Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/45

 began to fall. I looked behind once more and saw that the destructive rampage of the metal monster had started a fire in the remains of the cottage. Against the red flickering light I saw the bulk of Big Mike standing there. Pieces of painted wood and beaverboard from the wreckage festooned on its sides and broken over its shovel, and the conflagration, as it flamed up in the remains of the house, showed me more.

The shovel came to rumbling life, circling around the house to return the way it had come. As it did, the operator's cab was thrown in strong relief against the flames and in the cab—I swear it, I am very sure of this—there was no one! No one, I tell you. The cab was empty!

GUESS I fainted then for I remember no more until I came to in a neighbor's house where I had been brought by the volunteer firemen who had been summoned to the blaze. It was hours afterward and no one would listen to my story. A doctor kept forcing sedatives on me. Although nobody would tell me at the time, I found out later that no trace of my husband had been found. The cheap wooden house had burned completely and only the torrential rain that had come up luckily right afterward had prevented the fire from spreading to the surrounding trees and woods.

I tried to tell them about Big Mike but everybody looked very stern and disbelieving. The more I tried, the more medicine I was given.

Finally, I was taken to the Northville Hospital. Gradually it dawned on me no one believed my story. The construction boss himself came to see me, and tearfully I begged him to listen to me but he shook his head and turned away.

"That's absurd, Vilma. You've just been through a terrible experience. Big Mike was right where he always is the next morning and certainly there would've been tractor marks around your place."

Of course there would have, I thought.

"Weren't there?" I asked.

"No," he replied definitely.

Then the explanation came to me. The unusually heavy rainfall in that soft earth. That would obliterate the marks of treads. But he set his lips in a thin stern line, shook his head, and just said, "I'd better go now."

There were police officers who came, and I was glad the nurse never gave them more than a few minutes with me. They asked me endless questions about my husband and about Ronsford. It seems the body of the missing steam shovel operator had been found lying out in the rain-filled field. It was obvious from his condition that the man had been dead for at least a month and that he had met his end violently. I knew then, of course, without too great surprise, that my husband had murdered Ronsford. But that seemed to me so trivial beside the living menace of Big Mike.

After a while a doctor came in to talk to me. A psychologist or something, I was told he was. I tried again desperately to tell him what had happened that night, to try and make him believe. But I realized the more I talked, the more that set, decided expression came over his face. I was struck with a new fear then. Let them think me crazy. I didn't care. But I had to get out of Northville or somehow Big Mike would come down here. Even in the village hospital I didn't feel safe. Why, we were barely nine 3—4