“It’s the chance of a lifetime if we have the nerve,” he declared. “Let’s
sneak back into the building tonight, crawl on to a couple of slabs in
the mortuary and cover ourselves with sheets. We’ll look enough like
corpses to fool Peter if he looks in. Then, when Peter goes to bed and it
gets good and lonely, we can come to life with a few gentle moans, get
Peter aroused, and then do a little ghost dance for his benefit. After
we have him frightened stiff we can take off the sheets and give him the
laugh. The story will get around quick enough, and poor old Peter won’t
be troubling us freshies any more.”
I could scent trouble in the wild scheme, and I hastily began to offer
objections.
“Peter knows there aren’t any bodies in there now,” I said.
“That’s all right,” Chic replied. “I heard the dean tell him that a
couple might arrive late today. In fact, I know there will be one there
for certain. One of the inmates at the government hospital for the insane
died today, a poor beggar who was so wild they had to keep him locked up
tight all the time. He had no friends, so the body is to come here and
the undertaker has already gone for it.”
I was still unconvinced, but I had no plausible excuses. I felt my eye,
which was still sore from Peter’s bruising, and I assented to the crazy
plan.
* * * * *
Chic was right about the body. The undertaker’s car drew up to the
college just as we were leaving. We were the last students to go, and the
dean was the only other person there.
He asked our aid in bringing the body to the mortuary, and we laid it on
a cold marble slab. Peter arrived from supper, to begin his first night’s
stay, just as the dean and we were leaving.
True to my promise, I met Chic near the college about ten o’clock and we
prepared to carry out our plan. My courage was oozing already. One of
those wan yellow moons was the only light around the dreary building, and
every rustle of a leaf or a disturbed pebble began to send shivers up my
spine. But I couldn’t turn back.
Silently, we pried open one of the loosely locked basement windows. Then
we crept up dark stairs and through the classrooms, where I imagined I
could see the skeletons standing out like white patches in the murky
darkness.
We reached the mortuary room and groped our way in. I almost cried out as
my hand suddenly came in contact with the dead maniac, but I recovered
myself. Chic groped in the corners until he found two immense white
sheets.
We climbed upon adjacent slabs, and stretched out on our backs and pulled
the coverings over us. I managed to keep a small corner raised so that I
had a partial view of the room as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.
The stillness grew intense. We heard the long, dreary hoot of a freight
engine. I shivered involuntarily and thought of the real corpse a few
feet away.
Footsteps echoed in the building. Peter was making a round of inspection
before retiring. He switched on the lights in the mortuary and gave a
little whistle of surprise at the three still, white figures lying there.
Then he began to whistle again, a little tremulously. Evidently he was
not feeling as bold as when he accepted his post. He went to his little
room, but was soon back again.
In his hand he held a small coil of rope, apparently a clothesline. He
unwound it, and then, very gingerly, he approached the slab on which I
lay.
I felt a light blow as one end of the rope fell across me. Peter was
going to take no chances on midnight ghosts. _He was going to tie us all
firmly to the slabs!_
Whistling to keep up his courage, he proceeded with his task. In a few
minutes I was firmly bound. I could not have moved if I dared.
Then he cut away the remaining piece of rope and proceeded to truss up
Chic in the same way. He had to struggle to make the two ends of the cord
meet.
There was none left for the real corpse, and, though he hunted diligently
in all parts of the room, he could find no more.
He surveyed the two of us, bound firmly to the slabs, and evidently felt
reassured. He decided to take a chance on the third body remaining still
and retired to his room, closing the door and leaving us alone in the
creepy, moonlit mortuary.
How I cursed Chic as I lay there unable to move, listening to the
gradually deepening breathing of Peter as he dropped into a sound sleep.
What if he should leave us bound until the professors arrived in the
morning? What a fine row there would be!
These, and other unpleasant thoughts running through my mind, were
suddenly checked by a slight sound which turned me cold from head to
foot. Horrified, I gazed through the small chink in my covering. I could
not believe my eyes.
