RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Terror Tales, April 1935 with "Death Teaches School"
She knew only that the two before her who had taken that teaching post in desolate Death Hollow had vanished into the gloomy, threatening mountain silence. When she saw the faceless horror that was one of her predecessors, it was too late to draw back! For already death's red fingers were reaching from the crawling shadows—and the sons of death sat, row on row, before her!
DEATH HOLLOW! The name itself carried with it an ominous threat to Julia Winters as she paused hesitantly on the deserted station platform. And, her chill sense of foreboding, of impending evil, was not lessened as she watched the grimy train that had carried her into this remote mountain fastness hastily pick up steam, as if anxious to be gone. The wind, rushing out of the encircling hills, was bitter with the dying breath of October. It whistled through her threadbare garments, whipped her skirt close to her slender legs, sent a shiver that was not entirely from the cold along the spine. The girl clutched her shabby handbag tightly to her and her frightened eyes peered through the deepening shadows.
Where was the village? Surely those few rude, unlighted cabins, crouching against the ramparts of the engulfing hills, did not justify the job she had been so eager to accept. For the hundredth time she remembered the troubled, anxious face of the woman at the teachers' agency when she had offered Julia the position at Death Hollow.
"I'm tempted not to let you go, my dear," the woman had said. "You're the third I've sent up there in as many weeks. I haven't heard a word from the other two. Even though the telegram said it is urgent that I fill the vacancy before evening, and the salary is especially good, I really think—"
"Oh, please," Julia had begged. "I must get a job, at once. This is the first chance I've had since school, and—and my folks are dead. I've no place to go if I don't get it."
So her credentials and train fare had been given her. "But promise me one thing, my dear," the woman said to Julia before she left. "If you notice anything wrong, leave the place at once. I shall never forgive myself if anything happens—"
And now, recalling that last interview, blind panic swept through Julia. She turned instinctively toward the train she had just quitted as if that were her one refuge in a strange and horribly darkened world.
But it was too late. The lantern of the last car was only a red receding glow in the distance, the long, wailing note of the whistle made a hollow mockery in her ears. Then train and sound both disappeared, and she was alone.
Alone? It might have been better if she were alone. Another passenger had swung off the train just as it had started. He stood now at the farther end of the platform, a dim figure in the thickening gloom, the collar of his grey topcoat muffled against his face as he watched her with surreptitious glances.
Julia felt the blood in a cold mist around her heart. She was terribly afraid now—afraid of the threatening hills, of the shadowy cabins in which no lights appeared—of the strange passenger who made no move to depart, but eyed her with faceless stealth.
She shivered. Why hadn't she taken the kindly advice of the agency woman? Suppose she had been down to her last dime? Better to starve in the sight of crowded pavements and the every-day din of traffic than to face alone the half-hidden menace, the subtle yet unmistakable atmosphere of evil and peril of this Kentucky mountain hollow.
SHE bit her lip to keep from shrieking out her fear. Holding her bag convulsively, she edged farther and farther away from the shadowy figure of the man. The telegram had promised that the school trustee who had hired her would be at the station. She tried to remember his name. Lemuel—Lemuel Fogg, that was it! Why hadn't he come? Why was she left on this lonely platform with a stranger who...
Where had he disappeared to? She strained her eyes into the murky darkness. One tiny moment before he had been there, unmoving, sculptured out of shadows; now he was gone, vanished, and with no trace of his going. It seemed to the girl that the eerie twilight grew thick with leering shapes and vague, shifting forms, and whichever way she turned there were unearthly eyes that burned into her soul.
She started to run blindly down the rutted road that led into the hollow. Behind her the wind muttered with mocking voices, the pebbles rattled with the pursuing tread of unseen feet. She knew it was panic, yet she fled before her fears. Headlong, heart thumping, she ran on toward the refuge of the first dark and silent cabin. Perhaps it held people—rough, untutored people, they might be—but normal at least, with kindly faces and kindlier hearts. Tomorrow, she would telegraph the agency, collect, for funds to return, for—
What was that? She stopped her headlong, panting flight, frozen with new fears. This time there was no mistake about the sounds. Something was coming down the hollow toward her, making a noise like a horse's hoofs beating out a devil's tattoo, and dragging something crashing and banging behind.
There was no place to turn, to hide, before it was upon her. A horse and two-seater buggy raced out of the black shadows, swaying from side to side, bouncing and jouncing over the hard ruts.
"Whoa!" The horse slithered on his haunches, his flaring nostrils pitted with engorged blood; his flanks heaving. A man was seated in the buggy, pulling with powerful hands on the reins. In the dimness his massive, sculptured head seemed a frozen halo of white, shouldering hair and curling beard. He peered down at the shrinking girl.
"Be you the new school teacher?" he demanded. His voice was a deep, startling rumble. But it filled Julia with a thankful warmth, with blissful peace.
"Yes," she gasped, ashamed of her former unreasoned panic. "I'm Julia Winters. The Central Agency sent me. You're—"
"Lemuel Fogg," the man chuckled deeply. "Head o' the Death Holler School Board. I'm all-fired sorry I got here too late tuh meet the train, but I had a deal on with a feller t'other side o' the mountains, and it held me up a bit. Hope ye wasn't scared. Death Holler ain't a purty place at night, or in the daytime, nuther."
"I—I wasn't scared," she lied bravely. "Except there was a man got off the train with me, and he stood there on the platform, watching me. Then he seemed to vanish—just like smoke." She shuddered as she climbed into the vacant seat of the buggy.
The horse started forward so suddenly that she was thrown against her companion. He had jerked around to her, body rigid, deep-set eyes burning. Terror, stark, unashamed, stared out at her.
"A stranger, ye say, come tuh Death Holler?" he gasped. Then, seeing the girl's startled gesture, a mask dropped swiftly over his eyes, and he laughed. "And why not, Miss Winters? You're a stranger too, ain't ye?"
But his laugh was hollow and unconvincing. And suddenly it struck her that the man was afraid, afraid of hearing about that silent, shadowy figure she had seen. Once more, as they swayed and crashed over the bumpy road, the night became full of creeping fears and gibbering echoes.
LEMUEL FOGG must have sensed the frozen tenseness of the girl's body. He seemed to shrug off this terror with an effort. "Let's git down tuh brass tacks, miss. Ye mought be wonderin' about yer job, eh?"
"Well—that is, naturally, I—"
Why did he look at her sideways, she wondered, as the buggy rocked and careened over the frozen ruts. Why did that stealthy glance hold what seemed to be fear, sympathy, even warning? Why did he hesitate, as if reluctant to commence? In God's name, what was wrong with this job? School teaching was the same all over, wasn't it? Yet already, before Fogg began, the girl knew with dreadful certainty, with every fiber of her being, that this job in Death Hollow was different, that it held a sinister threat in its darkling folds.
