Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/44

 playing some kind of dumb joke; but it isn't Ronsford!"

Still the sound bore down on us and the rumbling became a vibrating in the darkness. The crickets and insects and other night noises were swallowed up in it. Our bedroom was south and the construction spot was north.

"I'm gonna investigate," Ed had said, pulling on overshoes and a long coat.

He took a flashlight from the closet and clumped into the living room. I was annoyed by the vibration now. There was an ominous heaviness about it, and as it came closer, the vibrating became a throbbing that dug into your temples almost like a blow. I heard the porch screen door slam and then it was that something made me decide to get up myself. I hastily got on some clothes and went out onto the porch. There was a flicker of light somewhere outside. That would be Ed. And beyond through the night came this bellowing, throbbing sound. There was an eerie awfulness about it. I realized I was shaking although the night was warm.

There was a rim of thin woods some ways across the field that stretched in front of the cottage. I could hear timber cracking in the wake of the rumbling. Ed's flashlight beamed forward, and although I expected it, it was a shock to see the giant outline of the steam shovel emerge like some prehistoric monster from the trees at the field's edge. It was too far away and too dark to make out the details, but I was sure it was Big Mike. The red operator's cab told me that.

The steam shovel continued forward, Ed's flashlight upon it, until it reached a spot halfway between the woods and our place. It stopped there and amazingly the shovel arm reached down and forward, the jagged bitting teeth ripping into the earth. I heard my husband curse and yell then above the noise of the motor. The shovel's scoop came up full of earth and the trap under the scoop opened and dirt fell, only there was something else. Something that caught for a moment and then dropped like a long full sack ... or a human body!

My husband screamed again, only instead of anger, the sound of his voice was now filled with animal fear. The beam of his flash flicked away from the steam shovel and the bobbing light told me he was racing toward the house. Big Mike's motor roared as it too came forward, a black hulk moving at incredible speed.

WRENCHED myself free from the bands of fear that were tied around my throat and legs pinning me to the porch and ran through the cottage to the back door. I stumbled over something and went down hard. I threw the carelessly left rake aside and got up, my ankle paining. I heard the screen door on the other side of the house jerk open and my husband's screaming voice. I was on my feet by now and hobbling away as fast as my injured ankle would let me. Behind, the screams of fear continued and then came a sudden shocking splintering of wood as though the house were being torn up by its very roots. The rumbling sounds were fused with the splintering and crashing of timbers. There was one more terrible cry from my husband and then silence except for the splintering and crashing of the machine that was running amuck in our cottage.

The pain from my ankle made me feel faint and I was glad for the cool rain that