"Ooze"
© 1923
by
Anthony M. Rud
In
the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama, a
region sparsely settled by backwoods blacks and Cajans — that queer,
half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth
century
(1) — stands a strange, enormous ruin.
Interminable trailers of Cherokee rose, white-laden during a single
month of spring, have climbed the heights of its three remaining walls.
Palmetto fans rise knee high above the base. A dozen scattered live
oaks, now belying their nomenclature because of choking tufts of gray,
Spanish moss and two-foot circlets of mistletoe parasite which have
stripped bare of foliage the gnarled, knotted limbs, lean fantastic
beards against the crumbling brick.
Immediately beyond, where the ground becomes soggier and lower —
dropping away hopelessly into the tangle of dogwood, holly, poison sumac
and pitcher plants that is Moccasin Swamp — undergrowth of ti-ti and
annis has formed a protecting wall impenetrable to all save the furtive
ones. Some few outcasts utilize the stinking depths of that sinister
swamp, distilling “shinny” of “pure cawn” liquor for illicit trade
(2).
Tradition
states that this is the case, at least — a tradition which antedates
that of the premature ruin by many decades. I believe it, for during
evenings intervening between investigations of the awesome spot I often
was approached as a possible customer by woodbillies who could not
fathom how anyone dared venture near without plenteous fortification of
liquid courage.
I know “shinny,” therefore I did not purchase it for personal
consumption. A dozen times I bought a quart or two, merely to establish
credit among the Cajans, pouring away the vile stuff immediately into
the sodden ground. It seemed then that only through filtration and
condensation of their dozens of weird tales regarding “Daid House” could
I arrive at understanding of the mystery and weight of horror hanging
about the place.
Certain it is that out of all the superstitious cautioning,
head-wagging and whispered nonsensities I obtained only two indisputable
facts. The first was that no money, and no supporting battery of
ten-gauge shotguns loaded with chilled shot, could induce either Cajan
or darky of the region to approach within five hundred yards of that
flowering wall! The second fact I shall dwell upon later.
Perhaps it would be as well, as I am only a mouthpiece in this
chronicle, to relate in brief why I came to Alabama on this mission
(3).
I am a scribbler of general fact articles, no fiction writer as was
Lee Cranmer — though doubtless the confession is superfluous. Lee was my
roommate during college days. I knew his family well, admiring John
Corliss Cranmer even more that I admired the son and friend — and almost
as much as Peggy Breede whom Lee married. Peggy liked me, but that was
all. I cherish sanctified memory of her for just that much, as no other
woman before or since has granted this gangling dyspeptic even a hint of
joyous and sorrowful intimacy.
Work kept me to the city. Lee, on the other hand, coming of wealthy
family — and, from the first, earning from his short stories and novel
royalties more than I wrested from editorial coffers — needed no
anchorage. He and Peggy honeymooned a four-month trip to Alaska, visited
Honolulu the next winter, fished for salmon on Cain's River, New
Brunswick, and generally enjoyed the outdoors at all seasons.
They kept an apartment in Wilmette, near Chicago, yet, during the few
spring and fall seasons they were “home,” both preferred to rent a
suite at one of the country clubs to which Lee belonged. I suppose they
spent thrice or five times the amount Lee actually earned, yet for my
part I only honored that the two should find such great happiness in
life and still accomplish artistic triumph.
They were honest, zestful young Americans, the type — and pretty nearly the
only
type — two million dollars cannot spoil. John Corliss Cranmer, father
of Lee, though as different from his boy as a microscope is different
from a painting by Remington, was even further from being
dollar-conscious. He lived in a world bounded only by the widening
horizon of biological science — and his love for the two who would carry
on that Cranmer name.
Many a time I used to wonder how it could be that as gentle,
clean-souled and lovable a gentleman as John Corliss Cranmer could have
ventured so far into scientific research without attaining small-caliber
atheism. Few do. He believed both in God and humankind. To accuse him
of murdering his boy and the girl wife who had come to be loved as the
mother of baby Elsie — as well as blood and flesh of his own family —
was a gruesome, terrible absurdity! Yes, even when John Corliss Cranmer
was declared unmistakably insane!
Lacking a relative in the world, baby Elsie was given to me — and the
middle-aged couple who had accompanied the three as servants about half
of the known world. Elsie would be Peggy over again. I worshiped her,
knowing that if my stewardship of her interests could make of her a
woman of Peggy's loveliness and worth I should not have lived in vain.
And at four Elsie stretched out her arms to me after a vain attempt to
jerk out the bobbed tail of Lord Dick, my tolerant old Airedale — and
called me “papa.”
I felt a deep-down choking… yes, those strangely long black lashes
some day might droop in fun or coquetry, but now baby Elsie held a
wistful, trusting seriousness in depths of ultramarine eyes — that same
seriousness which only Lee had brought to Peggy.
Responsibility in one instant become double. That she might come to
love me as more than foster parent was my dearest wish. Still, through
selfishness I could not rob her of rightful heritage; she must know in
after years. And the tale that I would tell her must not be the horrible
suspicion which had been bandied about in common talk!
I went to Alabama, leaving Elsie in the competent hands of Mrs.
Daniels and her husband, who had helped care for her since birth.
In my possession, prior to the trip, were the scant facts known to
authorities at the time of John Corliss Cranmer's escape and
disappearance. They were incredible enough.
For conducting biological research upon forms of protozoan life, John
Corliss Cranmer had hit upon this region of Alabama. Near a great swamp
teeming with microscopic organisms, and situated in a semitropical belt
where freezing weather rarely intruded to harden the bogs, the spot
seemed ideal for his purpose.
