The girl's control seemed to break. She covered her face with her
hands, convulsive sobs shaking her.
Bryan waited helplessly, with a feeling of guilt. In another moment,
over the muffled sobbing, he heard the sound of approaching feet. A
flashlight beam bobbed into view up one of the radiating walks, and
presently Bryan was able to make out the blue-clad running figure of a
patrolman.
"What's going on?" the patrolman demanded. "I heard a scream." He moved
his flashlight beam from the girl and the prostrate man, to Bryan. He
added in surprise, "You here, Terry?"
Bryan nodded a greeting, recognizing the other now as Pat Mulvaney, a
park officer. "This man seems to be hurt, Pat. We'd better get him to a
hospital."
Mulvaney bent over the sprawling figure, then returned to Bryan,
speaking low-voiced. "Hurt ain't the word for it, Terry. This case is
like the other ones we found in the park. And it would have to happen
tonight. Olson was supposed to be on duty at this end, but he sprained
an ankle. We're short-handed, what with the Department being on a
budget."
With the girl tearfully following, Bryan and Mulvaney carried the
stricken man to a call box, where Mulvaney telephoned his report and
requested that an ambulance be sent. Bryan was asked to accompany the
girl to headquarters, in a squad car, for questioning.
* * * * *
It wasn't until shortly before dawn that Bryan reached his room and
began undressing for bed. He examined his bare shoulder in a mirror.
There was a reddish patch on the skin, the size of a half-dollar
piece, where the sharp snout of the mosquito-man had pierced him.
The mark convinced him further that the whole thing had been no mere
hallucination.
He felt no pain--but his body seemed faintly, oddly feverish. And he
had a light-headed feeling that could not have been entirely due to
tiredness.
He took a stiff drink of whisky and crawled into bed. Sleep would not
come at once. Confused thoughts revolved in his mind.
He saw himself at police headquarters, answering questions. The girl
had told her story up to the instant she had fainted, mentioning the
flying shapes. She was unable to describe them, except to say the
strangeness of their appearance had terrified her. Bryan was reluctant
to discuss his own experience, but the girl had told of hearing his
warning, and this placed him squarely on the scene. He could not claim
ignorance of ensuing events without laying himself open to suspicion.
He had told of seeing the flying shapes also, but claimed he had been
unable to make out details. They had moved too swiftly, his explanation
went, it had been too dark. One had rushed at the man, knocking him
down, then all had flown out of sight. A vague story--evasive. But the
police had seemed satisfied, to the extent that the story checked with
the girl's.
The flying shapes ... Leeta.... A curious excitement surged in him as
he thought of the wraithlike girl. Who was she? Where had she come from?
He recalled something she had said--something about his will being
strong enough to penetrate the veil unaided. It seemed important. But
what had she meant by that? What--and where--was the veil?
And--how had he been able to understand her? He realized now that
neither she nor the others had used audible speech, yet he had the
impression of intelligible spoken words, of voice tones.
He pondered the mystery with a growing fogginess. He slept.
And then he was not sleeping.
He was standing on a mountain ridge, looking down into a broad green
valley. It was daylight. In the sky hung a great red-tinged sun,
which immediately struck him as--alien. But for the moment his wonder
remained concentrated on the valley. There was something there that
drew him--that had drawn him there. A bond of some sort existed, an
indefinable ethereal linking, over which he had crossed like a bridge.
A bond, he sensed, that even now was somehow fading ... dissolving.
The valley was a pleasant place, idyllic. Peace and quiet were cupped
within it. He had the sudden, insistent feeling that he had been
seeking a place like this, a place where he could be happy, where his
blind strivings would find fulfillment. A place--_where_?
He turned to gaze on the other side of the ridge. And saw--horror.
The land here was a ghostly desolation, blackened, charred, lifeless,
bathed in an eery shimmering blue radiance. An unutterably deadly
radiance, he knew in some strange way. And he knew, too, that the
radiance lay everywhere--except in this lone valley.
He returned his attention to it with a mounting urgency. The scene was
growing dim, blurring. It was escaping him. He made a frantic exertion
of will, seeking in what few moments that remained an answer to a
certain question.
There was ... a shifting. The ridge was gone. He stood within the
valley, at the foot of a rocky slope, up which ran a curving stairway
of a building of some pink stone. The building was exotic in design,
terraced, domed, fairy-like. All around it strangely beautiful flowers
and shrubs grew in riotous profusion. He had the nostalgic impression
of heady fragrance and warm breeze, of serenity and peace. And he felt
a queer ache of longing.
Then, breaking abruptly through the deep stillness, he seemed to hear
a faint piping. He turned in search and saw a flagstone path through
a lane of trees. At the end of the lane was movement, a flutter as of
wings.
* * * * *
He willed himself toward it. Again there was a shifting. And now he
stood at the edge of a broad shallow depression, like a sunken garden.
The path dipped down into this by a short stairway and ran on to circle
what appeared to be a pool at the center. All around the pool flowers
grew with an incredible luxuriance and splendor, thick masses of
flowers, startling in their size and beauty, that made the air almost
solid with their mingled perfume. It was as though they found some
abnormally rich nourishment here that stimulated their fantastically
prolific growth.
The very atmosphere of this place seemed charged with a vital energy.
