Pigeons from Hell | Page 9

Elizabeth's hairs stuck on it,
just as she'd said. She wouldn't go back there and show them how to
find the secret door; almost went crazy when they suggested it.
"When she was able to travel, the people made up some money and
loaned it to her - she was still too proud to accept charity - and she went
to California. She never came back, but later it was learned, when she

sent back to repay the money they'd loaned her, that she'd married out
there.
"Nobody ever bought the house. It stood there just as she'd left it, and
as the years passed folks stole all the furnishings out of it, poor white
trash, I reckon. A Negro wouldn't go about it. But they came after
sunup and left long before sundown."
"What did the people think about Miss Elizabeth's story?" asked
Griswell.
"Well, most folks thought she'd gone a little crazy, livin' in that old
house alone. But some people believed that mulatto girl, Joan, didn't
run away, after all. They believed she'd hidden in the woods, and
glutted her hatred of the Blassenvilles by murderin' Miss Celia and the
three girls. They beat up the woods with bloodhounds, but never found
a trace of her. If there was a secret room in the house, she might have
been hidin' there - if there was anything to that theory."
"She couldn't have been hiding there all these years," muttered Griswell.
"Anyway, the thing in the house now isn't human."
Buckner wrenched the wheel around and turned into a dim trace that
left the main road and meandered off through the pines.
"Where are you going?"
"There's an old Negro that lives off this way a few miles. I want to talk
to him. We're up against something that takes more than white man's
sense. The black people know more than we do about some things. This
old man is nearly a hundred years old. His master educated him when
he was a boy, and after he was freed he traveled more extensively than
most white men do. They say he's a voodoo man."
Griswell shivered at the phrase, staring uneasily at the green forest
walls that shut them in. The scent of the pines was mingled with the
odors of unfamiliar plants and blossoms. But underlying all was a reek
of rot and decay. Again a sick abhorrence of these dark mysterious

woodlands almost overpowered him.
"Voodoo!" he muttered. "I'd forgotten about that - I never could think
of black magic in connection with the South. To me witchcraft was
always associated with old crooked streets in waterfront towns,
overhung by gabled roofs that were old when they were hanging
witches in Salem; dark musty alleys where black cats and other things
might steal at night. Witchcraft always meant the old towns of New
England, to me - but all this is more terrible than any New England
legend - these somber pines, old deserted houses, lost plantations,
mysterious black people, old tales of madness and horror - God, what
frightful, ancient terrors there are on this continent fools call 'young'!"
"Here's old Jacob's hut," announced Buckner, bringing the automobile
to a halt.
Griswell saw a clearing and a small cabin squatting under the shadows
of the huge trees. The pines gave way to oaks and cypresses, bearded
with gray trailing moss, and behind the cabin lay the edge of a swamp
that ran away under the dimness of the trees, choked with rank
vegetation. A thin wisp of blue smoke curled up from the
stick-and-mud chimney.
He followed Buckner to the tiny stoop, where the sheriff pushed open
the leather-hinged door and strode in. Griswell blinked in the
comparative dimness of the interior. A single small window let in a
little daylight. An old Negro crouched beside the hearth, watching a pot
stew over the open fire. He looked up as they entered, but did not rise.
He seemed incredibly old. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and his
eyes, dark and vital, were filmed momentarily at times as if his mind
wandered.
Buckner motioned Griswell to sit down in a string-bottomed chair, and
himself took a rudely-made bench near the hearth, facing the old man.
"Jacob," he said bluntly, "the time's come for you to talk. I know you
know the secret of Blassenville Manor. I've never questioned you about
it, because it wasn't in my line. But a man was murdered there last night,

and this man here may hang for it, unless you tell me what haunts that
old house of the Blassenvilles."
The old man's eyes gleamed, then grew misty as if clouds of extreme
age drifted across his brittle mind.
"The Blassenvilles," he murmured, and his voice was mellow and rich,
his speech