The Valley where dead men live by Harold ward One, I have passed through
the valley where dead men live. My eyes have looked upon sights which God
did not intend that man should see. My life must pay the forfeit as
a man of science. You may be interested in hearing what I have to
say, and I must unburden myself to someone before I pass out into the
great unknown. But five days have passed since I said goodbye to old Sourdo
Jamieson. It seems as many centuries. Professor Parmley gave the speaker a quick
glance. Did I understand you to say that you left Jamieson's five days ago?
Are you sure about that? The man on the cot nodded on the
twentieth of June to be exact. There is no possibility of your being mistaken
none whatever My diary will prove it. I made my last entry the night
before I left Sourdough's place on the nineteenth. The professor sat silent for a
second. There is something wrong with your story, Blake. The nearest route
over the mountains from here is by way of Chickahoochee Pass, which would make
the distance from this point to sourdough Jamison's cabin, a matter of over one
hundred and fifty miles. This is the twenty fifth of June. A well
man couldn't do it. It is impossible for you to have made it in
five days in your weakened condition. Not that I wish to dispute your word,
but the sick man smiled Wanly, don't you see, professor, that
your own statement helps to support my story. I tell you that I wandered
into an undiscovered route through the mountains. You say that you picked me up
half an hour ago, lying exhausted and unconscious, a few rods from your
camp. That being the case, the entrance to the valley where dead men
live on this side of the range must be near at hand. You'll say
I'm crazy when I tell you that I have seen living dead men, dead
men who do not know they are dead. Can you imagine it? No?
Neither could I if I had not seen it myself. I've been through
the Valley of the living dead and come out alive. I've seen them living
dead men by the millions and millions, fighting, stabbing, shooting, tearing
at each other's throats like maddened beasts, and beasts. They are maddened by
blood. Blood flows in the rivers in the valley where the dead men live.
It's the rage they were in when they died. They carry it on
with them beyond the grave, and they're fighting it out in there. Can
you hear the rumble of cannon? Listen? You think that it is thunder,
but it's not. And those flashes that you notice just over the brow
of the mountain, the flashes of the big guns man spirit guns. No,
no, it's not lightning. I'm telling you the truth. I know
that you think I'm insane. I don't blame you. He stops suddenly,
his nostrils dilating. Take a whiff of that breeze, professor, don't you
smell anything? Parmely sniffed. The air from the mountains does have a peculiar,
acrid odor. It's reminiscence of something. Gunpowder, by George, That's
what it is. Somebody must have fired a weapon close at hand. And
yet why didn't we hear the report? The scientist gazed out the tent door.
It was none of my party. They are all accounted for. Yet
I could have sworn that there is not another human being within fifty miles.
Blake smiled again. I merely called it to your attention, professor, so
that you would give more credence to my story. It is so strange,
this story of the living dead, that it will stretch your imagination to the
utmost. I am a sick man. I doubt if I survived the day,
you, as a scientific man, may be able to discover the solution
to the puzzle. Perhaps you may even be able to do something to help
release those poor devils in there from the tie of hatred that is binding them
to this earth. At any rate, I would like to tell you my
yarn. If you care to listen. Just give me another sip of that
moose broth, will you? Raising the sick man's head, Professor parmelely fed
him a small quantity of the warm soup. Then he sat down again beside
the cot in an attitude of attention. Two. You are going to put
me down as the greatest liar since the world began, Lake said wearily.
Yet every word that I tell you is the absolute truth. My mind was
never clearer than at the present time. So don't think that what I say
to you is the raving of a disordered brain either. You have heard the
theory advanced by believers in spiritualism that some people who die suddenly persist in keeping
in touch with the earth, while others go directly to their reward. I
have seen enough to prove, but I digress. My time is short.
Let me start at the beginning. When the war broke out, I attempted
to enlist, but I was rejected on account of my physical condition nerves.
But I finally succeeded in hooking up with the Red Cross and got over.
