Page:Weird Tales Volume 23 Number 2 (1934-02).djvu/123



WILD and stifling fear contended with a wilder hope in Phariom's bosom. Trembling, he went toward the table ; and a cold clamminess, wrought by the presence of the dead, assailed him. The table was nearly thirty feet in length, and it rose waist-high on a dozen mighty legs. Beginning at the nearer end, he passed along the row of corpses, peering fearfully into each upturned face. Both sexes, and many ages and differing ranks were represented. Nobles and rich merchants were crowded by beggars in filthy rags. Some were newly dead, and others, it seemed, had lain there for days, and were beginning to show the marks of corruption. There were many gaps in the ordered row, suggesting that certain of the corpses had been removed. Phariom went on in the dim light, searching for the loved features of Elaith. At last, when he was nearing the further end, and had begun to fear that she was not among them, he found her.

With the cryptic pallor and stillness of her strange malady upon her, she lay unchanged on the chill stone. A great thankfulness was born in the heart of Phariom, for he felt sure that she was not dead—and that she had not awakened at any time to the horrors of the temple. If he could bear her away from the hateful purlieus without detection, she would recover from her death-simulating sickness. He stooped over to lift her in his arms.

At that moment, he heard a murmur of low voices in the direction of the door by which he had entered the sanctuary. Thinking that some of the priests had returned, he dropped swiftly on hands and knees and crawled beneath the ponderous table, which afforded the only accessible hiding-place. Retreating into shadow, he waited and looked out between the pillar-thick legs.

The voices grew louder, and he saw the curiously sandalled feet and shortish robes of three persons who approached the table of the dead and paused in the very spot where he himself had stood a few instants before. Who they were, he could not surmise; but their garments of light and swarthy red were not the shroudings of Mordiggian's priests. He was uncertain whether or not they had seen him; and crouching in the low space beneath the table, he plucked his dagger from its sheath

This vivid weird tale of a ghoulish cult and the great black shadow that welled up into hideous being in the temple of Mordiggian will be printed complete in the March number of

A tale of goose-flesh horror in the jungles of Borneo—a story of stark terror and the strange doom of an evil white man.

An eery story of the frightful punishment that overtook a scientist who bred poisonous African insects to kill his friend.

A colossal thrill-tale of the distant future, when our Earth and the other planets leave the dying sun on a stupendous voyage to distant stars in search of light and heat.

An unusual story of a bronze fist and the weird train of circumstances surrounding a mysterious murder in a New Orleans artist's studio.

Gregor awoke to a terrifying gray dawn, in which there was no color, and life was terribly changed. A story that you will long remember.