Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 6 (1925-06).djvu/22



T DROMORE many strange legends were told about "The Castle". It was a magnificent building and perched on the extreme edge of Black Hill, like a great white albatross poised for flight. It had been built by a young oil magnate who had years before gone to California almost penniless, to return later with uncountable wealth. Blindly he had purchased a tract of barren land for a few hundred dollars, and this subsequently developed into a spectacular oil field.

After he had sold out his interests for a fabulous amount, he returned to the town of his boyhood, Dromore, a veritable conquering hero. He proposed to the most beautiful girl in the town and was instantly accepted. At once he commenced building the castle for her on Black Hill, a place dreaded by superstitious folk. It was haunted, they said, by strange wraiths as transparent as mist, and occasionally one heard eery sounds as of distant thunder. They pleaded with Dan Cooley not to build a home there, but he only derided their fears.

"The wraiths," he said, "exist only in people's distorted imaginations. They are just stray wisps of fog and mist such as float about any mountain peak. The weird booming is a purely natural phenomenon. Such noises, phantom noises if you like, occur in all parts of the world. Only recently the newspapers gave columns to a discussion of the cause, and scientists all agree that the sounds come up from the depths of the earth, the result of subterranean disturbances. I am not superstitious. We will prove that Black Hill, despite its sinister reputation, is the happiest, most joyous spot in the countryside."

So Dan Cooley continued his building, oblivious to all the comments and forebodings of the people, and at last the work was done. At the gayest party ever held in Dromore, a party to which all the poor folk of the countryside were invited, he was married. At the moment it seemed as if all the weird legends were groundless. There was nothing wraithlike in this.

And yet less than one month later Mrs. Cooley went violently insane. She rushed up to the turret of "The Castle" and, laughing wildly and hysterically, pitched headlong down to the ragged, grim black rocks hundreds of feet below. When Dan Cooley made his way down to the rocks where the poor broken body lay, he was horrified by the sight. Her clothes were 357