Page:Weird Tales Volume 24 Issue 4 (1934-10).djvu/67

 on either side, I began to take note of the strangeness of his attire—or rather the lack of it. In spite of the bitter cold, the whole of the upper portion of his body was devoid of clothing, though I thought I could detect part of a coarse, shaggy, reddish-brown garment—which I at the time assumed to be a pair of trousers—extending from above his waist downward, until it was hidden by the window-sill. His hair was long and unkempt, falling in matted ringlets to his shoulders. On his head was what appeared to be a low-crowned, fantastic helmet decorated with a pair of huge stag's antlers, giving him an appearance that was at once grotesque and demoniacal.

"Until that moment I had never regarded myself as a superstitious man, and it was with a sub-conscious feeling very much like self-contempt that I found myself shivering and trembling like the rawest yokel when confronted with a thing beyond the scope of his shallow understanding. My very fears spurred me to action. I gained my feet with a jerk and advanced toward the window—advanced, as it seemed, through timeless eons, until I was gazing into the luminous, beast-like eyes of the nameless Thing, with but the thickness of the leaded panes between us—until I could see die slow and regular heaving of the massive chest and note the glistening of the melted snowflakes as they trickled down the knotted muscles.

"It seemed unbelievable that such a fearsome shape should draw the breath of life and radiate animal heat like a normal living thing, yet I felt some measure of confidence as I noted these natural signs. I did not stop to ask myself what devilish arts must have been employed to bring that erstwhile shattered and disembowelled body back to life; it was enough to know that it was no pale, bloodless phantom come from the grave in that dreadful guise to tax me with my crime. It lived! It breathed!—it might even be endowed with speech

"'Who are you?' I cried in a voice I scarcely recognized as my own. 'What do you want here?'

"'I am the man who in life was known as Crazy Jake—the man you slew by foul and damnable treachery!' came the answer, muffled by the intervening glass, yet every word falling on my heart like drops of ice-cold water. 'Look upon me and tremble, Silas Marie! For I, being dead, live again! In tumult and rending fire I was hurled to. my doom—I come again in the silent watches of the night, creeping like a shadow drifted by the moon, slaying swift and sure as the shrouded Angel of Death whom I have gazed on face to face! Look to yourself, murderer! The poor puzzle-brained Jake has passed through the halls of death, and has returned, strong, virile, cunning, and thirsting for revenge!"

"I listened like a man in a dream as the creature threw back his elf-locks and sent a maniacal laugh ringing out into the frozen night.

"'Ho! ho! ho! You've had your hour of triumph, Silas Marie—mine is still to come! These eyes, once glazed and lifeless, shall seek you out. These hands, once cold and stiff, shall send a dagger-thrust into your false heart—aye, and tear it smoking from your body and glut my vengeance with a feast of blood! The poor and friendless wanderer has been transformed into a being such as the eye of man has not looked upon before. I am a king!—a god!—a monster!—the Demon Monarch of the Moor! Fleet as the hunted hare—wary as the prowling fox —fierce as the bayed stag, I sweep like the wind over the broad bosom of my desolate domain, hunting by the glimpses W.T.—5