The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes

‘There is no God but Antichrist!’

And thereat the figure turned about – and it was Cartaphilus the Jew.

VII

There is no death! What seems so is transition.

Uttering an incoherent cry, Rose came to himself with a shock of agony and staggered to his feet. In the act he traversed no neutral ground of insentient purposelessness. He caught the thread of being where he had dropped it – grasped it with an awful and sublime resolve that admitted no least thought of self-interest.

If his senses were for the moment amazed at their surroundings – the silence, the perfumed languor, the beauty and voluptuousness of the room – his soul, notwithstanding, stood intent, unfaltering – waiting merely the physical capacity for action.

The fragments of the broken vessel were scattered at his feet; the blood of his wound had hardened upon his face. He took a dizzy step forward, and another. The girl lay as he had seen her cast herself down – breathing, he could see; her hair in disorder; her hands clenched together in terror or misery beyond words.

Where was the other?

Suddenly his vision cleared. He saw that the silken curtains of the alcove were closed.

A poniard in a jewelled sheath lay, with other costly trifles, on a settle hard by. He seized and, drawing it, cast the scabbard clattering on the floor. His hands would have done; but this would work quicker.

Exhaling a quick sigh of satisfaction, he went forward with a noiseless rush and tore apart the curtains.

Yes – he was there – the Jew – the breathing enormity, stretched silent and motionless. The shadow of the young man’s lifted arm ran across his white shirt front like a bar sinister.

To rid the world of something monstrous and abnormal – that was all Rose’s purpose and desire. He leaned over to strike. The face, stiff and waxen as a corpse’s, looked up into his with a calm impenetrable smile – looked up, for all its eyes were closed. And this was a horrible thing, that, though the features remained fixed in that one inexorable expression, something beneath them seemed alive and moving – something that clouded or revealed them as when a sheet of paper glowing in the fire wavers between ashes and flame. Almost he could have thought that the soul, detached from its envelope, struggled to burst its way to the light.

An instant he dashed his left palm across his eyes; then shrieking, ‘Let the fruit avail you now!’ drove the steel deep into its neck with a snarl.

In the act, for all his frenzy, he had a horror of the spurting blood that he knew must foul his hand obscenely, and sprinkle his face, perhaps, as when a finger half-plugs a flowing water-tap.

None came! The fearful white wound seemed to suck at the steel, making a puckered mouth of derision.

A thin sound, like the whinny of a dog, issued from Rose’s lips. He pulled out the blade – it came with a crackling noise, as if it had been drawn through parchment.

Incredulous – mad – in an ecstasy of horror, he stabbed again and again. He might as fruitfully have struck at water. The slashed and gaping wounds closed up so soon as he withdrew the steel, leaving not a scar.

With a scream he dashed the unstained weapon on the floor and sprang back into the room. He stumbled and almost fell over the prostrate figure of the girl.

A strength as of delirium stung and prickled in his arms. He stooped and forcibly raised her – held her against his breast – addressed her in a hurried passion of entreaty.

‘In the name of God, come with me! In the name of God, divorce yourself from this horror! He is the abnormal! – the deathless – the Antichrist!’

Her lids were closed; but she listened.

‘Adnah, you have given me myself. My reason cannot endure the gift alone. Have mercy and be pitiful, and share the burden!’

At last she turned on him her swimming gaze.

‘Oh! I am numbed and lost! What would you do with me?’

With a sob of triumph he wrapped his arms hard about her, and sought her lips with his. In the very moment of their meeting, she drew herself away, and stood panting and gazing with wide eyes over his shoulder. He turned.

A young man of elegant appearance was standing by the table where he had lately leaned.

In the face of the newcomer the animal and the fanatic were mingled, characteristics inseparable in pseudo-revelation.

He was unmistakably a Jew, of the finest primitive type – such as might have existed in preneurotic days. His complexion was of a smooth golden russet; his nose and lips were cut rather in the lines of sensuous cynicism; the look in his polished brown eyes was of defiant self-confidence, capable of the extremes of devotion or of obstinacy. Short curling black hair covered his scalp, and his moustache and small crisp beard were of the same hue.

‘Thanks, stranger,’ he said, in a somewhat nasal but musical voice. ‘Your attack – a little cowardly, perhaps, for all its provocation – has served to release me before my time. Thanks – thanks indeed!’

Amos sent a sick and groping glance towards the alcove. The curtain was pulled back – the couch was empty. His vision returning, caught sight of Adnah still standing motionless.

‘No, no!’ he screeched in a suffocated voice, and clasped his hands convulsively.

There was an adoring expression in her wet eyes that grew and grew. In another moment she had thrown herself at the stranger’s feet.

‘Master,’ she cried, in a rich and swooning voice: ‘O Lord and Master – as blind love foreshadowed thee in these long months!’

He smiled down upon her.

‘A tender welcome on the threshold,’ he said softly, ‘that I had almost renounced. The young spirit is weak to confirm the self-sacrifice of the old. But this ardent modern, Adnah, who, it seems, has slipped his opportunity?’

Passionately clasping the hands of the young Jew, she turned her face reluctant.

‘He has blood on him,’ she whispered. ‘His lip is swollen like a schoolboy’s with fighting. He is not a man, sane, self-reliant and glorious – like you, O my heart!’

The Jew gave a high, loud laugh, which he checked in mid-career.

‘Sir,’ he said derisively, ‘we will wish you a very pleasant good-morning.’

How – under what pressure or by what process of self-effacement – he reached the street, Amos could never remember. His first sense of reality was in the stinging cold, which made him feel, by reaction, preposterously human.

It was perhaps six o’clock of a February morning, and the fog had thinned considerably, giving place to a wan and livid glow that was but half-measure of dawn.

He found himself going down the ringing pavement that was talcous with a sooty skin of ice, a single engrossing resolve hammering time in his brain to his footsteps.

The artificial glamour was all past and gone – beaten and frozen out of him. The rest was to do – his plain duty as a Christian, as a citizen – above all, as a gentleman. He was, unhypnotised, a law-abiding young man, with a hatred of notoriety and a detestation of the abnormal. Unquestionably his forebears had made a huge muddle of his inheritance.

About a quarter to seven he walked (rather unsteadily) into Vine Street Police Station and accosted the inspector on duty.

‘I want to lay an information.’

The officer scrutinised him, professionally, from the under side, and took up a pen.

‘What’s the charge?’

‘Administering a narcotic, attempted murder, abduction, profanity, trading under false pretences, wandering at large – great heavens! what isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps you’ll say. Name of accused?’