The Thing from the Lake Part 21

The comfort of light springing up in the room! The relief of seeing normal, pleasant surroundings! Truly light is an elixir of courage to man.

That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force to rise. Nor did I altogether wish to rise and go. I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my self-respect also? Was I to run a beaten man from this peril, after standing against my enemy so long?

Should I not rather stand on this my ground where I was not the "lame feller"?

Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam.

The series of progressive crashes pa.s.sed back of the house and continued on, dying away down the creek.

As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise, the light was withdrawn from every lamp in the room. At the same moment, the electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I heard its progress across the m.u.f.fling softness of the rug, across the polished wood beyond, and final stoppage at some point out of my reach.

As vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing ma.s.s within the curdled air, so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared Itself in the night and stared in upon me. As so many times, I felt the Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me, poised to crush, yet withheld by a force greater than either of us. The venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me, fouling the breath I drew. My lungs labored.

"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine. "Frail and presumptuous Will that has dared oppose mine, you are conquered. This is the hour foretold to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength. Weakling, feel the death surf break upon you. Fall down before me. Cower--plead!"

Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for the wash of the invisible sea never had come to me until tonight. And there was Desire's saying that I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift of knowledge of the book. But I summoned my forces.

"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not met front to front these many nights? And who has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return, but I live. The duel is not lost."

"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken my gift that you might spy meanly on the secret of your beloved? Have you not opened your mind to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and tear down its power? Of your own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks your breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its pedestal. Your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those s.p.a.ces where it shall take flight tonight. Man, you die."

Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining low. My enemy spoke the truth. One more such wave----

My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In fancy, I saw bright dawn filling this room of mine, s.h.i.+ning on the figure of a man who had been myself. His head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden.

On the table beside him a vase was overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining the paper. By and by Vere would come to summon that unanswering figure to the gay little breakfast-table. Phillida would leave her place behind the burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and come running up the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at!

"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy now?" raged the Thing.

"Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. Think how you are alone with me. Think how you are abandoned to me."

But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth had flowed through me like strength.

"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where I am, I stand by my own will. With where I shall stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for with the death of my body your power ends. Back--or else face me, Thing of Darkness, while we stand in one place."

At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap.

Consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness.

I stood before the Barrier on the ghostly frontier; erect, arms folded, fronting the Breach in that inconceivably mighty wall. Above, away out of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.

This I had seen before. But behind me lay that which I had not seen. The mists I believed to be eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea stretched parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even a horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between these two immensities on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In the Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there reared Itself against me.

"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay, crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave my immemorial age?"

It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It stooped, a lowering menace.

"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since the youngest days of the world have I not answered? Have I not brought my presence to the magician's lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible? When the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am the guardian of the Barrier. Whoever would pa.s.s this way must pa.s.s me.

Have you the power? Die, then, and begone."

With a long heaving sound of waters in movement, the gray sea stirred from its stillness. As if drawn to some center out of sight, the tide began to recede down that strange beach. Then realization came to me that here was the ocean which, invisible, had surged icy death upon me a while past. The ocean now gathered for the final wave that should overwhelm the defeated.

"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look upon you, if you have visible form."

Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying, hurrying; the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft in the great wall. For there the cold darkness was writhing and turning, visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a gla.s.sy, twisting river might look by night. And as one might glimpse beneath the smooth boil and heave of such a river the dim shape of crocodile or water-monster, so in that moving dark there seemed to lie Something from which the mind shrank, appalled. Now gigantic tentacles rolled about a central ma.s.s, groping out in unsatisfied greed. Now an ape-like shape seemed to stalk there, rearing up its monstrous stature until all that Breach was choked with it. It fell down into vagueness, where huge coils upraised and sank their loops. But through all change steadily fixed upon me I felt the eyes of the Unseen.

I stood my ground. With what pain and draining cost to my poor endurance there is no need to say. Each instant I antic.i.p.ated the surge of that returning sea whose flood should smother out the human spark upon its sh.o.r.e. This I had brought upon myself. Yes, and would again to help Desire Mich.e.l.l! If I had sheltered her for one hour----!

The Thing halted, stooped.

"Man, cast off the woman," It snarled at me. "Fool, evil goes with her.

For her you suffer. Thrust her from your breast."

I looked down. Wavering against my breast, just above my heart glimmered a spot of light. The little hurrying steps had ceased. I thought, if the bright head of Desire Mich.e.l.l were rested there against me, how I would strive to s.h.i.+eld her from sight of the Thing yonder. In the sweep of that will to protect, I drew my coat about the spot of hovering brightness.

I felt her press warm against me. I heard the roar of the death-wave far out in that sea. Before me----

Oh Horror of the Frontier, what broke through the dread Breach. What formed there, more inhuman from Its likeness to humanity? What Hand reached for me--for--us----

CHAPTER XVI

"I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was."--MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

"Mr. Locke! Mr. Locke!"

I opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of Ethan Vere, who bent over me.

Phillida was there, too, pale of face. But what was That just vanis.h.i.+ng into the darkness beyond my window-sill? What malignant glare seared disappointment and grim promise across my consciousness? Had I brought with me or did I hear now a whispered: "_Pygmy, again!_"

"Cousin, Cousin, are you very ill?" Phillida was half sobbing. "Won't you drink the brandy, please? Oh, Ethan, how cold he is to touch!"

"Hush, dear," Vere bade, in his slow steadfast way. "Mr. Locke, can you swallow some of this?"

I became aware that his arm supported me upright in my chair while he held a gla.s.s to my lips. Mechanically I drank some of the cordial. Vere put down the gla.s.s and said a curious thing. He asked me:

"Shall I get you out of this room?"

Why should he ask that, since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal.

Any effort was impossible to me. The cold of the unearthly sea still numbed my body. My heart labored, staggering at each beat.

Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me. His tact let me rest in the mute inaction necessary to recovery, while my body, astonished that it still lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow he rea.s.sured and directed Phillida. Presently she was busied with the coffee apparatus in the corner of the room.

It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of the table before me. The vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see it. The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there the day before lay among the wet sheets of music. The Book of Hermas lay open at the page I had last turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.

"_Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might devour a city--whose name is Hegrin. Thou hast escaped--because thou didst not fear for so terrible a Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may escape----_"

What did they mean, the old, old words men have rejected? What had Hermas glimpsed in his visions? How many men are written down liars because they traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove to report what they had seen? Who before me had stood at the Barrier and set foot on the Frontier between the worlds?