Through
Mobile he could secure supplies daily by truck. The isolation suited
him. With only an octoroon man to act as chef, houseman and valet for
the times he entertained visitors, he brought down scientific apparatus,
occupying temporary quarters in the village of Burdett's Corners while
his woods house was in process of construction.
By all accounts the Lodge, as he termed it, was a substantial affair
of eight or nine rooms, built of logs and planed lumber bought at Oak
Grove. Lee and Peggy were expected to spend a portion of each year with
him; quail, wild turkey and deer abounded, which fact made such a
vacation certain to please the pair. At other times all save four rooms
were closed.
This was in 1907, the year of Lee's marriage. Six years later when I
came down, no sign of a house remained except certain mangled and
rotting timbers projecting from viscid soil — or what seemed like soil.
And a twelve-foot wall of brick had been built to enclose the house
completely! One partion of this had fallen
inward!
II
I wasted weeks of time first, interviewing officials of the police
department at Mobile, the town marshals and county sheriffs of
Washington and Mobile counties, and officials of the psychopathic
hospital from which Cranmer made his escape.
In substance the story was one of baseless homicidal mania. Cranmer
the elder had been away until late fall, attending two scientific
conferences in the North, and then going abroad to compare certain of
his findings with those of a Dr. Gemmler of Prague University.
Unfortunately, Gemmler was assassinated by a religious fanatic shortly
afterward. The fanatic voiced virulent objection to all Mendelian
research as blasphemous. This was his only defense. He was hanged.
Search of Gemmler's notes and effects revealed nothing save an immense amount of laboratory data on
karyokinesis
— the process of chromosome arrangement occurring in first growing
cells of higher animal embryos. Apparently Cranmer had hoped to develop
some similarities, or point out differences between hereditary factors
occurring in lower forms of life and those half-demonstrated in the cat
and monkey. The authorities had found nothing that helped me. Cranmer
had gone crazy; was that not sufficient explanation?
Perhaps it was for them, but not for me — and Elsie.
But to the slim basis of fact I was able to unearth:
No one wondered when a fortnight passed without appearance of
any
person from the Lodge. Why should anyone worry? A provision salesman in
Mobile called up twice, but tailed to complete the connection. He
merely shrugged. The Cranmers had gone away somewhere on a trip. In a
week, a month, a year they would be back. Meanwhile he lost commissions,
but what of it? He had no responsibility for those queer nuts up there
in the piney-woods. Crazy? Of course! Why should any guy with millions
to spend shut himself up among the Cajans and draw microscope-enlarged
notebook pictures of — what the salesman called — “germs”?
A stir was aroused at the end of the fortnight, but the commotion
confined itself to building circles. Twenty carloads of building brick,
fifty bricklayers, and a quarter-acre of fine-meshed wire — the sort
used for screening off pens of rodents and small marsupials in a
zoological garden — were ordered,
damn expense, hurry! by an unshaved, tattered man who identified himself with difficulty as John Corliss Cranmer.
He looked strange, even then. A certified check for the total amount,
given in advance, and another check of absurd size slung toward a labor
entrepreneur, silenced objection, however. These millionaires
were apt to be flighty. When they wanted something they wanted it at tap
of the bell. Well, why not drag down the big profits? A poorer man
would have been jacked up in a day. Cranmer's fluid gold bathed him in
immunity to criticism.
The encircling wall was built, and roofed with wire netting which
drooped about the squat-pitch of the Lodge. Curious inquiries of workmen
went unanswered until the final day.
Then Cranmer, a strange, intense apparition who showed himself more
shabby than a quay derelict, assembled every man jack of the workmen. In
one hand he grasped a wad of blue slips — fifty-six of them. In the
other he held a Luger automatic.
“I offer each man a thousand dollars for
silence!” he announced. “As an alternative —
death!
You know little. Will all of you consent to swear upon your honor that
nothing which has occurred here will be mentioned elsewhere? By this I
mean
absolute silence! You will not come back here to investigate
anything. You will not tell your wives. You will not open your mouths
even upon the witness stand in case you are called! My price is one
thousand apiece.
“In case one of you betrays me
I give you my word that this man shall die! I am rich. I can hire men to do murder. Well, what do you say?”
(4)
The men glanced apprehensively about. The threatening Luger decided
them. To a man they accepted the blue slips — and, save for one
witness
who lost all sense of fear and morality in drink, none of the fifty-six
has broken his pledge, as far as I know. That one bricklayer died later
in delirium tremens.
III
They found him the first time, mouthing meaningless phrases
concerning an amoeba — one of the tiny forms of protoplasmic life he was
known to have studied. Also he leaped into a hysteria of
self-accusation. He had murdered two innocent people! The tragedy was
his crime. He had drowned them in ooze! Ah, God!
Unfortunately for all concerned, Cranmer, dazed and indubitably stark
insane, chose to perform a strange travesty on fishing four miles to
the west of his lodge — on the further border of Moccasin Swamp. His
clothing had been torn to shreds, his hat was gone, and he was coated
from head to foot with gluey mire. It was far from strange that the good
folk of Shanksville, who never had glimpsed the eccentric millionaire,
failed to associate him with Cranmer.
They took him in, searched his pockets — finding no sign save an
inordinate sum of money — and then put him under medical care. Two
precious weeks elapsed before Dr. Quirk reluctantly acknowledged that he
could do nothing more for this patient, and notified the proper
authorities.
Then much more time was wasted. Hot April and half of still hotter
May passed by before the loose ends were connected. Then it did little
good to know that this raving unfortunate was Cranmer, or that the two
persons of whom he shouted in disconnected delirium actually had
disappeared. Alienists absolved him of responsibility. He was confined
in a cell reserved for the violent.
