Binder1, page 3
“Now what’s going on around here?”
The man rolled over and sat up. “I didn’t do it!” he sobbed. “I didn’t. I was walking along and I heard the ;gun and I heard some swearing and an awful scream ;and I went over there and peeped and I saw the dead ;man and I ran away and you came and I hid and you ;shot me and—”
“Shut up!” The man did, as if a switch had been thrown. “Now,” said Cory, pointing along the path, ;“you say there’s a dead man up there?”
The man nodded and began crying in earnest. Cory helped him up. “Follow this path back to my farmhouse,” he said. “Tell my wife to fix up your hand. ;Don’t tell her anything else. And wait there until I ;come. Hear?”
“Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Snff.”
“Go on now.” Cory gave him a gentle shove in the right direction and went alone, in cold fear, up the path ;to the spot where he had found Alton the night before.
He found him here now, too, and Kimbo. Kimbo and Alton had spent several years together in the deepest ;friendship; they had hunted and fought and slept together, and the lives they owed each other were finished now. They were dead together.
It was terrible that they died the same way. Cory Drew was a strong man, but he gasped and fainted ;dead away when he saw what the thing of the mold had ;done to his brother and his brother’s dog.
The little man in black hurried down the path, whimpering and holding his injured hand as if he rather wished he could limp with it. After a while the whimper faded away, and the hurried stride changed to a ;walk as the gibbering terror of the last hour receded. ;He drew two deep breaths, said: “My goodness!” and ;felt almost normal. He bound a linen handkerchief around ;his wrist, but the hand kept bleeding. He tried the ;elbow, and that made it hurt. So he stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and simply waved the hand ;stupidly in the air until the blood clotted. He did not ;see the great moist horror that clumped along behind ;him, although his nostrils crinkled with its foulness.
The monster had three holes close together on his chest, and one hole in the middle of its slimy forehead. ;It had three close-set pits in its back and one on the ;back of its head. These marks were where Alton Drew’s ;bullets had struck and passed through. Half of the ;monster’s shapeless face was sloughed away, and there ;was a deep indentation on its shoulder. This was what ;Alton Drew’s gun butt had done after he clubbed it and ;struck at the thing that would not lie down after he put ;his four bullets through it. When these things happened the monster was not hurt or angry. It only wondered why Alton Drew acted that way. Now it followed ;the little man without hurrying at all, matching his ;stride step by step and dropping little particles of muck ;behind it.
The little man went on out of the wood and stood with his back against a big tree at the forest’s edge, and ;he thought. Enough had happened to him here. What ;good would it do to stay and face a horrible murder inquest, just to continue this silly, vague search? There ;was supposed to be the ruin of an old, old hunting ;lodge deep in this wood somewhere, and perhaps it ;would hold the evidence he wanted. But it was a vague ;report—vague enough to be forgotten without regret. It ;would be the height of foolishness to stay for all the ;hick-town red tape that would follow that ghastly affair ;back in the wood. Ergo, it would be ridiculous to follow ;that farmer’s advice, to go to his house and wait for ;him. He would go back to town.
The monster was leaning against the other side of the big tree.
The little man snuffled disgustedly at a sudden overpowering odor of rot. He reached for his handkerchief, fumbled and dropped it. As he bent to pick it up, the ;monster’s arm whuffed heavily in the air where his ;head had been—a blow that would certainly have removed that baby-face protuberance. The man stood up ;and would have put the handkerchief to his nose had it ;not been so bloody. The creature behind the tree lifted ;his arm again just as the little man tossed the handkerchief away and stepped out into the field, heading ;across country to the distant highway that would take ;him back to town. The monster pounced on the handkerchief, picked it up, studied it, tore it across several ;times and inspected the tattered edges. Then it gazed ;vacantly at the disappearing figure of the little man, and ;finding him no longer interesting, turned back into the ;woods.