"Wall, ye see, we pay a purty good salary," Fogg said irrelevantly.
"I know," she said very low. That was why she had come to this desolate place, in spite of warnings. Why didn't he look squarely at her, so she could read in his eyes what terror it was that lurked there? But he kept his face forward, intent on the broad, heaving rump of the horse, and holding the reins in his hands.
"Ye know science, eh?"
"Yes."
"Ah, but mebbe ye don't know this here new-fangled business of evolution 'bout man an' a monkey bein' first cousins?"
Strange! He sounded almost pleading, as if—as if he didn't want her to say yes, as if it would be an excuse not to hire her. Why then had he sent that urgent telegram? Why...
She fought to keep her voice steady, determined. "Yes, I know all about that. I majored in biology at college."
"Wall!" There was genuine regret in his deep voice. "It's this-away. We ain't much on book-larnin' around these parts, and Death Holler ain't got more'n a few people. We've been too busy with plantin' an' huntin' an' makin' a little corn likker to bother with schools an' sich-like. But there was a feller lived in Death Holler, who quit to go to the big city. Claimed we was a passel o' mossbacks. He died back a bit, name o' Ingersoll Greenway, an' left a heap o' money." Fogg rasped out a sudden chuckle. "What d'ye think the derned fool did?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," Julia acknowledged. The country through which the galloping horse was whirling them was getting wilder and wilder. The cabins of the hollow were behind them now, and deep night shrouded the closing hills. Where were they going?
"Here's what he done," Fogg rumbled on. "He left all his money—exceptin' a mite tuh his two nephews, Hugh an' Philip Elson—tuh Death Holler. That's what he done. Made a will what said we was benighted fools. No eddication, no science, with silly superstitions and a belief in hell-fires. He'd change all that, he said. So he pervided fer a school tuh teach Death Holler science an' evolution. Not the chillen, mind ye, but their pappies, what snickered at his wild talk when he was a younker here. That's the job; tuh teach 'em evenin's, after workin' hours."
A heavy weight rolled off Julia's heart. "Why, I'd love that," she said impulsively. It sounded easy.
Lemuel Fogg stared straight ahead. Seconds passed while the thud of hoofs rolled with eerie thunder up the narrowing valley they had entered.
"Yup," he said finally. "Giddap, Dobbin." And he was silent.
They were jogging up a mountain road now. The trees were marching with them, keeping stealthy pace, it seemed, hemming them in with locked branches that looked horribly like bony, strangling fingers. The moon had risen, and poured a dead white light over rough-barked boles.
Then it was that Julia remembered. The bearded man's strained hesitation, his averted face, made the other a hideous, looming question in her mind. Once more fear squeezed her pumping heart dry, laid ice-cold fingers along her beating skull.
"Why did the other teachers leave?" she asked in a small, strangled voice. "What happened to them?"
Fogg did not answer. His body became a rigid ramrod beside her. He gulped, made rumbling noises in his throat, opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came. And Julia saw the reason.
A GHASTLY figure had appeared suddenly in the narrow path directly before them. The moonlight encased it in a ghostly shroud. Its face, uplifted from a torn shirt, was a grinning mask of madness. Its long, blood-streaked arm, bare to the shoulder, was extended in horrid warning. A shrill, tuneless screaming came from its bloodless lips, sheared through shrinking flesh and bone, shredded each nerve-end with quivering torture.
"Go back! Go back!" it mouthed insanely.
The horse snorted and then, frightened, reared suddenly on his haunches, back from the apparition that blocked the road. Julia screamed and flung up her hand. A cold wind whistled over the slender nape of her neck, froze her blood to gelid ice. Lemuel Fogg flung himself back, crying an exclamation in a hoarse voice.
The reins lashed against the horse's lathered flanks. He plunged forward wildly, straight for the pallid vision of madness in his path. Julia was thrown to her knees as the buggy crashed into the trunks of the close-pressing trees, bounced with spine-jarring bongs on the iron-hard ruts, and careened after the flying horse up the mountain road, with Fogg's powerful arms jerking on the reins.
Julia cowered against the seat, hearing still the wild cackling, the shrill warnings behind her.
They had passed directly over the terrible Thing that had loomed in their path, yet there had been no jar, and his mad shrieks followed them with dreadful din up the mountain.
The horse, exhausted, its flanks heaving convulsively, slowed to a stumbling trot. Julia gasped: "Who—what was that?"
Lemuel Fogg's hands pulsed with jerking nerves. His massive, bearded face was drained as white as his hair. His eyes were flaming pits.
"That," he said in a strangely hushed voice, "that was Mister Pittman. He taught school in Death Holler—till las' night!"
"Oh, my God!" the girl moaned faintly. Ralph Pittman, whom the agency had sent only a week ago, transformed into that unrecognizable monster! What had been done to him; what hideous things had driven him, a shrieking, gibbering madman, into the mountains? Her skin was suddenly a contracting web of agony; she could not breathe, she could not speak. Hammers pounded insanely in her brain, made a fiery torment of her thoughts.
The terrible shrilling had ceased. The Thing that had been Pittman was silent; had returned, perhaps, to the grave from which it had arisen... But Fogg was talking and his deep voice had a grim catch to it.
"Ye mought as well know the truth, Miss Winters," he said. "No sense keepin' it longer from yuh. That 'ere school's got a curse on't. Preacher Maunders sez it's 'cause God's plumb disgusted with sech heathen teachin's as Greenway's pervided fer. That mought be, though Increase Maunders ain't got no call to talk thataway, seein' as he's executor o' Greenway's will. That 'ere was another o' Greenway's little jokes, makin' the Parson see to't thet the will's carried out, even though its pervisions is pizen tuh him. But Increase, he claims a dead man's commands is God's commands, whatever they mought be."
Julia forced open her frozen lips. "But Pittman," she panted, "what—what—?"
Fogg shook his grim, shaggy head. "I dunno. It started two weeks ago. One night, arter lessons, they found the fust teacher's body thrown out on the mountainside, all chewed up, like wolves done it. Only they ain't no wolves round here. Then this feller Pittman came. The class warn't much—couple o' the boys who thought 'twas a great joke. But it warn't no joke las' night. Pittman, they say, looked shaky an' blue in the face, but he was a game 'un. He kep' on teachin', an' thanked em' fer comin'. No one ain't seen hide or hair of 'im sence, till—till—"
HE fell silent. Horror drew a black pall before Julia's eyes. She felt faint. Then she shrugged her slim body erect. Indignation forced the blood once more through her failing heart. Whiplash scorn edged her voice.
