Hulsey did not look up. He gave the key another frantic twist, and the lock opened.
In that short space of time the wall guard had raced into the lookout and seized a shotgun. As he stepped to the door of the lookout, a dark figure disappeared around the corner of a building twenty feet from the gate.
A moment later the alarm in the guards’ quarters rang frantically, and a dozen sleepy-eyed men tumbled from their beds, slipped on shoes and trousers and ran out into the yard.
The gate guard could only tell where he last saw the escaping convict. To capture the man on such a dark night seemed hopeless, considering, too, that the fleeing man had a seven-minute start. However, the half-dressed guards scattered and made for a heavy willow thicket several hundred yards beyond the spot where the convict was last seen.
For five minutes after the pursuing guards disappeared in the darkness, silence reigned over the prison. Then--
From a distant point in the dark thicket a hair-raising, half-animal, half-human shriek of mortal terror shattered the stillness of the night and echoed and re-echoed about the high prison walls.
White faced guards, temporarily unnerved by that fearful wail, crashed through the brush, their flashlights playing about like the eyes of spending demons. Then they found Malcolm Hulsey the “lifer.”
Groveling face down in the mud of a little creek bank, hands clutching at empty air, great spasms of maniacal terror passing through his body, the one time terror of the prison muttered insane, incoherent things.
Two guards pulled him to his knees. Others turned flashlights on his face--a face such as is seen in horrible nightmares; a ghastly face, partly covered with black mud; an avid face where it shown through the grime. The eyes were wide, protruding, glassy.
“_See! See!_” the convict rasped hoarsely, pointing a mud-smeared hand at a dense black nook in the thicket. “_See!_ He stands there and points at me--and laughs! _It’s Asa Shores!_ He’s been in my cell every night for weeks--laughing at me! He sang a death song to me--always sang--always laughed! Wouldn’t let me sleep! _He’s coming toward me! Stop him!_ Please--”
Then another horrible shriek, a shudder, a gasp, and the guards dropped the lifeless form of Malcolm Hulsey in the mud.
By some queer whim of fate, the speechless guards involuntarily switched off their flashlights. Utter darkness, utter silence enveloped them. Then a faint sound was heard.
“Listen!” came the hoarse voice of Guard Jerry Clark. “Do you hear it?”
Very little of it could be heard. It was a faint sound and growing fainter.
“_When I die and am buried deep, I’ll return at night to_ ...”
Then it was gone, and all was still again.
_Here’s An Extraordinary Yarn--_
_The_ Ghoul _and the_ Corpse
_By_ G. A. WELLS
This is Chris Bonner’s tale, not mine. Please remember that.
I positively will not stand sponsor for it. I used to have a deal of faith in Chris Bonner’s veracity, but that is a thing of the past. He is a liar; a liar without conscience. I as good as told him so to his face. I wonder what kind of fool he thinks I am!
Attend, now, and you shall hear that remarkable tale he told me. It was, and is, a lie. I shall always think so.
He came marching into my igloo up there at Aurora Bay. That is in Alaska, you know, on the Arctic sea. I had been in the back-country trading for pelts for a New York concern, and due to bad luck I didn’t reach the coast until the third day after the last steamer out had gone. And there I was marooned for the winter, without chance of getting out until spring, with a few dozen ignorant Indians for companions. Thank heaven I had plenty of white man’s grub in tins!
As I said, here came Chris Bonner marching in on me the same as you would go down the block a few doors to call on a neighbor.
“And where the devil did you drop in from?” I demanded, helping him off with his stiff parka.
“Down there,” he answered, jerking an elbow toward the south. “Let’s have something to eat, MacNeal. I’m hungry as hell. Look at the pack, will you!”
I had already looked at the pack he had cast off his shoulders to the fur-covered floor of the igloo. It was as lean as a starved hound. I heated a can of beef bouillon and some beans, and made a pot of coffee over the blubber-fat fire that served for both heat and light, and put these and some crackers before my guest. He tore into his meal wolfishly.