_The corpse of the maniac had moved!_
* * * * *
There came a faint rustle of his covering shroud, and the body moved
again ever so slightly. I wanted to shriek in terror, but I was paralyzed.
The shroud moved again, this time more noticeably. My scalp tightened,
and I could feel the gooseflesh rising all over my body.
Then, with one sudden motion, the maniac sat bolt upright and threw the
shroud from him.
He was clothed only in a long, hospital nightgown. His thin hair stood up
in tangled wisps, and his eyes blazed like those of a cat in a dark room.
Slowly he surveyed his surroundings, and then burst into the most hideous
laughter I have ever heard. His big, yellow teeth seemed like the fangs
of a wild animal. I could imagine them rending my flesh.
The echo of his hideous mirth had hardly died away when Peter burst from
his room, clad in his night clothes. His knees almost gave way as he took
in the dreadful scene. Horror was apparent in every line of his body, and
I had an inexplicable desire to laugh. But by a supreme effort I fought
off this hysteria.
Quite calmly the madman swung his legs down from the slab and sat there
on its edge, transfixing poor Peter with his terrible gaze. He chuckled.
Peter commenced to back toward his room. In an instant the madman was at
him.
Then commenced a wild chase around the room, of which I could only catch
fleeting glimpses as they passed on one side of my slab. Once the maniac
rested bony hands on my body as he prepared for a new rush at Peter, whom
I could hear breathing near by.
Bound hand and foot, Chic and I were unable to make a move, even if
terror had not prevented us.
Untiringly, cunningly, the madman pursued his prey. Peter dodged and
squirmed in terror. Perspiration poured from his face. But his efforts
were futile. He was penned in a corner, at last, where a door led
directly to a stairway in the corridor.
Step by step, the madman approached him, his long fingers outstretched
like talons, and a low, gleeful laugh came from his lips. Peter backed
desperately away from him, as though he hoped to press through the great
oaken door. The maniac’s fingers were almost at his throat, when the door
swung back suddenly and Peter tumbled from the room, his body bumping and
thudding on the stairs outside.
Startled by the sudden disappearance of his victim, the madman halted
a moment. The door automatically swung shut again, firmly this time.
Apparently, it had not been tightly closed before.
The insane creature flung himself at it. It repelled him. He shrieked and
tore at it, but to no avail, and he finally turned away.
His eyes, now wilder than ever, swept the room. They rested on our bound
figures. Swiftly, he passed over to where I lay. The rope puzzled him,
and he was still for a moment.
Suddenly he grasped it and snapped it as though it had been thread. I was
free, but I did not move. I waited for him to seize me, but his footsteps
shuffled away. He was beside Chic now. I heard the rope which bound him
snap.
In desperation, I rolled from the slab and rose trembling to my feet. The
noise attracted the crazed being. He turned and faced me.
His features were distorted into a horrible grin. His sharp, cruel teeth
gnashed as if in expectation of a bloody feast. He leaped at me, clearing
the slab, on which I had lain, at one bound.
I was too weak to dodge, but I tried grimly to clinch with him, as I had
seen groggy boxers do when they were sparring for time. I was in his
arms. His eyes blazed not a foot from mine. Foam flecked his mouth. His
weight pressed against me. It grew heavier and heavier.
Then my overwrought nerves gave way, and I became unconscious.
* * * * *
When I awoke I was outside in the cool night air. Chic was bathing my
brow with muddy water from a roadside pool. The madman had collapsed at
the same moment as I had. In a daze, Chic had laid him again on the slab
and had dragged me from the building.
Poor Peter we forgot, until he was found the next morning, haggard,
white-haired and unable to utter an intelligible word.
Too vivid an imagination, wrought into a frenzy by the uncanny
surroundings, was the way the doctors diagnosed his strange case. Chic
and I were too dazed to shatter the theory.
As for the madman, he had really died, after the short spell of suspended
animation and temporary revival. I know this because his gaunt skeleton
was one of the principal decorations at our graduation dance.
But, even with this assurance, I sometimes wake at night in a cold sweat,
and feel for the butt of the revolver under my pillow.