"And so all of you," she cried, "kept quiet about it, to lure other poor devils to their death, or madness. Why? Because of a will? What's in back of this? What...?"
Lemuel Fogg twisted his head. He looked shamefaced. "I'll tell ye. There's more tuh the will than that. It left a heap o' money tuh the village folk in Death Holler, pervided not a single night's teachin' was missed. One solitary night that there ain't some'un talkin' evolution in the schoolhouse, an' the hull passel o' money goes tuh his two nephews. An' Preacher Maunders, he comes round tuh investigate every night."
Julia choked with surging anger. "And you—Mr. Fogg, you permit this to go on!"
The man squirmed defensively. "After all," he muttered. "It saves taxes fer me, same's the rest of 'em. An' supposin' I should stop hiring new teachers, the folks around would go gunnin' fer me." He straightened his powerful shoulders determinedly. "But you're right, Miss. It ain't fair, lettin' you go on with it. I'd have ye on my conscience the rest o' my days. We'll turn right aroun' an' go back tuh Preacher Maunders. Tell 'im ye're quittin'. Let him tear up that fool will."
Julia sat up stiffly. Lemuel Fogg, for all of his craggy, bearded face, was human. He was willing to sacrifice his own interests to save her, and others, from the mysterious fate that overtook the teachers of Death Hollow. Some of her fear, her anger at him thawed under the warmth of that kindness. Then other thoughts shook her.
If she quit now she'd be penniless, without even money enough to return to the city. The future loomed dully before her. No job, no money, her clothes worn down to the last thin layer. Within a year, in this place, she could save what seemed to her starved eyes a fabulous sum. And besides there were the people of the Hollow, who, because of her cowardice, would lose Greenway's fortune, would stagger once more under a heavy burden of taxes.
Perhaps, she argued with herself, trying to still the dread that clutched at her vitals, the fates of the other two had been mere accidents. Spells, curses, the wrath of God? She tried to laugh to herself at that. This was mere backwoods superstition, the very thing Greenway had endowed the teaching to eradicate. But the inward laugh froze to a lump of ice that stuck in her throat. Now, again, she was afraid, horribly afraid...
She turned her fear-haunted eyes on Fogg. She held her voice steady only by sheer will. "I'll go through with the job," she said, very low.
The horse had stopped. The night shadows clustered around her body with chilling embrace. Fogg gulped noisily. She could not see his face in the dark.
"Yuh mean that," he gasped, "even when yuh know..."
"Yes," she answered. Never had she found it so difficult to talk.
"Well!" he exhaled. "Yo're a blame brave gal. An' seein' as how..." He extended his arm forward from the carriage. "There's the schoolhouse, and ye kin start teachin' soon's ye git in. Old Greenway's will said that school would be in session 'tween the hours o' seven an' nine."
She had not seen the building before. In front, the trees retreated up the mountainside. The path widened into an upland clearing. In the very center straggled a long pine building. The groping moonlight made leprous scabs on its scaling sides, surged in a ghastly flood to meet the wavering yellow that streamed from its single window.
Julia's heart bounded. "Oh, then there are pupils in there, waiting."
Lemuel Fogg shook his head. "Nary a one. Ye couldn' pay folks from Death Holler to come here after dark, since Pittman was took las' night. That there lamp was lit 'fore sundown."
"You mean to say, I'm to teach, even if no one is here to listen?"
Fogg grunted. "The will didn' say nothin' 'bout pupils; only 'bout teachers."
"And you, Mr. Fogg?"
"Who, me?" The man spoke hurriedly, with labored breath. "Not me. I don' believe much in ghosts, but I ain't stayin'. I—I got some chores tuh do. I'll tell yuh what: I'll be here tuh pick yuh up at nine."
"Oh!" The girl said no more. But she forced her suddenly dragging limbs out of the carriage onto the ground. She could hardly hold herself erect. Unholy things scuttered in the depths of the muttering forest, sent shivers of sheer terror through her aching skull. Her clenched teeth held back the fear that whimpered in her throat. Again and again she said to herself: "Julia Winters, you are not afraid! You are not afraid! " Aloud she said: "Thank you, Mr. Fogg. I'll be expecting you."
"Good gal," he whispered. "I'll be back, don't ye fear." And without another word he swerved Dobbin's head around, and was off in a very fury of impatience. The buggy banged on the hard ground and the sound of its going died out with an eerie whisper in the distance.
SHE was alone—alone in this wild mountain clearing, with the ominous schoolhouse in front of her, dim-lit with the flickering yellow lantern light. She was to teach in there, where a girl had been done to a horrible death and a man had been metamorphosed into a shrieking, gibbering mad thing. She was to face, night after night, the ghastly mockery of rows of empty benches, knowing all the while that unseen shapes lurked in the shadows, waiting only to drag her down, to gouge her soft, white body with hideous teeth and snarling, bloody muzzles.
Shivers of dread coursed up and down her spine. It would be two hours before Lemuel Fogg would return. Two long, dreadful hours in which every second would be a shrieking agony, every minute a dragging horror, and each hour an eternity of waiting.
Waiting for what?
If only she knew, if only she could see the fate that awaited her embodied in tangible form, it would be bearable—yes, even if death or torture or madness lay at the end. That was it—that was what drained her veins of blood, made her face a set mask of taut, insensate skin—the awful feeling that she did not know what Things were even now waiting in gloating expectation of her teaching.
She forced her lead-heavy feet forward. She set her teeth to strangle her welling fear into silence. She must enter that black-looming door now. If she didn't go on she would, in another moment, be flinging herself down the road, shrieking her dread to the gaunt mountains and to a desolate moon.
What was that?
That slight crackling sound that only ears, keyed to abnormal sensitivity, could have detected. Something, someone was creeping through the dark hemlocks behind her, stealthily, trying to make no noise.
Flogging her paralyzed limbs into movement, she whirled. Better to see it face to face than to imagine...
Framed between the black boles of two tall trees she saw a head. The moon drenched it with corpse-white luminescence, etched out the startled, distorted expression on the youngish face as it emerged from the upturned collar of a grey topcoat. Then, like a shadow seen in a dream, it faded back into the shrouded dark of the woods and was gone.
But Julia had seen enough. For a second her heart stopped beating, then pounded furiously against the thin protection of her ribs. She spun around and flung for the heavy paneled door that led into the schoolroom. Anything, even the terrors that awaited her inside, was better than the open clearing with that figure lurking stealthily in the sinister forest. She had recognized him. He was the strange passenger who had followed her off the train, who had tracked her, unseen, unheard, to this lonely school in Death Hollow. The place accursed, where a girl had died and a man had turned to a mindless idiot.