Meanwhile, strange things occurred back at the Lodge — which now, for
good and sufficient reason, was becoming known to dwellers of the woods
as Dead House. Until one of the walls fell in, however, there had been
no chance to see — unless one possessed the temerity to climb either one
of the tall live oaks, or mount the barrier itself. No doors or opening
of any sort had been placed in that hastily contructed wall!
By the time the western side of the wall fell, not a native for miles
around but feared the spot far more than even the bottomless,
snake-infested bogs which lay to west and north.
The single statement was all John Corliss Cranmer ever gave to the
world.
It proved sufficient. An immediate search was instituted. It showed
that less than three weeks before the day of initial reckoning, his son
and Peggy had come to visit him for the second time that winter —
leaving Elsie in company of the Daniels pair. They had rented a pair of
Gordons for quail hunting, and had gone out. That was the last anyone
had seen of them.
The backwoods Negro who glimpsed them stalking a covey behind their
two pointing dogs had known no more — even when sweated through twelve
hours of third degree. Certain suspicious circumstances (having to do
only with his regular pursuit of “shinny” transportation) had caused him
to fall under suspicion at first. He was dropped
(5).
Two days later the scientist himself was apprehended — a gibbering
idiot who sloughed his pole — holding on to the baited hook — into a
marsh where nothing save moccasins, an errant alligator, or amphibian
life could have been snared.
His mind was three-quarters dead. Cranmer then was in the state of
the dope fiend who rouses to a sitting position to ask seriously how
many Bolshevists were killed by Julius Caesar before he was stabbed by
Brutus, or why it was that Roller canaries sang only on Wednesday
evenings. He knew that tragedy of the most sinister sort had stalked
through his life — but little more, at first.
Later the police obtained that one statement that he had murdered two
human beings, but never could means or motive be established. Official
guess as to the means was no more than wild conjecture; it mentioned
enticing the victims to the noisome depths of Moccasin Swamp, there to
let them flounder and sink.
The two were his son and daughter-in-law, Lee and Peggy!
(6)
IV
By feigning coma — then awakening with suddenness to assault three
attendants with incredible ferocity and strength — John Corliss Cranmer
escaped from Elizabeth Ritter Hospital.
How he hid, how he managed to traverse sixty-odd intervening miles
and still balk detection, remains a minor mystery to be explained only
by the assumption that maniacal cunning sufficed to outwit saner
intellects.
Traverse those miles he did, though until I was fortunate enough to
uncover evidence to this effect, it was supposed generally that he had
made his escape as stowaway on one of the banana boats, or had
buried
himself in some portion of the nearer woods where he was unknown. The
truth ought to be welcome to householders of Shanksville, Burdett's
Corners and vicinage — those excusably prudent ones who to this day keep
loaded shotguns handy and barricade their doors at nightfall.
The first ten days of my investigation may be touched upon in brief. I
made headquarters in Burdett's Corners, and drove out each morning,
carrying lunch and returning for my grits and piney-woods pork or mutton
before nightfall. My first plan had been to camp out at the edge of the
swamp, for opportunity to enjoy the outdoors comes rarely in my
direction. Yet after one cursory examination of the premises, I
abandoned the idea. I did not
want to camp alone there. And I am less superstitious than a real estate agent.
It was, perhaps, psychic warning: more probably the queer, faint,
salt odor as of fish left to decay, which hung about the ruin, made too
unpleasant an impression upon my olfactory sense
(7). I experienced a
distinct chill every time the lengthening shadows caught me near Dead
House.
The smell impressed me. In newspaper reports of the case one
ingenious explanation had been worked out. To the rear of the spot where
Dead House had stood — inside the wall — was a swampy hollow circular
in shape. Only a little real mud lay in the bottom of the bowl-like
depression now, but one reporter on the staff of
The Mobile Register
guessed that during the tenancy of the lodge it had been a fishpool.
Drying up of the water had killed the fish, who now permeated the
remnant of mud with this foul odor.
The possibility that Cranmer had needed to keep fresh fish at hand
for some of his experiments silenced the natural objection that in a
country where every stream holds gar, pike, bass, catfish and many other
edible varieties, no one would dream of stocking a stagnant puddle.
After tramping about the enclosure, testing the queerly brittle,
desiccated top stratum of earth within and speculating concerning the
possible purpose of the wall, I cut off a long limb of chinaberry and
probed the mud. One fragment of fish spine would confirm the guess of
that imaginative reporter.
I found nothing resembling a piscal skeleton, but established several
facts. First, this mud crater had definite bottom only three or four
feet below the surface of remaining ooze. Second, the fishy stench
become stronger as I stirred. Third, at one time the mud, water, or
whatever had comprised the balance of content, had reached the rim of
the bowl. The last showed by certain marks plain enough when
the crusty, two-inch stratum of upper coating was broken away. It was puzzling.
The nature of that thin, desiccated effluvium which seemed to cover
everything even to the lower foot or two of brick, came in for next
inspection. It was strange stuff, unlike any earth I ever had seen,
though undoubtedly some form of scum drained in from the swamp at the
time of river floods or cloudbursts (which in this section are common
enough in spring and fall). It crumbled beneath the fingers. When I
walked over it, the stuff crunched hollowly. In fainter degree it
possesed the fishy odor also.
I took some samples where it lay thickest upon the ground, and also a
few where there seemed to be no more than a depth of a sheet of paper.
Later I would have a laboratory analysis made.
Apart from any possible bearing the stuff might have upon the
disappearance of my three friends, I felt the tug of article interest —
that wonder over anything strange or seemingly inexplicable which lends
the hunt for fact a certain glamor and romance all its own. To myself I
was going to have to explain sooner or later just why this lay er
covered the entire space within the walls and was not perceptible
anywhere outside! The enigma could wait, however — or so I decided.
