That time back yonder, I found the place myself, the way folks in those mountains allowed I had to.
I was rough hours on the way, high up and then down, over ridges and across bottoms, where once there'd been a road. I found a bridge across a creek, but it was busted down in the middle, like a warning not to use it. I splashed across there. It got late when I reached a cove pushed in amongst close-grown trees on a climbing slope.
An owl hooted toward where the sun sank, so maybe I was on the right track, a path faint through the woods. I found where a gate had been, a rotted post with rusty hinges on it. The trees beyond looked dark as the way to hell, but I headed along that snaky-winding path till I saw the housefront. The owl hooted again, off where the gloom grayed off for the last of daylight.
That house was half logs, half ancient whipsawed planks, weathered to dust color. Trees crowded the sides, branches crossed above the shake roof. The front-sill timber squatted on pate rocks. The door had come down off its old leather hinges. Darkness inside. Two windows stared, with flowered bushes beneath them. The grassy yard space wasn't a great much bigger than a parlor floor.
"What ye wish, young sir?" a scrapy voice inquired me, and I saw somebody a-sitting on a slaty rock at the house's left corner.
"I didn't know anybody was here," I said, and looked at him and he looked at me.
I saw a gnarly old man, his ruined face half-hid in a blizzardy white beard, his body wrapped in a brown robe. Beside him hunkered down what looked like a dark-haired dog. Both of them looked with bright, squinty eyes, a-making me recollect that my shirt was rumpled, that I sweated under my pack straps, that I had mud on my boots and my dungaree pant cuffs.
"If ye nair knowed nobody was here, why'd ye come?" scraped his voice.
"It might could be hard to explain."
"I got a lavish of time to hark at yore explanation."
I grinned at him. "I go up and down, a-viewing the country over. I've heard time and again about a place so far off of the beaten way that owls hoot in the daytime and they have possums for yard dogs."
An owl hooted somewhere.
"That's a saying amongst folks here and yonder," said the old man, his broad brown hand a-stroking his beard.
"Yes, sir," I agreed him, "but I heard tell it was in this part of the country, so I thought I'd find out."
The beard stirred as he clamped his mouth. "Is that all ye got to do with yore young life?"
"Mostly so," I told him the truth. "I find out things."
The animal alongside him hiked up its long snout.
It was the almightiest big possum I'd ever seen, big as a middling-sized dog. Likely it weighed more than fifty pounds. Its eyes dug at me.
"Folks at the county seat just gave me general directions," I went on. "I found an old road in the woods. Then I heard the owl hoot and it was still daytime, so I followed the sound here."
I felt funny, a-standing with my pack straps galled into me, to say all that.
"I've heard tell an owl hoot by daytime is bad luck," scraped the voice in the beard. "Heap of that a-going, if it's so."
"Over in Wales, they say an owl hooting means that a girl's a-losing her virginity," I tried to make a joke.
"Hum." Not exactly a laugh. "Owls must be kept busy a-hooting for that, too." He and the possum looked me up and down. "Well, since ye come from so far off, why don't me bid ye set and rest?"
"Thank you, sir." I unslung my pack and put it down and laid my guitar on it. Then I stepped toward the dark door hole.
"Stay out of yonder," came quick warning words. "What's inside is one reason why nobody comes here but me. Set down on that stump acrost from me. What might I call ye?"
I dropped down on the stump. "My name's John. And I wish you'd tell me more about how is it folks don't come here."
"I'm Maltby Sanger, and this here good friend I got with me is named Ung. The rest of the saying's fact, too. I keep him for a yard dog."
Ung kept his black eyes on me. His coarse fur was grizzled gray. His forepaws clasped like hands under his shallow chin.
"Maybe I'd ought to fix us some supper while we talk," said Maltby Sanger.
"Don't bother," I said. "I'll be a-heading back directly."
"Hark at me," he said, scrapier than ever. "There ain't no luck a-walking these here woods by night."
"There'll be a good moon."
"That there's the worst part. The moon shows ye to what's afoot in the woods. Eat here tonight and then sleep here."
"Well, all right." I leaned down and unbuckled my pack. "But let me fix the supper, since I came without bidding." I fetched out a little poke of meal, a big old can of sardines in tomatoes. "If I could have some water, Mr. Sanger."
"'Round here, there's water where I stay at."
He got off his rock, and I saw that he was dwarfed. His legs under that robe couldn't be much more than knees and feet. He wouldn't stand higher than my elbow.