Her slim hands pounded insanely on the door, her slender shoulder shoved with mad strength against the barricade. It opened with protesting, grating sound, as if reluctant to admit the sobbing girl.
With a little cry she stumbled inside, flung the heavy pine portal tight shut behind her, thrust the iron bolt into its socket. Thank Heavens for the lock! Perhaps now she would be safe from the creeping terrors of the wood.
She whirled, her shoulders taut against the door. Her knees were weak as flowing water, her eyes were wide with shadowed amazement; her hand was up clutching her throat. She had not expected this.
SHE was in a long room, as long as the building itself. High overhead, out of reach of her slight form, hung a lantern. It swung with a slow rhythmic motion, as if fanned by invisible breezes. Its smoky, yellow flare cast a dim, wavering light over the unpainted, pine interior. The shadows danced on the damp, musty walls, and gathered into strange, terrifying lumps of darkness in the farther corners.
Near where she stood was a plain board desk, huge and flat. Its top was bare, and wan shadows crawled over its surface with each swing of the hanging lantern. A chair, overturned as if in a struggle, lay on its back beside it. But it was not that which held her gaze and brought warm moisture to her brow.
It was what lay beyond. The rear of the room was crowded with long, backed benches, arranged in parallel rows. The sooty yellow barely tinged the cavernous recess with faint color. But on the benches, like pallid blobs of modeled clay, dimly descried in the muttering darkness, were faces—rows of them, uplifted to her straining gaze, waiting patiently, motionlessly.
A great sob of thankfulness burst from the girl's tense throat. Thank God! Thank God! Lemuel Fogg had been wrong. The people of Death Hollow were not all victims of superstitious fears. There were some who laughed them to scorn, who wished to drink of the strange doctrines which clashed with their primitive beliefs.
She was not alone, but had an audience for her teaching. It was hard to distinguish them in that silent, waiting row, but they must be the gaunt, grim men of the hills—sufficient protection against the lurking terrors of the school. That was it! They had heard that she was coming; they knew of the dreadful fates that had befallen her predecessors, and they had congregated to see that no harm should come to her.
Her heart warmed to these kindly folk. She felt her knees firm again. She moved to the desk and said quite loud: "Good evening!"
The simple words of greeting flew like leather-winged bats around the room, and rebounded from the enclosing walls in eerie, mocking echoes.
There was no other sound. She had greeted her class with friendly words, but they, her pupils, uttered no response. The lantern still kept up its rhythmic motion overhead, and cast its shifting light over the shadowy faces. It pricked them out with whitish-yellow glow; mere bodiless heads, dissociated from the darker shadows beneath, against which the light beat in vain. Then, as Julia strained her eyes to penetrate the murk, the wave of light passed on.
A tiny needle of fear slid painfully into Julia's consciousness. Why did they not answer her friendly gesture; why did they sit there, row on row, huddled, dim, unmoving? Why did those deep-socketed eyes, fixed on her with unwinking gaze, seem to burn searing holes in her skull?
JULIA shrugged her shoulders angrily. After all, she was there to teach, not to bandy social amenities. Besides, these were inarticulate simple folk, shy of their instructor from the city.
She cleared her throat nervously. It sounded startlingly loud. The little fear in her bosom was growing larger. She must start at once, to banish a queer choking sensation. She must not give way to silly thoughts.
The first words of the lecture she had hastily prepared on the long train ride came forth with a sense of strain. They sounded foreign to herself; they beat hollowly in her ears. They did not seem to be a part of her, to have any meaning. She knew that she must not foozle this job. If she failed...
Determinedly she stilled the rapid beating of her heart, and concentrated all her attention on one pallid face in the front row. She would lecture only to that particular auditor; she would forget the rest. Thereby she would establish a bond of intimacy, and thus be able to talk freely, naturally, interestingly, as she had always done at Normal School.
If only there were sufficient light, instead of that horrible swinging lantern. The face she peered at was a dark blur. She must see him closer, more plainly, if she were to establish that relationship so necessary to a lecturer. Of course, she could move away from her desk. She could ramble aimlessly across that emptiness between the flat table and the rows of benches, and see, face to face, these mountain pupils of hers.
In God's name, what was the matter with her?
The thought had been a normal, natural one. Why then did her hands, in sudden reflex, grip the edges of the desk with such convulsive tightness that their muscles ached in painful protest? Why did her blood shrink back from her skin to make it a dry sheath? Why did slimy maggots of fear go slithering through her skull?
She knew now, with the awful clarity of those condemned to die, that she would remain rooted to her desk; that nothing, nothing could force her to traverse that awful No Man's Land and meet her audience.
Why? Why? The thought pounded insanely in her aching skull, even as the words of her prepared lecture flowed mechanically from her lips. Ah, there it was! The thin flicker of light crawled slowly, inexorably across the floor, swung murkily over the first backed bench, empty of figures, shuddered hastily over the face on which she was so fiercely intent, and went skittering on.
God in Heaven! There was something wrong! There must be! That face! It had been that of a girl. A girl with grey, bloodless features and soulless, staring eyes. Blonde hair that was caked in a stiff mold. A glimpse of a dead grey throat speckled with red splotches. A sudden vision of sagging shoulders under the torn stuff of a mud-flecked dress. Then black shadows again, alive with horror.
A great shriek tried to pierce the unending flow of Julia's words. Every pounding vein in her body tried to tear loose, to scream out its shuddering terror. But the meaningless patter bubbled on. Her hands, white with strain, gripped the table more fiercely.
What were these strange people who had come to attend her school? Why was there no slightest sound from them; why did they sit in those queer, distorted positions, without the slightest shift or normal shufflings or casual clearings of throats? Why did those dark blobs that were eyes make her flesh crawl and her scalp become a squeezing horror?
On and on the words poured through her stiffened lips. She did not know what she was saying, but she must talk without pause, without ceasing. She must fill that dreadful void of silence with the sound of her voice. Let her stumble, let her but hesitate an instant, and those staring, rigid shapes would spring from their rooted seats and swarm over her pallid form with hideous mouthings.
She wanted to shriek out aloud, with all the outpouring of released fears. But she dared not. Cunning crept with sly edgings into her distorted mind. As long as she talked, as long as she let her voice echo around the dim emptiness, she held those Things, aching to spring at her throat, in thrall. For she knew now what they were.
They were the dead!
THEY were the moldering corpses of the mountain cemeteries, risen from their graves in ghostly wrath against the sacrilege that had descended upon their native hollows. Had not their preachers thundered against the abominations of the doctrines that she dared to teach?
But that girl? That Thing in the second row, with caked, blonde hair and bloody grey throat—what was she doing in this stealthy throng? She was Nan Hackett, the first teacher from the Agency, who had been ripped to death as by wolves—when there were no wolves in Death Hollow!