Far more interesting were the traces of violence apparent on wall and
what once had been a house. The latter seemed to have been ripped from
its foundations by a giant hand, crushed out of semblance to a dwelling,
and then cast in fragments about the base of wall — mainly on the south
side, where heaps of twisted, broken timbers lay in profusion. On the
opposite side there had been such heaps once, but now only charred
sticks, coated with that gray-black, omnipresent coat of desiccation,
remained. These piles of charcoal had been sifted and examined most
carefully by the authorities, as one theory had been advanced that
Cranmer had burned the bodies of his victims. Yet no sign whatever of
human remains was discovered.
The fire, however, pointed out one odd fact which controverted the
reconstructions made by detectives months before. The latter, suggesting
the dried scum to have drained in from the swamp, believed that the
house timbers had floated out to the sides of the wall—there to arrange
themselves in a series of piles! The absurdity of such a theory showed
even more plainly in the fact that
if the scum had filtered through in such a flood, the timbers most certainly had been dragged into piles
previously! Some had burned —
and the scum coated their charred surfaces! What
had been the force which had torn the lodge to bits as if in spiteful
fury? Why had the parts of the wreckage been burned, the rest to escape?
Right here I felt was the keynote to the mystery, yet I could imagine
no explanation. That John Corliss Cranmer himself — physically sound,
yet a man who for decades had led a sedentary life — could have
accomplished such a destruction, unaided, was difficult to believe.
V
I turned my attention to the wall, hoping for evidence which might suggest another theory.
That wall had been an example of the worst snide construction. Though
little more than a year old, the parts left standing showed evidence
that they had begun to decay the day the last brick was laid. The mortar
had fallen from the interstices. Here and there a brick had cracked and
dropped out. Fibrils of the climbing vines had penetrated crevices,
working for early destruction.
And one side already had fallen.
It was here that the first glimmering suspicion of the terrible truth
was forced upon me. The scattered bricks, even those which had rolled
inward toward the gaping foundation ledge,
had not been coated with scum!
This was curious, yet it could be explained by surmise that the flood
itself had undermined this weakest portion of the wall. I cleared away a
mass of brick from the spot on which the structure had stood; to my
surprise I found it exceptionally firm! Hard red clay lay beneath! The
flood conception was faulty; only some great force, exerted from inside
or outside, could have wreaked such destruction.
When careful measurement, analysis and deduction convinced me —
mainly from the fact that the lowermost layers of brick all had fallen
outward, while the upper portions toppled
in
— I began to link up this mysterious and horrific force with the one
which had rent the Lodge asunder. It looked as though a typhoon or
gigantic centrifuge had needed elbow room in ripping down the wooden
structure.
But I got nowhere with the theory, though in ordinary affairs I am
called a man of too great imaginative tendencies. No less than three
editors have cautioned me on this point. Perhaps it was the narrowing
influence of great personal sympathy — yes, and love. I make no excuses,
though beyond a dim understanding that some terrific,
implacable
force must have made spot his playground, I ended my ninth day of
note-taking and investigation almost as much in the dark as I had been
while a thousand miles away in Chicago.
Then I started among the darkies and Cajans. A whole day I listened
to yarns of the days which preceded Cranmer's escape from Elizabeth
Ritter Hospital — days in which furtive men sniffed poisoned air for
miles around Dead House, finding the odor intolerable. Days in which it
seemed none possessed nerve enough to approach close. Days when the most
fanciful tales of medieval superstitions were spun. These tales I shall
not give; the truth is incredible enough.
At noon upon the eleventh day I chanced upon Rori Pailleron, a Cajan —
and one of the least prepossessing of all with whom I had come in
contact. “Chanced” perhaps is a bad word. I had listed every dweller of
the woods within a five-mile radius. Rori was sixteenth on my list. I
went to him only after interviewing all four of the Crabiers and two
whole families of Pichons. And Rori regarded me with the utmost
suspicion until I made him a present of the two quarts of “shinny”
purchased of the Pichons.
Because long practice has perfected me in the technique of seeming to
drink another man's awful liquor — no, I'm not an absolute
prohibitionist; fine wine or twelve-year-in-cask Bourbon whiskey arouses
my definite interest — I fooled Pailleron from the start. I shall omit
preliminaries, and leap to the first admission from him that he knew
more concerning Dead House and its former inmates than any of the other
darkies or Cajans roundabout.
“…But I ain't talkin'.
Sacre! If I should open my gab, what might fly out? It is for keeping silent, y'r damn right!…”
I agreed. He was a wise man — educated to some extent in the queer
schools and churches maintained exclusively by Cajans in the depths of
the woods, yet naive withal.
We drank. And I never had to ask another leading question. The made
him want to interest me; and the only extraordinary in this whole neck
of the woods was the Dead House.
Three-quarters of a pint of acrid, nauseous fluid, and he hinted darkly.
A pint, and he told me something I scarcely could believe. Another half-pint… But I shall give his confession in condensed form
(8).
He had known Joe Sibley, the octoroon chef, houseman and valet who
served Cranmer. Through Joe, Rori had furnished certain indispensables
in way of food to the Cranmer household. At first, these salable
articles had been exclusively vegetable — white and yellow turnip, sweet
potatoes, corn and beans — but later,
meat!
Yes, meat especially — whole lambs, slaughtered and quartered, the
coarsest variety of piney-woods pork and beef, all in immense quantity!
VI
In December of the fatal winter, Lee and his wife stopped down at the Lodge for ten days or thereabouts.
