Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 03 (1935-09).djvu/3



UDWIG MEUSEL rolled over irritably in the four-poster he had carved with his own hands. It had been the intention of the German wood-carver to ask his wife to come to bed. Five minutes before, she had turned out the light.

"Mona," he started to grumble, only to have the word die in his suddenly tight throat.

Meusel's plump body went rigid with terror. His Mona—what had happened to her? Fragmentary dark tales he had heard as a boy in Germany leapt into his mind. Tales of witchcraft, of werewolves. But how could such things touch his Mona, mother of his four children? And here in America?

A ray from the street light at the corner toched her lovely face and soft, midnight hair. By its faint radiance, her fair face was seemingly drained of all color. Her eyes were wide and dark with horror as she stared at her own reflection in the full-length mirror.

Meusel stared dazedly from the reflection to the woman, cold chills darting down his spine. No light touched her body, which was covered with a diaphanous nightgown. It was in shadow; and yet it was visible like a marble statue on which a pale-blue light was cast.

Visible? No, more than that—it glowed! Glowed with a faintly blue radiance! And the reflection in the mirror also glowed with a bluish light.

Meusel felt the hair rising on his head as his eyes darted about the room. No optical illusion, this! There was no other light save the ray which touched his wife's face and hair—and it was yellow, not blue. There was no mirror which could throw the light on her body, save the one into which she stared with a horrified fascination.

Overwhelming was his desire to cry out: "Mona! Vat is? Effen in darkness your body is more bright than by day! Mein Gott!"

But Meusel's lips would not move, his tight throat would make no sound. Fear pinched his heart with icy fingers, as forgotten stories flashed in a dark procession through his mind. She had done something wrong, and this was her punishment? She was in league with unnamable creatures of the darkness? His gentle Mona! He could not believe it!

No! If she were evil, she would know! And yet she stared at her reflection with terror-wide eyes. She had discovered perhaps when she had turned out the light that her body glowed bluely in the mirror. She had stepped to the mirror, unbelieving, frightened. And now she could not draw her eyes away.

Meusel shuddered. Strong was his desire to flee from this thing which he did not understand. But he had been proud of his beautiful young wife. That pride even at this moment surmounted the clammy repugnance and fear which gripped him.

"Mona," he said in a voice he contrived to make petulant, "ain't you coming to bed, yet?"