TANITH LEE
At the point where the trees parted, he saw the tower. It seemed framed in space, standing on a rise, the pines climbing everywhere toward it in swathes, like blue-black fur, but not yet reaching the top of the hill. A strange tower, perhaps, he thought. The stone was ancient and obdurate, in the way of some old things—and these not exclusively inanimate. He could remember an old woman from his youth, that everyone called a witch, crag-like and immovable in both grim attitude and seeming longevity. Someone had said of her that she had never been younger than fifty, and never aged beyond seventy—“But in counted years she’s easily ninety by now.” The tower was like that.
Brown raised his binoculars and studied it attentively, rather as he had so many landmarks on his excursion through Europe; he did this more as if he should than because he particularly wanted or needed to.
But the tower was rather odd. Caught in that mirror-gap of spatial emptiness, only the cloudless sheet of earliest summer sky behind it, turning toward late afternoon, a warmly watery, pale golden blank of light. The tower was nearly in silhouette. Yet something hung down, surely, from the high, narrow window-slits. What was that? It had a yellowish effect, strands and eddies—creepers, perhaps.
Should he check the tower in the guidebook? No. He must make on to the little inn which, he had been told, lay just above the road to the west. It would take about half an hour to reach it, and by then the sun would be near setting. He did not fancy the woods after nightfall—at least, not alone.
He was not sure about the inn. They were so welcoming and kindly-spoken he suspected at once they might be planning to rob him, either directly or through the charges they would apply to his bed and board.
But the evening went on comfortably enough, with beer and various types of not unpleasant food. There was a fire lit, too, which was needed, since, with sunfall, a slight but definite chill had seeped into the world. Brown had selected and retained a good seat to one side of the hearth. Here, after his meal, he smoked and wrote up a few brief notes on the day’s travel. This exercise was mainly to provide something with which to regale acquaintances on his return. He sensed he would otherwise forget a lot. The general run of things did not often linger very long in his mind. Having, then, made a note on it, he asked the so-genial host about the tower.
“Oh, we do not speak of it,” said the host gravely. “It is unlucky.”
“For whom?” bantered Brown.
“For any. An old place, once a witch’s fortress.”
“A witch’s, eh?”
The host, having refilled Brown’s tankard, straightened and solemnly said, “It is unlucky even to look at it. To go there is most inadvisable.” And after this, rather belying his previous assertion that one had better not talk about the tower, he announced, “Long whiles ago, back in times of history, it was said a creature also lived in the tower, the servant of the witch. She had bred it by force on a human woman, they say, and all the while the mother carried this monster-child, the witch fed the woman special liquids and herbs of power from her own uncanny garden. When the baby came forth, the mother, no surprise to us much, died. The creature then grew in the charge of the witch, and did her bidding for evil, and for all manners of ill.”
“A fascinating story,” said Brown, who thought he was actually quite bored.
“There is more,” said the host, now gazing starkly up at the inn’s low, smoky rafters. “Men were drawn to the tower, and somehow clambered up there. They were lured by the vision of a lovely young woman with golden hair, who would lean out of the narrow window and flirt with and exhort them. But when they reached the stony place above and crawled in at the window—Ah!” exclaimed the host quite vehemently, making Brown jump and spill some of his beer—perhaps a ploy, so he would have to purchase more—“Ah, sweet Virgin and Lordship Christ, protect and succor us. No one must look at the tower, or venture close. I have said far too much, good mister. Forget what I have uttered.”
Brown dreamed. He had gone back to the tower.
However, he was much younger, maybe eighteen or seventeen years of age. And his father was standing over Brown, as so often Mr. Brown senior had done, admonishing his son: “Don’t touch it, boy. It isn’t to be touched.”
Yet surely—it was. All that golden floating fluff—like golden feathers escaping from a pillow full of swansdown—which down had come from golden swans.
“But it’s so sweet, Father,” said Brown.
And frowningly woke in the tiny bedroom up under the roof at the forest inn.
Midnight, harshly if voicelessly, declared his watch.
Now he would be awake all night.
Next moment, Brown was once more fast asleep and dreaming . . .
Treacle goldenly flowed. Of course it was sweet. He tasted it, licked it up, swallowed and swallowed, could not get enough. He had been deprived of confectionery when a child; his strict father had seen to that.
The only difficulty was that the treacle also spilled all over him. He was covered in the stuff. There would be such trouble later. Better, then, to enjoy himself while he could. Brown opened his mouth wider, and held out both his eager, clutching hands.
The next day dawned bright as any cliché, and Brown got up with the abrupt, rather dreary awareness that he must now go on with his exciting, adventurous journey across Europe. What, after all, was the point, really? Had he been a writer he might have made something of it, some book. Or a playboy would have used the time pretty well, though in a different way and through an unlike agenda. But Brown? What could Brown do with it? Bore people, no doubt, with badly recollected snippets of this and that. Even snippets like the tall tale the inn-host had cooked up last night. It had caused some funny dreams, that. What had they been? Something about sweets, was it, and—gold? Ridiculous.