"Come on, John," he said, and I picked up a tin pan and followed him round the house corner.
Betwixt two trees was built a little shackly hut, poles up and down and clay-daubed for walls, other poles laid up top and covered with twigs and grass for a roof. In front of it, in what light was left, flowed a spring. I filled my pan and started back.
"Is that all the water ye want?" he asked after me.
"Just to make us some pone. I've got two bottles of beer to drink."
"Beer," he said, like as if he loved the word.
He waddled back, a-picking up wood as he came. We piled twigs for me to light with a match, then put bigger pieces on top. I poured meal into the water in the pan and worked up a batter. Then I found a flat rock and rubbed it with ham rind and propped it close to the fire to pour the batter on. Afterward I opened the sardines and got my fork for Maltby Sanger and took my spoon for myself. When the top of the pone looked brown enough, I turned it over with my spoon and knife, and I dug out those bottles of beer and twisted off the caps.
We ate, squatted on two sides of the fire. Maltby Sanger appeared to enjoy the sardines and pone, and he gave some to Ung, who held chunks in his paws to eat. When we'd done, not a crumb was left. "I relished that," allowed Maltby Sanger.
It had turned full dark, and I was glad for the fire.
"Ye pick that guitar, John?" he inquired. "Why not pick it some right now?"
I tuned my silver strings and struck chords for an old song I recollected. One verse went like this:
We sang good songs that came out new,
But now they're old amongst the young,
And when we're gone, it's just a few
Will know the songs that we have sung.
"I God and that's a true word," said Maltby Sanger when I finished. "Them old songs is a-dying like flies."
I hushed the silver strings with my palm. "I don't hear that owl hoot," I said.
"It ain't daytime no more," said Maltby Sanger.
"Hark at me, sir," I spoke up. "Why don't you tell me just what's a-happening here, or anyway a-trying to happen?"
He gave me one of his beady looks and sighed a tired-out sigh. "How'll I start in to tell ye?"
"Start in at the beginning."
"Ain't no beginning I know of. The business is as old as this here mountain itself."
"Then it's right old, Mr. Sanger," I said. "I've heard say these are the oldest mountains on all this earth. They go back before Adam and Eve, before the first of living things. But here we've got a house, made with hands." I looked at the logs, the planks. "Some man's hands."
"John," he said, "that there's just a housefront, built up against the rock, and maybe not by no man's hands, no such thing. I reckon it was put there to tole folks in. But I been here all these years to warn folks off, the way I tried to warn ye." He looked at me, and so did Ung, next to him. "Till I seen ye was set in yore mind to stay, so I let ye."
I studied the open door hole, so dark inside. "Why should folks be toled in, Mr. Sanger?"
"I've thought on that, and come to reckon the mountain wants folks right into its heart or its belly." He sort of stared his words into me. "Science allows this here whole earth started out just a ball of fire. The outside cooled down. Water come in for the sea, and trees and living things got born onto the land. But they say the fire's still inside. And fire's got to have something to feed on."
I looked at our own fire. It was burning small and hot, but if it got loose it could eat up that whole woods. "You remind me of old history things," I said, "when gods had furnaces inside them and sacrifices were flung into them."
"Right, John," he nodded me. "Moloch's the name in the Bible, fifth chapter of Amos, and I likewise think somewheres in Acts."
"The name's Molech another place," I said. "Second Kings; Preacher Ricks had it for a text one time. How King Joash ruled that no man would make his son or daughter pass through the fire to Molech. You reckon this place is some way like that?"
"Might could be this here place, and places like it in other lands, gave men the idee of fiery gods to burn up their children."
I hugged my guitar to me, for what comfort it could give. "You wouldn't tell me all this," I said, "if you wanted to fool me into the belly of the mountain."
"I don't worship no such," he snapped. "I told ye, I'm here to keep folks from a-meddling into there and not come out no more. It was long years back when I come here to get away from outside things. I wasn't much good at a man's work, and folks laughed at how dwarfished-down I was."
"I don't laugh," I said.
"No, I see ye don't. But don't either pity me. I wouldn't like that no more than I'd like laughter."
"I don't either pity you, Mr. Sanger. I judge you play the man, the best you can, and nobody can do more than that."
He patted Ung's grizzled back. "I come here," he said again, "and I heard tell about this place from the old man who was here then. I allowed I'd take over from him if he wanted to leave, so he left. It wonders me if this sounds like a made-up tale to ye."