Desperately Julia forced breathless, garbled words from her tightening throat. As long as she spoke... Then her words grew faint, it required more effort to move the fear-stiffened muscles of her mouth and throat. A frozen wind stirred the tender hairs on the nape of her neck. The lantern dimmed, flickered unsteadily, then swung more violently. A thin creaking came to her fear-edged senses.
Behind her, the door through which she had entered—the very door that she had barred with a stout iron latch—was opening.
Dear God! she moaned to herself, don't let me faint! She felt as in a nightmare where bottomless pits yawn before racing feet, yet there can be no turning, no retreat; for greater horrors pursue with fetid breath.
In front of her lurked the gloating corpses, waiting for her to cease her babblings, waiting for her to come within reach of their skeleton hands. Behind her, borne on the icy breath of the mountains, came shuffling feet.
Ah, the window! She fought her trembling body erect, talking desperately all the while. She would hurl herself out of that window, and run—anywhere. Race on fear-driven feet through streams and whispering woods and slimy marshes, back to town, back to civilization, where the vengeful ghosts of the bigoted dead had no power over her.
Carefully she gathered up her failing strength for that last dreadful lunge. The feet were louder now behind her...
Her knees contracted and stiffened. Her eyes froze to the dead-gleaming oblong of window. The pale moonlight beat unsteadily on a peering face. Its nose was flattened to the grimy pane; its eyes were wide upon her with a grim intentness. It was the strange passenger of the train, the man who had watched her from the shelter of the darkling woods!
A shrill scream racketed from her lips and quavered down the long room. No longer could she fight against the encircling doom. She was lost; soon she would be a loathsome mangled Thing like Nan Hackett, or a mindless, shrieking monster like Ralph Pittman. It did not matter any more...
A strange authoritative voice pierced her consciousness: "In the name of Almighty God, woman, cease that senseless squalling."
Julia stopped as if a slashing sword had cut off her breath. She flogged her stiffened limbs into similitude of life. Like an automaton she turned, holding with pressing fingers to the desk. No demon out of Hell, no gloating Thing from the grave, would have invoked the name of the Almighty!
THERE, in the wavering yellow light, stood a tall, bony man. So thin and lank was he that the lantern's flare seemed to flow around him without a perceptible break. His elongated face was gaunt and cadaverous, and a profusion of black, coarse hair hung like a horse's mane down over a sloping forehead. The fires of fanaticism burned in the hollow depths of his deep-socketed eyes; they blazed on the fear-swathed girl with almost hypnotic compulsion. Jet black clothing encased his lankness.
Julia forced a whisper from her parched throat. "Who—who are you?"
The man chuckled morosely. "You ought to know, woman. I am the instrument of the Lord's work in Death Hollow; the thankless keeper of its immortal souls. I am the Reverend Increase Maunders. And you," he thundered, "are the godless woman who preaches that Devil's gospel called evolution!"
Julia fell limply into the chair. A wave of faintness loosened the rigidity of her limbs. This then was the executor, the agent appointed under the will of Ingersoll Greenway. He had come as Lemuel Fogg had said he would, to make certain that the terms of the will were being adhered to.
The harshness of his speech slid unheeded over her numbed brain. Only one thought whirled before her in ceaseless circles. He was human, he was flesh and blood—he would protect her from that dreadful audience of the dead, from that peering face in the window.
"Save me!" she panted.
The mountain preacher surveyed her sternly. "How can those be saved," he demanded, "who deny God's handiwork? It is a bitter enough cross for me to fulfill the sneering wishes of that infidel and agnostic, Ingersoll Greenway. But God has given me this task to try my strength, and I obey, unworthy as I am. I have preached to my flock unweariedly, day and night, forbidding them under penalties of eternal hell-fires to attend this atheistic school." He raised a long, black-clothed arm on high. "I have succeeded," he shouted triumphantly. "No one in Death Hollow will ever come to hear your damnable doctrines; you waste your smooth, cozening speeches on the empty benches. Look about you and..."
He stopped in mid-gesture. His bony jaw went agape. The flare of sooty light had gone shuddering over the shadowed row of benches. Face after face, staring, rigid, without motion, etched into startling relief, and faded back again into the enveloping murk.
For one dreadful moment the Reverend Increase Maunders was without speech, his skeleton-like finger extended, a frozen image. Then his face went black with wrath, and the floodgates loosened.
"Ye have mocked me, then," he thundered. "Ye have sworn on the Holy Book that ye would not attend, and now ye slink behind my back. I call down upon ye..."
Julia shrank back from the fanatical preacher. He was mad! The flames that shot from his eyes were not those of a sane man. He was mouthing curses against a congregation of the Dead, against parishioners who had moldered in their graves for God knew how long.
Horror rose like frozen lead in the pit of her stomach. She leaned over the desk...
SHE screamed again. The sound galvanized the moon-drenched figure at the window into action. The grim, tight lips drew back in a snarl. An arm raised and crashed against the pane. Glass shattered. A bloody fist thrust into the room, fumbled for the catch.
Maunders whirled and saw the staring face of the man. Grey, deadly eyes clashed with flaming black. For one instant they locked while Julia shrank moaning against the desk. Then the deep-set eyes of the preacher flared with lightning blasts.
"Hugh Elson!" he breathed. "I should have known." His voice raised to an insane fury. "Blast your rotten soul for this." His hand slid out of sight and came forth belching flame. The concussion blasted hideously against the leering corpses. Glass splintered into a thousand fragments; smoke swirled.
Julia felt herself going. Wildly she tried to hold on to her slipping senses. Through a fire-shot haze she saw dimly the hand at the window jerk back, the face grin at her and fade suddenly from view; in a deeper daze she heard strangled cursings from the preacher, the thud of his long legs as he dashed through the open door into the white-glimmering clearing; the bang of wood behind him. Then suddenly she was alone, alone with those rows of waiting corpses.
They were coming for her! They had risen from their seats, they were swaying forward, grinning hideously, bony arms outstretched. The flesh fell away from their faces, the clothes rotted off their bodies. They were skeletons, menacing with bony laughter, white jawbones agape, dancing with slow, mincing steps toward the desk.
Then the kaleidoscope of lights in her brain exploded, and blackness overwhelmed her...
SHE was cold. A bitter breeze slapped against her limbs, prickled them with new sensation. A nightmare weight lifted slowly from her chest. Blood started a sluggish flow in her veins. She opened her eyes, stared wildly about her.