I was gassed and later got a dose of shell shock. You know what
that means, nerves, pure and simple. It is needless to tell you
that I suffered all of the torments of hell, so will pass that up
and go on. I landed in the States a physical wreck. The doctor
sent me to the mountains. I am a wealthy man, but it suited
my mood to travel light and alone. I wandered here and there until I
finally reached this north country. I studied geology once, and while I didn't
need the money, I decided to do a little prospecting. A week or
so ago, I reached the cabin of sourde Jamison, having canoed up the
river nearly two hundred miles. I remained with the old man three days,
rested up, then announced my intention of striking off directly into the mountains.
Jamieson tried his best to dissuade me. He claimed that the Indians had a
legend that there was a valley located somewhere in the middle of the range which
was the abiding place of spirits, the valley where dead men lived, they
called it, and that nobody who entered it ever came back alive. I've
been through it and I'm out of it. But I'm no better than a
dead man. So the old legend holds good. But I hope when I
do pass out that my soul can rest in peace. God. I don't
want to spend an eternity in that hell hole back yonder. I will not
bore you with the details of my trip up the mountains, for I started
early next morning in spite of Jamieson's objections. That night, I camped halfway
up the side of the range. The next morning, that would be four
days ago, I chanced upon a little canyon that wound in and out.
Among the rocks. There were signs of gold, and I determined to explore
it thoroughly before going further. As I continued, the air grew colder.
From somewhere ahead came a dull, indescribable roar. I put it down to
a waterfall somewhere in the distance. Suddenly, after a two hour's tramp,
I reached the end of the narrow pathway and found myself on the edge of
a steep decline, ice covered, slippery, a veritable man trap, which
seemed to surround a huge, deep basin. The entire place was buried under
the pall of smoke, which hid everything from view. On all sides rose
the mountains, rugged, their peaks covered with snow, offering an impassable barrier.
The path by which I had entered seemed to be the only means of
getting in or out. Up out of the basin, there came to my
ears as a steady, rumbling boom. The air was filled with it.
The earth seemed to tremble under my feet at frequent intervals. Sometimes the noise
would die out for a second, only to start again with renewed violence.
There was nothing to be frightened at, yet I confessed that the goose pimples
came to the surface and I felt the icy chills running up and down my
spine. My hair stood up like the quills of a porcupine. The very
atmosphere seemed filled with despair, with a vague something the human mind could not
grasp. Suddenly, the wind brought to my ears a shout. Then came
a shrill, piercing, agonizing scream of a woman, a shriek that was
filled with terror and helplessness. Again and again it assailed my ears, shouting
in answer. I ran along the edge of the precipice, looking for the
pathway that would lead me to the rescue of her, who called. As
I ran along the narrow shelf of ice, I threw off my heavy pack
and carried only my rifle. Then I slipped and lost my footing. My
gun flew from my grip. I struggled to save myself, but without avail
over the slippery edge, I slid down, down, down. It seemed
to me that I rolled for miles. There was absolutely nothing which I could
grasp to stop my wild plunge, nothing but ice, ice, ice,
cold and smooth as glass. Faster and faster I went, until my speed
was that of an express train. I almost lost consciousness. I could not
think. Suddenly I struck the bottom with a force that knocked me senseless.
Three. I was awakened from my stupor by a peculiar rat hat hat that
sounded like the rattle of a drum. I opened my eyes. The air
was filled with acrid smoke. It hung over me like a great gray blanket.
Was I dead? I raised myself on my elbows and looked about me.
For an instant I imagined I was back in Flanders. Then I remembered
my fall. But where was I? The ground was covered with bodies,
heaped up in grotesque attitudes, lying in odd shaped piles. It was a
veritable charnel house, a page torn from Dante's Inferno, and such bodies peculiar,
transparent crystalline. I could see through them as one looks through a heavy
plate glass. Heavens, it was horrible, hideous. The blood, the
blood everywhere. The air rang with shrieks and groans and laughter, wild haunting
laughter that froze the marrow in my bones. Close beside me, a machine
gun was rattling, served by a sergeant and two privates wearing the olive drab.
