Next day, near noon, in broad daylight, we heard the two voices from
Stone’s hut. We found Etcham dropped asleep by his charge. The swelling
on the left had broken, and just such another head was there miauling
and spluttering. Etcham woke up and the three of us stood there and
glared. Stone interjected hoarse vocables into the tinkling gurgle of
the portent’s utterance.
Van Rieten stepped forward, took up Stone’s razor and knelt down by the
cot. The atomy of a head squealed a wheezy snarl at him.
Then suddenly Stone spoke English.
“Who are you with my razor?”
Van Rieten started back and stood up.
Stone’s eyes were clear now and bright, they roved about the hut.
“The end,” he said; “I recognize the end. I seem to see Etcham, as if
in life. But Singleton! Ah, Singleton! Ghosts of my boyhood come to
watch me pass! And you, strange specter with the black beard, and my
razor! Aroint ye all!”
“I’m no ghost, Stone,” I managed to say. “I’m alive. So are Etcham and
Van Rieten. We are here to help you.”
“Van Rieten!” he exclaimed. “My work passes on to a better man. Luck go
with you, Van Rieten.”
Van Rieten went nearer to him.
“Just hold still a moment, old man,” he said soothingly. “It will be
only one twinge.”
“I’ve held still for many such twinges,” Stone answered quite
distinctly. “Let me be. Let me die my own way. The hydra was nothing to
this. You can cut off ten, a hundred, a thousand heads, but the curse
you can not cut off, or take off. What’s soaked into the bone won’t
come out of the flesh, any more than what’s bred there. Don’t hack me
any more. Promise!”
His voice had all the old commanding tone of his boyhood and it swayed
Van Rieten as it always had swayed everybody.
“I promise,” said Van Rieten.
Almost as he said the word Stone’s eyes filmed again.
Then we three sat about Stone and watched that hideous, gibbering
prodigy grow up out of Stone’s flesh, till two horrid, spindling little
black arms disengaged themselves. The infinitesimal nails were perfect
to the barely perceptible moon at the quick, the pink spot on the palm
was horridly natural. These arms gesticulated and the right plucked
toward Stone’s blond beard.
“I can’t stand this,” Van Rieten exclaimed and took up the razor again.
Instantly Stone’s eyes opened, hard and glittering.
“Van Rieten break his word?” he enunciated slowly. “Never!”
“But we must help you,” Van Rieten gasped.
“I am past all help and all hurting,” said Stone. “This is my hour.
This curse is not put on me; it grew out of me, like this horror here.
Even now I go.”
His eyes closed and we stood helpless, the adherent figure spouting
shrill sentences.
In a moment Stone spoke again.
“You speak all tongues?” he asked thickly.
And the emergent minikin replied in sudden English:
“Yea, verily, all that you speak,” putting out its microscopic tongue,
writhing its lips and wagging its head from side to side. We could see
the thready ribs on its exiguous flanks heave as if the thing breathed.
“Has she forgiven me?” Stone asked in a muffled strangle.
“Not while the moss hangs from the cypresses,” the head squeaked. “Not
while the stars shine on Lake Pontchartrain will she forgive.”
And then Stone, all with one motion, wrenched himself over on his side.
The next instant he was dead.
When Singleton’s voice ceased the room was hushed for a space. We could
hear each other breathing. Twombly, the tactless, broke the silence.
“I presume,” he said, “you cut off the little minikin and brought it
home in alcohol.”
Singleton turned on him a stern countenance.
“We buried Stone,” he said, “unmutilated as he died.”
“But,” said the unconscionable Twombly, “the whole thing is incredible.”
Singleton stiffened.
“I did not expect you to believe it,” he said; “I began by saying that
although I heard and saw it, when I look back on it I cannot credit it
myself.”
1907