Page:Weird Tales v41n04 (1949-05).djvu/71

Rh paused. For a long terrible moment silence prevailed. Even Mrs. Renner’s cries ceased. It was as if the house and all in it were awaiting an irrevocable event.

Then there sailed out upon that sea of silence a long quavering shriek of tormented, protesting agony that died away in spreading ripples of sound, ebbing into the finality of deep stillness as if the silence had absorbed them.

Mrs. Renner slipped unconscious to the floor. She said one word only as her body went from chair to floor. "Kathy!” Her lips pushed apart sluggishly to permit the escape of that sound.

Lucy stood without moving beside the loom with its slashed and ruined web. It was as if she were unable to initiate the next scene in the drama and were obliged to await her cue. It came with the sound of wheels and a brake and a voice that repeatedly called her name.

"Lucy! Lucy!”

Why, it was Stan. How was it that Stan had come to her? How was it that his arms were about her shelteringly? She found her own voice then.

"Aaron has killed Kathy with a sharp stick and a mallet,” she accused sickly.

Stan’s voice was full of quiet reassurance.

"Aaron hasn’t killed Kathy. Kathy has been dead for many weeks.”

"Impossible,” whispered Lucy. "I’ve heard her calling for food, night after night.”

"Food, Lucy? All Kathy wanted was blood. Her mother tried to satisfy her and couldn’t, so Kathy took what Cora Kent could give and Cora couldn’t stand the drain.”

“Mrs. Renner said Cora didn’t last long—”

Stan held her closer, comfortingly safe within his man’s protective strength.

"Lucy, did she—?”

UCY touched her neck. Incomprehensibly, the red points had smoothed away.

She said uncertainly: "I think she came, once, Stan. But I thought it was a dream. Now the red marks are gone.”

"For that you can thank Aaron's action, Lucy. He has put an end to Kathy’s vampirism.”

He bent over the prostrate woman. "Nothing but a faint,” he said briefly.

"Aaron—?”

"He’s perfectly sane and he won’t hurt anybody, Lucy. What he’s done won’t be understood by the authorities but I doubt if they do more than call him insane, for an examination will prove that Kathy was long dead before he drove that wooden stake into her heart.”

"How did you know about her, Stan?”

"From the antimascassar you sent Mother.”

"With the S-O-S worked into the border?” Lucy ventured.

"So you found that, too, Lucy? Did you know that poor girl had woven shorthand symbols all over the piece? As soon as I realized that they stood for 'Vampire, danger, death, Cora Kent', I came for you.”

"What will happen to Mrs. Renner, Stan?”

"That’s hard to say. But she may be charged with murder if they ever find Cora’s body.”

Lucy shuddered.

"The likelihood is that she is mentally unsound, deaf. She probably never realized that Kathy was dead. Her punishment may not be too severe.

"But come on, Lucy, and pack up your things. You’re going back to town with me and we’ll inform the authorities of what’s happened.”