Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 12 (1943-07).djvu/70

Rh The gray, mottled flesh of Simeon Hodges was all compact again after its brief percolation through the screen, a shambling horror that advanced soullessly upon the terrified girl and cackled in hellish mirth.

N ANOTHER second the distance between the girl and the hideous thing had been bridged, and Sally Sherwin was screaming in its embrace.

Frantically she struggled to free herself. She jerked her shoulders back and beat with clenched fists upon its boardlike chest, her breath coming in heaving gasps.

The horror’s breath was fetid, its squirming body reeking with the odors of the grave. Mercilessly its long, dirt-encrusted fingernails raked her flesh, inflicting deep gashes on her bared back and heaving bosom.

For five full minutes Sally fought with every ounce of her strength. So frenzied were her struggles that she did not hear the door open or see Nancy Summers advancing into the room, a look of unutterable horror on her face.

Nancy Summers was clutching a four-foot wooden bow and a gleaming bob-tailed arrow. When Nancy Summers had borrowed Sally’s bow-and-arrow set to practice with on the school archery range she had never dreamed that returning it would expose her to the most ghastly peril she had ever known. She stood now white and shaken, her mouth as dry as death.

She could hear the pounding of her own heart above the vampire’s harsh breathing.

"Don't touch me! No, no!” There was a strangling horror in Sally’s voice. The vampire had seized her dark hair in one scrawny hand and was fastening its greedy lips on her throat.

Nancy Summers nocked her bow with automatic fingers, her gaze riveted on the cadaver’s squirming back. The room and Sally seemed to recede as she stared. She had eyes only for that ghastly twisting body—a shape more foul and terrifying than all the sensations of nightmare.

She knew that she must kill it. Swiftly, remorselessly, or Sally would be lost. Her eyes did not waver as she raised the bow and took deliberate aim.

There was a sharp twang. Screeching, the thing that had been Simeon Hodges twisted about and tugged frantically at the long, barbed shaft which was quivering between its shoulder blades.

Nancy shrank back against the wall and stared wide-eyed at the petrifying sight of blood gushing from the horror’s mouth and spattering on walls which were spinning and heaving sickeningly.

The vampire had turned and was stumbling straight toward her across the room, its gray face twisting in anguish, the arrow still vibrating in its flesh.

Its eyes were glazed, but it seemed to sense that Nancy was responsible for its plight. Nancy’s head was spinning madly. She feared that she was going to faint. She saw Sally Sherwin sway, clutch at the dresser and slump with delirious babblings to her knees, her hair falling over her face. She saw the vampire’s arms go out—

She could smell the taint of it now. It was very near and reaching for her and she could not move at all. She stood as though paralyzed, terror beating into her brain.

An instant of sickening unreality followed. She thought the vampire was already upon her and then she wasn’t sure and then an awful coldness seemed to sweep over her.

HEN—Oh, Merciful God—came the sound of a familiar voice. "Get her out of here, Limerick. Damn it, man, take over.”

Strong, muscular hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her toward the