All three were of the same peculiar grayish cast of pellucidness, as were
the bodies lying around on all sides. Guns were booming, the ground rocked
beneath them. Was I dreaming? Was I the victim of a horrible nightmare
in which my subconscious mind was again living the scenes I had gone through across
the seas. I pinched myself to make sure. I was at a loss
for an explanation. I shook like an aspen leaf. I was filled with
supernatural terror. Then something happened that gave me a better light on the matter.
Just at my right was a small knoll, scarred and pitted with machine
gun nests. Through the drab, smoky haze, I could see the ill
fitting German uniforms on the men who manned them. Across the gap which separated
them from me, a man was crawling, dragging himself along on hands and
knees. He turned his head toward me. For an instant I recognized Howard
Preston, an old friend, a captain of infantry, who had been killed
at the Argonne after silencing a number of German guns which had stopped the American
advance. Did he still live? But no? I had seen his body
the day it was buried. Was I crazy? My head whirled. I
was unable to move, so transfixed was I by what was on around me.
Suddenly I saw Preston leap forward. A dozen guns opened on him,
yet they failed to stop him. I saw him fire from the hip.
Then he leapt among the Germans with the butt end of his rifle. A
second later he hurled the weapon aside, and drawing his automatic from its holster,
he sprang into a second nest. The man seemed to bear a charmed
life. The Germans swarmed over him time after time, but after each effort
he emerged triumphant. His clothes hung on him in tatters. He was bleeding
from a dozen mounds. His face was a red smear through which his eyes
gleamed like burning coals. A German officer, a great, hulking blonde man,
fired a pistol point blank at him. It failed to stop his rush.
Both for their trench knives. They came together, locked in a death
struggle, their weapons plying like mad. Slowly, the German dropped to the
ground, a peculiar dazed look on his flat, round face. Preston turned
wearily away and beckoned as if waving for his men to move forward. Then
he crumbled up and fell forward across his victim's body. Then I knew the
truth, the horrible truth. The legend of the Indians was not fiction.
This was the valley where dead men lived. Here, men who could not
break their earthly ties came back to fight on and on until their berserker rage
had expended itself. Here they were enacting, over and over again the final
tragedy of their lives. God, it was the most diabolical thing that a
human mind could imagine. Think of it. All Over that vast plain,
in the midst of that ice bound valley, similar tragedies were being enacted by
men. Dead men race were grappling here, there, and everywhere. The
peculiar feature of it all was that I seemed to be able to see each
individual feet of valor at the same time, although they had transpired over miles
of territory. It was like looking at an immense moving picture which unreeled itself
before me. I can liken it to nothing better than one of the huge,
old fashioned panoramas that were in vogue a few years after the Civil War,
some few of which still remain in southern cities. I seemed to be
floating over the entire basin. The guns seemed to be real guns, shooting
real bullets. The cannons were monsters of steel that I had seen in France.
Yet I swear that several times I passed directly through barrages unscathed. The
weapons, like the men who served them, were only phantoms God in heaven.
It was the most horrible scene of carnage I have ever witnessed, more
awful than the hell of France and Belgium, for every detail was the result
of the terrible ire under which the combatants labored. When they met their death,
as fast as they had played their parts, they started in at the
beginning and went through it again and again, over and over, like automatons,
held to their posts by a divine decree of some kind. Words fail
me. It was so unspeakably ghastly weird, a futuristic nightmare, a bedlam
of noise and infusion, a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria of light and color. Death walked
everywhere. Remember, Professor, on a battlefield, the men do not die
in great numbers and lie around in heaps. Hours, days, sometimes weeks
pass without carnage. Even in the heat of conflict, only a small percentage
of those engaged meet death. Here it was different for miles. In every
direction there was death, death, death, nothing but cold, stark death.
Explain, I can't. My idea is as I stated before, that
man must work out his own salvation, that those who die in the heat
of anger must work that hatred off before their spirits can quit this earth.