"No, sir, I hark at air word you speak."
"If ye reckon this here is just some common spot, look on them flowers at the window by ye."
It was a shaggy bush in the firelight. There were blue flowers. But likewise pinky ones, the color of blood-drawn meat. And dead white ones, with dark spots in them, like eyes.
"Three different flowers on one bush," he said. "I don't reckon there's the like of that, nowheres else on this earth."
"Sassafras has three different leaves on one branch," I said. "There'll be a mitten leaf, and a toad-foot leaf next to it, and then just a plain smooth-edged leaf." I studied the bush. "But those flowers would be special, even if there was just one of a kind on a twig."
"Ye done harked at what I told, John," said Maltby Sanger, and put his bottle up to his beard to drink the last drop. "Suit yoreself if it makes sense."
"Sense is what it makes," I said. "All right, you've been here for years. I reckon you live in that little cabin round the corner. Does that suit you?"
"It's got to suit somebody. Somebody's needed. To guard folks off from a-going in yonder and then not come out."
I strummed my guitar, tried to think of what to sing. Finally:
Yonder comes the Devil
From hell's last bottom floor,
A-shouting and a-singing,
There's room for many a more.
"I enjoy to hear ye make music, John," said Maltby Sanger. "It was all right for ye to come here tonight. No foolishness. I won't say no danger, but ye'll escape danger, I reckon."
I looked toward the open door. It was all black inside—no, not all black. I saw a couple of red points in there. I told myself they were reflected from our fire.
"I've been a-putting my mind on what's likely to be down yonder," I said. "Recollected all I was told when I was little, about how hell was an everlasting fire down under our feet, like the way heaven was up in the sky over us."
"Have ye thought lately, the sky ain't truly up over us no more?" he inquired me. "It's more like off from us now, since men have gone a-flying off to the moon and are a-fixing to fly farther than that, to the stars. Stars is what's in the sky, and heaven's got to be somewheres else. But I ain't made up my mind on hell, not yet. Maybe it's truly a-burning away, down below our feet, right this minute."
"Or either, the fire down in there is what made folks decide what hell was."
"Maybe that," he halfway agreed me. "John, it's nigh onto when I go to sleep. I wish there was two beds in my cabin, but—"
"Just let me sleep out here and keep our fire a-going," I said. "Keep it a-going, and not let it get away and seek what it might devour."
"Sure thing, if ye want to." He got up on his stumpy legs and dragged something out from under that robe he wore. "Ye might could like to have this with ye."
I took it. It was a great big Bible, so old its leather covers were worn and scrapped near about away.
"I thank you, sir," I said. "I'll lay a little lightwood on the fire and read in this."
"Then I'll see ye when the sun comes up."
He shuffled off to his shack. Ung stayed there and looked at me. I didn't mind that, I was a-getting used to him.
Well, gentlemen, I stirred up the fire and put on some chunks of pine so it would burn up strong and bright. I opened the Bible and looked through to the Book of Isaiah, thirty-fourth chapter. I found what I'd recollected to be there:
It shall not be quenched night nor day: the smoke thereof shall go up for ever, from generation to generation it shall lie waste . . .
On past that verse, there's talk about dragons and satyrs and such like things they don't want you to believe in these days. In the midst of my reading, I heard something from that open door, a long, grumbling sigh of sound, and I looked over to see what.
The two red lights moved closer together, and this time they seemed to be set in a lump of something, like eyes in a head.
I got up quick, the Bible in my hand. Those eyes looked out at me, and the red of them burned up bright, then went dim, then bright again. Ung, at my foot, made a burbling noise, like as if it pestered him.
I put down the Bible and picked up a burning chunk from the fire. I made myself walk to the door. My chunk gave me some light to see inside. Sure enough it was a cave in there; what looked like a house outside was just a front, built on by whatever had built it for whatever reason. The cave was hollowed back into the mountain and it had a smooth-looking floor, almost polished, of black rock. Inside, the space slanted inward both ways, to narrowness farther in. It was more like a throat than anything I could say for it. A great big throat, big enough to swallow a man, or more than one man.
Far back hung whatever it was had those eyes. I saw the eyes shine, not just from my flashlight. They had light of their own.
"All right," I said out loud to the eyes. "Here I am. I look for the truth. What's the truth about you?"
