A Rival from the Grave Read online

  “Manura is nominally under Dutch rule, but it’s so unimportant that they haven’t a regularly resident administrator there, and the actual government is carried on by the native sultan, Ali Nogoro. When I arrived I discovered that my father had been married for some years to one of the sultan’s sisters, a fine-looking native woman named Salanga, who had been given him as wife in return for his promise that he would give me to the sultan when I arrived at marriageable age.”

  “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed de Grandin.

  “Exactly,” she assented with a bitter little smile. “That was the bargain they had made. As Ali Nogoro’s brother-in-law, my father had everything his own way in Manura. Other traders were permitted on the island only by his sufferance, and as a consequence of this preferment he had become enormously wealthy. But I was the price he had agreed to pay.

  “At the last, though, he must have repented his revolting bargain, for I found a will, duly authenticated by the Dutch district commissioner, which left everything to me, and a note requesting me to bring his body back to Harrisonville for burial beside my mother. ‘Go home, child,’ the note told me; ‘open the old house where I was so happy for a little while, and be happy there with the man you love.’

  “Fortunately for me, Father had sent much of his fortune home for deposit in American banks, for when I refused to carry out the bargain and marry Sultan Ali Nogoro, he confiscated everything, and had it not been for Ah Kee, my father’s half-caste number one man, I probably shouldn’t have been able to escape Nogoro after all. You see, I had practically no money when I landed, and Nogoro absolutely refused to let me take so much as a stick of furniture from my father’s house or godown.

  “But Ah Kee had some money of his own, and with it he paid the coolies for disinterring my father’s coffin, bribed some fishermen to take us to Flores in their boat, then paid our passage to America.

  “Bad as Nogoro was to deal with, his sister Salanga, who was, after all, my father’s widow, proved far worse. She declared she had ‘lost face’ by my refusal to carry out the marriage bargain which had been made for me, and the will which virtually disinherited her infuriated her even more. I offered to share everything which Father left with her, half and half, and even had a Dutch notary draw up a quitclaim of half the inheritance, but she tore the paper into shreds, spit at me, and would have done me physical injury if they had not restrained her. The day before I left Manura she committed suicide.”

  “Suicide?” de Grandin asked. “You mean a sort of vengeance death, like the hara-kari of the Japanese?”

  “I—I suppose so, sir. Her body was found in the bed she’d occupied in my father’s house the day before Ah Kee and I left Manura. But—”

  “Tiens, now I think that we approach the egg’s good meat!” de Grandin cut in softly as she paused in her recital. “Yes, Mademoiselle? But—”

  “But when the coolies went to the cemetery to disinter my father’s coffin they found Salanga’s decapitated body sprawled prostrate on the grave. The arms were opened, as though to embrace the mound, and the feet were spread apart, as though to hold down whatever lay beneath. Her neck had been severed close to the shoulders, and the head was nowhere to be found.”

  De Grandin twisted fiercely at the needle-points of his trimly waxed wheat-blond mustache. “Tell me, Mademoiselle,” he asked irrelevantly, “who officiated at your father’s interment in the grave beside your mother?”

  “Why, Doctor Bentley, the rector of St. Chrysostom’s; he had been—”

  “Non, you do misapprehend. I do not mean the clergyman, but the mortician.”

  “Oh, the undertaker. Why, Mr. Martin, of Harrisonville, who made all the necessary arrangements.”

  “U’m? Thank you. What then, if you please?”

  “Ah Kee and I came out here, and as soon as Mr. Van Riper, our family lawyer, completes the probate of my father’s will, I intend having the place completely modernized. My cousin Philip and I are to be married in the fall, if I—”

  Once more she paused, and de Grandin leant forward with quick understanding as he patted her hand reassuringly. “Do not be alarmed, ma chère; you will assuredly live that long, and much longer, too,” he comforted. “I, Jules de Grandin, guarantee it.

  “Now,” once more his cool, professional manner asserted itself, “when was it that you first observed these untoward occurrences, if you please?”

