Title: The Pool of the Stone God
Author: Abraham Merritt
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Language: English
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Date first posted: June 2006
Date most recently updated: June 2006

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                       THE POOL OF THE STONE GOD
                                                     by

                                       Abraham Merritt
                       (written under the pseudonym W. Fenimore)

This is Professor James Marston's story. A score of learned bodies have courteously heard him tell it,
and then among themselves have lamented that so brilliant a man should have such an obsession.
Professor Marston told it to me in San Francisco, just before he started to find the island that holds his
pool of the stone god and--the wings that guard it. He seemed to me very sane. It is true that the
equipment of his expedition was unusual, and not the least curious part of it are the suits of fine chain mail
and masks and gauntlets with which each man of the party is provided.

The five of us, said Professor Marston, sat side by side on the beach. There was Wilkinson the first
officer, Bates and Cassidy the two seamen, Waters the pearler and myself. We had all been on our way
to New Guinea, I to study the fossils for the Smithsonian. The Moranus had struck the hidden reef the
night before and had sunk swiftly. We were then, roughly, about five hundred miles northeast of the
Guinea coast. The five of us had managed to drop a lifeboat and get away. The boat was well stocked
with water and provisions. Whether the rest of the crew had escaped we did not know. We had sighted
the island at dawn and had made for her. The lifeboat was drawn safely up on the sands.

"We'd better explore a bit, anyway," said Waters. "This may be a perfect place for us to wait rescue. At
least until the typhoon season is over. We've our pistols. Let's start by following this brook to its source,
look over the place and then decide what we'll do."
The trees began to thin out. We saw ahead an open space. We reached it and stopped in sheer
amazement. The clearing was perfectly square and about five hundred feet wide. The trees stopped
abruptly at its edges as though held back by something unseen.

But it was not this singular impression that held us. At the far end of the square were a dozen stone huts
clustered about one slightly larger. They reminded me powerfully of those prehistoric structures you see
in parts of England and France. I approach now the most singular thing about this whole singular and
sinister place. In the center of the space was a pool walled about with huge blocks of cut stone. At the
side of the pool rose a great stone figure, carved in the semblance of a man with outstretched hands. It
was at least twenty feet high and was extremely well executed. At the distance the statue seemed nude
and yet it had a peculiar effect of drapery about it. As we drew nearer we saw that it was covered from
ankles to neck with the most extraordinary carved wings. They looked exactly like bat wings when they
were folded.

There was something extremely disquieting about this figure. The face was inexpressibly ugly and
malignant. The eyes, Mongol-shaped, slanted evil. It was not from the face, though, that this feeling
seemed to emanate. It was from the body covered with wings-and especially from the wings. They were
part of the idol and yet they gave one the idea that they were clinging to it.

Cassidy, a big brute of a man, swaggered up to the idol and laid his hand on it. He drew it away quickly,
his face white, his mouth twitching. I followed him and conquering my unscientific repugnance, examined
the stone. It, like the huts and in fact the whole place, was clearly the work of that forgotten race whose
monuments are scattered over the Southern Pacific. The carving of the wings was wonderful. They were
batlike, as I have said, folded and each ended in a little ring of conventionalized feathers. They ranged in
size from four to ten inches. I ran my fingers over one. Never have I felt the equal of the nausea that sent
me to my knees before the idol. The wing had felt like smooth, cold stone, but I had the sensation of
having touched back of the stone some monstrous obscene creature of a lower world. The sensation
came of course, I reasoned, only from the temperature and texture of the stone-and yet this did not really
satisfy me.

Dusk was soon due. We decided to return to the beach and examine the clearing further on the morrow.
I desired greatly to explore the stone huts.

We started back through the forest. We walked some distance and then night fell. We lost the brook.
After a half hour's wandering we heard it again. We started for it. The trees began to thin out and we
thought we were approaching the beach. Then Waters clutched my arm. I stopped. Directly in front of us
was the open space with the stone god leering under the moon and the green water shining at his feet!

We had made a circle. Bates and Wilkinson were exhausted. Cassidy swore that devils or no devils he
was going to camp that night beside the pool!

The moon was very bright. And it was so very quiet. My scientific curiosity got the better of me and I
thought I would examine the huts. I left Bates on guard and walked over to the largest. There was only
one room and the moonlight shining through the chinks in the wall illuminated it clearly. At the back were
two small basins set in the stone. I looked in one and saw a faint reddish gleam reflected from a number
of globular objects. I drew a half dozen of them out. They were pearls, very wonderful pearls of a
peculiarly rosy hue. I ran toward the door to call Bates-and stopped!

My eyes had been drawn to the stone idol. Was it an effect of the moonlight or did it move? No, it was
the wings! They stood out from the stone and waved-they waved, I say, from the ankles to the neck of
that monstrous statue.
Bates had seen them, too. He was standing with his pistol raised. Then there was a shot. And after that
the air was filled with a rushing sound like that of a thousand fans. I saw the wings loose themselves from
the stone god and sweep down in a cloud upon the four men. Another cloud raced up from the pool and
joined them. I could not move. The wings circled swiftly around and about the four. All were now on
their feet and I never saw such horror as was in their faces.

Then the wings closed in. They clung to my companions as they had clung to the stone.

I fell back into the hut. I lay there through the night insane with terror. Many times I heard the fan-like
rushing about the enclosure, but nothing entered my hut. Dawn came, and silence, and I dragged myself
to the door. There stood the stone god with the wings carved upon him as we had seen him ten hours
before!

I ran over to the four lying on the grass. I thought that perhaps I had had a nightmare. But they were
dead. That was not the worst of it. Each man was shrunken to his bones! They looked like collapsed
white balloons. There was not a drop of blood in them. They were nothing but bones wrapped around in
thin skin!

Mastering myself, I went close to the idol. There was something different about it. It seemed larger-as
though, the thought went through my mind, as though it had eaten. Then I saw that it was covered with
tiny drops of blood that had dropped from the ends of the wings that clothed it!

I do not remember what happened afterward. I awoke on the pearling schooner Luana which had picked
me up, crazed with thirst as they supposed in the boat of the Moranus.

                                              THE END