“Now a pipe and some tobac, MacNeal,” he ordered, pushing the empty dishes aside.
I gave him one of my pipes and my tobacco-pouch. He filled and lighted up. He seemed to relish the smoke; I imagined he hadn’t had one for some time. He sat silent for a while staring into the flickering flame.
“Say, MacNeal,” he spoke at length; “what do you know about a theory that says once on a time this old world of ours revolved on its axis in a different plane? I’ve heard it said the earth tipped up about seventy degrees. What d’you know about it?”
That was a queer thing for Chris Bonner to ask. He was simon-pure prospector and I had never known him to get far away from the subject of mining and prospecting. He had been hunting gold from Panama to the Arctic Circle for the past thirty years.
“No more than you do, probably,” I answered his question. “I’ve heard of that theory, too. I’d say it is any man’s guess.”
“This theory holds that the North Pole used to be where the Equator is now,” he said. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Chris,” I replied. “But I do know that they have found things up this way that are now generally recognized as being peculiarly tropical in nature.”
“What, for instance?”
“Palms and ferns, a species of parrot, saber-tooth tigers; and also mastodons, members of the elephant family. All fossils and parts of skeletons, you understand.”
“No human beings, MacNeal? Any skeletons or fossils of those up this way?”
“Never heard of it. Prehistoric people are being found in England and France, however.”
“Huh,” he said.
He pondered, puffing at his pipe, his eyes on the fire. He looked perplexed about something.
“Look here, MacNeal,” he said suddenly. “Say a man dies. He’s dead, ain’t he?”
“No doubt of it,” I laughed, wondering.
“Couldn’t come to life again, eh?”
“Hardly. Not if he were really dead. I’ve heard of cases of suspended animation. The heart, apparently, quits beating for one, two or possibly ten minutes. It doesn’t in fact, though; it’s simply that its beating can’t be detected. When a man’s heart stops beating he’s dead.”
Bonner nodded.
“‘Suspended animation,’” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “That must be it. That’s the only thing that’ll explain it; nothing else will. If it could cover a period of ten minutes, why not a period of twenty or even a hundred thousand years--”
“If you’d like to turn in and get some rest, Chris, I’ll fix you up,” I broke in.
He caught the significance of my tone and grinned.
“You think I’m crazy, eh?” he said. “I’m not. It’s a wonder, though, considering what I’ve seen and what I--here, let me show you something!”
* * * * *
He thrust a hand into his lean pack and brought forth an object that at first glance I thought to be a butcher’s knife.
He handed it to me and I at once saw that it was not a butcher’s knife as I knew such knives. It was a curious sort of knife, and one for which a collector of the antique would have paid good money.
It was a very dark color, almost black; corroded, it seemed to me, as if it had lain for a long time in a damp cellar. It was in one piece, the handle about five inches long and the blade perhaps ten inches. Both edges of the blade were sharp and the end was pointed like a dagger. And it certainly wasn’t steel. I scratched one side of the blade with my thumb nail and exposed a creamy yellow under the veneer of black.
“Part of that’s blood you scraped away, MacNeal,” Bonner said. “Now what’s that knife made of?”
I examined the yellow spot closely. The knife was made of ivory. Not the kind of ivory I was acquainted with, however; it was a very much coarser grain than any ivory I had ever seen.
“That came out of a mastodon’s tusk, MacNeal,” Bonner said.
I looked at him. He was nodding, seriously. He apparently believed what he said, at any rate.
“Nice curio, Chris,” I commented, handing the thing back to him. “Heirloom, no doubt. Picked it up in one of the Indian villages, eh?”
He did not speak at once. He sat puffing, looking at the fire. Once he puckered his brows in a deep frown. I waited.
“I’ve been prospecting, as usual,” he said at length. “Down there around the headquarters of the Tukuvuk. It’s an awful place; nobody ever goes there. The Indians tell me the spirits of the dead live there. I can believe it; it’s an ideal place for imps and devils. And I was right through the heart of it. I believe I’m the first. No matter how I got there; I came up from the south last summer. You see, I had an idea there was gold in that country.