that gaping maw, he shoved the ball, risking having his arm bitten clear through.

The Gator God was gagging and choking for the three seconds left in his life. He released Hawk, who rolled away as the monster's head blew apart in a sharp booming detonation. Those miniature grenades were potent. The body of the dead creature fell with a thump to the ground.

As Hawk struggled to his feet with his ears ringing, Brenda rose herself and reeled into his arms, crying hysterically. "This can't be real, it just can't be..."

"It's all right now, Brenda," he panted, crushing her to him. "It's all over. They're dead. They can't hurt us now. Come on, let's start walking, lean on me. You're going to be fine." But he wondered if she would ever recover from that night. Stronger minds had been broken by the Midnight War.

3/16/2023