Brown ate his breakfast in an ordinary silence, which the host respected. If the man felt either embarrassed or scornfully amused at his previous storytelling, one could not be certain. He might even, Brown decided, have forgotten it. Conceivably, he subjected every traveler who spoke of anything to some such dramatic recital.
After breakfast, Brown paid his bill, and left the inn.
His next stop was to be a town by a river, both with unpronounceable names. It should take about four hours to reach the unpronounceable town. If everything ran to plan.
Presently, Brown, striding through the sun-splashed blackness of the forest, realized he must have taken the wrong track. For it seemed to him the landscape was familiar. That leaning sapling, for example, and the fallen pine beyond—and then that break in the trees, through which the daylight currently streamed so vividly.
Brown halted, staring out with disfavor and a degree of annoyance. And there, sun-painted now on the sky, stood up again the old tower, with the pines still climbing toward it, and the yellow weeds still hanging down by the windows.
For a long while Brown paused, gazing at the tower. It was not a great distance away, perhaps a couple of miles, or not so much. He noticed a slender path of trodden earth ran down through the forest here, that seemed to lead directly to the foot of the hill, which really, itself, was not significantly steep.
He found he had walked forward without noticing it, and was on the beginnings of the path, descending toward the shallow valley that lay below the hill. See what sheer indolence, mere indifference, could lead to! Did he truly want to go in this direction? Did he want to climb up and gape at a nondescript ruin—which probably it was, a ruin, when one saw it up close? Then again, why not? It was all the same to him. One more rather pointless episode. Climbed up to tower, he mentally penned in his notes: Nothing much to look at. Perhaps dating from the 15th century; creepers all over it. Not much of a view, as surrounded on all sides by the forest.
As he had believed, the path and the subsequent climb were not overly taxing for a man who had, so far, mostly walked through two or three countries already.
Well before noon, he had come up and out just below the hilltop, and the stonework loomed in front of him.
Something about the tower was, after all, rather interesting—but what? It was lean, which had made it look taller, though it was not in fact high—perhaps thirty-five feet. It was constructed of a darkish, smoothish stone, polished subsequently by weather, like the carapace of some hard, smooth, rugged sea-creature, possibly. The narrow window-slits appeared quite a way off from the ground, but were, of course, only some twenty-eight or thirty feet up. Nor would they be so narrow, one reasoned, when viewed at their own level. Something he would not be able to do. It was not a tower to climb, not in any way. Nor did he wish to. What, besides, could be up there—an empty stone space?—or else it was full of the wrecked debris from some previous era, only left unthieved because it was so worthless.
But there was a curious and strangely pleasant smell that hung around the tower. It did not resemble the balsamic fragrance of the pines, let alone their other flavors of dryness and wetness, fruition and fading death. On the contrary, the tower had a—what was it? A sort of honeyed scent, like the tempting sweetmeats of the Middle East.
Was it the peculiar hanging creepers that gave off this aroma? There seemed to be nothing else that would do so.
Brown was reluctant to go nearer and sniff at them. They were doubtless full of insects, and might even have tiny thorns. One could never tell with alien species. Their color, however, was really after all quite beautiful. Less yellow than a golden effect, a shining radiant hue.
There now, despite his caution, he had approached very close. In fact, there seemed nothing remotely injurious about the plant. It was, if anything, extremely silken, and totally untangled—as if (fanciful notion) combed by careful and loving hands. And yes, the perfume was exuded by these multiple “locks.” Irresistibly, Brown leaned forward and drew into his lungs the delicious scent. What was it that this recalled for him? Was it confectionery—or flowers? Exactly then, something gleamed out above him.
Involuntarily, Brown’s neck snapped back. He found he gaped up the stem of the tower at the single window-slit directly above. He noted as he did so that, oddly, the creeper actually seemed, instead of having grown about the stone embrasures, to be extruded from their openings—hung out of the windows like some weird and ethereal washing, falling free thereafter down the tower wall.
But what had that been meanwhile—that glimpse he had had—something which passed across the slit thirty feet above; something white and vivid and—surely—alive . . . ?
Arrested there, straining his neck, Brown was aware in that moment of a wild memory, the line of some poem, or of a song made from one, a piece by a well-known and respected poet and novelist—Thomas Hardy, was it?—Golden Hair—open your window—Golden Hair—
Something shifted, some loose array of pebbles, or a rock, under the sole of one of Brown’s boots. Losing his balance, instinctively he grabbed for the side of the tower. But his hands missed their purchase and met instead the warm waterfall of the creeper. How strong it was, yet exquisitely silky and soft, vibrant with its own aureate and glowing life force. A delight to touch, to hold. And the perfume now, pouring over him, wonderful as some mysterious drug.
