"No, you don't!" I yelled at them. As they seemed to hesitate before the
impact of my wild voice, I charged frantically. For a moment I scattered
them and got through the bedroom door, as on the previous night. There
was another shindy in the entry; this time they all got hold of me, like
a pack of hounds, and wrestled me back against the wall. I writhe even
now when I think of the unearthly hardness of their little gripping
paws. Two on each arm were spread-eagling me upon the plaster. The
cruciform position again!
I swore, yelled and kicked. One of them was in the way of my foot. He
floated back, unhurt. That was their strength and horror--their ability
to go flabby and non-resistant under smashing, flattening blows.
Something tickled my palm, pricked it. The point of a spike....
"Miss Dolby!" I shrieked, as a child might call for its mother. "Help!
Miss D----"
The door flew open; I must not have locked it. "Here I am," came her
unafraid reply.
She was outlined against the rectangle of light from the hall. My
assailants let go of me to dance toward her. She gasped but did not
scream. I staggered along the wall, touched a light-switch, and the
parlor just beyond us flared into visibility. Miss Dolby and I ran in to
the lamp, rallying there as stone-age folk must have rallied at their
fire to face the monsters of the night. I looked at her; she was still
fully dressed, as I had left her, apparently had been sitting up. Her
rouge made flat patches on her pale cheeks, but her eyes were level.
* * * * *
This time the dancers did not retreat or vanish; they lurked in the
comparative gloom of the entry, jigging and trembling as if mustering
their powers and resolutions for another rush at us.
"You see," I chattered out to her, "it wasn't a nightmare."
She spoke, not in reply, but as if to herself. "They have no faces," she
whispered. "No faces!" In the half-light that was diffused upon them
from our lamp they presented the featurelessness of so many huge
gingerbread boys, covered with pink icing. One of them, some kind of
leader, pressed forward within the circle of the light. It daunted him a
bit. He hesitated, but did not retreat.
From my center table Miss Dolby had picked up a bright paper-cutter. She
poised it with the assurance of one who knows how to handle cutting
instruments.
"When they come," she said steadily, "let's stand close together. We'll
be harder to drag down that way."
I wanted to shout my admiration of her fearless front toward the
dreadful beings, my thankfulness for her quick run to my rescue. All I
could mumble was, "You're mighty brave."
She turned for a moment to look at the picture above my dying fire. My
eyes followed hers. I think I expected to see a blank canvas--find that
the painted dancers had vanished from it and had grown into the living
ones. But they were still in the picture, and the cross and the victim
were there, too. Miss Dolby read aloud the inscription:
"_A living picture_ ... The artist knew what he was talking about, after
all."
"Couldn't a living picture be killed?" I wondered.
It sounded uncertain, and a childish quibble to boot, but Miss Dolby
exclaimed triumphantly, as at an inspiration.
"Killed? Yes!" she shouted. She sprang at the picture, darting out with
the paper-cutter. The point ripped into one of the central figures in
the dancing semicircle.
All the crowd in the entry seemed to give a concerted throb, as of
startled protest. I swung, heart racing, to front them again. What had
happened? Something had changed, I saw. The intrepid leader had
vanished. No, he had not drawn back into the group. He had vanished.
Miss Dolby, too, had seen. She struck again, gashed the painted
representation of another dancer. And this time the vanishing happened
before my eyes, a creature at the rear of the group went out of
existence as suddenly and completely as though a light had blinked out.
The others, driven by their danger, rushed.
I met them, feet planted. I tried to embrace them all at once, went over
backward under them. I struck, wrenched, tore. I think I even bit
something grisly and bloodless, like fungoid tissue, but I refuse to
remember for certain. One or two of the forms struggled past me and
grappled Miss Dolby. I struggled to my feet and pulled them back from
her. There were not so many swarming after me now. I fought hard before
they got me down again. And Miss Dolby kept tearing and stabbing at the
canvas--again, again. Clutches melted from my throat, my arms. There
were only two dancers left. I flung them back and rose. Only one left.
Then none.
They were gone, gone into nowhere.
"That did it," said Miss Dolby breathlessly.
She had pulled the picture down. It was only a frame now, with ragged
ribbons of canvas dangling from it.