Pigeons from Hell

by Robert E. Howard
Published May 1938 in Weird Tales. The copyright has expired
because the registration was filed by an incorrect entity and thus
invalidated (see "The copyright and ownership status of works and
words of Robert E. Howard" by Paul Herman
http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought4ws02.html ).
Contents
1 The Whistler in the Dark
2 The Snake's Brother
3 The Call of Zuvembie

The Whistler in the Dark
Griswell awoke suddenly, every nerve tingling with a premonition of
imminent peril. He stared about wildly, unable at first to remember
where he was, or what he was doing there. Moonlight filtered in
through the dusty windows, and the great empty room with its lofty
ceiling and gaping black fireplace was spectral and unfamiliar. Then as
he emerged from the clinging cobwebs of his recent sleep, he
remembered where he was and how he came to be there. He twisted his
head and stared at his companion, sleeping on the floor near him. John
Branner was but a vaguely bulking shape in the darkness that the moon
scarcely grayed.
Griswell tried to remember what had awakened him. There was no
sound in the house, no sound outside except the mournful hoot of an
owl, far away in the piny woods. Now he had captured the illusive
memory. It was a dream, a nightmare so filled with dim terror that it
had frightened him awake. Recollection flooded back, vividly etching

the abominable vision.
Or was it a dream? Certainly it must have been, but it had blended so
curiously with recent actual events that it was difficult to know where
reality left off and fantasy began.
Dreaming, he had seemed to relive his past few waking hours, in
accurate detail. The dream had begun, abruptly, as he and John Branner
came in sight of the house where they now lay. They had come rattling
and bouncing over the stumpy, uneven old road that led through the
pinelands, he and John Branner, wandering far afield from their New
England home, in search of vacation pleasure. They had sighted the old
house with its balustraded galleries rising amidst a wilderness of weeds
and bushes, just as the sun was setting behind it. It dominated their
fancy, rearing black and stark and gaunt against the low lurid rampart
of sunset, barred by the black pines.
They were tired, sick of bumping and pounding all day over woodland
roads. The old deserted house stimulated their imagination with its
suggestion of antebellum splendor and ultimate decay. They left the
automobile beside the rutty road, and as they went up the winding walk
of crumbling bricks, almost lost in the tangle of rank growth, pigeons
rose from the balustrades in a fluttering, feathery crowd and swept
away with a low thunder of beating wings.
The oaken door sagged on broken hinges. Dust lay thick on the floor of
the wide, dim hallway, on the broad steps of the stair that mounted up
from the hall. They turned into a door opposite the landing, and entered
a large room, empty, dusty, with cobwebs shining thickly in the corners.
Dust lay thick over the ashes in the great fireplace.
They discussed gathering wood and building a fire, but decided against
it. As the sun sank, darkness came quickly, the thick, black, absolute
darkness of the pinelands. They knew that rattlesnakes and copperheads
haunted Southern forests, and they did not care to go groping for
firewood in the dark. They ate frugally from tins, then rolled in their
blankets fully clad before the empty fireplace, and went instantly to
sleep.

This, in part, was what Griswell had dreamed. He saw again the gaunt
house looming stark against the crimson sunset; saw the flight of the
pigeons as he and Branner came up the shattered walk. He saw the dim
room in which they presently lay, and he saw the two forms that were
himself and his companion, lying wrapped in their blankets on the
dusty floor. Then from that point his dream altered subtly, passed out of
the realm of the commonplace and became tinged with fear. He was
looking into a vague, shadowy chamber, lit by the gray light of the
moon which streamed in from some obscure source. For there was no
window in that room. But in the gray light he saw three silent shapes
that hung suspended in a row, and their stillness and their outlines
woke chill horror in his soul. There was no sound, no word, but he
sensed a Presence of fear and lunacy crouching in a dark corner. . . .
Abruptly he was back in the dusty, high-ceilinged room, before the
great fireplace.
He was lying in his blankets, staring tensely through the dim door and
across the shadowy hall, to where a beam of moonlight