Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 01.djvu/49

Rh had stubbornly persisted in her pretence that she was never really alone any more, that always an invisible child was at her side sharing in her childish games. There was more to it—an indefinite, but horrifying more—the one bit that Julia had held back from Cliff.

The day before she had seen the invisible playmate!

In bright sunlight, grass rippling gently as though some small animal stirred at its roots; a small, furtive round, like the passage of a snake...

She, Julia, had crossed the lawn to call Gin for lunch. The child was sitting quietly under a big beach unbrella, making a crude, crayon sketch. Julia, smiling and looking down over Gin's shoulder, saw the scrawled likeness of a little boy in blue overalls. Gin had made a round, jack-o'-lantern face wreathed in an exaggerated grin. She had drawn in thick, stubby hair of a bright reddish-orange, and made the feet bare.

All at once Julia had been breathlessly conscious that there was someone else—someone standing in the orchard field just behind her—someone so dim and indistinct that when she turned her head it was as though colors flickered in the bright sunlight—wavered and vanished, like an abruptly dissolving mirage.

But for one breathless instant, for one heartbeat, she had seen something—something, surely! A wavering image, like the warping of air in heat-haze; the shadowy simulacrum of a small figure, standing in the ripe grass of the field.

It had seemed to Julia that the dissolving vision held color—blue tint, like faded overalls; a white shirt; a face unseen because it was surmounted by a big hat of yellow straw.

But afterward when, fingers pressed to her eyes, she tried to recall details that had been blurred—only shadowy suggestion—Julia wondered whether she had not merely imagined it. Heat and glaring sunlight distort vision. Perhaps she had simply projected, in vision, the blue-overalled boy of Gin's childish sketch—the drawing she had carefully labelled, in angular block letters: "TOMMY."

with unutterable joy that Julie welcomed Elsie. The two children were of the same age, had been neighbors in the city. But curiously, Virginia exhibited no great enthusiasm at seeing her old playmate again. She was indifferent and ignored the other child.

"I won't stay here any more!" Elsie cried one morning, storming into the kitchen in tears. "I hate it here! I want to go home, please!"

"Oh, Elsie! What's the trouble? Did you and Gin quarrel again?"

"No, it's that ugly, horrible boy! He spoils everything! He—"

"Elsie!" Julia snatched the child's arm and swung her sharply toward her. "You saw him?"

"'Course I saw him!" Elsie looked annoyed. "What do you mean? He comes every day but he won't come near us. He just stands there, watching, or follows us around—and it's scarey! I threw stones at him but they didn't hurt him. He just laughed and wouldn't go home. And Gin said she hates me. She said I scared him and now he won't come and play until I go back home!"

With Elsie's abrupt leaving the household became, to all appearances, normal again. Gin's impatience to be rid of the encumbering Elsie had been only too evident. Now the invisible other returned, remain at her side throughout all of the long summer day. Gin laughed and prattled and was happy—and under the apparent light-hearted gaiety Julie was aware that horror hid and slowly uncoiled as day slid into day.

Even Cliff, now, began looking strangely at his small daughter. Once or twice Julia