No answer but a grumble. The thing moved, deep in there. I saw it had, not just that black head with red eyes, it had shoulders and things like arms. It didn't come close, but it didn't pull back. It waited for me.
"What's the truth about you?" I inquired it again. "Might could your name be Molech?"
It made nair sound, but it lifted those long arms. I saw hands like pitchforks. It was bigger than I was, maybe half again bigger. Was it stronger?
A man's got to be a man sometime, I told myself inside me. I'd come there to find out what was what. There was some strange old truth in there, not a pretty truth maybe, but I'd come to see what it was.
I walked to where the door was fallen off the leather hinges. The red eyes came up bright and died down dull and watched me a-coming. They waited for me, they hoped I'd get close.
I put my foot on where the door-log had been once. It was long ago rotted to punk, it crumbled under my boot. I took hold of the jamb and leaned in.
"You been having a time for yourself?" I asked the eyes.
There was light from the chunk I carried, but other light, a ghost of a show of it, was inside. It came from on back in there. It was a kind of smoky reddish light, I thought, you might have called it rosy. It made a glitter on something two-three steps inside.
I spared a look down there to the floor. Gentlemen, it was a jewel, a bunch of jewels, a-shining white and red and green. And big. They were like a bunch of glass bottles for size. Only they weren't bottles. They shone too bright, too clear, strewed out there by my foot.
There for the picking up—but if I bent over, there was that one with the red eyes and the black shape, and he could pick me up.
"No," I said to him, "you don't get hold of me thattaway," and I whirled my chunk of fire, to get more light.
There he was, dark and a-standing two-legged like a man, but he was taller than I was, by the height of that round head with the red eyes. And no hair to his black hide, it was as slick as a snake. Long arms and pitchfork hands sort of pawed out toward me, the way a praying mantis does. The head cocked itself. I saw it had something in it besides eyes, it had a mouth, open and as wide as a gravy boat, wet and black, like a mess of hot tar.
"You must have tricked a many a man in here with those jewels," I said.
He heard me, he knew what I said, knew that I wouldn't stoop down. He moved in on me.
Those legs straddled. Their knees bent backward, like a frog's, the feet slapped flat and wide on the floor of the cave, amongst more jewels everywhere. Enough in there to pay a country's national debt. He reached for me again. His fingers were lumpy-jointed and they had sharp claws, like on the feet of a great big hawk. I moved backward, I reckoned I'd better. And he followed right along. He wanted to get those claws into me.
I backed to the old door-log and near about tripped on it. I dropped the burning chunk and grabbed hold of the fallen-down door with both hands, to stay on my feet. I got hold of its two edges and hiked it between me and that snake-skinned thing that lived inside. I looked past one edge of the door, and all of a sudden I saw him stop.
There was the rosy light in yonder, and outside my chunk blazed where it had fallen. I could see that door rightly for the first time.
It was one of those you used to see in lots of places, made with a thick center piece running from top to bottom betwixt the panels, and two more thick pieces set midpoint of the long one to go right and left to make a cross. In amongst these were set the four old, half-rotted panels. But the cross stood there. And often, I'd heard tell, such doors were made thattaway to keep evil from a-coming through.
So, in the second I did my figuring, I saw why the front had been built on the cave, why that door had been hung there. It was to hold in whatever was inside. And it had worked right well till the door dropped down.
It was a heavy old door, but I muscled it up. I shoved on back into the cave, with the door in front of me like a shield.
Nothing shoved back. I took one step after another amongst those shining jewels, careful to keep from a-tripping on them. I cocked my head leftways to look past the door. That big black somebody moved away from me. I saw the flicker of the rose light from where it came into the cave.
The cross, was it a help? I'd been told that there were crosses long before the one on Calvary, made for power's sake in old, old lands beyond the sea. Yes, and in this land too, by Indian tribes one place and another. My foot near about skidded on a rolling jewel, but I stayed up.
"In this sign we conquer," I said, after some king in the olden days, and I believed it. And I went on forward with the door for my sign.
For as long as a breath I shoved up against him. I felt him lean against the other side, like high wind a-blowing. I fought to keep the door on him to push him back, and took a long step and dug in with my foot.
And almighty near fell down a hole all full of the rosy light.
He'd tricked me there where his light came up from. I hung on its edge, a-looking down a hole three-four feet across, deeper than I could ask myself to judge, and away down there was fire, a-dancing and a-streaming—a world, it looked to me, of fire.
