DALTON’S DEATH
A long minute dragged by while Douglas stood there, the drone of the
crickets gnawing at his nerves. Then he pounced at the lamp and bounded
up the stairs. At the top he halted and glared around the attic.
Nothing was there.
The tiny windows at either end, heavily coated with spider-webs, were
shut as usual. Not a web was broken. Nowhere, except where one little
pane had long been missing, could he see any opening into the barren
room. He moved about, and the boards groaned loudly under him. They had
not groaned under that ghostly unknown.
He returned down the stairs, and the steps creaked and squeaked as he
passed. He slammed the door and went about the room, inspecting every
door and window. All was as he had left it on retiring. He even glanced
into the little wood-room. That, too, was unchanged.
“H’m!” he muttered. Pausing at the water-bag, he gulped a drink. After
once more staring around, he returned to the bedroom.
Back into his tumbled blankets he got. As the strangled flame of his
lamp slowly died he reached to his trousers, dug out his watch, and
glanced at it. It was now eight minutes after midnight.
“H’m!” he repeated as he lay back.
For some time after the light had expired he lay wide-eyed. No further
sound came from stairs or attic. In the solid blackness he discerned
nothing. At length he grinned.
“Guess I’ve laid you for the night, Mister Ha’nt,” he whispered.
As if in answer, the bed quivered again. The feeling was as if some
man standing beside him had rested a hand on the headboard--a barely
perceptible tremor. He had not moved a muscle. Nor, suddenly frozen,
did he move one now. He lay absolutely still, only his eyes moving.
Another quiver came. With it came a faint dry rustle. Nerves and
straining ears alike flashed the same message: it was the corn-husk
mattress now! The movement, the sound, were beside him, almost under
him--as if a bodiless man were laying himself down to rest side by side
with the live one!
With lightning speed Douglas turned and struck at the Thing. His
knuckles crashed against the old cloth and its content of husks. Again
he struck, this time into the air. With a dive he launched himself at
the chair--clutched matches--scratched them. The yellow blaze showed
that the room was empty of all life but his own.
Scrambling out, he lit fresh matches and scanned the floor under the
bed. Then he wheeled and looked all about the outer room. All was as
before.
The matches burned his fingers, and he dropped them. Again blackness
and vacancy engulfed him. Groping, he found the bed and lay down. Then
he reached out, found his gun, and laid it beside him. And this time
he did not roll up in his blankets. He only draped one of them loosely
over him, and kept a hand on the gun.
“Come again, Mister Ha’nt,” he muttered.
Only the monotonous chorus outside answered. For a long time he lay
waiting, his nerves gradually relaxing. At length, still loosely
holding the weapon, he dozed away into slumber.
He awoke as if struck by a blow. A heavy thump had shocked him awake.
Instantly he knew what caused it. The table against the outer door had
been pushed over. The damp night air was sweeping in.
His gun leaped up. Its muzzles licked toward the entrance. One barrel
vomited flame and lead.
The flare of the explosion lit up the portal. It stood ajar, but not
wide enough to admit a man. Nor was any man standing there. Outside was
only black, cavernous night.
His ears numbed by the concussion of the shell, he squatted there in
the blankets, the other barrel ready for instantaneous use. Presently
his stunned auditory nerves regained their acuteness. They told him
something that brought a new chill crawling down his back. The song of
the insects no longer swung through the night. And out there on the
steps sounded a dull, slow _drip_--_drip_--_drip_.
With measured beat that dread sound hammered at his brain. It slowed,
as if the first flow of falling fluid were becoming choked--or clotted.
Then it ceased.
Shuddering, he moved once more to the edge, groped about until he found
his boots, and slipped his legs into them. Feeling again through the
dark, he located his matches. But he did not light one. With half a
dozen of the little light-sticks in his hand, he stepped stealthily to
the front door.
Long he listened, hearing nothing but a weird whisper of night wind
among leaves. The air was clammy, and in it was a wet smell. He began
to shiver again; but this time the cold was natural--the dank cold of
dampness. Feeling about, he found a leg of the overturned table. On it
he scratched a match, and out into the uncanny gloom beyond the door he
darted the burning sliver.
The stoop was empty. The thing he had dreaded to find slumped against
the wall was not there. Nor were the old boards disfigured by any fresh
red stain.
Sorely perplexed, he ignited a new match from the expiring stub. As he
did so a new thought struck his mind. Perhaps the dead thing was in the
room, huddled beside him. He yanked the match inward--and found nothing
but the capsized table, its legs wedging the door.
As the light died down a sudden soft sound made him jump. It was a
single drop falling on the steps outside.
With a new match flaring he yanked the door open and strode out,
angrily determined to find the source of those soul-sickening drops.