They were en route to Cuba at the time, intending to be away five or
six weeks. Their original plan had been only to wait over a day or so in
the piney-woods, but something caused an amendment to the scheme.
The two dallied. Lee seemed to have become vastly absorbed in
something — so much absorbed that it was only when Peggy insisted upon
continuing their trip that he could tear himself away.
It was during those ten days that he began buying meat. Meager bits
of it at first — a rabbit, a pair of squirrels, or perhaps a few quail
beyond the number he and Peggy shot. Rori furnished the game, thinking
nothing of it except that Lee paid double prices — and insisted upon
keeping the purchases secret from other members of the household.
“I'm putting it across on the Governor, Rori!” he said once with a
wink. "Going to give him the shock of his life. So you mustn't let on,
even to Joe, about what I want you to do. Maybe it won't work out, but
if it does…! Dad'll have the scientific world at his feet! He doesn't
blow his own horn anywhere near enough, you know.”
Rori didn't know. Hadn't a suspicion what Lee was talking about.
Still, if this rich, young idiot wanted to pay him a half dollar in good
silver coin for a quail that anyone — himself included — could knock
down with a five-cent shell, Rori was well satisfied to keep his mouth
shut. Each evening he brought some of the small game. And each day Lee
Cranmer seemed to have use for an additional quail or so...
When he was ready to leave for Cuba
(9), Lee came forward with the
strangest of propositions. He fairly whispered his vehemence and desire
for secrecy! He would tell Rori, and would pay the Cajan five hundred
dollars — half in advance, and half at the end of five weeks when Lee
himself would return from Cuba — provided Rori agreed to adhere
absolutely to a certain secret program! The money was more than a
fortune to Rori; it was undreamt of affluence. The Cajan acceded.
“He wuz tellin' me then how the ol' man had raised some kind of pet,”
Rori confided, “an' wanted to get shet of it. So he give it to Lee,
tellin'
him to kill it, but Lee was sot on foolin' him. W'at I ask yer is, w'at
kind of a pet is it w'at lives down in a mud sink an'
eats a couple hawgs every night?”
(10)
I couldn't imagine, so I pressed him for further details. Here at last was something which sounded like a clue!
He really knew too little. The agreement with Lee provided that if
Rori carried out the provisions exactly, he should be paid extra and at
his exorbitant scale of all additional outlay, when Lee returned.
The young man gave him a daily schedule which Rori showed. Each
evening he was to procure, slaughter and cut up a definite — and growing
— amount of meat. Every item was checked, and I saw that they ran from
five pounds up to
forty!
“What in heaven's name did you do with it?” I demanded, excited now
and pouring him an additional drink for fear caution might return to
him.
“Took it through the bushes in back an' slung it in the mud sink there! An' suthin' come up an' drug it down!”
“A gator?”
“
Diable! How should I know? It was dark. I wouldn't go close.”
He shuddered, and the fingers which lifted his glass shook as with
sudden chill. “Mebbe you'd of done it, huh? Not
me, though! The young fellah tole me to sling it in, an' I slung it.
“A couple times I come around in the light, but there wasn't nuthin'
there you could see. Jes' mud, an' some water. Mebbe the thing didn't
come out in daytimes…”
“Perhaps not,” I agreed, straining every mental resource to imagine
what Lee's sinister pet could have been. “But you said something
about two hogs a day?
What did you mean by that? This paper, proof enough that you're telling
the truth so far, states that on the thirty-fifth day you were to throw
forty pounds of meat — any kind — into the sink. Two hogs, even the
piney-woods variety, weigh a lot more than forty pounds!”
“Them was after — after he come back!”
From this point onward, Rori's tale became more and more enmeshed in
the vagaries induced by bad liquor. His tongue thickened. I shall give
his story without attempt to reproduce further verbal barbarities, or
the occasional prodding I had to give in order to keep him from
maundering into foolish jargon.
Lee had paid munificently. His only objection to the manner in which
Rori had carried out his orders was that the orders themselves had been
deficient. The pet, he said, had grown enormously. It was hungry;
ravenous. Lee himself had supplemented the fare with huge
pails of scraps from the kitchen.
From that day Lee purchased from Rori whole sheep and hogs! The Cajan
continued to bring the carcasses at nightfall, but no longer did Lee
permit him to approach the pool. The young man appeared chronically
excited. He had a tremendous secret — one the extent of which even his
father did not guess, and one which would astonish the world! Only a
week or two more and he would spring it. First he would have to arrange
certain data.
Then came the day when everyone disappeared from Dead House. Rori
came around several times, but concluded that all of the occupants had
folded tents and departed — doubtless taking their mysterious “pet”
along. Only when he saw from a distance Joe, the octoroon servant,
returning along the road on foot toward the Lodge, did his slow mental
processes begin to ferment. That afternoon Rori visited the strange
place for the next to last time.
He did not go to the Lodge himself — and there were reasons. While
still some hundreds of yards away from the place a terrible, sustained
screaming reached his ears! It was faint, yet unmistakably the voice of
Joe! Throwing a pair of number two shells into the breech of his
shotgun, Rori hurried on, taking his usual path through the brush at the
back.
He saw — and as he told me, even “shinny” drunkenness fled his
chattering tones — Joe, the octoroon. Aye, he stood in the yard, far
from the pool into which Rori had thrown the carcasses —
and Joe could not move!
Rori failed to explain in full, but
something, a slimy,
amorphous something, which glistened in the sunlight, already engulfed
the man to his shoulders! Breath was cut off. Joe's contorted face
writhed with horror and beginning suffocation. One hand — all that was
free of the rest of him! — beat feebly upon the rubbery, translucent
thing that was engulfing his body!
