Page:The Thrill Book Volume 1 Issue 1 (1919-03-01).djvu/7

THE THRILL BOOK made use of the Light, in its artificial form, to nullify the forces of evil which I knew were abroad.

Vera’s story, as nearly in her own words as I can remember it, runs as follows.

Y parents were Russian, and I was born in Russia.

Coming under political suspicion because he had consorted with men not in his own class, my father was given to understand that he would be wise to leave the country. Converting into gold his large holdings, he took my mother and me and came to America. Serge Vassilovitch, one of the men with whom my father’s association had brought him into disrepute, followed us in the course of three years. As they had both been students of the occult arts, in which my father had grown deeply interested, he was welcomed with open arms and given a home with us.

I was about ten years old. I spoke English fluently, having had an English governess, a good but stupid soul. I had never known anything but happiness in all my short life; always I had seen my mother laughing and my father good-humored. Therefore, I remember with what amazement I began to note my mother’s face grow sad when she thought she was alone and with what dismay I discovered her more than once weeping. All this was after the arrival of Serge Vassilovitch.

My mother hid her trouble from my father, and it was not until long afterward that I learned the reason for her tears. Serge Vassilovitch loved my mother, and desired to take her away from my father, whom, however, she never ceased to love. He urged his guilty love upon her, only to be rebuffed repeatedly. Finally he swore that my mother should some day go to his arms whether she wanted to or not, and for some time he left her in peace. Then it was that my mother began to look sad and to weep in secret more than before, for my father fell so deeply under the spell of our evil genius that whatever Serge Vassilovitch proposed to him was as though foreordained. This condition of affairs went on for four years. I had grown to be tall and womanly and a companion to my dear mother, for I was seventeen years old when affairs reached a climax.

My father went so deeply into the study of the occult arts with Serge that it became his own and our undoing. Night after night they pored over unhallowed books of magic, and although I am sure Serge knew well what he was about my poor father was more weak and curious than he was wicked. He fell so entirely under the evil spell of that incarnation of Satan that he finally arrived at a place where he could not break with him, and actually believed everything Serge told him, even to entertaining suspicions of my dear mother. He drew up a will, as we discovered afterward, naming Serge my guardian and leaving in those hands all that should have been ours in trust; this shows you how deeply he believed in that vile man.

One day Serge’s mad passion broke bounds; his years of restraint made him madder than ever before. He caught my mother to him, kissing her and holding her to him until she lost her strength and fell from him in an agony of shame at her weakness. She turned on him at last, then, telling him that another day should not pass before her husband should know how his friend had abused his confidence. Serge laughed at her scornfully. She told him that he must leave her roof at once, and he apparently acceded to her request. But although she little realized it, her momentary generosity in covering up the matter in her anxiety not to trouble my father became her undoing.

The following morning a child's body, mangled dreadfully as though by the teeth of a savage dog, was found in our grounds. We kept no dog, therefore suspicion did not attach to our household. But my father was closeted with Serge for hours after that discovery, and afterward he shut himself into his library, admitting no one. In the afternoon he came into my mother’s room, where we sat embroidering, and kissed us both with a tender gravity which I felt portended something unusual. He laid a sealed envelope in my mother’s lap, requesting her not to open it until circumstances seemed to demand it. Strange request! While my mother still sat staring with puzzled face at the envelope we heard a muffled shot. We ran down and pushed open the library door. Oh, my poor father! He had died, an innocent victim to that unmentionable devil whose evil influence had ruined all our lives. In his hand he still held the revolver with which he had hoped to purchase immunity for us from what he feared might be our fate.

After the agony of that experience was over my mother wanted to take me away, but our stern, implacable guardian refused to permit me to go, and my mother would not leave me, for she had already learned of Serge’s further perfidy from my father’s letter, and she dared not leave me with him.

My father’s letter remained a sad secret with my mother during the year that we had together. During that year my poor mother was tortured in every conceivable manner imaginable by Serge Vassilovitch. Fearing both for me and for herself, she never left me alone for a moment, yet even in my presence that monster never desisted from inviting her to his arms with a cynicism that in itself was sufficiently revolting to a high-souled woman. It was toward the end of that first year of her widowhood that my mother learned the inner meaning of my father’s letter—learned it from Serge’s own lips.

My poor father had been the victim of a most vile plot, and had taken his own life in the belief that in so doing he was expiating his unconscious crime. Under Serge Vassilovitch’s spell, he had been led to believe that, owing to the magic arts they had practiced together, the power of metamorphosis into the form of a wolf had been bestowed upon him by certain evil powers. Serge had himself killed the child, and had shown the mangled body to my father, declaring that in the form of a wolf my poor parent had destroyed and torn the innocent. Imagine the consternation and horror of a high-minded man who had unwisely permitted himself to dabble in magic arts that had brought him to such a pass. His remorse was terrible. He felt that, having unconsciously committed one such crime, he might in future commit others. He believed there was but one way out and like a true and noble gentleman he took that