My hand shook perceptibly, but still I delved; after a while standing in the large hole I had made. With the deepening of the hole, which was about six feet square, the evil smell increased; and I lost all doubt of my imminent contact with the hellish thing whose emanations had cursed the house for over a century and a half. I wondered what it would look like—what its form and substance would be, and how big it might have waxed through long ages of life-sucking. At length I climbed out of the hole and dispersed the heaped-up dirt, then arranging the great carboys of acid around and near two sides, so that when necessary I might empty them all down the aperture in quick succession. After that I dumped earth only along the other two sides; working more slowly and donning my gas-mask as the smell grew. I was nearly unnerved at my proximity to a nameless thing at the bottom of a pit.
Suddenly my spade struck something softer than earth. I shuddered, and made a motion as if to climb out of the hole, which was now as deep as my neck. Then courage returned, and I scraped away more dirt in the light of the electric torch I had provided. The surface I uncovered was fishy and glassy—a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions of translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form. There was a rift where a part of the substance was folded over. The exposed area was huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter. Still more I scraped, and then abruptly I leaped out of the hole and away from the filthy thing; frantically unstopping and tilting the heavy carboys, and precipitating their corrosive contents one after another down that charnel gulf and upon the unthinkable abnormality whose titan elbow I had seen.
*
The blinding maelstrom of greenish-yellow vapor which surged tempestuously up from that hole as the floods of acid descended, will never leave my memory. All along the hill people tell of the yellow day, when virulent and horrible fumes arose from the factory waste dumped in the Providence River, but I know how mistaken they are as to the source. They tell, too, of the hideous roar which at the same time came from some disordered water-pipe or gas main underground—but again I could correct them if I dared. It was unspeakably shocking, and I do not see how I lived through it. I did faint after emptying the fourth carboy, which I had to handle after the fumes had begun to penetrate my mask; but when I recovered I saw that the hole was emitting no fresh vapors.
The two remaining carboys I emptied down without particular result, and after a time I felt it safe to shovel the earth back into the pit. It was twilight before I was done, but fear had gone out of the place. The dampness was less fetid, and all the strange fungi had withered to a kind of harmless grayish powder which blew ash-like along the floor. One of earth’s nethermost terrors had perished for ever; and if there be a hell, it had received at last the demon soul of an unhallowed thing. And as I patted down the last spadeful of mold, I shed the first of the many tears with which I have paid unaffected tribute to my beloved uncle’s memory.
The next spring no more pale grass and strange weeds came up in the shunned house’s terraced garden, and shortly afterward Carrington Harris rented the place. It is still spectral, but its strangeness fascinates me, and I shall find mixed with my relief a queer regret when it is torn down to make way for a tawdry shop or vulgar apartment building. The barren old trees in the yard have begun to bear small, sweet apples, and last year the birds nested in their gnarled boughs.
Way Station
By Mary Elizabeth Counselman
Rain whipped at the little car, plastering sheets of water against the windshield faster than the wipers could fan it clear. The man at the wheel, crouched forward to peer through the blinding storm, ran a palm quickly over the misted glass; then smiled and patted the knee of the girl pressed close to his side.
“Honey—we can’t go on in this downpour. Better pull off the highway, at least until I can see three feet ahead! . . . Cold?” he inquired tenderly, as the slender body shivered against him.
The girl shook her head. “Just . . . nervous, I guess.” She smiled back, with a studied attempt at gaiety. “After all, this is my first honeymoon!”
“Some honeymoon!” The bridegroom, a tall stocky young man, whose army uniform contrasted grimly with his bride’s frilly suit and flower-hat—laughed wryly. “For so long I’ve been dreaming of this, slogging around in the rain in Korea . . . A furlough! Ah-h! We’d spend a wonderful, sunny week together in a musical-comedy setting! And what do I get?” He chuckled. “More rain! Besides,” he added sheepishly, “I think I took a wrong turn back there someplace. Can’t see any road-signs in all this . . .”
He broke off, slowing the car at sight of a byroad at right angles to the paved highway ahead. Pulling off into it, he discovered it to be the entrance of a gravel driveway, ill kept and deeply pitted with holes. As the car jolted to a standstill, deluged by a fresh downpour, a huge truck rumbled past—dangerously close as it hugged the edge of the pavement. The young soldier whistled; tipped back his cap; mopped his face.
“Whew! That was close! Can’t tell when those trailers will sideswipe you on a wet road . . .”
“Like a dinosaur’s tail?” His bride giggled, snuggling against him. “I wasn’t worried, Tom. Not with you driving.”
The boy grinned, and held her close for a moment. “No? I’m glad you have such confidence in me. Wish I had as much! And knew where the merry hell we are!
He rolled down a window glass. Rain lashed at him as he peered out, straining his eyes through the storm-hastened twilight. With a movable search-lamp he swept a yellow arc of brilliance, like a finger pushing at the curtain of rain. It halted abruptly.
“Hey! Some kind of sign up there on a post . . . FARADAY HOUSE,” he read with difficulty. “Miss Adelaide Faraday, Prop. Overnight . . .” A grin curved his anxious mouth. “Well! How about that for luck? It’s a tourist home!” The finger of light probed deeper into the rain, seeking out a dim white blur at the end of the gravel drive. “Doesn’t look too bad. One of those old Gone-with-the-wind jobs. White-columned veranda, fanlight over the door. They probably serve wonderful meals; fried chicken and biscuits. How about it, Jean baby? Take a look . . .”
The girl was looking—not at the storm-blurred house, but at her husband’s earnest expression.
“Anyplace,” she whispered. “Any place at all, darling. So long as we can be together, even for . . . a little while.” Her eyes misted over suddenly, like the rainy windshield, traveling from the boy’s eager young face to the chevrons on his khaki sleeve. “A week! Just a week . . .”
The shadow of fear rose between them abruptly at her words, the dark fear of all lovers—that of being separated, of being torn apart by forces stronger than the love that bound them together. The boy reached out, snatched his young bride into his embrace, and held her tight. She clung to him, sobbing.
“Oh, Tommy! If only you didn’t have to go back! So . . . so soon!”
“Hey, now! We promised to pretend. Remember?” His voice as he tried to comfort her was unsteady, but determinedly light. “Time is relative,” he chanted the familiar ritual. “A day can be 24 hours—or a minute. Or ten years! We have seven days, hull? Seven times ten are seventy. . . . Why, we’ve already been married—let’s see—fifteen years! Wednesday will be our Golden Anniversary! And by Friday, when I have to . . . to . . . say, how long can a guy stand being married to one old hag?”
The sobbing against his shoulder ceased. With a forlorn but game little sniff, the bride sat up and managed a wavery grin.
“Okay . . .” As the rain slacked briefly, she peered out, following the pointing finger of the searchlight. “It . . . it looks kind of . . . old and rundown. Maybe