Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Issue 01 (1936-01).djvu/114

112 inverted and placed upon the earth, with the summit of the mountain touching its spangled center.

Suddenly the priest spoke to his companions.

"See, my friends, there lies the Feldenpflanz dwelling. When we enter let us conduct ourselves with fitting dignity and propriety. We must not speak to the bereaved frulein when we enter, but gather around the coffin and pray with her. We must not disturb her.”

So it was. The big house, white-painted and gabled and surrounded by gardens, lay just before them. Marring the pure, solid color of the walls and the big front door hung a significant black ribbon. The calm hush was very pronounced here. In a window near the front door there twinkled a single electric light, the only one in the town of Rotfemberg. The unschooled villagers had always been amazed by the electric fixtures and the apparatus in Feldenpflanz’s home and laboratory.

All silent, the group of men reached the end of the path and tried the door. It was open, and quietly they entered. Father Josef in the lead. They passed through a long, dark hall, at the end of which was a door leading into the parlor. Light gleamed through the crack along the floor. As they approached they heard the muffled sound of low praying, mingled with sobs.

Father Josef opened the door carefully and tiptoed in, followed by the five other villagers. They crossed themselves in unison.

By a simple, black coffin of wood knelt Fraulein Feldenpflanz. Under her knees was a cushion to make possible long vigils. Her face was hidden by her long, black hair, and her head hung low over the bier. Her pale lips moved constantly. At the head of the coffin, in spite of the electric light, burned a candle; the whole coffin itself was covered with mountain blooms. The heavy, cloying odor peculiar to death did not hang in the air, however. The kneeling woman cast one vacant, tearful glance at the entering men and resumed her former attitude.

The six men came close to the coffin and gazed down upon its occupant. There lay Herr Feldenpflanz, calm and handsome and indeed very life-like, dressed in a suit made by the tailor himself. They all knelt around the bier and prayed.

lay there, Feldenpflanz, terrified by his predicament, could think of only one thing—escape. And one word echoed and re-echoed through his brain—catalepsy, catalepsy!

For hours he had been forced to listen to his sister’s prayers and tears; long hour after hour he heard his death mourned, and was unable to move. He felt his own heart-beat, very slow and very gentle so that no one would be able to detect it; but it sent the blood through his numbed brain, sustaining consciousness, so that, aware of all that went on, he could know the pangs of mortal fear and the bittersweet of faint hope. "Help! Help!” he tried to shout, but his mind alone formed the words; his lips defied his will.

An educated man, he knew the danger of his state. A chance existed that he might regain control of his limbs before he was buried—buried alive. Consciousness was a good sign, he knew. If now he could force his body to obey his will, the final stage of recovery from this dreadful malady, he would be saved; he would return to the world he loved, to life and living, to his sister Maria.

And then a terrifying thought flashed through his head. He realized that inevitably, if not soon, the air in his coffin would be exhausted! The oxygen of the Rh