Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 12 (1943-07).djvu/69

68 from its mouth. Fled across country, between lonely farmhouses, stumbling in blind panic over fallen branches and bruising his shins on stone fences and ramshackle stiles.

He was halfway to the college when he became aware of footsteps pounding at his heels. Reluctantly he slowed up, allowing Cummings and O’Rourke to overtake him.

O’Rourke was out of breath from running. "The garlic worked,” he panted. "It protected us. But we’ve got to rouse the dormitory and distribute necklaces to all the students. It’s loose for the night! That ghastly thing is loose!”

"Sharp’s dead,” contributed Cummings, his face ghastly white. "The vampire slashed open his throat and then tried to attack us. But the garlic hurled it back. The last we saw of it it had turned into a bat. It was circling upward and heading for the college, Limerick.”

Limerick muttered: "I don’t see how in hell a little sprig of garlic could do that.”

ALLY SHERWIN was powdering her nose when she heard the tapping. Unmistakably it was coming from just outside her window—a persistent tapping on the screen.

An irritable frown creased her attractive features. She was sitting before her dresser with her back to the screen. Her coiffure was flawless, but there were still some things she wanted to do to her face. She needed at least ten more minutes to transform herself into a really glamorous person.

It was very annoying. Why couldn’t Cummings wait? He was always ahead of time.

He just didn’t seem to realize that no girl likes to be rushed into keeping a date. Especially a furtive, against-the-rules date which included descending from the window into the arms of a man.

She said without turning around: "All right, Empty. Don’t be impatient.”

The tapping ceased abruptly. There was an instant of silence and then a faint whisper drifted into the room.

"Why can’t I come in, Sally? It’s chilly out here?”

Sally straightened in indigationindignation [sic]. She wasn’t conventional or prudish, but she bridled at the thought that perhaps Cummings didn’t respect her. He had kept her out late, scandalously late, and now he was urging her to risk expulsion by inviting a man into the girl’s dormitory.

"No, you can’t come in,” she said. "You’ll have to wait. Take a walk around the campus, if you’re cold.”

"Be reasonable, Sally. You’ve finished dressing. I’ll climb in without making a sound.”

"No, go away. You ought to be ashamed to even suggest such a thing.”

"If I go away, Sally, I may not come back.”

Sally Sherwin bit her lip. She was just crazy enough about the big, handsome, athletic Cummings not to want to lose him.

"All right,” she said. "You can come in. But you’ll have to wait a minute.”

Hastily she rouged her lips, an angry flush stealing up over her face. The concessions which a girl had to make merely to hold a man were outrageous. It was a man’s world entirely. A girl had no rights, no—

"It was kind of you to invite me in,” said a deep, sepulchral voice behind her.

Terrified, she whirled about. The vampire was advancing toward her with bared teeth, its dead, white eyes roaming all over her. There was blood on its clawlike hands and its tattered clothes were drenched, sodden.

About its hunched shoulders swirled a grayish mist which slowly dissolved as it advanced, the last dispersing wisps of its de-materialized state.