But Dean's tense face relaxed. He had caught himself just in time.
"No, Doctor Hedwig. You must be right. It's overwork and nervousness,
as you say. If I believed what the Mexicans had told me about Morella
Godolfo--well, I'd be mad and a fool."
"Who is this Morella Godolfo? Some woman who has been filling you with
foolish tales?"
Dean smiled. "No need to worry about Morella. She was my
great-great-grand-aunt. She used to live in the San Pedro house and
started the legends, I think."
Hedwig had been scribbling on a slip of paper. "Well, I see, young man!
You heard these legends; your imagination ran riot; you dreamed. This
prescription will fix you up."
"Thanks."
Dean took the paper, lifted his hat from the table, and started for the
door. In the doorway he paused, smiling wryly.
"But you're not quite correct in thinking the legends started me
dreaming, Doctor. I began to dream before I learned the history of the
house."
And with that he went out.
* * * * *
Driving back to San Pedro, Dean tried to understand what had happened
to him. But always he came up against a blank wall of impossibility.
Any logical explanation wandered off into a tangle of fantasy. The one
thing he could not explain--which Doctor Hedwig had not been able to
explain--was the dreams.
The dreams started soon after he came into his legacy; this ancient
house north of San Pedro, which had so long stood deserted. The place
was picturesquely old, and that attracted Dean from the first. It had
been built by one of his ancestors when the Spaniards still ruled
California. One of the Deans--the name was Dena, then--had gone to
Spain and returned with a bride. Her name was Morella Godolfo, and it
was this long-vanished woman about whom all the subsequent legends
centered.
Even yet there were wrinkled, toothless Mexicans in San Pedro who
whispered incredible tales of Morella Godolfo--she who had never
grown old and who had a weirdly evil power over the sea. The Godolfos
had been among the proudest families of Granada, but furtive legends
spoke of their intercourse with the terrible Moorish sorcerers and
necromancers. Morella, according to these same hinted horrors, had
learned uncanny secrets in the black towers of Moorish Spain, and when
Dena had brought her as his bride across the sea she had already sealed
a pact with dark Powers and had undergone a _change_.
So ran the tales, and they further told of Morella's life in the old
San Pedro house. Her husband had lived for ten years or more after
the marriage, but rumors said that he no longer possessed a soul. It
is certain that his death was very mysteriously hushed up by Morella
Godolfo, who went on living alone in the great house beside the sea.
The whispers of the peons were hereafter monstrously augmented. They
had to do with the _change_ in Morella Godolfo; the sorcerous change
which caused her to swim far out to sea on moonlit nights so that
watchers saw her white body gleaming amidst the spray. Men bold enough
to gaze from the cliffs might catch glimpses of her then, sporting
with queer sea-creatures that gamboled about her in the black waters,
nuzzling her with shockingly deformed heads. These creatures were not
seals, or any known form of submarine life, it was averred; although
sometimes bursts of chuckling, gobbling laughter could be heard. It is
said that Morella Godolfo had swum out there one night, and that she
never came back. But thereafter the laughter was louder from afar, and
the sporting amidst the black rocks continued, so that the tales of the
early peons had been nourished down to the present day.
[Illustration: "Watchers saw her white body gleaming amidst the spray."]
Such were the legends known to Dean. The facts were sparse and
inconclusive. The old house had fallen into decrepitude, and was only
occasionally rented through the years. These rentals had been as short
as they were infrequent. There was nothing definitely wrong with the
house between White's Point and Point Fermin, but those who had lived
there said that the crashing of the surf sounded subtly different when
heard through windows that overlooked the sea, and, too, they dreamed
unpleasantly. Sometimes the occasional tenants had mentioned with
peculiar horror the moonlit nights, when the sea became altogether too
clearly visible. At any rate, occupants often vacated the house hastily.
Dean had moved in immediately after inheriting, because he had thought
the place ideal for painting the scenes he loved. He had learned the
legend and the facts behind it later, and by this time his dreams had
started.
At first they had been conventional enough, though, oddly, all centered
about the sea which he so loved. But it was not the sea he loved that
he knew in sleep.
The Gorgons lived in his dreams. Scylla writhed hideously across dark
and surging waters, where harpies flew screaming. Weird creatures
crawled sluggishly up from the black, inky depths where eyeless,
bloated sea-beasts dwelt. Gigantic and terrible leviathans leapt and
plunged, while monstrous serpents squirmed a strange obeisance to a
mocking moon. Foul and hidden horrors of the sea's depths engulfed him
in sleep.
This was bad enough, but it was only a prelude. The dreams began to
change. It was almost as though the first few formed a definite setting
for the greater terrors to come. From the mythic images of old sea-gods
another vision emerged. It was inchoate at first, taking definite form
and meaning very slowly over a period of several weeks. And it was this
dream which Dean now feared.
It had occurred generally just before he awoke--a vision of green,
translucent light, in which dark shadows swam slowly. Night after night
the limpid emerald glow grew brighter, and the shadows twisted into
a more visible horror. These were never clearly seen, although their
amorphous heads held a strangely repellent recognizable quality for
Dean.
Presently, in this dream of his, the shadow-creatures would move aside
as though to permit the passage of another. Swimming into the green
haze would come a coiling shape--whether similar to the rest or not
Dean could not tell, for his dream always ended there. The approach of
this last shape always caused him to awake in a nightmare paroxysm of
terror.
He dreamt of being somewhere under the sea, amidst swimming shadows
with deformed heads; and each night one particular shadow was coming
closer and closer.
* * * * *
Each day, now, when he awoke with the cold sea-wind of early dawn
blowing through the windows, he would lie in a lazy, languid mood
till long past daybreak. When he rose these days he felt inexplicably
tired, and he could not paint. This particular morning the sight of his
haggard face in the mirror had forced him to visit a physician. But
Doctor Hedwig had not been helpful.
Nevertheless Dean filled the prescription on the way home. A swallow of
the bitter, brownish tonic strengthened him somewhat, but as he parked
his car the feeling of depression settled down on him again. He walked
up to the house still puzzled and strangely afraid.
Under the door was a telegram. Dean read it with a puzzled frown.
JUST LEARNED YOU ARE LIVING IN SAN PEDRO HOUSE STOP VITALLY
IMPORTANT YOU VACATE IMMEDIATELY STOP SHOW THIS CABLE TO DOCTOR
MAKOTO YAMADA 17 BUENA STREET SAN PEDRO STOP AM RETURNING VIA
AIRPLANE STOP SEE YAMADA TODAY