Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 01.djvu/52

66. "Oh, Mother—you drove him away again!"

It was hot—there was such a dazzle on the water. The sky was a tight, lacquered bowl. Everything was too still, too close, too bright. Julia clutched despairingly at Gin's small, dripping figure.

"What's the matter, Mommy?" The childish voice, full of puzzled concern, made Julia break into uncontrollable weeping. "Do you feel awful bad?"

"Bad," Julia sobbed, clutching Gin the harder. "Awfully bad! My poor little girl! Don't leave me, ever? You'll promise—stay close beside me?"

"'Course I'm right here, Mommy," Gin replied with childish dignity. "I'm sorry you hurt. Shall I dip some water out of the pond and put it on your head?"

"The pond—no! Let's go back and don't ever go near it again! Keep away from it—you hear? It's—it's cursed!"

time had come, Julia felt, when she could no longer continue the unequal struggle. For now, with every passing hour, she was losing—Gin was slowly, but surely, slipping away from her. Only one alternative remained—to go away. And now she was forced to tell Cliff the truth.

"I been thinking about telling you for two days," Cliff unexpectedly informed her. "I know all about it. I've been inquiring around, ever since that afternoon when I—saw the kid." He looked at Julia bleakly. "Yeah—I really knew, then, something was wrong. It's the pond. Kid name of Tom Beaufield drowned there. Nine years old, he was—and that was seventy years ago."

"Seventy years." Julia repeated with dry lips. "Yes, I saw how it must have been—the old-fashioned haircut, the quaint shirt he wore."

"They never found him," Cliff went on. "The family moved away. Then a childless couple had the place—never noticed anything wrong. Then the old bachelor coot we bought the place from. It's my fault—I should have sent you and Gin away before. But now this clinches it. Start packing tomorrow."

"No—I won't even pack at least, nothing but a small suitcase. We won't let Gin know until the last minute. Even then, maybe, we'd better pretend we're just going for the day. After we've gone you can board up the windows, see that our things get moved—"

Julia clapped her hand over her mouth, suppressing a scream.

"He was there!" she cried frantically, pointing to the wide-open window. "He heard us—every word!"

Cliff swore savagely. He leaped to the door and flung it wide open to the night. Across the lawn trotted a small shape, indistinctly seen by the light of a gibbous moon: a small lad in overalls who turned his head once, looking back, as if in derision. The instant Cliff stepped outside the door, he had vanished.

"Tomorrow!" Julia choked. "Tomorrow—if it isn't too late!"

They didn't leave because during the night Virginia complained of a burning in her throat. By morning she was running a high temperature and babbled deliriously. Alarmed, Julia had sent for a physician. But the man, a local practitioner, advised against moving the child until the fever died down.

"He's won, again!" Julia thought frantically. He doesn't want her to go away!"

But if Gin had to remain, confined, in that hateful house, she could still watch over her. Never would that hated other get near the child again. Already she had lost too much to him: Gin's sanity, and perhaps her life itself. That sinister, malignant child of the pond would never dare set foot over the threshold of the house so long as she, Julia, remained on guard—alert and vigilant to the shadowy enemy.