Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/178

Rh he felt certain that some one was trying to force open the door. Tiptoeing over, he listened intently. He imagined he could see misty shapes peering in through the solitary window. A damp chill was in the room, despite the fire.

He rolled a barrel of water against the door, then fastened a large sheet of cardboard across the window. The misty shapes, furious that their view was obstructed, pointed ghostly, accusing fingers in his direction.

HE night wore on, and Sellars was unafraid. He pulled a writing tablet towards him and began to write, laughing at the foiled phantom shapes outside.

He dozed off to sleep, only to awake with a shriek of terror and that strange, intangible feeling that the house was surrounded by invisible beings, ready to pounce upon him the moment he stepped outside. And then a cold perspiration stood on his forehead. What if the piece of cardboard which he had fastened across the window should fail to resist their attempts to force it?

With terrified eyes he glanced across the room. The cardboard still protected the window. But Martha seemed to be in the room; and so strong was this feeling that, although he could not see her, he caught himself speaking to her and waiting for her to answer. She seemed, somehow, to be in the room sewing or knitting in the old, familiar way; and yet she was buried in the shallow grave outside the cabin

What a gloomy place the cabin was! He saw something on the threshold, but as he looked again it was not there. He searched every nook and corner of the room, even going down on his knees and looking under the bed. He could discover nothing. Finally he decided that it must have been the cat; it was now purring lazily before the hearth, and he gave it a vicious kick and began to prepare hot coffee.

But the wind began to rise, and the rain beat against the window pane in a steady downpour. A chill crept over Sellars; the cat was mewing eerily. At times the cabin rocked and swayed with the fury of the gale. Again he was sure that Martha was in the room—quite close to him now—seeking to communicate with him.

There was a loud rapping at the door, a loud, insistent knocking, as if some one demanded admittance.

In a voice trembling with fear, Sellars asked who was there. No response came, but the latch clicked as if some one were trying to open the door.

Panic-stricken, Sellars sat at the table, muttering incoherently to himself. He noticed that the cat, with arched back and hair standing straight in the air, dived under the bed and continued to spit and mew.

Again that knocking on the door, making it quiver on its frail hinges. Then the bar that secured it on the inside began to move slowly out of its socket!

Sellars half attempted to rise from his chair, with the intention of holding the bar in its place, but he was powerless to move. The cat gave a wild screech and dashed through the flame and smoke of the hearth up the wide chimney.

A loud click of the latch, and the door swung open. With eyes starting from their sockets, Sellars, nearly crazed with terror, watched several misty shapes circling round the threshold. They changed and drifted in the wind like phantom forms of fog or smoke.

The desperate man's hand flew for the revolver in his hip-pocket. As he grasped the weapon, the foremost of the phantoms glided up to where he sat. His brain reeled as he felt a pair of ice-cold hands encircle his wrists. His hands were held as in a vise.