Babe broke into a trot at the sound of the shots. It was important to warn Uncle Alton about what her ;father had said, but it was more interesting to find out ;what he had bagged. Oh, he’d bagged it, all right. ;Uncle Alton never fired without killing. This was about ;the first time she had ever heard him blast away like ;that. Must be a bear, she thought excitedly, tripping ;over a root, sprawling, rolling to her feet again, without K noticing the tumble. She’d love to have another bearskin in her room. Where would she put it? Maybe they i ;could line it and she could have it for a blanket. Uncle ;Alton could sit on it and read to her in the evening— Oh, ;no. No. Not with this trouble between him and dad.
Oh, if she could only do something! She tried to run fester, worried and anticipating, but she was out of ;breath and went more slowly instead.
At the top of the rise by the edge of the woods she stopped and looked back. Far down in the valley lay the ;south thirty. She scanned it carefully, looking for her ;father. The new furrows and the old were sharply defined, and her keen eyes saw immediately that Cory had ;left the line with the cultivator and had angled the team ;over to the shade trees without finishing his row. That ;wasn’t like him. She could see the team now, and ;Cory’s pale-blue denim was nowhere in sight. She giggled lightly to herself as she thought of the way she ;would fool her father. And the little sound of laughter ;drowned out, for her, the sound of Alton’s hoarse dying ;scream.
She reached and crossed the path and slid through the brush beside it. The shots came from up around ;here somewhere. She stopped and listened several times, ;and then suddenly heard something coming toward her, ;fest. She ducked under cover, terrified, and a little ;baby-faced man in black, his blue eyes wide with horror, crashed blindly past her, the leather case he carried catching on the branches. It spun a moment and ;then fell right in front of her. The man never missed it.
Babe lay there for a long moment and then picked up the case and faded into the woods. Things were happening too fast for her. She wanted Uncle Alton, but ;she dared not call. She stopped again and strained her ;ears. Back toward the edge of the wood she heard her ;father’s voice, and another’s—probably the man who ;had dropped the brief case. She dared not go over ;there. Filled with enjoyable terror, she thought hard, then snapped her fingers in triumph. She and Alton ;had played Injun many times up here; they had a whole ;repertoire of secret signals. She had practiced birdcalls ;until she knew them better than the birds themselves. ;What would it be? Ah—blue jay. She threw back her ;head and by some youthful alchemy produced a nerve-shattering screech that would have done justice to any ;jay that ever flew. She repeated it, and then twice ;more.
The response was immediate—the call of a blue jay, four times, spaced two and two. Babe nodded to herself ;happily. That was the signal that they were to meet ;immediately at The Place. The Place was a hide-out ;that he had discovered and shared with her, and not ;another soul knew of it; an angle of rock beside a stream ;not far away. It wasn’t exactly a cave, but almost. Enough ;so to be entrancing. Babe trotted happily away toward ;the brook. She had just known that Uncle Alton would ;remember the call of the blue jay, and what it meant.
In the tree that arched over Alton’s scattered body perched a large jay bird, preening itself and shining in ;the sun. Quite unconscious of the presence of death, ;hardly noticing the Babe’s realistic cry, it screamed ;again four times, two and two.
It took Cory more than a moment to recover himself from what he had seen. He turned away from it and ;leaned weakly against a pine, panting. Alton. That was ;Alton lying there, in—parts.
“God! God, God, God—”
Gradually his strength returned, and he forced himself to turn again. Stepping carefully, he bent and picked up the .32-40. Its barrel was bright and clean, but the ;butt and stock were smeared with some kind of stinking ;rottenness. Where had he seen the stuff before? ;Somewhere—no matter. He cleaned it off absently, ;throwing the befouled bandana away afterward. Through ;his mind ran Alton’s words—was that only last night?—
“I’m goin start trackin’. An I’m goin’ to keep trackin’ till I find the one done this job on Kimbo.”
Cory searched shrinkingly until he found Alton’s box of shells. The box was wet and sticky. That made it— ;better, somehow. A bullet wet with Alton’s blood was ;the right thing to use. He went away a short distance, ;circled around till he found heavy footprints, then came ;back.