Then Joe sank from sight…
VII
Five days of liquored indulgence passed before Rori, along in his
shaky cabin, convinced himself that he had seen a phantasy born of
alcohol. He came back the last time — to find a high wall of brick
surrounding the Lodge, and including the pool of mud into which he had
thrown the meat!
While he hesitated, circling the place without discovering an
opening
— which he would not have dared to use, even had he found it — a
crashing, tearing of timbers, and persistent sound of awesome
destruction came from within. He swung himself into one of the oaks near
the wall. And he was just in time to see the last supporting stanchions
of the Lodge give way
outward!
The whole structure came apart. The roof fell in — yet seemed to move
after it had fallen! Logs of wall deserted layers of plywood in the
grasp of the shearing machine!
That was all. Soddenly intoxicated now, Rori mumbled more phrases,
giving me the idea that on another day when he became sober once more,
he might add to his statements, but I — numbed to the soul — scarcely
cared. If that which he related was true, what nightmare of madness must
have been consummated here!
I could vision some things now which concerned Lee and Peggy,
horrible things. Only remembrance of Elsie kept me faced forward in the
search — for now it seemed almost that the handiwork of a madman must be
preferred to what Rori claimed to have seen! What had been that
sinister translucent thing? That glistening thing which jumped upward
about a man, smothering, engulfing?
Queerly enough, though such a theory as came most easily to mind now
would have outraged reason in me if suggested concerning total
strangers, I asked myself only what details of Rori's revelation had
been exaggerated by fright and fumes of liquor. And as I sat on the
creaking bench in his cabin, staring unseeing as he lurched down to the
floor, fumbling with a lock box of green tin which lay under his cot,
and muttering, the answer to all my questions lay within reach!
It was not until next day, however, that I made the discovery. Heavy of
heart I had reexamined the spot where the Lodge had stood, then made my
way to the Cajan's cabin again, seeking sober confirmation of what he
had told me during intoxication.
In imagining that such a spree for Rori would be ended by a single
night, however, I was mistaken. He lay sprawled almost as I had left
him. Only two factors were changed. No “shinny” was left — and lying
open, with its miscellaneous contents strewed about, was the tin box.
Rori somehow had managed to open it with the tiny key still clutched in
his hand.
Concern for his safety alone was what made me notice the box. It was a
receptacle for small fishing tackle of the sort carried here and there
by any sportsman. Tangles of Dowagiac minnows, spool hooks
ranging
in size to silver-backed number eights; three reels still carrying line
of different weights, spinners, casting plus, wobblers, floating baits,
were spilled out upon the rough plank flooring where they might snag
Rori badly if he rolled. I gathered them, intending to save him an
accident.
With the miscellaneous assortment in my hands, however, I stopped
dead. Something had caught my eye — something lying flush with the
bottom of the lock box! I stared, and then swiftly tossed the hooks and
other impediments upon the table. What I had glimpsed there in the box
was a loose-leaf notebook of the sort used for recording laboratory
data! And Rori scarcely could read, let alone
write!
Feverishly, a riot of recognition, surmise, hope and fear bubbling in
my brain, I grabbed the book and threw it open. At once I knew that
this was the end. The pages were scribbled in pencil, but the
handwriting was that precise chirography I knew as belonging to John
Corliss Cranmer, the scientist!
Could he not have obeyed my instructions! Oh, God! This…
These were the words at top of the first page which met my eye.
Because knowledge of the circumstances, the relation of which I pried
out of the reluctant Rori only some days later when I had him in Mobile
as a police witness for the sake of my friend's vindication, is
necessary to understanding, I shall interpolate.
Rori had not told me everything. On his late visit to the vicinage of
Dead House he saw more. A crouching figure, seated Turk fashion on top
of the wall, appeared to be writing industriously. Rori recognized the
man as Cranmer, yet did not hail him. He had no opportunity.
Just as the Cajan came near, Cranmer rose, thrust the notebook, which
had rested across his knees, into the box. Then he turned, tossed
outside the wall both the locked box and a ribbon to which was attached
the key.
Then his arms raised toward heavens. For five seconds he seemed to
invoke the mercy of Power beyond all of man's scientific prying. And
finally he leaped,
inside…!
Rori did not climb to investigate. He knew that directly below this
portion of wall lay the mud sink into which he had thrown the chunks of
meat!
VIII
This is a true transcription of the statement I inscribed, telling
the sequence of actual events at Dead House. The original of the
statement now lies in the archives of the detective department.
Cranmer's notebook, though written in a precise hand, yet betrayed
the man's insanity by incoherence and frequent repetitions. My statement
has been accepted now, both by alienists and by detectives who had
entertained different theories in respect to the case. It quashes the
noisome hints and suspicions regarding three of the finest Americans who
ever lived – and also one queer supposition dealing with supposed
criminal tendencies in poor Joe, the octoroon.
John Corliss Cranmer
went insane for sufficient cause!
As readers of popular fiction know well, Lee Cranmer's
forte was
the writing of what is called — among fellows in the craft —
pseudo-scientific story. In plain words, this means a yarn, based upon
solid fact in the field of astronomy, chemistry, anthropology or
what-not, which carries to logical conclusion improved theories of men
who devote their lives to searching out further nadirs of fact
(11).
In certain fashion these men are allies of science. Often they
visualize something which has not been imagined even by the best of men
from whom they secure data, thus opening new horizons of possibility. In
a large way Jules Verne was one of these men in his day; Lee Cranmer
bade fair to carry on the work in worthy fashion — work taken up for a
period by an Englishman named Wells, but abandoned for stories of a
different — and, in my humble opinion, less absorbing — type
(12).