On the other side of the door he made a noise. It was a whiny buzz, what you'd expect from a bee as big as a dog. His long old arm snaked round the edge of the door, a-raking with its claws. They snagged into my shirt—I heard it rip. I managed to sidestep clear of that hole, and he buzzed and came again. I shoved hard with the door, put all I could put into it. Heat come in all round me, it was like when you sit in a close room with a hot stove. I smelt something worse than a skunk.
The pressure was there, and then the pressure was all of a sudden gone. I went down, the door in front of me, to slam on the floor with a rattly bang.
I got up quick, without the door. I wondered how to face him. But he wasn't there. Nowhere.
I stood and trembled and gulped for air. Sweat streamed all over me. I looked up, all 'round me. Sure enough, he was gone. I was all alone in that dark cave, me and the door. And the rosy light was gone.
For the door had fallen whack down on top of it.
I put a knee down on the panel. I could feel a tremble and stir underneath.
"By God Almighty, I've got you penned in!" I yelled down to what made the stir in that fiery hole.
It was a-humping to me there. I reached out and grabbed a shiny green jewel. It must have weighed eight pounds or so. I put it on a plank of the cross. I got up on my feet, found more jewels. I laid them on, one next to another, along both arms, to make the cross twice as strong.
"You're shut up in there now," I said down to the hole it covered.
The door lay still and solid. No more hum below.
I headed out toward the gleam of the cooking fire. My feet felt weak under me. Ung sat out there and looked at me. I wondered if I should ought to get a blanket. Then I didn't bother. I must have slept.
It was morning's first gray again, with the stars a-paling out of the sky, when I sat up awake. Maltby Sanger was there, a-building up the fire. "Ye look to have had ye a quiet night," he said.
"Me?" I said, and he laughed. Next to the fire he set a saucepan with eggs in it.
"Duck eggs," he told me. "Ung found them for our breakfast. And I got parched corn, and tomatoes from my garden."
"And I've got a few pinches of coffee, we can boil it in my canteen cup," I said. "Looky over yonder at the cave."
He looked. He pulled his whiskers. "Bless my soul," he said, "the door's plumb gone off it."
"The door's inside, to bottle up what was the trouble in there," I said.
While he was a-cooking, I told him what I'd met in the cave. He got up with a can of hot coffee in his hand and stumped inside. Out again, he filled one of his old buckets with dirt and stones and fetched it into the cave. Then back for another bucketful of the same stuff, and then another. Finally he came out and washed his hands and served up the eggs. We ate them before the either of us said a word.
"Moloch," Maltby Sanger said then. "Ye reckon that's who he is?"
"He didn't speak his name," I replied him. "All I guess is, he'll likely stay under that door with the cross and the weight on it, so long as it's left to pen him in."
"So long as it's left," he agreed me. "Only ye used them jewels for weight. If somebody comes a-using 'round here and sees them, he might could wag them off. So I put a heap of dirt over them to hide them best I could. Nobody's a-going to scrabble there so long's I'm here to keep them from it."
He stroked his beard and grinned his teeth at me. "My time's been long hereabouts, and it'll be longer. Only after I'm gone can somebody stir him up in yonder. Then the world can suit itself about what to do about him."
He squinted his eyes to study me. "Now," he said, "ye'll likely be a-going yore way."
"Yes, sir, and I'm honest to thank you for a-letting me found out what I wanted to know."
I stowed my pack and strapped on the blanket roll.
"Last night," he said from across the fire, "I'd meant
to ask ye to stay on watch here and let me go."
"Ask me to stay?"
"That's what. And ye'd have stayed, John, if I'd asked ye the right way. Stayed and kept the watch here."
I couldn't tell myself for certain if that was so.
"I aimed for to ask ye," he said again, "but if I was to go, where'd I go? Hellfire, John, I been here so long it's home."
Ung twinkled an eye, like as if he heard and understood.
"I'll just stay a-setting here and warn other folks off from a-messing round where that door is," said Maltby Sanger.
I slung my pack on my shoulders and picked up my guitar. "Sunrise now," I said.
"Sure enough, sunrise. Good-bye, John. I was proud to have ye here overnight."
We shook hands. He didn't seem so dwarfish right then. I found the path I'd come in by, that would take me back to people.
The sun was up. Daytime was come. Back on the way I went, I heard the long, soft hoot of an owl.