and that now I was frightened. Pride and the desire for adventure urged
me on, however, and I pressed into the close thicket that barred my way.
The path was hardly visible: merely the worn road of some small beasts,
for, though it showed in the crisp grass, the bushes above grew thick
and hardly penetrable. The land rose slowly, and rising grew clearer,
until at last I came out on a great slope of hill, unbroken by trees or
shrubs, very like my memory of that rise of land we had topped in order
that we might find the dead valley and the icy fog. I looked at the sun;
it was bright and clear, and all around insects were humming in the
autumn air, and birds were darting to and fro. Surely there was no
danger, not until nightfall at least; so I began to whistle, and with a
rush mounted the last crest of brown hill.
"There lay the Dead Valley! A great oval basin, almost as smooth and
regular as though made by man. On all sides the grass crept over the
brink of the encircling hills, dusty green on the crests, then fading
into ashy brown, and so to a deadly white, this last color forming a
thin ring, running in a long line around the slope. And then? Nothing.
Bare, brown, hard earth, glittering with grains of alkali, but otherwise
dead and barren. Not a tuft of grass, not a stick of brushwood, not even
a stone, but only the vast expanse of beaten clay.
"In the midst of the basin, perhaps a mile and a half away, the level
expanse was broken by a great dead tree, rising leafless and gaunt into
the air. Without a moment's hesitation I started down into the valley
and made for this goal. Every particle of fear seemed to have left me,
and even the valley itself did not look so very terrifying. At all
events, I was driven by an overwhelming curiosity, and there seemed to
be but one thing in the world to do,--to get to that Tree! As I trudged
along over the hard earth, I noticed that the multitudinous voices of
birds and insects had died away. No bee or butterfly hovered through the
air, no insects leaped or crept over the dull earth. The very air itself
was stagnant.
"As I drew near the skeleton tree, I noticed the glint of sunlight on a
kind of white mound around its roots, and I wondered curiously. It was
not until I had come close that I saw its nature.
"All around the roots and barkless trunk was heaped a wilderness of
little bones. Tiny skulls of rodents and of birds, thousands of them,
rising about the dead tree and streaming off for several yards in all
directions, until the dreadful pile ended in isolated skulls and
scattered skeletons. Here and there a larger bone appeared,--the thigh
of a sheep, the hoofs of a horse, and to one side, grinning slowly, a
human skull.
"I stood quite still, staring with all my eyes, when suddenly the dense
silence was broken by a faint, forlorn cry high over my head. I looked
up and saw a great falcon turning and sailing downward just over the
tree. In a moment more she fell motionless on the bleaching bones.
"Horror struck me, and I rushed for home, my brain whirling, a strange
numbness growing in me. I ran steadily, on and on. At last I glanced up.
Where was the rise of hill? I looked around wildly. Close before me was
the dead tree with its pile of bones. I had circled it round and round,
and the valley wall was still a mile and a half away.
"I stood dazed and frozen. The sun was sinking, red and dull, towards
the line of hills. In the east the dark was growing fast. Was there
still time? _Time!_ It was not _that_ I wanted, it was _will_! My feet
seemed clogged as in a nightmare. I could hardly drag them over the
barren earth. And then I felt the slow chill creeping through me. I
looked down. Out of the earth a thin mist was rising, collecting in
little pools that grew ever larger until they joined here and there,
their currents swirling slowly like thin blue smoke. The western hills
halved the copper sun. When it was dark I should hear that shriek again,
and then I should die. I knew that, and with every remaining atom of
will I staggered towards the red west through the writhing mist that
crept clammily around my ankles, retarding my steps.
"And as I fought my way off from the Tree, the horror grew, until at
last I thought I was going to die. The silence pursued me like dumb
ghosts, the still air held my breath, the hellish fog caught at my feet
like cold hands.
"But I won! though not a moment too soon. As I crawled on my hands and
knees up the brown slope, I heard, far away and high in the air, the cry
that already had almost bereft me of reason. It was faint and vague, but
unmistakable in its horrible intensity. I glanced behind. The fog was
dense and pallid, heaving undulously up the brown slope. The sky was
gold under the setting sun, but below was the ashy gray of death. I
stood for a moment on the brink of this sea of hell, and then leaped
down the slope. The sunset opened before me, the night closed behind,
and as I crawled home weak and tired, darkness shut down on the Dead
Valley."
POSTSCRIPT.
There seem to be certain well-defined roots existing in all countries,
from which spring the current legends of the supernatural; and therefore
for the germs of the stories in this book the Author claims no
originality. These legends differ one from the other only in local color
and in individual treatment. If the Author has succeeded in clothing one
or two of these norms in some slightly new vesture, he is more than
content.
BOSTON, _July 3, 1895_.
THE END.
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