He had not far to go. After one straight look at the steps he flung
down the match and laughed out in savage scorn of himself.
The narrow steps were wet, but with nothing more sinister than rain.
The dampness of the air, the utter blackness around, the silence of
the insects--all told of a recent shower. Even now the crickets were
beginning to chirp again. Somehow their sturdy notes, which previously
had seemed doleful, now sounded cheerful.
“You doddering imbecile!” he jeered. “It’s as simple as daylight. A
little shower just before you woke up--a gust of wind shoving the door
open--the drip of the eaves for a minute or so. And you, you hysterical
half-wit--you shoot a harmless door and turn into a knot of goose-flesh
because of that! Who ever told you you were a grown-up man? You’re
nothing but a scared-of-the-dark baby!”
He drank in a deep breath of the sweet air and nodded unseen
encouragement to some lusty cricket in the grass near the stoop.
But, as he turned again toward the door, he hesitated. Wind and rain
could not be blamed for the footsteps on the stairs or the sounds and
movements of his bed. Something urged him to take his blankets and lie
down outdoors, even though the ground was wet: to sleep surrounded by
the honest-voiced crickets, unconfined by walls within which stalked
bodiless things.
“No!” he growled. “Back to bed you go, and there you stay. This is a
fight to a finish, Mister Ha’nt, and I’ve taken one round out of three,
with the other two drawn. I think I’ve got you on the run. Now let’s
see if you can come back.”
With that he felt his way in, shut the door, kicked the table
negligently against it, and returned to bed.
As he rearranged his blankets, heavy drops thudded overhead. Rapidly
the spattering impacts swelled into a drumming roar of new rain.
“Aha,” he nodded. “You’d look sweet out in the grass now, wouldn’t you?
By the time you got back in here you’d be well soaked, and it would
serve you right. The Lord hates a quitter. Come on, Ha’nt. I’m waiting.”
He continued to wait. Steadily the rain pounded on, varied only by
slashing swoops at the window. His eyes closed. His breathing slowed.
The tumult of the storm faded out of his consciousness.
By and by he found himself drifting over a murky waste of waters
which swashed and hissed and gurgled in sullen enmity. Above was no
sun or moon or star--nothing but a dreary void. Around was no life;
he was utterly alone in the desolation of plunging waves, a derelict
at the mercy of wind and tide. But presently weird shapes took form
among the billows--ghastly, gigantic wraiths which mouthed hideous
grimaces down at him and reached for him with shadowy fingers. They
veered away before they touched him, and a great wind blew them apart
into fragments of mist and spume. But they formed again, making more
frightful spectres than before, and stalked athwart the waste, half
seen through a roaring deluge of rain. They began to yell his name, and
with the shouts blended a thunder of hollow blows. He tried to yell
back at them----
He was in his bed again. Wan daylight was in his opening eyes. The
noise of falling rain was real. So were the loud knocking and the
calling of his name. The pounding came from the outer door, and the
voice was that of Uncle Eb.
“Hey, Hampton! Hampton! Speak up if ye’re livin’!”
He jumped from bed, shoved the table away from the entrance, and pulled
the door open. Uncle Eb, his mustache drooping in a bedraggled wisp and
his body gleaming dully in a wet rubber coat, took a sudden backward
step.
“Gorry, boy! Ye scairt me, a-snakin’ the door open so sudden. I was
about gittin’ ready to go ’long. How be ye?”
“All right, thanks. Come in. Wet morning.”
“Mornin’? It’s ’most noon, son. Ye been sleepin’ all this time?
Mebbe--mebbe ye was broke of yer rest, though. That it?”
“That’s it. You were right--there are some funny things around this
place.”
The old man nodded quickly, and his eyes swerved to the door. Following
his gaze, Douglas saw that the panels were furrowed across by shot, and
in the casing beyond was a splintery hole.
“I ain’t a mite s’prised,” was the guarded admission. “But git yer
pants on an’ don’t stand here with yer shirt-tail a-flappin’. I got
some tobacker an’ so on into the wagon--whoa, Bob! a little more rain
won’t hurt ye after what ye come through--I’ll git it right out. Snake
on yer clo’es before ye git cold.”
Yawning, Douglas snaked them on. By the time he emerged from his
bedroom Uncle Eb had returned with a bulky box which seemed almost dry.
Without ceremony he tramped in and dropped the box with a thud.
“Thar she is, right side up with care an’ dry as Nigger Nat--been
ridin’ under a rubber blankit all the way. Gorry, ain’t this a rain!
It’s the line storm. What say? Oh, four dollars an’ thutty-five cents.
Thank ye.”
“Don’t thank me. Peel off your coat and light your pipe while I get
breakfast--or luncheon, or whatever you want to call it. Why do you say
‘dry as Nigger Nat’?”
