Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/104

Rh the body and see it laid in the family vault at Mulbridge.

Oct. 22, 19— HAT I saw last night simply could not have happened. And yet it did.

Frank and I were sitting before the fire, watching the reflection from the coals fuse with the afternoon sunbeams on the hearth, each busy with his own thoughts, when a subdued clatter in the kitchen started us up together. The tiniest noises are magnified a hundredfold in the house of death.

The same thought was in both our minds as we made for the back room. The rats were at their devilish work.

Frank took up a carving knife, big as a half-grown cutlas, as I swung the door open. I smiled at the action in spite of myself. The reflexes of elemental psychology are as unreasoning today as when our ancestors slunk naked through the primeval forests. Nothing but a blind desire to kill led to the seizure of that knife; a second's reflection would have told him that a knife is well-nigh as useless against rats as a pointed finger.

We searched the little cell of a room quickly. Nothing living, save a cricket which set up its mournful "ka-cheek" from a cranny in the stones, was there. The chest with the dog-headed skeleton lay by the cold, gaping fireplace. Carew's coffin rested starkly under its black pall on a pair of saw-horses beside the wall. One of the candles sputtering at its head leaned a little in its socket. I straightened it, pressing the melting wax with my thumb to prevent its soiling the cloth. Frank half seated himself on the rough deal table, gouging at the wood with the point of his absurd knife.

A sudden current of air, icy cold, fluttered the candle flame and shook the hem of the coffin-robe. Instinctively, I felt another presence; some evil thing, that traveled in a chill of terror. Eyes seemed boring me from behind, and I gripped the candelabrum savagely to suppress the desire to turn.

Slowly, without moving my head, I turned my eyes on Frank. He was frowning morosely at the table, chipping bits of wood from it, as though intent on serious business.

"Rat, tat, tat!"

A sudden sharp clatter of knuckles against the window pane. I wheeled in my tracks, my breath gone hot and sulfurous with fear.

Staring through the glass was a great, shaggy-haired wolf. Yet it was not a wolf. About the lupine jaws and cheeks were lines hideously reminiscent of a human face, and the phosphorescent glow of those monstrous eyes never shone in anything carnal. As I looked, the monster raised its head, and strangling horror gripped me as I saw a human neck beneath it. Very long and thin it was, corded and sinewed like the neck of a thing long dead, and covered with thick, gray fur. Then a hand, hairy, like the throat, and slender as a woman's, fingers tipped with blood-red nails, struck the glass again. I went sick with fear as I speculated how long the fragile glass would withstand it.

The thing must have seen my terror, for the corners of its devilish eyes contracted in a malevolent smile, and a rim of scarlet tongue flicked its black muzzle.

A moan behind me told Frank's abject terror.

"Oh, my God!" he quavered. "That's the thing I saw the other night. That's the thing that killed Carew. Shela Tague was right. We dug up one of them, and the other has come for us."

I swallowed at the dryness in my throat. Words were beyond me.

"Professor—" Frank had crawled across the floor and seized me by the knees—"don't let it get in; for God's sake, don't let it in!"