“I’m a-trackin’ for you, bud,” he whispered thickly, and began. Through the brush he followed its wavering ;spoor, amazed at the amount of filthy mold about, ;gradually associating it with the thing that had killed his ;brother. There was nothing in the world for him anymore but hate and doggedness. Cursing himself for not ;getting Alton home last night, he followed the tracks to ;the edge of the woods. They led him to a big tree ;there, and there he saw something else—the footprints ;of the little city man. Nearby lay some tattered scraps ;of linen, and—what was what?
Another set of prints—small ones. Small, stub-toed ones.
“Babe!”
No answer. The wind sighed. Somewhere a blue jay called.
Babe stopped and turned when she heard her father’s voice, faint with distance, piercing.
“Listen at him holler,” she crooned delightedly. “Gee, he sounds mad.” She sent a jay bird’s call disrespectfully back to him and hurried to The Place.
It consisted of a mammoth boulder beside the brook. Some upheaval in the glacial age had cleft it, cutting out ;a huge V-shaped chunk. The widest part of the cleft ;was at the water’s edge, and the narrowest was hidden ;by bushes. It made a little ceilingless room, rough and ;uneven and full of pot-holes and cavelets inside, and ;yet with quite a level floor. The open end was at the ;water’s edge.
Babe parted the bushes and peered down the cleft.
“Uncle Alton!” she called softly. There was no answer. Oh, well, he’d be along. She scrambled in and slid down to the floor.
She loved it here. It was shaded and cool, and the chattering stream filled it with shifting golden lights ;and laughing gurgles. She called again, on principle, ;and then perched on an outcropping to wait. It was ;only then she realized that she still carried the little ;man’s brief case.
She turned it over a couple of times and then opened it. It was divided in the middle by a leather wall. On ;one side were a few papers in a large yellow envelope, ;and on the other some sandwiches, a candy bar, and an ;apple. With a youngster’s complacent acceptance of ;manna from heaven, Babe fell to. She saved one sandwich for Alton, mainly because she didn’t like its highly ;spiced bologna. The rest made quite a feast.
She was a little worried when Alton hadn’t arrived, even after she had consumed the apple core. She got ;up and tried to skim some flat pebbles across the roiling ;brook, and she stood on her hands, and she tried to ;think of a story to tell herself, and she tried just waiting. Finally, in desperation, she turned again to the ;brief case, took out the papers, curled up by the rocky ;wall and began to read them. It was something to do, ;anyway.
There was an old newspaper clipping that told about strange wills that people had left. An old lady had once ;left a lot of money to whoever would make the trip from ;the Earth to the Moon and back. Another had financed ;a home for cats whose masters and mistresses had died. ;A man left thousands of dollars to the first person who ;could solve a certain mathematical problem and prove ;his solution. But one item was blue-penciled. It was:
One of the strangest of wills still in force is that ;of Thaddeus M. Kirk, who died in 1920. It appears ;that he built an elaborate mausoleum with burial vaults for all the remains of his family. He collected and removed caskets from all over the country to fill the designated niches. Kirk was the last ;of his line; there were no relatives when he died. ;His will stated that the mausoleum was to be kept ;in repair permanently, and that a certain sum set ;aside as a reward for whoever could produce the ;body of his grandfather, Roger Kirk, whose niche ;is still empty. Anyone finding this body is eligible ;to receive a substantial fortune.
Babe yawned vaguely over this, but kept on reading because there was nothing else to do. Next was a thick ;sheet of business correspondence, bearing the letterhead of a firm of lawyers. The body of it ran:
In regard to your query regarding the will of Thaddeus Kirk, we are authorized to state that his ;grandfather was a man about five feet, five inches, ;whose left arm had been broken and who had a ;triangular silver plate set into his skull. There is no ;information as to the whereabouts of his death. He ;disappeared and was declared legally dead after ;the lapse of fourteen years.
The amount of the reward as stated in the will, plus accrued interest, now amounts to a fraction ;over sixty-two thousand dollars. This will be paid ;to anyone who produces the remains, providing ;that said remains answer descriptions kept in our ;private files.
There was more, but Babe was bored. She went on into the little black notebook. There was nothing in it ;but penciled and highly abbreviated records of visits to ;libraries; quotations from books with titles like “History ;of Angelina and Tyler Counties” and “Kirk Family History.” Babe threw that aside, too. Where could Uncle Alton be?