Lee wrote three novels, all published, which dealt with such subjects
— two of the three secured from his own father's labors, and the other
speculating upon the discovery and possible uses of inter-atomic energy.
Upon John Corliss Cranmer's return from Prague that fatal winter, the
father informed Lee that a greater subject than any with which the young
man had dealt now could be tapped.
Cranmer, senior, had devised a way in which the limiting factors in protozoic life and
growth, could be nullified; in time, and with cooperation of biologists who specialized upon
karyokinesis
and embryology of higher forms, he hoped — to put the theory in
pragmatic terms — to be able to grow swine the size of elephants, quail
or woodcock with breasts from which a hundredweight of white meat could
be cut away, and steers whose dehorned heads might butt at the third
story of a skyscraper!
Such result would revolutionize the methods of food supply, of
course. It also would hold out hope for all undersized specimens of
humanity — provided only that if factors inhibiting growth could be
deleted, some methods of stopping gianthood also could be developed.
Cranmer the elder, through use of an undescribed (in the notebook)
growth medium of which one constituent was agar-agar, and the use of
radium emanations, had succeeded in bringing about apparently
unrestricted growth in the paramoecium protozoan, certain of the
vegetable growths (among which were bacteria), and in the amorphous cell
of protoplasm known as the amoeba — the last a single cell containing
only nucleolus, nucleus, and a space known as the contractile vacuole
which somehow aided in throwing off particles impossible to assimilate
directly. This point may be remembered in respect to the piles of lumber
left near the outside walls surrounding Dead House!
When Lee Cranmer and his wife came south to visit, John Corliss
Cranmer showed his son an amoeba — normally an organism visible under
low-power microscope — which he had absolved from natural growth
inhibitions. This amoeba, a rubbery, amorphous mass of protoplasm, was
of the size then of a large beef liver. It could have been held in two
cupped hands, placed side by side.
“How large could it grow?” asked Lee, wide-eyed and interested.
“So far as I know,” answered his father, “there is
no limit now! It might, if it got food enough, grow to be as big as the Masonic Temple!
“But take it out and kill it. Destroy the organism utterly — burning
the fragments — else there is no telling what might happen. The amoeba,
as I have explained, reproduces by simple division. Any fragment
remaining might be dangerous.”
Lee took the rubbery, translucent giant cell — but he did not obey
orders. Instead of destroying it as his father had directed, Lee thought
out a plan. Suppose he should grow this organism to tremendous size?
Suppose, when the tale of his father's accomplishment were spread, an
amoeba of many tons weight could be shown in evidence? Lee, of somewhat
sensational cast of mind, determined instantly to keep secret the fact
that he was not destroying the organism, but encouraging its further
growth. Thought of possible peril never crossed his mind
(13).
He arranged to have the thing fed — allowing for normal increase of
size in an abnormal thing. It fooled him only by growing much more
rapidly. When he came back from Cuba the amoeba practically filled
the whole of the mud sink hollow. He had to give it much greater supplies…
The giant cell came to absorb as much as two hogs in a single day.
During daylight, while hunger still was appeased, it never emerged,
however. That remained for the time that it could secure no more food
near at hand to satisfy its ravenous and increasing appetite.
Only instinct for the sensational kept Lee from telling Peggy, his wife, all about the matter. Lee hoped to spring a
coup
which would immortalize his father, and surprise his wife terrifically.
Therefore, he kept his own counsel — and made bargains with the Cajan,
Rori, who supplied food daily for the shapeless monster of the pool.
The tragedy itself came suddenly and unexpectedly. Peggy, feeding the
two Gordon setters that Lee and she used for quail hunting, was in the
Lodge yard before sunset. She romped alone, as Lee himself was dressing.
Of a sudden her screams cut the still air! Without her knowledge, ten foot
pseudopods
— those flowing tentacles of protoplasm sent forth by the sinister
occupant of the pool — slid out and around her putteed ankles.
For a moment at first she did not understand. Then, the horrid
suspicion of truth, her cries rent the air. Lee, at that time struggling
to lace a pair of high shoes, straightened, paled, and grabbed a
revolver as he dashed out.
In another room a scientist, absorbed in his note-taking, glanced up,
frowned, and then — recognizing the voice — shed his white gown and
came out. He was too late to do aught but gasp with horror.
In the yard Peggy was half engulfed in a squamous, rubbery something which at first he could not analyze.
Lee, his boy, was fighting with the sticky folds, and slowly, surely, losing his own grip upon the earth!
IX
John Corliss Cranmer was by no means a coward; he stared, cried
aloud, then ran indoors, seizing the first two weapons which came to
hand — a shotgun and hunting knife which lay in sheath in a cartridged
belt across hook of the hall-tree. The knife was ten inches in length
and razor-keen.
Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an indecent fluid something which as
yet he had not had time to classify — lumped into a six-foot-high
center before his very eyes! It looked like one of
the micro-organisms he had studied! One grown to frightful dimensions. An amoeba!
There, some minutes suffocated in the rubbery folds — yet still
apparent beneath the glistening ooze of this monster — were two bodies.
They were dead. He knew it. Nevertheless he attacked the flowing,
senseless monster with his knife. Shot would do no good. And he found
that even the deep, terrific slashes made by his knife closed together
in a moment and healed. The monster was invulnerable to ordinary attack!
A pair of
pseudopods sought out his ankles, attempting to
bring him low. Both of these he severed — and escaped. Why did he try?
He did not know. The two whom he had sought to rescue were dead, buried
under folds of this horrid thing he knew to be his own discovery and
fabrication.
Then it was that revulsion and insanity came upon him.
There ended the story of John Corliss Cranmer, save for one hastily
scribbled paragraph — evidently written at the time Rori had seen him
atop the wall.
