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The Undead
Above the maritime nightmares, Maria awoke upon the leathern brick; the winds were furious, and the trees were dead, and all was white and spectral. The snow, sifted from the heavens, was nearer in semblance to skulls than to stars. Maria rose, panting; the green moon and the fog tinted the icy scene about her. Alone, in the midst of night, she moved onward, venturing deeper into the trench of terror. Thus she went among the trees and the snows and the rains, gazing upon the stars with glittering eyes. Her brow was bleeding, her breath issuing forth as mist into the cold air.
She was the bride of mankind who now found herself face to face with the vampire. She spoke unto herself: I must find Michael. I am haunted by a dread surmise that he is the author of all this—that fiend who cursed our crew and turned the cosmos against us.
Poor Maria beheld afar a colossal, white laboratory, shining as though fallen from the very void of space. Towards it she directed her steps—slow, chill, laboured. The gale drove against her, her cloak coiling about her throat, while solitude enshrouded her and the darkness of that glacial realm wearied her wounded feet. Blood, frozen by the rime, clung to her ankles.
When Maria drew near to the laboratory, she glimpsed a black shadow that capered like a living flame, staring at her with triangular, pale eyes and grinning a crafty grin. It clutched at a tree. When she beheld it, her pupils widened in horror, breath quickening; the shadowy thing raised its taloned hand in eerie salutation and forthwith vanished. Maria thought herself delirious—mad from the cold, from the loss of blood. Though fear gnawed at her, she pressed onward.
At last she stood before the laboratory gate: a vast iron portal, and from its centre there hung a human skeleton, slumped downward, its gaze forever fixed upon the earth. Maria's teeth clattered as though from a fever chill. Was it terror that caused this tremor—or the wind's cruel bite?
Mary Wilton knew not.
Entering the laboratory, she beheld towering jars wherein floated a purple ichor. Within one drifted an octopus-hand, within another the head of a little girl, and within a third the dissected carcass of a dodo-bird—an anatomical aberration.
And there, before her, stood the sorcerer, the thaumaturge, the maniacal, psychopathic savant—the evil genius, the mad scientist. Lo, it was Lithebiath, holding a human brain aloft in one hand, and with the other lifting a chalice brimmed with blood, laughing in delirious ecstasy.
Maria did not do the expected thing. She neither fled nor hid herself. Rather, she inverted the common fate: she looked upon him with a kind of breathless wonder and advanced toward him.
Lithebiath cried out, his rapture broken, eager to know who had profaned his sacrament:
"Who goes there? Oh, oh, oh—behold what we have here! A young and stainless maiden! Tell me, who are you—and what seekest don"g in my laboratory?"
Maria replied with chill composure:
"I am the investigator, Mary Anstion. The ship of my crew, bound for the isle of the Devil's Triangle, was wrecked. I seek them now. I beheld your fair laboratory in the distance and was drawn by these grotesque tableaux of horror you have here."
Lithebiath, with a strange mirth:
"Oh, oh, oh—so we have a guest of refined taste! Well, good news, young miss: thou art indeed in the isle of the Devil's Triangle. The ill news: thy crew is in all likelihood dead. Now, begone from here, and let me complete my experiment."
Maria, astonished:
"What is thy experiment? What dost thou seek to achieve, in any case?"
Lithebiath, raving, his eyes like coals, his voice ringing with dark delight:
"Oh, I—I strive to become a god! By my experimentations on the human brain, I shall soon attain it. I shall augment the speed of neural conduction within my own mind—from the meagre 120 metres per second, which is the human limit, unto that which is near to Mach 1 itself—aye, beyond the speed of sound! This very night, I shall ascend to their level, Miss Mary! Yea, I shall become a cosmic entity—I shall possess the cosmic power!"
Maria, retreating, voice quavering:
"A cosmic entity? Of what dost this babble? What mad delirium is this?"
Lithebiath, ecstatic, stretching his arms heavenward, gazing through the glass roof at the glittering stars:
"Cosmic entities—such as the great lich, the king of the dead, Zulish! Or the Lady of Witches, Arkantha! Or Beelzebuth! Or the Lord of Space Himself! I shall be near their intellect; and with this mortal flesh I shall contend among the gods of fear and dread and shall strive to rule the universe—becoming fear incarnate!"
He lowered his gaze from the vault of night, smiling a loathsome smile that bared his teeth—hideous, sabre-like, as those of the Smilodon. His eyes rolled in an eldritch fashion, and a strange froth dribbled from his mouth, trailing down his neck.
Maria, tears brimming with dread:
"And what—what wilt thou do to me?"
Lithebiath, returning to a semblance more human:
"Well, my old comrade used to say that the fairest thing in mankind is the skull beneath the skin. Therefore I shall strip the flesh from thy head and gaze upon its naked glory, and probe the gelatinous treasure that lies within—O Investigator!"
Maria drew forth her revolver, loaded it, raised it, levelled it at the demoniac thing's face. He advanced slowly, smiling with cold malignance. That infernal being, who no longer bore the aspect of aught that was alive, held in his hand a syringe which he lifted, smiling still, clasping his hands together as though in prayer, his eyes glinting as he raised his blood-smeared fingers.
Maria crawled backward along the floor, the pistol trembling in her hands.
Then—ere she knew it—the automaton of Lithebiath seized her wrists, lifted her bodily into the air. Her weapon fell clattering to the ground.
And Lithebiath thrust the needle into her flesh, whispering with a ghastly glee:
"you shalt never behold the moon again."
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