Then memory that brought a new shriek bubbling to her pallid lips. Oh, God, hadn't she been through enough? Must there be more? The Reverend Maunders—where was he? Hugh Elson, the face at the window, the young man of the platform, whom he had shot at with a pistol; what had happened to him? She remembered that name. Lemuel Fogg had told her. He was one of the nephews to whom Greenway's fortune would revert if Death Hollow's school were closed.
Her own scream forced her eyes wide. Silence had followed, unbroken by any sound. She stared down the long room, straight at the shadowy dead Things on the benches. There they sat, in huddled rows, unstirring, blank eyes protruding from grisly faces in silent mockery.
She forced her weary body upright. She must get out of here before she went completely mad. Thank Heaven, it had been delirium that made those seated bodies seem to move toward her. They were dead for all eternity. She took a painful step toward the door, and froze in her tracks.
Something was rustling back there among the corpses. It was coming for her!
She tried to drive her limbs forward, but they seemed suddenly rooted. It was true then—that the dead were coming to life!
Closer and closer came the dread sound of muffled movement. Now it was upon her. Hot breath fanned her neck. With a frenzied scream Julia threw off her strange paralysis and plunged ahead.
But it was too late. Something caught her shoulder in a powerful grip and whirled her around. The white, flowing arms tightened, crushed her until bone and sinew seemed to merge in a gory mess. A gloating chuckle rasped her eardrums. Then something snapped in her mind.
SHE was being carried through the woods. That much her darkened senses told her. The night slithered pallid fingers along her cheek; her body hung in a limp arc over powerful shoulders. Branches—whipped across her face; unseen things plucked at her hair.
Then the creature who held her stopped. Voices sprang out of the dark. As in a dream she heard them. One was the voice of the Reverend Increase Maunders. It boomed startlingly close; almost in her ear. The other was strange to her.
Desperately Julia tried to pierce the dully roaring haze that enveloped her, to hear what they were saying. But her head was a throbbing pulse, and her body a thing dissociated from her. She was held, bound in a paralysis of dread. Her muscles could not move; she opened her lips, but no sounds issued. And the voices were an indistinguishable confusion.
Then the voices ceased, and the crash of footsteps took their place. Farther and farther away, snapping dry branches beneath heavy shoes, until they were gone.
Once more Julia knew she was moving. Shoulders heaved beneath her flaccid form; the stinging wind slashed her flesh. How long this nightmare trek took she was never to know. In her half-conscious condition it seemed an eternity.
Then it was suddenly warm. Through the closed lids of her eyes bright sparkles darted. A thin hissing sound came to her. And she crashed sickeningly onto a hard surface.
The shock forced her senses into the groove of life again. She moaned.
She was lying on a wooden bunk in a rough log cabin. The bark of the walls was green with fungous slime, and little puffs of steam curled upward from the damp, untrimmed wood. Signs that the cabin had long been abandoned.
But now red flame glowed over the sizzling walls and danced with gloating shadows over the dark green mould. A furnace blast smote her frozen cheeks.
In the farther corner blazed a charcoal fire in a bed of brick. The blood-red sparks flew upward with insane glee; the leaping tongues of flame reached out from the flaring embers with a greedy hissing. Imbedded in their midst was a long iron rod, shaped at the end into a curious flat disk. It seared the eyeballs with its shimmering white heat. And to Julia there seemed something unutterably malign about that instrument.
Shuddering, she forced her eyes away. They strained upward at a sheeted figure. It loomed over her like a destroying demon. A long white shroud of coarse material enveloped it from head to foot. Two slits bored at her where eyes should be. Like a graven image it stood, soundless, unmoving. Like the corpses that had sat row on row in the school.
Insane thoughts hammered in her brain. She must make that shrouded Thing speak; she must force it to unlock its hidden lips.
The words barely trickled through fear-stiffened lips. "Who are you? What do you want of me?"
He did not answer; he did not move. He loomed over her like a tower of evil; he grew on her blurred vision until he seemed to fill the small confines of the cabin. She shrieked and babbled and flung her body forward. Her nostrils were full with the stench of rotting flesh, of moldering earth. He would drag her down... Down...
But her limbs refused to move. She was tied hand and foot, helpless in the presence of this faceless horror.
THE shrouded figure flowed away from her. It made no sound as it stooped over the blazing charcoal, lifted the metal rod and stared intently at the white-glowing disk. Then, without a sound, the figure returned it back into the fire, as if it still were not hot enough. Julia closed her eyes in a spasm of dread. Already she felt the approach of that hellish brand; already she felt the tender flesh of her body scorch and sizzle under its burning embrace, stamping her tortured skin.
She tried to focus her crazed mind on what that brand might be. She narrowed her thoughts to that single hairline. What scarlet letter would the sizzling iron blazon on her for all the world to see? She must not think of anything else, or she would follow Ralph Pittman into the gibbering realms of madness. Only by concentration on a single thing, no matter what, could she save her reason...
Curious what queer thoughts cluttered up her mind. Was it a symbol that proclaimed a sin, like Hester's, in The Scarlet Letter? Was it a device to prove ownership, as if she were some four-footed beast? Or was it something unutterably hideous, deforming, at the sight of which men would go mad and flee from her as from a monster unfit for earth?
Denial rasped madly from her throat, conjured by the compelling spell of her own imaginings. Fever burned her veins and her mouth became a kiln of lime and ashes. Then she opened heavy lids, afraid of what she would see. She gasped.
The sheeted figure was gone! The brand was blazing whiter and whiter in the embers—leering imps seemed to dance over the writhing iron—but the Thing had vanished. Hope flared momentarily in Julia's fuddled brain. She jerked madly at her bonds, and they cut into her soft, white body with razor edges.
Then she went limp, hopeless, sobbing in low, tearing tones. He was coming back for her, now. She could hear the thud of clumping feet on the ground outside; she heard the door latch lift and a gust of wind howl into the room. Someone came inside.
She dared not look up any more. This time the iron would be hot enough for even the fiendish desires of the sheeted Thing. Soon now the searing flame would be at her shrinking flesh; soon...
An exclamation of surprise broke in on the frenzied whirl of her thoughts. She lifted frightened lids. A man was staring at her wide-eyed. She had never seen him before. He was short and stocky, fleshed with good living, and his lips were thick and unnaturally red.
"Good Lord!" he stuttered. "I thought..." He stopped and looked hastily around. His eyes seemed to pop out of his head. He had just seen the branding iron. His mouth gaped and his lower lip dropped as if it were pendulous on a hinge. He seemed to have forgotten all about the helpless girl.
"Please, save me!" Julia cried out frantically, writhing in her bonds. "Quick, before the Thing returns!"
The man swung back to her. He cast sidelong glances at the instrument of torture, licking his lips with stealthy, pointed tongue. It seemed to exercise a fearful fascination over him.
