Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 2 (1925-02).djvu/149

 among the trees. There was a continuous dull roar, as the thunder grew in volume and came nearer. The noise of the wagon wheels had died away, but the dark figure in the road toiled painfully onward.

OW the lights from the medical annex, dim through the gloom and the mists of blurring boughs that swept backward and forward before the night wanderer, revealed themselves. The wagon stood without. He ran to it, panting. It was empty. He hurried to the dissecting room and pushed against the door.

No one answered his low call. He pressed his face against the window in a vain attempt to see within, but the curtain had been closely drawn. At last, replying to his impatient knocks, a hand lifted it ever so slightly and a face looked into his, blanching as it looked. For a moment the man outside forgot his errand in the chilling shudder that swept through him at sight of that face gloomed over with shrinking abhorrence.

There was a murmur of lowered voices. The door opened cautiously and two or three students whom he knew emerged and closed it behind them. Portrayed on every countenance was that same look of horror and repugnance and loathing that had so startled him in the face of that man who had looked at him from the window.

He pushed his way toward the door; they shrank before him as he advanced. He demanded entrance in a voice that he scarcely knew as his own, a voice that died away, failing him at the looks of dread and frozen, horror on the faces confronting him. No one spoke. Each gazed at the others, avoiding his proximity as they might have avoided contact with a man stricken with pestilence. He thought he heard a whispered word—"Nemesis!"—but it came from as remote distance as might have come a dream voice.

Once more he made his request, but now it was in the manner of one who demands. A student pointed wordlessly, and he gathered from the gesture that the way was open to him. As he grasped the knob, the students with one accord melted away from that spot, unhallowed by its associations with robbery of the grave.

The man crossed the threshold and the wind pushed shut the door behind him with its invisible, malignant fingers. He moved across the room, still holding the silken scarf in his nerveless fingers. He paused before the table, whereon lay the dead whom he had that night dragged out of the peaceful grave.

With a quick gesture he tore away the sheet that concealed the cold and lifeless clay.

A tress of hair, rich, waving, auburn, trailed upon the floor.

One horrible, dissonant scream of bitter anguish shrilled from his lips, reverberated through the room, and wailed out on the chill night wind into the ears of the shuddering students dashing across the campus.

The body was that of his promised bride!