Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 04 (1942-03).djvu/88

 on a semblance of restraint—just enough to seem like belated revelers staggering home from a debauch.

We did not separate, but managed to get to West's room, where we whispered with the gas up until dawn. By then we had calmed ourselves a little with rational theories and plans for investigation, so that we could sleep through the day—classes being disregarded. But that evening two items in the paper, wholly unrelated, made it again impossible for us to sleep. The old deserted Chapman house had inexplicably burned to an amorphous heap of ashes; that we could understand because of the upset lamp. Also, an attempt had been made to disturb a new grave in the potter's field, as if by futile and spadeless clawing at the earth. That we could not understand, for we had patted down the mould very carefully.

And for seventeen years after that West would look frequently over his shoulder, and complain of fancied footsteps behind him.

Now he has disappeared.

HIS black, lush night has bloomed its span. Foredoomed, it plops into the insatiate maw of Time the carnivore whose hideous claw Plucks at our hours. Hot breathed since we began

To savor living, squeeze its essence, taste Its sharp intoxication, ghoulish Time Has snorted at our heels. In luscious prime He tears our pleasures from us. One we raced

To save from this life-lusting beast one night, One moment only. All our mortal days Are swallowed. But no finite food allays This hunger, vast, illimitable, bright.

While blear-eyed mortals vainly clutch their hours, With neither slack nor pause, lewd Time devours.