He sensed he could fall forward and the creeper would respond. It would catch him and lull him, support and caress him; he need fear nothing. With a startled oath, Brown sprang backward. An icy sweat had burst from every pore of his body. The world rocked beneath him and all about. He was—quite terrified. What in God’s name had happened?
“Damnation!” Brown exclaimed.
How absurd—the creeper—the creeper had attached itself to him, to his fingers, hands and arms—a rich swathe had folded itself against his chest, nestling there on his clothing, on the skin of his neck, stuck fast. For it was sticky. Sticky as some ghastly glue—
Struggling, writhing and floundering, he shouted and swore and tore at the encumbrance, trying, exasperated, and next with all his strength, to pull free—how stupid, how silly. He was a fool—but how, how to release himself? The more he pulled and fought, the more it wrapped itself against, onto and around him. Now it had somehow got up into his hair, dislodging his hat, and it had wound about his throat—like an expensive muffler—and the scent, too sweet finally, cloying, sickening—he retched, and chokingly bellowed for help to some nonexistent fellow human, to the sky and to the tower itself, to God. None and nothing replied.
Silence then. A hiatus. Brown had ceased to resist, since resistance seemed futile. Through his mind went a jumble of the words of the inn-host: “To go there—inadvisable. Even to look at it—unlucky.” So no one would come in this direction, and if they must, they would not look. Nor listen and heed, presumably, should they hear anyone calling or crying out for assistance—
In the name of Heaven, what was he to do?
Brown tried to collect himself together. The situation was fantastic, but had to be rectifiable. He was a grown man, not unstrong. True, he could not reach his pocketknife, the only cutting implement he possessed, aside from his teeth and nails—which would inevitably be inadequate. And the creeper had roped him round very securely. But there must be some way! Stay calm, and think.
Thoughts came, but they were no help. He saw himself instead held here for weeks, months, as he slowly died of hunger and thirst, or was poisoned by the stenchful sweetness.
So horrible was this, and so unusually sharply imagined, that for a moment he missed the other, newer sensation.
But then the faint quiver and tensing grew more adamant, and next there was a solid jerk that tipped him off his feet. Tangled in the weedy net he did not, of course, fall. Or rather, he seemed to be falling upward—
For several seconds, Brown did not grasp what was happening. But soon enough reality flooded in. It would have been hard to ignore, indeed, as the ground dropped away, the hillside, too, the forested valley, even the lower pines on the surrounding heights. The old stones rubbed slickly against him as he slid. The sky seemed to open, staring eyeless yet intent at his incongruous plight, while the creeper, muscular as the arms of a giant, dragged him without any effort up the stalk of the ancient tower.
Perhaps he lost consciousness for a minute. That was what had happened. He was only dimly aware of the rough tugging and squeezing that shoveled him in at the thin, hard window-slit. His knees and left shoulder were particularly bruised. But they were minor concerns, given the rest.
Spun up in the golden creeper-mass, coughing and retching still, the spasms uncontrollable if intermittent, Brown lay in a knotted ball on a floor of bitterly cold stone. He was not able really to move, for the slightest motion—even the helpless esophageal spasms—seemed to glue and mesh him more, and so confine him further.
The internal atmosphere was dark, though not lightless. The day poured through at the narrow slot and lit his golden chains heartlessly. Here and there patches of light also smudged the stony inner walls. They formed a room, he supposed, a guard-post, one assumed, centuries before. But now nothing was there, only himself, and the restraining weed.
Inadvertently almost, Brown thrust and rolled and kicked at his binding—or attempted to do so. It was, as earlier, to no avail—in fact, again, it made things somewhat worse.
Brown started to sob, but managed to subdue this. If he lost a grip on himself, he would have nothing left. Nothing at all.
Someone had hauled him up here. That much was evident. They had used the creeper, which must have been treated in some bizarre way and had therefore become both lure and trap. Then they had dragged him in like any hapless fish on a line. Soon enough, no doubt, the villain—or villains—would return and hold him to account, maybe requiring a ransom. Brown groaned aloud, thinking of his two maiden aunts, neither wealthy, or the feckless uncle whom Brown had not seen for more than fourteen years. But maybe there would be some other way. Or he might even escape, when once he was unbound.
Brown desperately longed then for his enemy to come back, to free him at least, if only partially, from the net. Presently he called out, in a stern though deliberately nonangry manner, firstly in English, then in the correct local vernacular.
No answer was proffered. There was no sound at all—aside, naturally, from the occasional brush of the breeze beyond the window-slit, the pulse of a bird’s wings.
