Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/37

 stared, the patch on the divan spread—grew till it almost covered the cushions.

He gibbered, pointing a shaking finger at it. "That's where they laid her, after—"

She turned on him savagely. "If you don't stop that, I'll brain you! There's a natural explanation for this. Ugh!" She broke off, revulsed, as she felt the cold spat of the green stuff on her hand.

"The room is full of it," he shrieked. "It's from the lake! From the Spirits of the Lake she prayed to punish me! I knew they would if I came back here!"

"They have nothing against me—I had nothing to do with—!" She was interrupted by his scream of terror. Her eyes followed his, and stark panic fell upon her.

On the sodden divan lay a dripping figure with wisps of weed and moss hanging from its matted hair.

An instant later they were racing madly down the wet, crumbling path to the beach and a canoe. From the sky above them, from trees, bushes, even rocks it seemed, sprang the clammy, fetid slime, hurling itself into their faces, raising their gorge with its noxious odor, chilling their hearts with each wet impact.

Suddenly, the man stopped short. The woman ran on, screamed back at him to follow.

"No!" he sobbed. "Not out on that lake. Can't you see that's what it wants—to get us on the water!"

Apparently she did not hear him for she continued to call on him to follow. She reached the canoe, clambered in, and beckoned to him wildly. All at once her voice soared frantically higher. She pointed.

"Look behind you!"

He pivoted, saw the grisly specter of the drowned Bernice, its dripping arms outstretched. He floundered down the path, fell into the canoe, and grasped the paddle Hilda pressed into his hands. With the strength of despair he propelled the frail shell into the lake. After a dozen strokes, he turned to glimpse the misty figure, standing at the marge; still with arms outstretched.

A moment later the paddle broke.

He sat staring at the pieces. Then "Worms" he mumbled. "It was eaten through by worms—worms from the lake."

"We're drifting—drifting toward the rocks!" The woman strove to waken him, to stir him to action. "DO something. We'll be killed!"

He shook his head. The canoe wasn't drifting—some force, powerful, utterly irresistible, was drawing them along!

The woman screeched, "The rocks!—we're going to strike!"

He nodded slowly. A terrible quiet descended upon him; the quiet of the long condemned. Slowly he said, as though repeating a lesson from memory, "The Indians call these rocks the Spirit's Talons—the road to death leads over rocks like those—only the Good can keep their footing—the Bad fall off into an abyss of eternal torment."

"They won't harm ME!" Hilda shouted. "I'm going to swim—swim to safety."

He raised a deterring hand, "It's no use to try. The Spirits of the Lake will punish—as she said they would."

She shook him off, plunged into the foaming water. He quietly watched her useless struggles as the canoe bore ever faster toward the rocks.

Nahma, the old Indian woman, found their bodies days later where the lake had cast them out. The green slime which had long since disappeared from the surface of the waters, its season past, sheathed Hilda and Roger Benton in its viscous embrace. She looked for a time out of her expressionless dark face at the grisly sight, then waddled heavily away.

On the other side of the island that night, she and Two Horses each flung a handful of late garden flowers on the quiet bosom of the lake.