Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/78

Rh answered by an eruption of light in the north. As the following thunder battered the place with sound, Haverland stood up thrilling. He had a brilliant vision of the dying Keene; for indeed, this again was the legendary halo. The two colossal charges of electricity in the sky seemed to serve as electrodes, each bolt a pole, the laboratory between; and in this room the halo appeared once more, just as Haverland had seen it over the tube of gas three months past. There was a full, mysterious effulgence throughout the room. A pale, thin radiance flowed out from the thing on the floor and filled the room with a glory of soft light. By this illumination the engineer saw that it was really a denuded length of vine, now more like a hideous, tapering worm; saw, too, that there was scarcely a leaf remaining on the tangle of vines at the window. In the glory of the halo these boneless arms serpentined in a terrible dance; every tentacle glittered with sweat in small beads, that winked at the lightning like innumerable eyes. The vine in the room began to raise itself from the floor.

And now, having formed a towering, closed palisade about it, and accompanied by the sound of shouting leaves and colliding trunks, the vine-hung grove of cottonwoods was advancing on the house. It was the sound of earthquake; the hill shook, and metal clanged in the central chamber of the laboratories. Followed a stupendous crash. Haverland hurried to the door, half stunned.

Through the broad windows of this central chamber one commanded a view of the entire countryside. The hill itself was just high enough to permit sight over the foliaged heads of the oaks and cottonwoods. Haverland, looking down at the trees, saw the entire woods bathed in cold flame. The grove was one vast phosphorescence. The tree-trunks glowed, and the masses of leaves shone like soft, burnished metal. All the great vines were alive with light, and hung from the trees in waterfalls of flame. It was a thing seen in a nightmare or read in a fairy-tale. Another Birnam Wood, that was coming by degrees, but surely, toward the central point that was the laboratories. The laboratory hill seemed to rise from a chasm whose walls were solid light. Trees and vines in motion. Before their advancing trunks and stems the earth was rolling away in waves. Then, dark off in one end of the chamber, the engineer saw that the oak on the hill had already entered the building. The end generator had been shouldered aside and crashed through the floor into the basement. Commotion was in the air. The storm entered the chamber with the oak, and rain beat on Haverland's face.

And still it was not too late. The engineer whirled and retreated through his own laboratories, leaping the handful of twining creepers in his way. In the back of the building he picked up a sledgehammer, then raced back through the smother of rain to the garage, in which stood three full drums of gasoline. He ran up the incline on which the drums rested, and worked rapidly with a wrench. He stepped back a little, swung the sledge in one heavy blow. The drums, released, tumbled booming down the runway, spilling their contents as they went, and bounded out the doorway to go careering down the hill.

Haverland waited, dripping with rain and perspiration, then produced a box of matches. As he was about to strike a light the heavens gaped and a volcano of flame plunged cracking and thundering into the woods like the finger of God.

Haverland flung himself out of the garage in time to escape the arm of fire