Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/177

176 skiff from Vallejo to his home above the inlet and Martha, noting his drunken state, had started the argument.

It had degenerated into the usual squabble, for both were of uncertain temper. Martha, womanlike, seeing that she was being worsted in the argument, had pushed him through the door of the cabin, causing him to land full-length in the sticky mud outside.

Then he had risen in a towering rage and, grabbing a heavy iron bar, had dealt a terrific blow at his wife's head, expecting to see her dodge as on many similar occasions. But she had slipped and lost her balance, and with a crunching, sickening sound the bar had descended on her unprotected head. He could see her now, lying where she had dropped without a cry or groan.

Horrified and frightened, he had poured cold water on her upturned face, had slapped and chafed her wrists. Finally, in a frenzy of terror, he had placed his hand over her heart.

There was no movement, not even a flutter. Martha was dead, her head crushed in by the frightful blow.

He had sought the hypodermic needle again, and his fears had fallen from him. He had picked up the baby and taken it to the outskirts of Suisun. Someone would find it and give it a home.

But as the drug gradually wore off, he had fallen a prey to remorse and fear, and at last had fled to Carson for comfort and counsel. And, God pity him, he had not had the courage to go through with it!

Sellars straightened up and glanced around. To his fervid imagination, a thousand pairs of eyes seemed watching him. The leaves on the trees and bushes near by, rustling in the wind, sounded like accusing voices. A crane rose from the swamp with a mighty flapping of wings and a shrill, harsh cry, causing Sellars' flesh to creep and his hair to stand on end. What if the crane had seen, and was now trying to attract man's attention to the murderous deed?

Martha's body had been disposed of in a shallow grave quickly dug in the soft, muddy ground. It was covered over with damp earth. Sellars breathed a sigh of relief. All the same, if only the crane hadn't seen!

How gloomy and depressing the old cabin seemed! The very air seemed weighted with an unearthly, deathly chill. And those unseen eyes—watching—watching his every movement

He had been aware of their presence for two years and more, long before Martha died. The doctor had said "hallucinations," but Sellars knew better. At night, out at his lines or setting his nets, he had been conscious of ghostly whispers and strange murmurs, which quivered in the air about him. He could not shake off that strange sensation that invisible eyes were watching him out of the misty, damp air that hovered over the swamp.

The mysterious sounds were more noticeable in foggy or rainy weather; in fact, several times, when out late at night, he had seen mistlike shapes dogging his footsteps. He had at last come to the firm conviction that the air around the swamp was inhabited by a peculiar group of phantoms, whose forms were almost visible in damp or foggy weather.

Foggy, stormy, gloomy! And the wind this evening whistled across the swamp with a mournful intensity, like a legion: of demons turned adrift, seeking for some human being to destroy. Every moment Sellars, sitting there, expected to see the cabin torn apart and its debris scattered broadcast over the swamp. The rain came down in torrents, dripping down the chimney and threatening to extinguish the small fire in the open hearth.

If only Martha were not buried so close to the house! Again and again