Page:Strange Tales Volume 02 Number 03 (1932-10).djvu/130

 One of these, he perceived with horror, was holding the limp form of Taylor. Taylor had fainted.

HE creatures bobbed about in the passage without and glared at Harvey with their small, red-rimmed eyes. When they saw that he was intent on emerging, one of them raised a tentacle and struck him a thud upon the chest which sent him sprawling. When he again raised himself his horror-struck gaze encountered an extraordinary sight. Taylor was lying prone upon the floor and one of the creatures was spraying him with a greenish fluid. This exudation drooled from the creature's mouth, a thick substance that descended in a stream on Taylor's extremities. Harvey did not immediately perceive the significance of what was taking place; he was too frightened.

But when one of the creatures seized him and began spraying him with the same sticky, evil-smelling liquid, he awoke to the seriousness of his predicament. The creatures were gluing his arms and legs together so that he would be powerless to escape, powerless to so much as move about in the enclosure.

There was no doubt in Harvey's mind that the creatures intended to imprison him in the enclosure. The gluelike substance hardened almost instantly on his arms and legs and held them in a rigid vise. So acrid was the odor that surged from it that it half strangled the breath in his throat. But worst of all, he was not permitted to assume a natural posture, but was glued into a cramped and agonized attitude, and trussed up like a beetle in amber against the wall of the chamber.

Having deposited him against the wall the octopus creatures retreated to the main passageway, and stood for an instant silently gazing in at him, their small eyes glowing with malicious satisfaction. Then they withdrew, their places being taken, after a moment, by others of their kind. For nearly an hour Harvey and Taylor, glued helplessly to the wall, were viewed and reviewed by the detestable creatures. With an insatiable curiosity they clustered about the entrance to the chamber and reveled in the sufferings and agony of their captive guests. They seemed to exude, beside the gluelike substance which dripped from their mouths, a malignancy, a hate so intense that it could actually be felt, as though it emanated in tangible vibrations from their bodies.

T last, when more than a hundred of the octopus-men had passed and repassed before the chamber, and the more agile and aggressive of the creatures, who seemed to exercise a kind of leadership, were showing evident signs of weariness, a change became evident in the proceedings. Five of the creatures congregated before the entrance and began, slowly, to make grotesque gestures in the air.

Harvey was not left long in doubt as to the meaning of their strange behavior. They were walling him up! Skilfully and with a hellish deliberation they drew out the exudation from their mouths and converted it into a finely meshed, cohesive web by the cooperative movements of five pairs of hands working in harmony with numberless tentacles. They wove the threadlike strands in and out among the tentacles, using the latter as looms, staples and shuttles, when the need arose, as it alternately did, for thicker and finer integuments. They worked with a spider-like precision and it was not long before a heavy veil spanned the entrance of the enclosure, dimming the radiance within and increasing Harvey's despair. The octopus creatures became dim shadow-shapes on