May we not supply with assurance the intervening steps?
Cranmer was known to have purchased a whole pen of hogs a day or two
following the tragedy. These animals were never seen again. During the
time the wall was being constructed is it not reasonable to assume that
he fed the giant organism within — to keep it quiet? His scientist brain
must have visualized clearly the havoc and horror which could be
wrought by the loathsome thing if it ever were driven by hunger to flow
away from the Lodge and prey upon the country-side!
With the wall once in place, he evidently figured that starvation or
some other means which he could supply would kill the thing. One of the
means had been made by setting fire to several piles of the disgorged
timbers; probably this had no effect whatever.
The amoeba was to accomplish still more destruction. In the throes of
hunger it threw its gigantic, formless strength against the walls
from the inside;
then every edible morsel within was house assimilated, the logs,
rafters and other fragments being worked out through the contractile
vacuole.
During some of its last struggles, undoubtedly, the side wall of
brick was weakened — not to collapse, however, until the giant amoeba no
longer could take advantage of the breach. In final death lassitude,
the amoeba stretched itself out in a thin layer over the ground. There
it succumbed, though there is no means of estimating how long a time
intervened.
The
last paragph in Cramer's notebook, scrawled so badly that it is
possible some words I have not deciphered correctly, reads as follows:
In my work I have found the means of creating a monster. The
unnatural thing, in turn, has destroyed my work and those whom I held
dear. It is in vain that I assure myself of innocence of spirit. Mine is
the crime of presumption. Now, as expedition — worthless though that
may be — I give myself…
It is better not to think of that last leap, and the struggle of an insane man in the grip of the dying monster.
END.
NOTES
(1) - Variant spelling of "Cajuns," whose derivation is indeed as Mr. Rud explains. H. P. Lovecraft would famously use this same setting in part of
The Call of Cthulhu (written 1926, published 1928). It is fairly likely that Lovecraft read "Ooze," so this may have been one of his inspirations.
(2) - A reminder that this story was written during Prohibition, though of course the avoidance of taxes by moonshine-makers happened before and continued to happen after Prohibition — it continues into the present day. However, there was a
lot more money in it during the Prohibition Era.
(3) - The Cajun ethnic culture is actually more common in Louisiana than in Alabama, though there's no particular reason why some Cajuns couldn't have migrated to Alabama at some point in history.
(4) - This is seriously insane behavior even by the standards of over a century ago, though at that time rich eccentrics really
could reasonably expect to get away with murder, in back-country areas such as the one described. Remember, this was also the time when labor disputes not infrequently led to pitched battles with dozens of casualties on a side.
(5) - This is pretty brutal treatment meted out to the black man — and, sadly, all too plausible for a black suspect with known criminal tendencies in the South c. 1910. The police were in general brutal by modern standards, a century ago, and the South extremely racist. He was actually fortunate not to be lynched.
(6) - In comparison, Corliss is rich, obviously crazy, and
confessing — brutality to him would be totally counter-productive. The problem is that his confession is so incoherent that the police can't figure out what actually happened; if they presented it as given he could not be convicted upon it, and any competent defense attorney (which his friends and relatives would provide for him) could throw the
complete confession back at them and tear it full of holes as the obvious rantings of a lunatic.
(7) - This would have stuck in Lovecraft's mind if he ever read this; he
hated seafood, a dislike we see expressed in
The Call of Cthulhu and
The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
(8) - This may have been the scene that inspired Lovecraft to write the similar liquor-based interrogation of Zadok Allen by Robert Olmstead in
The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
(9) - This was, of course, when Cuba was still relatively free and prosperous, having recently (1898) been liberated from Spanish rule by the United States of America. Fidel Castro would not afflict that unfortunate island nation for over half a century.
(10) - The sequence with the growing demand for raw meat may have inspired Lovecraft to plant the similar clue regarding the growth of Wilbur Whateley's Twin in
The Dunwich Horror. In fact this story -- especially its use of layered revelation and interviews with persons speaking in fully-rendered rural dialects -- strikes me as
very Lovecraftian in tone.
So Lovecraftian, in fact, that it makes me wonder if this wasn't actually an early example of Lovecraft doing a ghost-rewrite, as he frequently did in his later career.
(11) - This story was written before the term "science fiction" had been coined to describe this sort of tale.
(12) - H. G. Wells stopped writing much science fiction after the early 1900's, preferring instead to write science fact, speculative essays, and social novels. By the late 1910's and 1920's he had pretty much abandoned science fiction, though he was to return to it in the 1930's with
The Shape of Things To Come -- both the book and the (more famous) movie.
(13) - To be fair to Lee, this was before the concept of attacks by scientifically-created, artificially-enlarged creatures was common. Indeed, this story may have been the first, or one of the first, uses of this trope.
REVIEW
This is a remarkably-powerful, creepy and well-presented science fiction horror tale. It contains numerous Lovecraftian touches, at a time before H. P. Lovecraft was a well-known horror writer, including the celibate hero, the revelation of the horror one layer at a time, the rustic informants with dialogue rendered in phonetic dialect, the revulsion against anything smelling of the sea, and the amorphous creature. In fact it is
so Lovecraftian that I strongly suspect, having finished it, that Lovecraft either helped Rud write this, or was inspired to parts of some of his later works, notably
The Call of Cthulhu,
The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and
At the Mountains of Madness, by elements of this fiction.
I have never seen this story reprinted anywhere, even though it is very obviously ancestral to later several amorphous-horror stories, including one I've reprinted here,
Charles Willard Diffin's
Spawn of the Stars. This story deserves much wider distribution -- I'm honored to have had the chance to run it on my zine. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as did I.
END.