Once he thought he heard a hunter’s dog bark two or three times, in the woods below. If only they would come this way—if only he might call again and be heard.
Brown composed himself on the hard, frigid floor, and in his cramped discomfort and bruised pain. He would have to be patient and stoical. Pragmatic.
The spasms had eased. The perfume reek seemed less. Conversely, he sensed the quietly dismal fetor of an enclosed and poorly ventilated place where beasts had died, and too many years stagnated.
He closed his eyes, for the constricted light dazzled, and the contrasting darkness was too full of cobwebs and shadows and shutness—except there, just beyond where his vision, his head being so constrained from movement, could reach—over there, in that wall, something that might be a very low doorway, a sort of arch . . . or maybe not.
Brown’s watch had stopped—some knock against the window embrasure. But the clock of the day had gone on, and now the evening arrived. The sky outside the tower was turning a soft, delicate mauve, with vague extinguishing tints of red toward what must be the west. It would be very dark soon. It would be night.
Had anyone come in to inspect their catch? He believed not, though somehow it seemed he had fallen either into a stifled doze or else some kind of trance.
The choking and nausea had passed, but he could not now have moved or struggled, even if the web containing him had permitted it. How curious, Brown mused, deep in his haphazardly self-controlled, near anesthetic misery: a web. For was not the creeper very like that: a web? Tempting and beautiful in its own way, but sticky, a snare, and the means to an ultimate capture. And storage.
Should he call out again? If anyone had entered the tower, and was below, they must definitely come up to see to him. There might be threats, or violence, but then, if they wanted him for ransom, at least for a while they would try to keep him in one piece—or so he must hope. If he could talk to them, make promises—however rash or implausible—exhort them to see reason . . . He was not done for yet! He shouted, as loudly and calmly as he was able. And, after a minute, again.
And—yes. There was at last a faint yet quite distinct movement that he had heard, a little below and behind him. If only he could turn his head. Brown endeavored to, and his neck was spitefully wrenched. He gave out a quickly mastered yelp of physical hurt, protest and frustration.
But the movement, the sound, was being repeated, over and over. Steps, he thought, soft, careful, rather shuffling steps, as of a person elderly, or somewhat infirm, climbing up, toward this room.
Thank God, Brown thought. Thank God.
“Good evening,” said Brown, urbane yet cool, the proper tone, he had judged, in which to greet his lawless captor. The steps had taken a long time to reach him, and once during their progress he had called out again; but now, having spoken, he lay bunched and dumb, tense in every fiber and nerve, awaiting a response—of any kind.
Because he could not turn and see, Brown was visualizing a myriad versions of the one who had so astonishingly made a prisoner of him. A bandit, or merely a peasant driven into crime, or some eccentric landowner, a savage child—but disabled, certainly, to assess those footfalls; nevertheless obviously dangerous and conceivably lunatic. Brown must proceed very prudently. Yet, even as he speculated on and guessed at all this, he sensed the other behind him, not moving now, needing a pause to recover, maybe, from the climb, although there was no noise of labored breathing or other token of distress.
Perhaps some old wound had discommoded him—nothing recent, something to which he was accustomed. And now he only stood at the entry to the room, gloating. Or . . . unsure—could it be that? A robber regretting his act, or nervous that his victim, under his shackles, looked far from weak, or himself unable—
“What did you say?” asked Brown. His voice came out far too urgently, and frightened in tone. “I didn’t hear you,” he added firmly, now much too like a schoolmaster, he thought.
But the visitor had made only one small extra sound. Not a word, no, it had not been conversation. A type of whispering, wheezing murmur.
“You’d better,” said Brown, “tell me straight out—”
And this was all he had time to say, before the one who had come in moved suddenly forward and was against, and over, and on him.
Where he had had a glimpse of something gleaming and white high above, when he stood outside and below the tower, he had the impression now of a mask, pale as marble, yet glistening and streaming with an oily moisture that came from nowhere but itself. Nor was it any mask that resembled a human face.
It was long and snouted and somehow blind—and yet—it could see—and there were huge, long, slender needles—that might be teeth—and the large body was stretched out, horizontal, heavy, made of flesh but also hard and pale and gleaming-moist, and stinking, and there—hands—so many dead-white hands, each with just four fingers, and they flashed, flashed, and things tore at Brown, too fast to hurt, and then the hurt came, in long openwork waves, and he screamed and thrashed in the ever-tightening ropes of the golden-yellow web that was like hair, and would not give, or break, but Brown must give and Brown must break, and he gave and broke, and his screaming sank to a dull and mindless whining, and then to nothing at all as the venomous fangs and the thirty-two claws of the creature the witch had raised from the womb on rampion and murder and darkness began to prepare and present and devour its slow and thorough dinner. As already it had done so many, countless times before.