Horror tales; Ozark Mountains -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
But Enid had commanded her shuddering muscles. She ran. One of the
things caught her sleeve, but the cloth tore and she won free. She
heard sounds that could hardly be called voices, from the mouths of
such as had mouths. And Persil Mandifer laughed quietly, and said
something in a language Enid had never heard before. The thick voice
of his son Larue answered him in the same tongue, then called out in
English:
"Enid, you only run in the direction we want you to run!"
It was true, and there was nothing that she could do about it. The
entities behind her were following, not very fast, like herdsmen
leisurely driving a sheep in the way it should go. And she knew that
the sides of the gulley, to north and south, could never be climbed.
There was only the slope ahead to the eastward, up which Lanark must
have gone. The thought of him strengthened her. If the two of them
found the king-horror, the Nameless One, at the base of Fearful Rock,
they could face it together.
She was aware that she had come out of the timber of the ravine.
All was moonlight here, painted by the soft pallor in grays and silvers
and shadow-blacks. There was the rock lifted among the stars, there the
stretch of clump-dotted plain--and here, almost before her, Lanark.
He stood poised above a hole in the ground, his saber lifted above his
head as though to begin a downward sweep. Something burly was climbing
up out of that hole. But, even as he tightened his sinews to strike,
Lanark whirled around, and his eyes glared murderously at Enid.
_15. Evil's End_
"Don't!" Enid screamed. "Don't, it's only I----"
Lanark growled, and spun back to face what was now hoisting itself
above ground level.
"And be careful of me, too," said the object. "It's Jager, Mr. Lanark."
The point of the saber lowered. The three of them were standing close
together on the edge of the opened grave. Lanark looked down. He saw at
the bottom the two areas of loose white.
"Are those the----"
"Yes," Jager replied without waiting for him to finish. "Two human
skins. They are fresh; soft and damp." Enid was listening, but she was
past shuddering. "One of them," continued Jager, "was taken from Persil
Mandifer. I know his face."
He made a scuffing kick-motion with one boot. Clods flew into the
grave, falling with a dull plop, as upon wet blankets. He kicked more
earth down, swiftly and savagely.
"Help me," he said to the others. "Salt should be thrown on those
skins--that's what the old legends say--but we have no salt. Dirt will
have to do. Don't you see?" he almost shrieked. "Somewhere near here,
two bodies are hiding, or moving about, without these skins to cover
them."
Both Lanark and Enid knew they had seen those bodies. In a moment three
pairs of feet were thrusting earth down into the grave.
"Don't!" It was a wail from the trees in the ravine, a wail in the
voice of Persil Mandifer. "We must return to those skins before dawn!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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