Bryan had a feeling of surging life, of boundless power. And he sensed
that it came from the pool. Something more than water was contained
within it, something strange, supernal--god-like.
The pool was filled with a pearly opalescence, alive and seething
with delicate pastel hues, swirling, changing. Sparkles of chromatic
brilliance raced over its surface, blazing and vanishing. A glow rose
from it like a gorgeous rainbow-colored mist, spreading, charging the
air with vibrant energy.
But the weird magnificence of the pool held Bryan's attention only
momentarily. For kneeling at its brink like a nymph in an enchanted
setting was ... Leeta. In a semi-circle behind her a score or more of
the grotesque mosquito-men made a fascinated audience. The giant bird,
too, was visible, squatting, motionless.
In her hands the girl held the crystal globe, shining with its stolen
radiance. Now she leaned forward, lowering the globe to the surface
of the pool. It seemed to float, pulsing. Sparkles from the pool ran
to it in a growing boil of motion--and were absorbed. The activity
grew swifter and yet swifter, until the pool seethed and foamed with
brilliance. The air turned electric with a sensation of vast striving,
of super-human effort.
Watching puzzled, from his vantage point above the depression,
Bryan saw the globe begin to swell. Its radiance blazed feverishly,
its pulsing increased to a frenzied beat. Larger, it grew--larger.
Became misty, unsubstantial, unreal. The rose core of it grew also,
elongating, paling to pink. And now it was taking shape--the shape of a
man. Features began forming, and then--
Stunned amazement hit Bryan as he peered intently at the figure being
so weirdly created. For recognition had come. He was looking at the man
who, a short time before, had been attacked in the park by Leeta and
her bizarre followers.
The shape was taking on solidity. Dazed, Bryan recalled the events in
the park. Leeta's strange globe, he realized, had absorbed some vital
essence from its victim--perhaps the soul--and this essence was now
being released by the pool. Released, somehow, in a perfect replica of
the fleshly covering that originally had housed it.
The man hung over the pool. His closed eyes fluttered, opened.
Animation touched his face. Fear showed in it, a rising horror, a
frantic desperation. He struggled.
And began dissolving.
The pool boiled and seethed as though in a mighty effort to hold its
creation intact. It did not succeed. The shape thinned, shrunk,
faded ... was gone.
There was a moment of stricken stillness. The pool had quieted. Its
aura of supernal power had dimmed. An air of exhaustion lay over it
now, an exhaustion in which even the surrounding flowers seemed to pale
and droop.
Then a piping murmur rose like a sigh of mourning. "Failed ...
again...."
And Leeta covered her face with her hands, sagging. Her bowed shoulders
shook, with great sobs of mingled grief, disappointment and despair.
Bryan wanted to make some sign of sympathy, of consolation--but again
the scene was growing blurred, fading. He fought to hold it together,
fought as the pool had fought ... futilely. And then a hovering
blackness rushed over him, and he seemed to whirl dizzily across an
enormous gulf.
He awoke in bed, soaked with perspiration, breathing hard. He had a
feeling of anger, dejection.
He swung his legs to the floor and glanced at his watch. He had been
asleep for less than an hour, but at the moment he was too upset by his
strangely realistic nightmare to return to bed.
He lit a cigarette and fell to pacing the length of his room. Thinking
back over his disturbingly vivid dream, he wondered why he should have
experienced it in that particular way. The events of the preceding
night had been unnerving enough, but he felt there was a deeper reason.
Was it possible that the queer wound he had received in the park had
something to do with it? He recalled his feverishness, his light-headed
sensation.
Then he thought of the man he had seen in the dream, and came to an
abrupt stop. In another instant he sprang back into motion, hurrying to
the telephone near the bed. He dialed the hospital to which the man
had been taken from the park, waiting impatiently while the doctor in
charge of the case was put on.
Identifying himself, then, he asked quickly, "How is the fellow,
doctor?"
"Afraid I have bad news. He died about five minutes ago. There didn't
seem to be a single thing I could do to prevent it."
"I see...." Bryan muttered his thanks and hung up. He sat staring into
space.
Five minutes ago.... That would be shortly before he had
awakened--about the time the image of the man, in the dream, had
dissolved and vanished....
* * * * *
That afternoon Bryan sat at a secluded corner table in the small
restaurant he frequented near the _Courier_ Building. The remains of
a fourth cup of coffee stood before him, the saucer littered with
cigarette butts. He was staring into the cup, brooding. His mind kept
returning to his strange dream and its incredible implications. And
tangled in the thread of his thoughts was the picture of Leeta, dainty
and elfinly lovely, struggling toward an end he could only dimly grasp.
A slim figure dropped into the chair opposite Bryan. It was Joyce,
crisp, fresh, giving her usual effect of elegance.
"Hi! A little bird told me I'd find you here, Terry." She studied his
face in swift concern. "What on earth happened to you last night? You
look like a fugitive from a horror movie."
"Maybe I am," Bryan grunted. And he grinned wryly at the element of
truth in his retort.
Joyce was solemn, probing. "Terry, I heard what happened in the park
last night. One of our fellow wage slaves is posted at Headquarters,
you know. And from what he told me, I gather you were mixed up in
something with a spook angle. But, Terry, it seems the police have the
quaint idea you didn't give them the whole story."