The Judges of Hades: And Other Simon Ark Stories

145 Pages·2013·0.92 MB·English

by  Hoch Edward D

The Judges of Hades
And Other Simon Ark Stories
Edward D. Hoch
For Bob Lowndes, who first discovered the Simon Ark stories and their author.
CONTENTS
Introduction by Hans Stefan Santesson: THE CASE OF SIMON ARK
VILLAGE OF THE DEAD
THE HOUR OF NONE
THE WITCH IS DEAD
SWORD FOR A SINNER
THE JUDGES OF HADES
THE CASE OF SIMON ARK
HERE IS A MAN who does little more than at times, if pressed, admit to being close
to two thousand years old (“I was fifty when the Emperor Galerius was on his
deathbed at Nicomedia.”), and—with the authority of the past—he will curse the
Satanist in the language Christ’s disciples in Egypt knew as he relentlessly,
ceaselessly, seeks out Evil, wherever he can find it, in order to destroy it.
No. He is not the Wandering Jew. He is a Copt, almost certainly a one-time
priest, who has been denied the grace of dying but has instead been condemned
—is there another word for it?—to hunt down the Forces of Evil, wherever these
may be found, century after century, while those around him would grow old
and would eventually die.
There has been extraordinary reader interest in this man who, though he
claims no powers, and exercises no powers, obviously has the charisma, if I may
use that word, of a man who seems to have been condemned to live forever. …
Many of the Ark stories have been reprinted, time and time again—I
reprinted or ran some of them in The Saint, for that matter—but what has
fascinated me, professionally, is how long-lived these stories have been—how
people know Edward Hoch, despite his later and frequent sales to E.Q.M.M. and
A.H.M.M. more as the author of these Ark stories, published ten-twelve-fourteen
years ago, than as a regular cover name on the above cited and other magazines.
These stories, “Village of the Dead,” “The Witch Is Dead,” “The Judges of
Hades,” “The Hour of None,” and “Sword for a Sinner,” ignoring for the
moment the sensationalism of the titles, describe a man whom readers remember
and talk about and, I know, would like to read about again!
— Hans Stefan Santesson
VILLAGE OF THE DEAD
PERHAPS, IF YOU’RE OLD enough, you remember the Gidaz Horror. At least that
was the name the newspapers gave it during those early days when the story
shocked the world.
I was near Gidaz when the thing happened, and I suppose I was one of the
first to reach the village. I went without sleep for forty-eight hours to get the
story and then I never could use it. All these years I’ve thought about it, and I
guess sooner or later I just had to tell someone.
So this is the way it happened, that day in Gidaz. …
I was at the state capitol, covering a political story, when the flash came in. We
crowded around the teletype in the press room and watched the words as they
formed on the yellow paper:… THE TINY VILLAGE OF GIDAZ, IN THE
SOUTHERN PART OF THE STATE, WAS THE SCENE TODAY OF AN
APPARENT MASS SUICIDE. A MAIL TRUCK, ARRIVING IN THE
VILLAGE THIS MORNING, FOUND THE HOUSES DESERTED, AND, AT
THE BASE OF A HUNDRED-FOOT CLIFF NEARBY, SCORES OF BODIES
WERE FOUND AMONG THE ROCKS. …
That was all. There was more to follow, but none of us waited to see it. Ten
minutes later we were in a car heading south, toward the village of Gidaz, eighty
miles away.
It was almost evening when we arrived, but there were no lights in the
village. The streets and the few dozen houses that clustered around them were
dark and silent. It was as if the entire population had suddenly vanished.
And in a way it had.
We found people and cars at the edge of the village, but the people were not
toiling silently, as at the scene of a train wreck or a fire. They only stood at the
edge of the cliff and looked down at the rocks below.
We joined them at the edge, and I saw it, too. In the reflected glare of a
dozen headlights and in the dying glow of the setting sun, I saw the bodies on
the rocks below. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, men, women,
and children. I could almost imagine a giant hand sweeping them over the edge
to their death.
Presently we made our way down the steep path to the bottom, and men
began to set up floodlights for the long job ahead. They were piled on top of
each other, among the pointed rocks that stretched upward toward the sky.
“Think any of them could be alive?” I heard myself asking.
“Not a chance. A hundred feet is a long way to fall, especially with rocks
like these at the bottom.”
“Yeah. …”
And they began moving the bodies. An old man with his skull shattered by
the fall, a girl with her neck broken. …
They carried them from the rocks and laid the bodies in neat rows on the
ground. Soon there were only the red-stained rocks remaining. And I counted the
bodies, along with the others. “Seventy-three.”
“Seventy-three. …”
A state trooper joined the group at the foot of the cliff. “We’ve gone
through every house in the village; there’s not a living thing up there. …”
“The entire village walked over the edge of that cliff sometime last night.
…”
After that the deserted village of Gidaz was alive with reporters and
photographers from all over the country. They wrote a million words about the
Gidaz Horror. Seventy-three people, the entire population of the village of
Gidaz, had committed suicide by walking off the edge of a cliff. Why? What had
driven them to it? That was the question we all wanted to answer.
