* * * * *
Before the meal was done, there was a rapping at the back door.
Answering it, Josepha Hand called:
"Doctor, it's Jud."
His haggard face was relieved.
"Let him in," he called. "Let him take it down to Eben."
The man Jud Geer passed across the end of the room, carrying a milk
can. There was more fresh blood on his overalls. A stained bandage was
wrapped around his head, to cover his lips where my fist had pulped
them.
His glassy, bulging eyes rolled toward me. They rested for a moment
upon Valyne's still-bowed head, and I caught a lewd glitter in them.
He went out toward the cellar. The doctor and his wife listened
anxiously. I heard an eager, bestial whining, and the sound of thickly
splashing liquid.
Jud Geer came back into the room. He stopped by Doctor Kyle's chair,
so close to me that I could hear the tick of his cheap watch. He held
out his great, reddened hand, and muttered something through his
bandage. But his filmed eyes were looking not at the doctor, but at
Valyne.
Doctor Kyle dropped some coins into his palm, and he put them into his
pocket, without taking his eyes off the girl.
Josepha Hand had opened the back door. At her impatient word, the
gigantic butcher abruptly jerked his eyes away. He picked up his milk
can, and went out.
It was after he had gone that I looked at the floor where the can had
rested. On the bare pine boards was a circle of dark red. I knew that
its contents had been blood.
Before I had time to digest that disturbing discovery, Eben Hand
appeared again. His puffy face was strained and ashen; his colorless
lips were twitching; his fat fingers nervously spelled out some hasty
message.
"What is it?" Doctor Kyle's hollow voice was apprehensive.
"He says it won't touch it," said Josepha Hand. "It won't taste it. And
he can't get it quiet. It keeps whimpering. He thinks it knows _he's_
in the house. He thinks it's calling for _him_."
With that last word, her dark head jerked at me.
Doctor Kyle's deep-sunk, flaming eyes came wonderingly to my face.
"It couldn't remember," he whispered faintly, as if to himself. "It
couldn't know Clay, after all these years."
Again, from the cellar, I heard that eager, feral whining.
"It does," whispered Josepha Hand. "It wants _him_!"
And I perceived suddenly that all eyes were fixed upon me, glazed and
distended with horror, as if I had been some ghastly apparition. In
that abrupt and fearful silence, Valyne's fork rattled shockingly on
the floor.
_3. "Your Father Was--Horror!"_
When the meal was finished, Doctor Kyle took me apart to the end of the
room, and lowered his hollow voice.
"Clay," he said solemnly, "I beg you to trust me, as if I were your
true father. I want you to leave Valyne--to go away, without making me
tell you the secret of your life."
"Why?" I demanded, bluntly impatient.
"I love you, Clay." His voice quivered faintly with emotion. "I love
you as my own son, in spite of what I must tell you. That is why I have
never told you, and why I am unwilling to tell you now.
"If you go away from Creston, Clay, you may find some happiness. I beg
you to go, and to heed my warning--never marry!"
I seized his arm. Despite his age, it felt hard and powerful as Jud
Geer's.
"I'm not going," I told him flatly. "Life without Valyne wouldn't be
life. And why shouldn't I marry? I'm healthy, without any stain that I
know of."
He bowed his yellow, cadaverous head, resignedly.
"I see that I must tell you. It is better for my words to wreck your
life, than to let you and Valyne plunge unwarned into the horror
waiting----"
His voice stopped suddenly; his dark eyes flew toward the cellar door.
From below I heard a hoarse scream, thick, maddened; the clanking of
a heavy chain; the shriek of rusty nails being drawn; the crashing of
splintered planking.
The doctor stood voiceless, ashen, trembling, until Eben Hand burst
again into the room, mouthing incoherent sounds, fingers flying.
"It's breaking out!" cried Josepha Hand. "It's coming to _him_!"
Her dark eyes darted to me again, terrible with an undisguised and
savage odium.
Abruptly recovering himself, Doctor Kyle picked up a heavy chair and
ran through the cellar door. His wife scurried after him, with her
astonishing bird-like agility.
"Let me, Latham!" her thin voice shrilled. "Let me! It always heeded
me."
The two servants followed them apprehensively.
Valyne was standing at the other end of the room, staring after them
with stunned tragedy in her shadowed violet eyes. I walked to her
hastily, and grasped her cold hands.
"Valyne," I said urgently, "you tell me! What have they in the cellar?
What makes this house so strange? Why does the doctor want us not to
marry?"
Her eyes, looking back at me, were dark and wide with dread. Her cold
hands trembled.
"You're afraid, darling!" I cried. "Tell me--what do you fear?"
But a terrible intuition had already given me the answer.
"You're afraid of me!"
She looked at me in mute agony, without denial.
"I know only what he told me, Clay."
Her voice broke, and her eyes gleamed with tears. Her warm arms were
suddenly around me, clinging with the pressure of urgent need.
"Remember I love you, Clay!" she sobbed. "Whatever you may be, remember
that I love you."
* * * * *
She was still in my arms when Doctor Kyle came back up the stairs,
walking with a hasty, shaken step. His voice quick and nervous, he
called:
"Clay, will you please come with me for a moment? And hurry! I think
our lives are all in danger, if you don't."