Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 3 (1925-09).djvu/67

354 It came to us three months before Mary Ann died,' he answered. 'There was a crowd of young people at the house, and ’long toward midnight someone suggested they try some table-tipping. I didn’t want to interfere with their fun; but I didn’t like it. Table-tipping and such like things aren’t good for the soul, sir, as any man from the old country can tell you.

Well, sir, they all sat down to the little table in the hall, and put their hands on it, little fingers touching, so as to make a complete circle, and one of the young men called out, "Are there any spirits here tonight? If there are, let them answer our questions. One rap on the table means a, two, b, and so on through the alphabet. Now, then, are there any spirits here tonight?”

Dr. Applegate, you can believe it or not; but that table—a brand-new piece of furniture it was—began to quiver like a mettlesome horse when something startles him, and all ’round its edge there started a series of rappings as though someone was marching about it beating a tattoo with a pair of drumsticks.

Then I lost my temper, for I don’t hold with that sort o’ thing, and I said, "Whoever’s knocking on that table, quit it. I won’t have it in my house."

The young folks jumped up from their chairs, doctor, but the drumming kept up, and Mary Ann suddenly cried out, "Why, father, they’re calling for you! Hear the rappings? 'Patrick O’Loughlin; Patrick O’Loughlin,' is what they’re spelling."

And so they were. "Who calls?" I wanted to know, and the rappings stopped like a drum corps’ music when the drum major brings down his baton.

Who calls?" I asked again, and the thing spelled out the answer: "Itself."

You’re not Irish, doctor, and you most likely don’t know what that word meant to an Irishman. Over in the old country we have fairy folk and such like, and those we call the little good people, though the holy saints know they’re not good at all. But we call ’em good lest they hear our real opinion of ’em and steal away our children or burn our homes over our heads. But bad and troublesome as the little good people are, they’re holy angels compared to some o’ the things that hover ’round in the air. And these terrible things, the very sight or sound of which means death, we don’t name at all, though we know their names well enough. We refer to ’em by the use of a pronoun, and the worst of ’em all we call simply "themselves."

"And what does Itself want with Patrick O’Loughlin?" I asked, though my breath was coming so fast in my throat it near choked the speech from my lips.

And it answered me and said, "Patrick O’Loughlin, you have called to me and here I am. Never, while there’s a man or woman of your blood in this new land will I desert you. You shall know when Death and I are near by the movements of the comb."

"I could have laughed in the man’s face. Who but an Irishman could have dreamed such a fantastic story? Table-tipping, a message from an old-world fairy, delivered by rappings on a piece of Grand Rapids furniture!

You’re crazy, Pat,' I told him.

Am I, indeed, doctor?' he answered seriously. 'Then listen to this: Never a word more could we get from the table after that one message had been delivered, and what the night-thing meant by "the movements of the comb" was more than any of us could imagine.

But you recall well enough when Mary Ann was taken sick. You remember how she seemed so much bet-