Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 4 (1923-04).djvu/77

 'A Five-Minute Tale of Supernatural Adventure'

T IS easy to recall it, bit by bit, just as it occurred, though it should have been forgotten long ago.

I can, even now, visualize the THING as I saw it in all its frightfulness. Time has accentuated the memory of that haunting half hour.

The immediate result of my enervating experience was a benumbing of the senses—a partial paralysis of the mind. The frenzied fear, the gripping horror of it, came to me later when miles away from the scenes of its occurrence.

I had retired late. My room, number 307, was on the third floor of a downtown hotel, which town and which hotel, for good and sufficient reasons, I shall not say. Several cups of strong coffee had rendered sleep out of the question. The weather was warm, but a damp, sticky, smoke-laden haze, due to the crowded shipping that lay in the harbor below, penetrated everywhere. I fancy the night was dark, but the electric glare of the city turned night into day.

At last, lulled by the stillness within and the hum of the city which came to me through my open window, I slept. My sleep was a dreamless, leaden unconsciousness, far from refreshing. Then came the introduction to my unusual experience.

I would never explain why I heard it so distinctly. Soundly asleep, my ears were painfully smitten by a dull, heavy, sickening, smothered explosion.

I was awake and alert in an instant, trying to account for it. Light of day was paling the electric glare and objects were plainly visible within the room. Without my open window I could see, through the blue murk, the outlines of buildings across the street, the serrated sky-line far above. I got up, stretched and yawned; took a turn around the room, lit a cigarette and laid down again. I had not accounted for the noise, but finally concluded that it came from some natural cause—apparently out on the street. At any rate, I thought no more of it as I lay there enjoying my morning smoke.

I was about to doze again when the room was suddenly filled, saturated with the vilest smell of burned powder I have ever encountered. It was absolutely sickening and seemed mingled with the smell of burning human flesh—the stench that hangs over a battlefield the morning after a carnage.

So, I said to myself, that explosion was in this building, on the third floor and not far from my room!

I was still reclining and had taken another cigarette when the THING came into my room, putting an end to all thought of immediate investigation.

It came in through the wide open window from the fire-escape. Its shape was that of a human body, entirely nude, perfectly distinct in outline and detail, yet lacking in the extremities—a torso only—so distinct and lifelike that I could see the folds of flesh, the contour of muscles, the pinky-yellow color of the skin, and yet, so transparent was it, the window casing, the figured wall paper, the outlines of the dresser and everything it passed, were visible through it—as plainly discernible as though it were not there.

It floated in—slowly, slowly, as a mist of early morning might enter one's casement or a wisp of smoke, wafted in on a stray breeze—unsubstantial, filmy, yet seeming to have the substance of flesh and blood.

The head of my bed was exactly opposite the window, and I had splendid vantage for contemplation. I was not long in discovering the incompleteness of that spectral visitor. It lacked hands and forearms, the lower extremities were cut off above the knees, and, to complete the phantasmal horror of it, there was no head upon those broad, powerful shoulders—only the stump of a muscular neck.

The awfulness of this armless, legless, headless shape was further intensified by the fact that the extremity of each truncated member seemed to drip red blood!

All this I saw as it floated into my room through the open window—a ghastly shape that defied description—while I was breathing the stench of a day-old battlefield.

And now, the last, the most weird detail of all—the most inexplicable—the one that indeed filled me with astonishment was yet to come.

Between my open window and the door, against the wall, stood a dresser surmounted by a large plate glass mirror.

As the THING advanced, floated through my room, to melt, vanish, or draw through the solid panels of my door, it, perforce, must pass by this mirror. So clear was my mind in those trying moments, that I had dwelt upon this very fact as the THING advanced, and had speculated as to what the reflection of a spectre would be like.

Let science explain this singular phenomenon; I can not. The reflection of my spectre was no spectre, at all! It was the solid, substantial, flesh, blood and bone of a six-foot man about thirty years of age, not lacking a single member, perfect in color, form, feature, as nude as the day he was born, gracefully floating by the big looking glass; his eyes closed, a contented smile lighting up his handsome features—much like one asleep whose face is transfigured by a pleasant dream.

And then, just as the figure was floating free of the glass—as the bevel on the edge of the plate began to distort the otherwise perfect lineaments, the head was turned by some odd movement of the body, the eyes opened and looked straight into mine!

With a start, I half arose and culled out:

"Arnold! Oh, Arnold, is it, can it be"

Even as I called—foolishly, idiotically, pleadingly—in a hollow, unnatural voice, I knew there would be, could be no response. For an instant, fear—fear that he might heed my cry—that he might delay his noiseless flight through my room, gripped my throat and stilled my voice.

But now the apparition out of the glass, was at the door. Through it I could plainly see the outlines of the door casings—and it was becoming less and less. It was gone. The phantom drew through