Dreary fields passed before his gaze, their harvests taken in, and dismal second growth accompanied the mile of gravel road. The scene was not more depressing than Alan’s thoughts as it shaded them with a subtle, insidious aura of gloom. Fletcher’s suggestion that some unknown dread was stalking the countryside was certainly confirmed by the words, although emotionally tainted, of Hal Webber. All sorts of possibilities occurred to him which before had not hitherto presented themselves. At first he had feared the letters might turn out to be the hoax of someone pretending to be Bayard Fletcher, or that Fletcher himself had somehow lost his reason. But now he strongly entertained the notion that the unnamed and unknown menace was not purely imaginary at all but perhaps very genuine. Not what Fletcher thought it to be, of course, but still something very real and noxious and deadly.
Could it be that his earlier suspicions were not so untenable after all?
And what was that ahead of him? He had been driving parallel to a meadow when something decidedly strange leaped into his vision, causing him to slow down for a closer look. Leaning motionless against the fence, obviously dead, was a cow looking as though it had been tossed there like a rag doll discarded by an irked child. But the proportions of its body seemed to be all wrong. It looked as though it had been deflated, like a basketball from which most of the air had leaked, much thinner and flatter than one would expect.
Alan shook his head, absently noting another huddled, unmoving mass much farther away in the meadow, and continued to Shadow Lake.
Presently he reached the narrow, winding lane which had been described by Fletcher, leading off to the left of the road. He carefully maneuvered through an aisle of rotting leaves carpeting the shallow wheel ruts; above, naked branches whipped the roof of his car.
His keen blue eyes searched the gathering dusk intently as the car wound through the clustering trees down the narrow gravel road to the lake and along the shore. Occasionally he passed cottages which were dark and unoccupied. Shadow Lake’s long narrow expanse, as seen through a break in the trees, stretched cold and somber and still. Alan could just make out a gray barrier beyond the sullen surface of the water which was the tree-shrouded heights of the opposite shore. The lake was certainly desolate and lonely in the autumn after the departure of the summer residents and the closing of the few isolated cottages. But its very solitude probably appealed to Fletcher as a welcome contrast to the unpleasant features of big city life. Fletcher, he thought, would probably have the lake to himself from now until the following summer.
The cottage on the knoll, which presently came into view, was long and low. It appeared to be a late Victorian dwelling, spacious and in reasonably good repair, but looking somewhat bleak and desolate behind a wild tangle of uncut grass and bushes.
Alan turned into a clearing hemmed in by patches of unkempt shrubbery and small trees, parked the car, and started to the cottage. Dusk continued to settle about the quiet countryside and the pine-fringed cleft in the knoll at his left was already shadowy and indistinct as was the narrow tree-screened path. Alan walked faster through the somberly rustling leaves, piled by the early autumn winds and seemingly undisturbed by human feet.
Fletcher opened the door at Alan’s knock. He seemed to be almost painfully glad to see him and led him to his rustic study, a long, booklined room tastefully paneled with dark oak. They sat before a small fire pleasantly burning in a huge fireplace and talked.
Fletcher was tall and lean and slightly stooped, but still handsome and distinguished in bearing, with snowy hair and precise eyeglasses. His voice, cordial and controlled, gave little hint of the strain under which he had been living.
“I’m delighted that you could come, Mr. Hasrad,” he assured his guest after drinks were mixed and they were comfortably seated. “This thing I wrote of in my letters is so utterly at variance with anything normal and understandable that I almost believe I’d have pulled out rather than remain here alone much longer.” His voice trembled momentarily and Alan had a flashing glimpse of the iron fortitude and determination of this man who would not run when retreat would so easily have solved his problem.
“I’ve heard talk in Bramwell that life has been threatened,” Alan observed carefully.
Fletcher nodded confirmation.
“Yes.” With slender, symmetrical hands he began to load a blackened briar. “This morning I found one of my neighbor’s cats on the front porch. It had been crushed to a shapeless, furry pulp, just like a goat I saw on the road the day before, and flung there. Terror has struck this area, Mr. Hasrad, a terror which most people couldn’t even begin to understand. In the past two weeks two people have been killed.”
“I’ve heard of their deaths,” Alan said, “although only sketchy and incomplete accounts of what had occurred.”
Fletcher, sprawled in his comfortable chair, drew lazily at his pipe. “I can probably fill in some of the details; I must, in order to convince you that the trouble here is very real. It’s a terrible business that is getting worse all the time. Those in charge are being very careful as to just what news they release. I suppose they think people will believe a hoax is being perpetrated upon them. But I can tell you some of the facts, as I was present at the autopsies—county Medical Examiner’s my cousin—and what I’m going to tell you just might be the strangest thing you’ve ever heard.”
Fletcher leaned forward and peered through his spectacles, his gaunt face a study in earnestness.
“Now here’s the really strange part. I saw the bodies myself, and there didn’t seem to be a scratch on them anywhere. But they were limp as rags; the bones, subjected to some terrific pressure, had been crushed and splintered and broken to pieces. I could hear crepitation in a dozen places before my cousin started to cut.
“I suppose explanations, remote and far-fetched, could account for such conditions, but something else was discovered which makes it even more unbelievable if that could be possible. It seems that in both cases the cells of most organs of the bodies had been somehow drained of nearly every trace of their enzymes, hormones, and antibodies; in fact, nearly all the amino acids which make up these complex substances are gone! This has resulted, in terms a layman might better understand, in most of the protein matter being missing from the interior tissues! Protein, you might know, makes up a large part of each body cell, so you can imagine the incredible scene we viewed after a few simple incisions!”
Alan gazed at the professor nonplussed, and sipped from his glass.
“Yes,” Fletcher nodded. “It’s unbelievable but true. With the exception of certain organs and the skin, which seems in both cases not to have been touched, it would appear as though the bodies had been robbed in some inexplicable manner of nearly every molecule of protein within them! As you can imagine, there was little left to examine but flimsy husks!”
Alan, remembering the cow he had earlier seen, was thoughtful for a time. Finally: “And what does your cousin the Medical Examiner have to say?”
Fletcher smiled weakly. “What can he say? The only possible explanation that he and his colleagues can offer is that the countryside is being terrorized by an animal that swallows its prey, ingests the bodily matter its diet requires, then spits out or otherwise eliminates the carcass!”
Alan’s lips tightened but he offered no comment.
“That, of course,” Fletcher continued, “is the most absurd rubbish that one could hypothesize! And yet… I have no better theory myself to offer. To compound one’s incredulity is the utterly impossible condition of the intact, unbroken skin.”