  “I’ve been home one month tomorrow,” she replied. “We’d just come out here, three weeks ago, when one night I wakened from a sound sleep hearing some one laughing at me.

  “At first I thought I’d dreamed it, but the laughter persisted, even when I sat up in bed. I looked around; there was no one in the room. Then I rose to light the gas, and as I did so, chanced to look toward the window. There was Salanga’s head. It hung in midair, with nothing to sustain it, just outside the window, and laughed at me.

  “Suddenly I felt a stifling, choking sensation, as though a band were drawn about my throat. I put my hands up to my neck, but there was nothing there. But the throttling feeling grew, and as my fingers touched my throat I could feel the flesh sinking in, as though compressed by an invisible cord. My breath came shorter and shorter, I could hear the heart-beats pounding in my ears, and everything turned black; then bright lights flashed before my eyes. I tried to call Ah Kee, but only a sort of awful gurgle, like water rushing down a drain, sounded when I tried to scream. Somehow I managed to reach the bed and fell there, choking and gasping. Then I lost consciousness.

  “When I came to, my throat was sore and bruised, and that awful, bodiless head still hung there just outside the window, mouthing and grimacing at me. Presently it gave a fiendish, screaming laugh and floated away, leaving me half dead with pain and fright.

  “As soon as I was strong enough I called Ah Kee, and told him what had happened. He seemed terribly frightened and began mumbling prayers or incantations in Malayan and Chinese. Then he asked me to bolt the door and window, and ran out as though pursued by fiends. In a little while he came back with an armful of Japanese quince, which he twisted into two big wreaths, one of which he insisted on putting on the bed. The other he hung in the window, like a Christmas decoration.

  “For the next two nights I rested easily, but the third night I woke up with a feeling of oppression, as though a great weight rested on my chest. I tried to sit up, and instantly the invisible cord tightened round my throat and I began to choke. As I turned my head in agony I saw Salanga’s head staring at me through the window.

  “Every night it’s been like that. I try to stay awake, drinking strong black coffee and tea so strong and bitter that it fairly rasps my throat, but sooner of later I drop off; indeed, it seems as though there is some curse of sleep upon me, for every evening, just at dusk, I find myself so drowsy that no matter how I fight it, I fall asleep, and sleep is the signal for that dreadful head to come again and that awful choking to begin.

  “Sometimes I’m tormented by this sensation of strangulation as often as a dozen times a night; other times I suffer only once, then manage to hold myself awake by main strength of determination, but—”

  “Can’t you sleep in the day?” I interrupted. “The head doesn’t appear in daylight, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t; but no matter how exhausted I may be, I can’t sleep in the light,” the girt replied. “I’ve tried again and again, but just as I can’t seem to keep from dozing as soon as it turns dark, I find myself unable to snatch even five minutes’ rest by day. It’s maddening, and when I say that I’m not speaking figuratively. I really feel that unless I find some way to escape this torment I’ll go crazy.

  Thoughtfully de Grandin extracted a cigarette from his case of engine-turned silver, set it alight and blew twin columns of gray smoke from his narrow, sensitive nostrils. At length:

  “Mademoiselle,” he announced, “I think I see an avenue of escape. Will you submit to hypnotism?”

  “Hypnotism?”

  “Préci
sément. Sleep, as you know, can be hypnotically induced; but that is only half the plan. The skilled hypnotist can, by very strength of will, command the blood to flow from the subject’s hand or leg, leaving the member totally anemic. It is possible that by exercising a similar command I can induce you to sleep naturally and to ignore the orders of this cursed apparition, thus saving you from torment. Are you willing to experiment?”

  “Yes, of course,” she answered.

  “Bien. You will compose yourself, if you please, and gaze fixedly at this—” He drew a silver pencil from his pocket and waved it slowly, like a pendulum, before her eyes. “Sleep, Mademoiselle; sleep, sleep. Sleep soundly and naturally. Obey me only, heed no other’s orders; experience no feeling of compression round your neck. Sleep, sleep; sleep—”

  A shriek of wild, unearthly laughter sounded from the storm-swept night outside, and to our horror we descried the telltale band of white begin to form about Joan Haines’ throat. The indentation deepened, the crimson of her lips took on a violet tinge and between her parted teeth her tongue protruded. Her eyes bulged forward in their sockets and on each cheek appeared small spots of ecchymoses.