“Wal----” Uncle Eb hesitated, looking toward the stove. “No, I can’t
stop. I got to git ’long, or the folks’ll think somebody waylaid
me--I’d oughter be to home now. Nat? Oh, that’s jest a sayin’ we’ve
got round here--‘dry as Nigger Nat.’ He’s one o’ them misfortunit
critters that can’t never drownd his thirst, if ye know what I mean. He
warn’t round to visit with ye last night, was he?” He turned toward the
shot-scored door.
“Not to my knowledge. Sit down a minute, and I’ll tell you about my
visitors. Yes, I had some.”
Duty and curiosity struggled a few seconds in Uncle Eb. Curiosity,
of course, won. He accepted the chair and some new tobacco, loaded
a disreputable old pipe, puffed as Douglas held a blazing match for
him, and looked expectant. Douglas, his own pipe aglow, forthwith
enlightened him as to the happenings of the night. He made merry over
his various scares; but the older man, his eyes soberly traveling from
door to door, did not echo his mirth.
“By mighty, boy, I take off my hat to ye,” he barked. “I ain’t scairt
o’ nothin’ that walks or crawls or swims or flies, an’ I ain’t
soop’stitious nuther, but I don’t want to live into no house where
things walks without no feet an’ jiggles a bed without no hands. No
sirree! I guess mebbe ’twas the wind that blowed yer door open--must of
been. But them other things----”
He shook his head and spat noisily on the floor.
“I want to tell ye sumpthin’,” he went on. “I thought I wouldn’t tell
ye yesterday, so’s ye wouldn’t git scairt beforehand; but after I went
’long I wished I had, so’s ye’d be ready. I been worried ever sence.
Thinks I, if anything comes to ye into the night an’ catches ye asleep
it’ll be my fault for not tellin’ ye.
“Wal, now, this house was Jake Dalton’s. He warn’t a sociable critter,
lived all by hisself, kind o’ growled if ye spoke to him; an’ he used
to go ’way for days to a time--had sumpthin’ to do up back, mebbe--I
never ast no questions. But I drive up an’ down ’tween here an’ High
Falls pretty reg’lar--I git my mail thar an’ so on--an’ I know how
everything looks ’long the way. An’ Jake’s door was always shut,
whether he was to home or not--’less’n he jest happened to be comin’
out when I went by.
“But one day I see this door a-standin’ a little ways open an’ Jake
nowheres round. I didn’t say nothin’--I went ’long an’ come back, an’
’twas jest the same. I kind o’ figgered about it, but then I thought
mebbe Jake was drinkin’ up a new jug inside here an’ didn’t know
’nough to shut his door--he used to git that way. So I went ’long. But
about three-four days later on somebody said Jake’s door was open yit,
an’--wal, some of us come down here to see what was what.
“Jake was out back. He was the deadest man I ever see. He’d been
thar--I dunno how long, but too long anyway. I ain’t a-goin’ to tell ye
how he looked--I don’t want to remember it too plain. But we couldn’t
see a mark onto him, an’ we dunno yit what kilt him. But he got kilt
sometime into the night.
“We know that much, ’cause Jake was undressed--nothin’ onto him but his
shirt--an’ we found the rest o’ his clo’es hangin’ on nails beside the
bed, an’ his shoes layin’ onto the floor jest where he dropped ’em.
He had got up an’ tore open this front door an’ run out back an’ fell
down an’ died. He was dyin’ when he run out o’ here, too--he only went
a little ways. But what he was runnin’ away from--what had got holt o’
him before he run--nobody knows. Nobody but Jake, an’ he can’t tell.
“That’s all there is to it, ’cept this: two-three fellers tried livin’
here an’ they couldn’t. They heard them same things that was round ye
last night, an’ other things too, ’cordin’ to what I’ve heard tell;
an’ they _felt_ sumpthin’ that was worse’n what they heard. They jest
couldn’t stand it. So they took everything wuth carryin’ an’ got out,
an’ sence then nobody’s been here but Dalton’s Death--that’s what
folks calls the thing that walks here nights: Dalton’s Death. I dunno
if---- Whoa thar, Bob, _whoa_! Back up!”
He clattered to the door and plunged out. Douglas followed, to find him
grabbing the reins and halting the white horse.
“Got to go ’long, boy,” he shouted from the edge of the road. “Bob’s
a-gittin’ cranky, an’ mebbe he’s got a right to. ’Tain’t fitten weather
for hoss or man. Come on up an’ visit with me any time.”
He clambered in and turned to yell an afterthought.
“Don’t leave yer gun here when ye go out. Ye might lose it. Some folks
ain’t scairt o’ Dalton’s Death ’ceptin’ at night. G’by. G’yapalong!”
Blurred by the rain, he rolled away and was gone.