Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/161

 a clock somewhere was booming midnight. The sound seemed to come from a distance, and it was oddly familiar. Then I remembered: it was the town-bell—at Gretna—and this was an old-time shrimpers' haunt, deserted now for more modern equipment. My skin was parched, and it burned like flame, and my eyes seemed to be coals of fire dancing about in my head. My tongue was hot, thick, swollen; yet icy rigors shook me convulsively. I was ablaze with fever. I wondered dimly if this were to be the end of my pilgrimage a drowzy lethargy and blankness

I was roused from my coma by a woman's shrill, terrified scream. The scream was followed immediately by a succession of short, choking, gurgling sounds, then a man's fiendish, exultant laugh, almost a snarl; and gloating, savage words:

"Mine at last, my pretty Dot! Scorned me, did you, for the fine New Yorker who stole you from me? I promised you I'd pay—remember? Stop that squealing, damn you—the river sharks are playing around to-night—they'll manage so's he'll not get you again—and in an hour's time I'll be hauling passengers just the same as usual."

I tried to move. I was paralyzed. I attempted to cry out but no sound left my stiff lips. And then, of a sudden, before I could free my limbs from that deadly atrophy, before even thought might be framed, there came more cries, even more terrible than those that had gone before—frightened, almost unrecognizable—but unmistakably belonging to—her.

Great God! Dorothy—my wife—murdered before my very eyes and I helpless—moveless—dumb!

There was the sickening bump of a body against the floor, and a man's maniacal laughter. Then suddenly the heavens parted in a lurid flash and I saw, not the woman's face, nor the man's, but a pair of huge, hairy arms, folded triumphantly over a bulging, naked and equally hairy chest. On the left forearm was a large jagged scar in the shape of a cross, clearly visible against the hirsute blackness of the rest of the limb.

A simultaneous crash of thunder shook the battered old structure and split it like an eggshell. I sat up, cold with perspiration, straining my eyes through the blackness, straining my ears in a tense horror of expectancy. But all I could see now was the dense blackness of the night; and all I could hear was the weird shrieking of the wind in the trees.

My delirium had passed, but still rigid in the grip of that horrible nightmare, I huddled in a corner of the wrecked shanty and waited for dawn. Eternities passed, then slowly, after the storm, a soft, pink glow in the east heralded daylight.

little more than an hour's walk to the outskirts of Gretna; but horror lent speed to my trembling limbs, and despite my physical weakness, I made it in much less time. I needed food, sorely. If I could not earn it, or beg it, then I should have to steal it.

Suddenly I came upon a group of laborers gathered about a corner grocery, waiting for the factory whistle to summon them to work.

I approached timidly; perhaps in the crowd someone would be kind enough to give me the price of a meal!

"Hey, Old Timer! Kinder need a shave, don't you?"

Their jeers affected me little. I replied as kindly as I could:

"Perhaps, but right now I need something else more: I am hungry. I have had no food for forty-eight hours."

A pleasant-faced young fellow instantly produced his dinner-pail.

"Help yourself, mister. You're welcome to it all."