  With one accord we turned and faced the window. There, like a miniature balloon, hung the severed head of the penanggalan, its red lips parted in a mocking smile of hate, green, red-flecked eyes dancing with devilish merriment, sharp, white teeth flashing in the gaslight’s rays.

  “By damn, I am annoyed, I am angry and enraged!” de Grandin stormed, snatching up the wreath of scarlet flowers from the bed and rushing toward the window. “Be careful how you play your tricks on Jules de Grandin, Madame; he is a very dangerous customer!”

  Flinging up the sash he lunged out viciously with the thorn-spurred blossoms, and so quick and cat-like was his gesture that the laughing visitant was a thought too slow in darting backward.

  A shrill, ear-splitting shriek resounded through the night as a sharp thorn came in contact with the floating horror’s stomach sac, and a bloody weal appeared upon the serous coating of the greater curvature. Like a wind-extinguished light the dreadful head was gone, leaving but the echo of its anguished wail to tell us it had been there.

  “Ah-ha; ah-ha-ha, I think that she will pause for self-debate before she interrupts our work again,” announced de Grandin as he closed the window with a bang. “Now, Mademoiselle, if you please. . . .”

  Once more he drew the pencil from his waistcoat pocket and began the process of hypnosis. In a few minutes Joan Haines’ eyes closed sleepily; then her lips parted as she drew a deep and tranquil breath. Less than five minutes from his opening command she was sleeping naturally, like a tired child, and though we watched beside her till the eastern sky was streaked with gray, there was no sign of strangling marks upon her throat, nor any indication of a further visitation from the dreadful severed head.

  THE STORM PASSED WITH the night, and, fortified with several cups of strong coffee brewed by Ah Kee, we left Joan Haines sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion and set out for town. Highway patrols had cleared away the wreckage from the road, and we made excellent progress through the clear, rain-washed summer morning.

  “Tell me,” I demanded as we drove along, “what the deuce is a penanggalan, de Grandin?”

  He twisted thoughtfully at the ends of his mustache a moment; then:

  “She is a sort of nocturnal demon closely analogous to the vampire of eastern Europe,” he replied, “but she differs from him in a number of respects. First of all, she is, or was, always a woman, whereas the vampire may be either male or female. Again, while the vampire appears with all his members complete, the penanggalan possesses only a head, esophagus and stomach sac, either leaving the remainder of her body at her dwelling-place, or—as often happens—permitting it to rot within the grave while only head and stomach retain their evil immortality.

  “How one becomes a penanggalan is a matter of debate. Some say she was a woman of evil life who uses the magic arts of the devil who is her master to enable her to detach her head and assume volant powers; others declare she is one who died by self-destruction; still others maintain that she is a sorceress who by her magic contrives to remain alive in this fashion after death has overtaken the remainder of her body. However that may be, it is remarkable that the Malay Islands and Peninsula abound with both wizards and witches, and that they are able to perform tricks and work charms which would have turned the witches of Colonial New England and mediæval Europe green with professional envy. Those who have seen the penanggalan at her work invariably identify her as some well-known sorceress, either living or dead.

  “Her technique differs from the vampire’s, too. The vampire, you recall, recruits his grisly ranks by infecting those whose blood he sucks with vampirism, so that they in turn become as he is when he has drained them of their blood and killed them. The penanggalan, upon the contrary, can put her seal upon her victim without resorting to physical contact. True, those she drains of blood die, but when they die they die dead. When she desires to make another woman even as she is, it is but necessary for her to infest the house where her victim dwells and gaze upon her prey. By a sort of vile hypnotic spell she works upon her victim, makes her neck to show the signs of thongs upon it; finally she strangles her to death. And when death comes—”

  He paused to light a cigarette, and I could have thumped his head in my impatience.

  “Yes, and when death comes?” I prompted.