"Who are you?" he demanded. His voice was shrill and effeminate, and he made no move toward the girl.
"My name is Julia Winters and I'm the new school teacher in Death Hollow," she gasped. "What difference does that make? For the love of God, untie me before it is too late."
He disregarded her agonized appeal and sat down on a rickety chair. "So you're teaching evolution to Death Hollow, eh?" he said surveying her with strange interest from under pasty lids. "That is interesting," he purred.
"Don't you understand?" she cried desperately, the pulses pounding like trip-hammers in her temples. "We're both lost if the Thing comes back. He'll kill us both."
The man started suddenly. "Why, bless my soul did you say kill? You don't mean to say..."
The sound of steps outside cut him off.
"Too late," she moaned. "Oh God, it's too late."
THE man jumped to his feet. His over-red complexion went dirty grey. The chair slammed back with a crash.
The shrouded Thing filled the doorway, silent, ominous.
The man shrieked and cowered away. His pudgy hand flew over his eyes. "Don't you touch me," he screamed. "I—I have nothing to do with this girl. I swear it. Came here to meet—"
The sheeted figure laughed hollowly.
"You came to meet me," he intoned.
The shivering wretch stiffened. "Good Lord!" he cried. " You! What fool mummery is this?"
A low chuckle dripped through the sheet. It held a tone of sadistic gloating. "I aim to give value for money received. After tonight, when Death Hollow sees this gal with the brand of Cain on her forehead, there ain't going to be no more teachers coming. There won't be no teaching of evolution in the hills. That's what was wanted, wasn't it?"
The stocky man staggered. He turned his furtive eyes on the girl, swung them back to the hooded figure.
"Y-e-es," he admitted hesitantly. "But, man alive, I didn't expect this. I drove in tonight as we arranged, thinking everything was settled. I find you all dressed up in a nightshirt, and this girl... I won't have it!" he cried with a feeble access of energy. "Scare her out of the place, but don't mark her up. That—" he gulped heavily, "—would mean jail."
Julia trembled with new-found eagerness. "Yes, yes," she begged. "Let me go. I'll leave Death Hollow and never return. I swear I won't say anything. Please, please!" Her haunted eyes implored the newcomer.
The man's glance wavered over the slimness of her body, revealed in every contour by the tightness of the thongs. His reddish eyes gleamed lustfully.
"I'll take care of you," he promised with a smirk. "Now listen," he blustered to the shrouded man. "I'll take this girl with me. You make sure no one else takes her place for tomorrow night, and the deal is closed."
The sheeted figure straightened. He advanced threateningly on the shorter man.
"So that's what ye think to do, Philip Elson," he rumbled.
Elson made a quick, fluttering gesture with his hands. He shrank back from the ominous advance. "For God's sake, no names!" he squealed.
THE hooded man kept on coming. He laughed horribly. "Philip Elson, Philip Elson," he repeated. "You think you're smooth as silk. You think you could break the old man's will, an' get all his money without dirtying your hands. Or mebbe you thought you'd leave me holding the bag. Well, it ain't gonna work out that way. Folks in Death Hollow don't like sinful teachin's more'n I do, but they like the fortune that old Greenway left, right fine. You didn't think it was goin' to be easy when you made your proposition, did you?"
Philip Elson backed into the corner. "Why, I—I thought—" he gulped.
"You ain't got no right to think," the other thundered. "You told me yourself it was up to me to deliver the goods. Well, I'm delivering 'em, see, and you're in the same boat with me. Do you hear?" His voice rose to a great shriek, his hand clenched under the folds. "I killed the first teacher; I made a raving lunatic out of a second, and this one is goin' to be branded for everyone to see. After that, nobody will come here a-teachin', and Death Hollow'll be glad to give back old Greenway's money to ye."
Elson pressed his rounded body against the wall.
"You—you—killed someone," he stammered. "You're crazy; you're a lunatic. I'm through with you," he screamed.
The white-sheeted hand reached out with lightning speed, caught Elson by the coat collar, and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat.
"So ye think ye'll run out on me, hey? Well, think again. Mebbe you don't know the law—you're an accomplice, an' you're in this with both feet. And mebbe you forget this gal knows your name?"
Elson sagged weakly against the wall as the other let him go. He stared at Julia as if he had never seen her before.
The girl listened with mounting horror to the strange colloquy. Hope alternated with grim despair, as the argument waxed hotter. The figure in the shroud was not a Thing risen from the grave, but a man! That gave her no comfort. He was a killer, a fiendish murderer who slaughtered for money, and because of the innate cruelty of his being. There was no mercy to be expected from him. But the other, Philip Elson, Greenway's nephew, who, in his greed for fortune, had instigated this monster to break the terms of the will—he was weak, yet he shrank from murder. Now, however, the madman's cunning phrases had instilled poison into his mind. It was his own skin that was in danger now.
"Don't listen to that vile Thing," she cried desperately. "I promise you, I swear I won't tell. I'll go far away—"
But Elson was shaking with a new dread. The hangman's rope loomed before his terrified gaze. This girl knew too much!
The monster chuckled gloatingly. "I see, Elson, ye understand. We'll brand her with the sign—an' then—to save your neck, we'll kill her an' throw her body out on the road."
Elson nodded. He was beyond words, beyond any pitying emotion. His own life was at stake.
THE hooded man moved with doomful tread to the fire. He took out the sizzling brand by its long handle and stared at its blazing disk. Then he swung around in a billow of robes, and came slowly toward the bunk on which Julia lay rigid with terror. Elson still crouched in his corner, eyes desperate and hunted.
Julia shrieked in an ecstasy of fear as the inexorable brand approached. Every fiber in her body ached with the anticipation of that dreadful iron. Her head was a bursting globe; her limbs seemed encased in a concrete mold as the hooded figure grew on her tear-drenched vision until he seemed gigantic, filling the universe with his frightful, torturing hate.
She threw herself again and again at the cords that held her in horrible embrace. She shredded her flesh into long red strips and did not even feel the pain.
Closer and closer came the blazing iron. The heat flared in her face, crisped her eyebrows into ashes. She tried to close her eyes, but some terrible power held them open. The white-hot disk flamed and shimmered with unholy glee.
Julia let out one last despairing shriek. She had seen the design! It was a grinning, leering, hideous ape! What distorted brain could have thought of that—to brand her with the Devil's sign for all Death Hollow to read and shudder?
The looming figure bent closer. The iron was stabbing down for her white forehead. She smelt the frizzling hair, the stench of hot iron. She went limp in dreadful anticipation...
SOMEONE shouted. The next instant the flaming brand flew violently away, went sizzling and scorching across the cabin. The hooded madman staggered and went down with a crash.