But there was no answer.
A New York paper compared it to an incident during the Napoleonic Wars,
when a charging cavalry had ridden over the edge of a cliff before they realized
their error. A national magazine brought up the legend of the Pied Piper, and
suggested that some supernatural force had lured them to their death.
But still there was no answer.
The houses were searched for clues, but yielded nothing. In some places,
food was still on the table. In others, people had been preparing for bed. It must
have been around eight o’clock when something brought them from their houses.
There were no notes or messages remaining. Apparently they had planned to
return when they left their houses for the last time.
But they had not returned. …
I was the first one to think of digging into the background of the town, and I
spent most of the first night in the deserted building that had once held town
meetings. There were records here—records and memories of days past, when
Gidaz had been founded, by a group of settlers pushing westward. It had been
named after one of them, and had grown rapidly after the discovery of gold
nearby.
I studied one of the old maps I found, and decided that the gold mines must
have been almost at the spot where those seventy-three persons had plunged over
the cliff to their deaths.
It was while I was looking at the map that I suddenly became aware that I
was not alone in the old building. I turned and pointed my flashlight at a dark
corner, and a tall man stepped out of the shadows. “Good evening,” he said
quietly.
“Who are you?”
“My name is not important, but you may call me Simon Ark if you wish.”
“Simon Ark?”
“That is correct,” the stranger replied. “And now may I ask who you are?”
“I’m a reporter, a newspaper reporter. I came down from the state capitol to
cover the story.”
“Ah, and you thought you might find something in the old records of the
village? I also had a similar thought.”
The man called Simon Ark had advanced closer now, and I could make out
his features clearly in the light from my flash. He was not old, and yet his face
had tiny lines of age to be seen if one looked closely enough. In a way he was
perhaps a very handsome man, and yet I somehow could not imagine women
ever being attracted to him.
“Are you a writer or something?” I asked him.
“No, I am simply an investigator; I make a hobby of investigating any
strange or unexplained happenings in the world.”
“How did you manage to get here so quickly?”
“I was in the area, just across the state line, on another mission. I would
have been here sooner, but it is very difficult to reach Gidaz by road.”
“It certainly is. The village is almost completely cut off from the rest of the
town. Ever since the gold mines died out, the place has been almost a ghost
town.”
“And yet,” Simon Ark said quietly, “there were seventy-three people
remaining here. Why did they remain, I wonder. Why didn’t they leave this
dying village?”
“They’ve left it now,” I said; “they left it last night when they walked over
that cliff.”
“Yes. …” And the man called Simon Ark left the ancient building. I
followed him outside, to see where he would go.
He was a strange man, strange in many ways. He seemed almost to be from
another world or another time as he walked slowly along the dirt road that led
through the center of the dead village.
The reporters and the police had already searched the houses, but he
seemed to be looking for something more. …
Soon, he had almost disappeared in the darkness, and I hurried after him. When I
finally reached him, he was bending over a dark spot on the ground. I could see
only by the light of the moon overhead, but he seemed excited by what he had
found.
“There has been a fire here recently,” he said, almost to himself. He pulled
something from the ashes and attempted to brush it off. It looked as if it had
once been a book, but in the dim light it was impossible to tell more.
I had not realized the utter silence of the night around us until that moment,
when it was suddenly shattered by the distant sound of an approaching car.
“Someone’s coming,” I said.
“Odd. …” And a strange expression passed quickly over the face of Simon
Ark.
He pushed the remains of the charred book into his topcoat pocket and
walked back toward the dirt road.
Somewhere above, a cloud passed over the moon, and for the moment all
was darkness. Then the night was broken by the gleam of two headlights moving
slowly along the road.
Simon Ark stepped in front of the car and held up both hands, like some
ancient high priest calling upon the gods above. A chill ran down my spine as I
watched him.
The car, a light green convertible, came to an abrupt halt, and a girl climbed
out from behind the wheel. “Are you the police?” she asked him.
“No, only an investigator. This other gentleman is a reporter.” She noticed
me then for the first time, and the tense look on her face softened.
“I’m Shelly Constance,” she said. “I… I used to live here.”
Simon Ark introduced himself. “You had a family still living here in
Gidaz?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. … My father and brother. … I… I heard on the radio what happened
last night. I came as soon as I could. …”
“It would have been wiser to stay away,” Simon Ark told her. “Your father
and brother are beyond all worldly aid now, and the evil of Gidaz still fills the
air, mingled now with the odor of death.”