  “Eh bien, then life—of a kind—begins,” he answered. “The strangled victim’s head parts company with her body at the point the magic ligature has marked upon her flesh, and, dragging the esophagus and stomach after it, it flies screaming off to join its hideous fellows in the ranks of the penanggalans.

  “You will recall how certain fathers of the early church enunciated the cheerful doctrine that the only melancholy pleasure which the damned in hell possessed was to rail at the other damned and shrieking with obscene delight when a new soul came to join them in their torment? In some such way the penanggalan seems to derive a certain satisfaction from exercising her spells on poor unfortunates, separating their heads from their bodies and making them even as she is.

  “Like the true vampire, the penanggalan is a blood-sucker, though unlike him, she does not have to have the sanguinary diet to exist. Apparently she drinks warm blood for pleasure, as the drunkard imbibes liquor, not because she must. Also, as garlic, wild rose and wolf’s bane are powerful vegetable antidotes to the vampire, so is the jerju thistle, or any bush with strong, sharp thorns, distasteful to the penanggalan, though for a different reason. The vampire dare not approach the garlic or wild rose because they exercise a magic influence on him. The penanggalan fears a thornbush because its barbs are liable to become entangled in her dangling stomach sac, or even to pierce it. If the first contingency occurs she can not get away, for she is as highly sensitive to pain as any living person; if, by any chance, her stomach sac is perforated, it can not repair itself by healing, and she dies from the wound. It was for that reason that she fled from me when I menaced her with the thorny flowers last night—ha, I very nearly had her once, too, you will recall.”

  “Does she lie dormant by day, as the vampire does?” I asked.

  “Yes. And like the vampire, she usually chooses a tomb, a cemetery or an old and long-deserted house as her lair. She need not necessarily do this, but apparently she does it as a matter of choice. Also, she is unable to exercise her powers of flight across bodies of water affected by the tides, as, by example, bays, estuaries and tide-water rivers. Does not the knowledge of that limitation give you an idea? Does not a possible explanation of the mystery of her presence leap to the eye?”

  “Not to mine,” I answered. “What’s your theory?”

  “That depends upon the information Monsieur Martin gives us.”

  “Martin? The funeral director?”

  “But certainly. Who else? Will you drive past his place before we go home?”

  “Of
course,” I agreed, wondering what connection any information John Martin might be able to give could possibly have with the presence of an Oriental demon in the quiet Jersey countryside.

  JOHN MARTIN, LEADING MORTICIAN of Harrisonville, was seated in his private office when we stopped at his funeral home. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he greeted. “What’s the bad news today?”

  “Hein?” replied de Grandin.

  The big, gray-haired funeral director laughed. “Some one’s always in process of getting in or out of trouble when you’re around, Doctor de Grandin,” he rejoined. “Can I help ’em out—or in?”

  “Perhaps,” the little Frenchman answered with a smile. “It is of Monsieur Haines that we inquire. You had charge of his interment, I believe?”

  “Yes,” replied the other. “I remember the case particularly, because his daughter refused to let me furnish a casket.”

  De Grandin smiled a thought sarcastically, and Mr. Martin put a quick and accurate interpretation on his grin.

  “It isn’t the loss of the sale that fixes the case in my mind,” he hastened to explain, “but the trouble we had with the Oriental coffin which contained Mr. Haines’ body. It was one of those Chinese affairs, heavy as a cast bronze sarcophagus, nearly eight feet long by three feet wide and almost four feet high. Grave space in Shadow Lawns is at a premium, and the Haines family plot is pretty well filled, so burying a coffin of that size was no easy task. We had to get special permission from the cemetery board to have a grave larger than their six foot six maximum dug, and we had to pay seventy per cent above the usual cost of opening a grave for the extra labor. Then, too, our casket coach, which operates with an automatic electric table, wasn’t equipped to handle such a large case, and the coffin was too big to fit our lowering-device. I’d almost rather have made the young lady a present of an American casket than go through all the trouble that outlandish foreign coffin caused us.”

  “U’m? And did you, by any chance, open that outlandish coffin?” de Grandin asked.