Julia opened her eyes in a shiver of dread. Had the brand already etched its path into her forehead? What had happened? She saw the smoking iron bite deep into the rough wood of the floor; she saw the sheeted monster struggle furiously with a grey-coated man.
They rolled over and over, pounding each other with clenched fists. She caught glimpses of a rather good-looking young face, grim now and terrible with anger.
Julia's wracked heart gave a tremendous bound. It was the passenger from the train, the man in the forest, the face at the window. Hugh Elson, the Reverend Maunders had called him, and had shot at to kill. Why? He was Philip Elson's cousin, co-heir to Greenway's money. Had the conspirators fallen out—or was he really...
Philip Elson came out of his crouch with a mad shriek. "Hugh!" His eyes bulged in terror. "We'll split the money. Let him up. Don't—"
Hugh rolled like a cat on top of the cursing, gouging figure. His face bled freely from a long, raking slash. His sinewy fingers grappled in the folds of the sheet for an invisible throat.
"You can't bribe me, Philip," he panted.
The powerful figure beneath him heaved and thrust out with both knees. Hugh staggered, rolled off with a groan, and came back scrambling. But the shrouded man was already on his feet, rushing for him with a bull-like roar. They met with a crash in the center of the cabin. Hugh's fist flailed out, smashed with a heavy thud into the monster's muffled face. A mad, thick snarl answered the blow. And two long, snaky arms whipped out, caught the young man around the waist, and strained.
Hugh's face engorged with strangled blood. He tried desperately to free himself from that bone-crushing grip. He smashed his fist again and again into the billowing folds. But the madman only grunted and held on with a grip of death.
There was a sharp, sickening crack. Hugh went limp.
"Oh God!" Julia moaned. It was all over.
Then the monster let out a great cackle of triumph. He relaxed his guard for a fleeting instant, and in that moment Hugh acted. Using every last ounce of his failing strength, biting his lips with the agony of a final tremendous effort, he crashed his balled fist for the point where a chin should be.
There was a dull thud. The shrouded figure grunted, staggered and toppled to the floor. A horrible scream followed; there was the smell of burnt cloth, and a burst of flame enveloped him. He had been thrown directly across the still-blazing brand!
Hugh staggered wearily, held himself barely erect. He groped toward the bunk, swaying from side to side. His face was a drawn, taut mask of pain.
"Look out!" Julia shrieked.
Philip Elson, eyes glaring, thick lips drawn back in fiendish snarl, was crashing downward with a chair. He was too far immersed in this welter of blood and death now to withdraw. If Hugh lived, the hangman's noose dangled for his own fleshy neck.
Hugh put up a feeble hand to ward off the blow. The chair smashed down his guard, sent him writhing to the floor. Philip mouthed animal sounds, raised the chair again for the finishing blow. There was no light of reason in his face. The chair came down with horrible speed.
A film appeared suddenly over Philip's inflamed face. He seemed to stumble oddly. Then he went toppling headlong over the body of the cousin whom he had tried to kill.
JULIA'S skull was squeezed with iron bands; she groaned and shook her head.
There, in the doorway, holding a still-smoking pistol, stood the gaunt, thin figure of the Reverend Increase Maunders, executor of the will of Ingersoll Greenway! His great holes of eyes burned in his cadaverous face as he swung his accusing gaze around the shambles of the cabin.
In one stride he was at the side of the flame-enswathed figure. His stamping feet pressed out the hungry filaments of fire. In the next instant he was with the fainting girl, loosening her pain-wracked limbs from their bonds. Then he thrust aside Philip Elson, dead with a bullet in his fear-crazed brain, and heaved at the limp man beneath.
Hugh stirred, opened his eyes, smiled weakly at Julia. Her heart thumped oddly at that smile. In spite of battered, blood-smeared features, it held a certain luminous, thrilling quality for her.
Maunders strode stiff-legged to the Thing that lay, oddly still, in the smoldering corpse cloths. He ripped away with strong fingers.
"I might have thought of him, instead of blaming Hugh Elson," he said. "But the Lord turned his vengeance on the bloody and the sinful."
The singed face that stared up sightlessly at Julia was still enhaloed with white, flowing hair and patriarchal beard. It was the face of Lemuel Fogg, head of the School Board of Death Hollow!
AFTERWARD, when wounds were bandaged, and the dead decently shrouded, came explanations.
Hugh held Julia's hand in a firm, warm grip. "I suspected something was wrong," he said, "when Philip came to me with the idea of trying to break our uncle's will. He had run through his own money, and was pretty desperate for funds. I refused. After all, Greenway had a right to dispose of his fortune as he saw fit. At the time Philip was pretty angry at me. But when I met him the following week, he seemed in high spirits. He had been to Death Hollow, he said, and everything was going along fine.
"I wondered what he meant, and decided to find out for myself. A telegram to the executor of the will, the Reverend Maunders, brought an answer I didn't expect. It spoke bitterly of the horrors that were taking place here."
He grinned down at the girl. "I went out to investigate the business myself, and saw you on the platform, frightened and alone. I trailed you to the school, to see what was up." His grin hardened. "I saw plenty through that window. I was just coming in to help you when Maunders took a pot shot at me. I had to run for it—he had a gun and I had none. By that time I was convinced Philip had bribed him to put on the act."
"And I," the preacher rumbled, "was sure that you were to blame. Your telegram—and your face at the window—"
"But what," Julia shuddered, moving a shade closer to Hugh, "were those awful corpses in the school room?"
Hugh smiled grimly. "I went back to find out when both of you disappeared. They were wax dummies, realistically smeared with blood. Fogg had thought first he could drive you mad—the way he did Pittman."
Maunders interrupted. "I was chasing Hugh through the woods, when I ran into Philip. He was coming along this trail, and seemed uneasy-like at meeting me. Made up some excuse about being here."
Then those were the voices she had heard while Fogg was carrying her, Julia thought.
"After he left me," the preacher went on, "I got to thinking. I remembered this old cabin along the trail that was supposed to be deserted, and thought I'd take a look at it."
"It was a good thing you did," Hugh agreed.
"And now," the Reverend Maunders rose and buttoned his clerical coat. "Don't ye both think it's time to put an end to this godless will of your uncle? The wages of sin is death and there has been enough of sin and death in Death Hollow for a good many years to come."
Hugh looked questioningly at the girl. She shuddered. "I don't ever want to teach in that horrible place again," she said hastily.
The young man pressed her fingers. "You won't have to," he whispered.
Somehow the words brought the blood once more to her pallid cheeks. She turned shyly to the preacher, but that gaunt savior of souls was on the threshold, back turned to them, staring out into the night.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.