God, in his infinite wisdom, did not care to inflict the horror upon
the hire world. So he set aside this barren hole as a place where
dead men might sever the ties which bind them here, and, with their
passion cooled, pass on to a better life. No, the man never
lived who could describe it, that cold, ice bound hell, the air
tingled with madness, and the look of awful malignity on the faces of those
poor souls as they went on and on and on through the same monotonous performance
of killing and being killed. It was butchery. The place was a slaughter
house. Ah, the deeds of valor that I saw performed wonderful, magnificent.
History will never be able to record the actual happenings, the cold blooded
bravery through the hazy heavens. Phantom airplane manned by ghostly pilots, dipped and
maneuvered, dodging falling to earth, Entangled masses, often burning gigantic balloons in
flames tossed across the clouds. Among a heap of stones, the remains of
what had once been a tiny church located in the center of an ancient graveyard,
A sniper carried on his nefarious trade, his hiding place at tomb from
which the bodies had been hurled aside, I saw a group approach the place,
grim determination written on their faces. Their beloved colonel had been the victim
of the sniper's bullets. They found him after a long search. A youngster
he had been the colonel's orderly leaped upon him. A knife, plunged up,
down, up, down, slowly, monotonously, while the screams of
him into whose body it was sinking, made the night hideous. And when
he had completed his work on the dead thing with the glassy eyes that gazed
upward unseeingly, the youngster calmly wiped his weapon on the tunic of the vanquished
foe. Oh the look of vengeance that was upon the countenances of that little
group, a shell came screaming through the heavens. They attempted to dodge to
cover, but too late, and so the awful drama went on and on
and on. There is no rest for those who dwell in the valley where
dead men live. Men fought with the ferocity of wild beasts. They were
blood mad, frenzied. A little detachment of Englishmen were laboring with automatic rifles.
Just at the edge of the wood hoods. In front of them was
a tiny veil through which wound a sunken road. On the opposite side of
the valley was another thicket, in which were a seemingly equal number of Germans.
It was a duel to the death between the two groups. Both seemed
to exhaust their ammunition at the same time. By what appeared to be mutual
consent, they left their guns and charged at each other, Meeting in the
middle of what had once been a peaceful little dell. There were not over
twenty men on either side grappling. They fought hand to hand, using knives,
clubs, stones, their revolvers, their bare hands. They were like
cave dwellers, giving no quarter and asking none. At the end, there
was no one left on either side, only a heap of dead and dying.
When it was all over, the dead arose and again went through the
monotonous performance. Four. I was hypnotized, held by a spell I could
not break. Try as I would, I seemed unable to drag myself away
from the ghastly sights. I don't know how long I remained in the Valley
of horrors. You say it was four days. Look at my hair snow
white. When I left Sourdough's cabin. My locks were dark. I am
just past thirty years of age, yet from my appearance one would swear that
I had passed threescore years and ten allotted to men. I have not slept
for the hellish panorama continued on and on and on. Only at night a
different group of actors filled the stage. The darkness was hideous, with the
roar of the big guns, the screeching of shells. Signal rockets filled the
air, as if by magic. Trenches appeared here and there, little sectors,
each with its own melancholy drama of life and death. Here was a
stretch of no man's land, with its grisly tenants. Men hung on barbed
wire, entanglements, their clothes in tatters, swaying to and fro in the
breeze, like scarecrows in a farmer's field. Once I lost consciousness fainted.
I suppose much of the time I wandered about in a daze. I knew
not which way to turn. Dead men living dead men everywhere. I dragged
myself into a tiny house that seemed to stand in the center of the valley.
It was empty. I threw myself on the floor, thinking to gain
a minute's respite from the horrors around me. I dropped into a deep sleep.
I was awakened by the sound of voices. I crouched further back in
the darkness of the corner, frightened, not daring to make a move.
