Alan was thinking swiftly. “But, Doctor Fletcher—really, there must be a reasonable explanation for all of this. One of the constrictor snakes could have crushed them,” he feebly offered, realizing as he spoke the unlikelihood of such a reptile being found anywhere near Bramwell.
Fletcher waved his hand. “Certainly,” he returned quickly, a hint of disparagement in his voice, “and so could a steamroller; but a snake would have swallowed its prey. And explain a conceivable way in which it could extract most of the protein from the bodies. No,” Fletcher shook his head with positive conviction, “obviously snakes don’t feed that way.” He fell into a troubled silence while he pondered his next words.
“But these killings were not the beginning,” he finally continued, relighting his briar. “It started about a month ago with the destruction of the insects in this area; and within four or five days it was nearly impossible to find an insect or a spider of any sort. Fed upon in the same manner, countless numbers of their broken remains lay scattered about. Within a week the small rodent population was in the process of being decimated; and it wasn’t long before dogs and cats and other small mammals that remained outdoors at night met with the same fate. Farmers then began to find livestock killed with all the same attributes, and these losses continue to increase. There’s no doubt about it, Mr. Hasrad, this thing is strong enough now to attack humans and even the larger animals and anything else unfortunate enough to be outside after dark. In all, I know of at least a dozen full grown cows and four or five sheep that have been found—and there are probably many more—crushed and drained of the sustenance this… this, whatever it is, craves!
“No,” he concluded, “we may as well face the fact that it’s not a natural happening susceptible of an ordinary explanation.” He rose and crossed to the bay window. “It won’t be long now,” he stated cryptically, “before you can see for yourself.”
After a sketchy meal cooked on the gas range, they retired to the living room. Fletcher fed the small blaze in the fireplace with pieces of dried driftwood, and shadows danced and jerked over the paneled walls, bringing into momentary clearness the pastoral paintings suspended about, then hiding them in a shadowy background that was vague and indistinct.
Alan could hear the faint sounds of the wind outside grow louder as the autumn darkness deepened. Across the sky it whipped gray storm clouds, sending them scudding before its wild breath. He studied Fletcher seated in his chair beneath the probing rays of a nearby floor lamp which highlighted his face in shocked relief as he stood before one of the windows facing the swamp.
Alan smiled discreetly. A wind such as this would make short work of any mists should they present themselves.
But he was wrong.
The night was dark and clear; the wind blew even stronger with a keening cry, whipping the shrubbery and bending the long grasses beneath its blasts. Alan chose a chair and sat quietly by the window, watching where Fletcher told him the vanguard of the mist would appear.
And then, beneath the few faint and newly visible stars, long writhing streamers of fog appeared from over the brow of the hill above the marsh. Faint, white and utterly loathsome in their inexplicable defiance of natural laws, they moved toward the house against the wind! Alan watched the grass bend nearly flat by the whistling blasts which should have torn the fog to shreds, and knew that he was indeed witnessing something that completely opposed the laws of nature.
Darkness was soon complete—the utter lonely dark of the countryside unrelieved by street lights or homely reflections from house lamps. But there was still light enough to discern indistinctly the writhing mists slowly approaching till they stretched forth damp, clammy arms and caressed the window panes in a loathsome embrace—a nebulous, vast grayness with misty, armlike tentacles that moved and writhed and poked curiously at each nook and corner of the building although the main body seemed immobile. The thought flashed into Alan’s mind that Fletcher’s likening had been inaccurate. Instead of an army with scouts, it seemed more like a huge, gray, smoky octopus that squatted before them, moving ghastly tentacles in threatening gestures.
Fletcher finally broke the spell of silence that had settled over the interior of the cottage. He spoke quietly.
“You have seen, Mr. Hasrad. What do you make of it?”
Alan tore his gaze from the window. His figure was tense, his face engraved with lines of worry and haunting doubt which was foreign to his eager, enthusiastic nature. “I don’t know what to think of it—yet,” he confessed. “In view of the apparent strength of the wind, this has to be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. What would happen if I were to go out?”
Fletcher’s frail, pale face looked anxious. He stroked his white hair uneasily and his thin lips twisted grimly. “Don’t try it. Remember Kane and the widow and the livestock. It would make short work of a man. But, if past experience is any guide, we’re safely enclosed in here.” He moved to the windows and pulled down the shades, blotting from view the blindly crawling tentacles.
“When did this first begin?” Alan asked when he had resumed his chair.
“As best as I can determine, about five weeks ago,” Fletcher answered, his keen face haggard and drawn in the revealing rays of the light.
Alan fell into a troubled silence. Finally: “I hardly know what to tell you, Dr. Fletcher, although my first inclination, after seeing that deadly mist, is to urge you as strongly as I can to leave this area until something can be done.”
“That’s precisely my feeling. And I would probably have left a couple of weeks ago…” Suddenly his voice reflected a vehemence unusual to his normally quiet tones. “…But the fact is I have strong reason to believe that I myself might be responsible for what has been happening. My infernal, prying curiosity has, I suspect, loosed this terror on the countryside—this ominous dread of whose real nature no one yet has any conception. That’s why I’m so reluctant to leave. And I hesitate to take the legal authorities into my confidence, even if it would do any good. They’d confine me in an observation ward if I were to tell the truth, even the little I know, of this hideous death that stalks the vicinity at night. It’s too bizarre, too utterly incredible, for any normal person to accept as factual.
“But I’m going to tell you all about it. I have read accounts of strange encounters you have had with hellish entities, and you are one of the very few people I know who might be able to advise me about the problems here. I’ve had it on my mind for five weeks now, and it’ll do me good to tell it to someone I can trust. You see, I gave a hint or two to my cousin the Medical Examiner, and the way he looked at me made me quit right there and pass it off as a joke. And even then he suggested I take things easy and not let my imagination work overtime.”
Fletcher stared silently into the dancing flames for a while before continuing.
“Mr. Hasrad, I’m anxious to hear your views when I tell you of my conviction that a horror, possibly dormant and unsuspected since the dawn of recorded history, has emerged to prey upon humanity—a foul and terrible thing which must have lain in a sort of suspended animation for untold eons, only to be released by the poking curiosity of a fool like me. You’d think I was batty, wouldn’t you?”
Alan smiled faintly at the unexpected colloquialism used by the professor.
“But it’s the only answer. Part of it is deduction, of course—I don’t actually know anything about its past—but I can testify to the conditions under which I found it and, to my great sorrow, released it.”