She began to sing tunelessly. “Tumalumalum turn, ta ta ta,” pretending to dance a minuet with flowing ;skirts like a girl she had seen in the movies. A rustle of ;the bushes at the entrance to The Place stopped her. ;She peeped upward, saw them being thrust aside. ;Quickly she ran to a tiny cul-de-sac in the rock wall, ;just big enough for her to hide in. She giggled at the ;thought of how surprised Uncle Alton would be when ;she jumped out at him.
She heard the newcomer come shuffling down the steep slope of the crevice and land heavily on the floor. ;There was something about the sound—What was it? It ;occurred to her that though it was a hard job for a big ;man like Uncle Alton to get through the little opening ;in the bushes, she could hear no heavy breathing. She ;heard no breathing at all!
Babe peeped out into the main cave and squealed in utmost horror. Standing there was, not Uncle Alton, ;but a massive caricature of a man: a huge thing like an ;irregular mud doll, clumsily made. It quivered and ;parts of it glistened and parts of it were dried and ;crumbly. Half of the lower part of its face was gone, ;giving it a lopsided look. It had no perceptible mouth ;or nose, and its eyes were crooked, one higher than the ;other, both a dingy brown with no whites at all. It stood ;quite still looking at her, its only movement a steady ;unalive quivering.
It wondered about the queer little noise Babe had made.
Babe crept far back against a little pocket of stone, her brain running round and round in tiny circles of ;agony. She opened her mouth to cry out, and could not. ;Her eyes bulged and her face flamed with the strangling effort, and the two golden ropes of her braided ;hair twitched and twitched as she hunted hopelessly for ;a way out. If only she were out in the open—or in the ;wedge-shaped half-cave where the thing was—or home in bed!
The thing clumped toward her, expressionless, moving with a slow inevitability that was the sheer crux of horror. Babe lay wide-eyed and frozen, mounting pressure of terror stilling her lungs, making her heart shake ;the whole world. The monster came to the mouth of ;the little pocket, tried to walk to her and was stopped ;by the sides. It was such a narrow little fissure, and it ;was all Babe could do to get in. The thing from the wood ;stood straining against the rock at its shoulders, pressing harder and harder to get to Babe. She sat up slowly, ;so near to the thing that its odor was almost thick ;enough to see, and a wild hope burst through her ;voiceless fear. It couldn’t get in! It couldn’t get in ;because it was too big!
The substance of its feet spread slowly under the tremendous strain and at its shoulder appeared a slight ;crack. It widened as the monster unfeelingly crushed ;itself against the rock, and suddenly a large piece of the ;shoulder came away and the being twisted slushily three ;feet farther in. It lay quietly with its muddy eyes fixed ;on her, and then brought one thick arm up over its ;head and reached.
Babe scrambled in the inch farther she had believed impossible, and the filthy clubbed hand stroked down ;her back, leaving a trail of muck on the blue denim of ;the shirt she wore. The monster surged suddenly and, ;lying full length now, gained that last precious inch. A ;black hand seized one of her braids, and for Babe the ;lights went out.
When she came to, she was dangling by her hair from that same crusted paw. The thing held her high, ;so that her face and its featureless head were not more ;than a foot apart. It gazed at her with a mild curiosity in ;its eyes, and it swung her slowly back and forth. The ;agony of her pulled hair did what fear could not do— ;gave her a voice. She screamed. She opened her mouth ;and puffed up her powerful young lungs, and she sounded off. She held her throat in the position of the first ;scream, and her chest labored and pumped more air ;through her frozen throat. Shrill and monotonous and ;infinitely piercing, her screams.
The thing did not mind. It held her as she was, and watched. When it had learned all it could from this ;phenomenon, it dropped her jarringly, and looked around ;the half-cave, ignoring the stunned and huddled Babe. ;It reached over and picked up the leather brief case and ;tore it twice across as if it were tissue. It saw the ;sandwich Babe had left, picked it up, crushed it, dropped ;it.