What was I frightened of? I do not know. One need not fear
specters, need he There was a sound of a match being scratched, and
then a candle flared up. By its uncertain light, I made out the
figures of two men wearing the German uniform. They groped about until they found
a trapdoor cut in the floor. Raising it, they lowered themselves through the
opening, Seized by some impulse which even now I am unable to explain.
I determined to follow them. The events that transpired are inexplicable to me.
The only solution that I have for the puzzle is that, for the time
being, I was someone else, some poor devil who lost his life in
the attempt to avert a German surprise on ver Dunn. For I swear that
I was propelled by some force stronger than my own will. Cautiously, I
waited until I heard their voices trailing off in the distance. Then I sprang
to the trap, and a second later dropped through into the darkness of the
cellar. I stumbled about until I found the wall, following it with my
hands, I came to an opening. Far ahead. In the darkness,
I saw a tiny speck of light bobbing up and down. It was the
candle carried by the man I was following. Without thought of the future,
I followed in their wake. On on they went. Then suddenly the passageway
widened out into a huge cavern. Relying on the darkness, I crept closer
until I was only a few yards away from them. Hiding behind a huge
pile of boxes and barrels heaped up at one side, I listened to their
conversation. At first I was unable to understand what they were about to do.
Then, with a murmured one of them cautiously drew aside a small block
of what appeared to be solid rock, and peeping out over my hiding place,
I gazed through the little opening into a brilliantly lighted passageway. I caught
a glimpse of uniforms. Through the opening came scraps of conversation in French.
The truth flashed over me. I was looking into the underground defenses of their
done. The Germans had tunneled up to them and were waiting only for the
minute. That the defenders were the fewests to break down the tiny barrier which
held them back and throw their hordes into the very vitals of the French defense.
Even as the thought came to me, a watcher closed the opening softly,
and with a muttered word to his companion, lighted a lantern and waved
it across his body like a signal torch and a signal it was for.
Instantly, a distant whistle sounded. Then lights leapt up as far as the
eye could see, and from the distance came the tramp tramp of marching feet.
I forgot that I was dealing with phantoms. The thing was too horribly
real. I searched about me for a weapon, for some way to warn
the unsuspecting men on the other side of that frail partition. In the semi
darkness to which I was rapidly growing accustomed, my eyes fell upon an open
box. It was heaped up with hand grenades. I made out the markings
of other boxes. I almost shouted for joy, for the pile was a
huge ammunition dump, placed there by the invaders in readiness for the crucial moment.
Seizing a grenade in either hand, I pulled the pins with my teeth
and held them in readiness. Closer and closer came the German hordes. The
whole cavern and passageway was filled with them. There were thousands, it seemed.
The air was thick and heavy with the odor of their sweat. Then,
just as the head of the column reached me, I hurled the bombs
at the advancing enemy, but straight into the big pile of ammunition. The
leaders heard me, saw me. They came at me with a rush.
The ground trembled a concussion. I felt myself being hurled through the air around
me rang screams and cries of mortal agony. Then came oblivion. There is
nothing more that I can tell you how I came here. I have no
recollection. Evidently my mind a blank. I found some exit on this side
of the valley. I only know that you found me here outside. My
secret is yours. As a man of science, you will probably try and
find the way into the place from which I have come. Take my advice
and stay away. Now. I am tired, Professor, I must rest
five extract from the report of Professor Phineas Parmaly A B. L. L.
D et cetera. Mister Blake passed away shortly after completing his strange narrative.
The members of the Parmaly scientific Expedition spent nearly a week searching the vicinity
in the hope of discovering the opening through which he came from the valley,
but our efforts were fruitless. I would be tempted to put his story of
the Valley where Dead Men Live down as an hallucination resulting from his terrible experiences
during the war, But for one thing, I sent a courier by way
of Chickahoochee Pass to interview Jamison. The letter says that the date given by
Blake was correct. He crossed the mountains, as he stated, in five
days. I confessed myself puzzled. We buried poor Blake where we found him.
Rescue yat in Pass, the end of the valley where dead men live.
By Harald Ward