“Go to sleep and don’t scare yourself with such silly talk. Mother will be with us tomorrow night, and Dad will be back next day. Now go to sleep.”
The elder sister soon dropped into slumber, but the younger lay open-eyed, staring into the black room and shuddering at every stifled scream of the wind or distant growl of thunder. She began to count, hoping to hypnotize herself into drowsiness, but at every slight noise she started, and lost her count.
Suddenly she turned and shook her sister by the shoulder.
“Edith, somebody is prowling around downstairs!” she whispered. “Listen! Oh, what shall we do?”
The elder sister struck a match and lit the candle. Then she slipped on her dressing-gown, and drew on her slippers.
“You’re not going down there? Edith, tell me you’re not going downstairs! It might be that murdered Berkheim girl! Edith, don’t--”
Edith shot a glance of withering scorn at her sister, who lay on the bed with blanched face and wide, terrified eyes.
“There is something moving around downstairs, and I’m going to find out what it is,” she said.
Taking the candle, she left the room. Her younger sister lay in the darkness, listening to the pattering of rain on the roof and straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. The noise downstairs ceased, but the wind rose and the rain beat upon the roof in sudden furious blasts that made her heart jump wildly....
Ten minutes passed--twenty minutes--and Edith had not returned.
A door slammed, and the younger sister thought she heard something moving again, but the wind began to sob and drowned out all other noises. Between gusts, she heard the portentous sound, and each time it seemed nearer.
Then--she started as she realized that something was coming up the stairs. Once she thought she heard a cry, to which the wind joined its plaintive voice in a weird duet.
Nearer and nearer the strange noise came. It mounted the stairs, step by step, heard only when the wind and rain softened their voices. It passed the first landing, and moved slowly up the second flight, while the girl fearfully awaited its coming.
The wind howled until the house quaked; it shrilled past the eaves and fled across the fields like a hunted ghost.
And now the girl’s pounding pulses drowned out the screaming of the wind, for the presence had _invaded her bedroom_!
She cowered under the covers, a cold perspiration chilling her body until her teeth chattered. Her imagination conjured up frightful things--a disembodied spirit come to destroy her--a corpse from the grave, gibbering in terror because it could not tear the cerements from its face--the murdered Berkheim girl, with the knife still sheathed in her heart--or some escaped beast, licking its lips in greedy anticipation of the feast her tremulous body would provide. Or was it a murderer, who, having killed her sister, was now bent on completing his bloody work?
A flash of lightning split the sky, and the thunder bellowed its terrifying warning. The girl threw back the bedclothes and shrank to the wall, her eyes starting from their sockets, fearful lest another flash reveal some sight too ghastly to contemplate.
Slowly the being dragged itself across the floor, lifted itself onto the bed, and uttered a choking sound of agony.
The girl sat petrified. Then, timorously, she extended a shaky hand, but quickly withdrew it in dread of some hideous contact.
Again she thrust her trembling hand into the gloom, farther, farther, until it touched something shaggy and wet.
A clammy hand closed over hers, and she started to her feet, with a horrified scream.
The icy hand tightened with a sickening tremor, and dragged her down. Then her tortured senses gave way, and she fell back unconscious upon the bed....
* * * * *
When she awoke, it was day. Beside her, on the bed, lay the bleeding body of her sister, Edith, stabbed in the breast by the burglar she had tried to frighten away.
The younger girl was clutching the clotted wisps of hair that had fallen across the breast of her sister, whose cold hand had closed over hers in the last convulsive shudder of death.
_Howard Ellis Davis Relates Some Extraordinary Adventures With_
_The_ UNKNOWN BEAST
At the edge of the little settlement of Bayou le Tor lapped the slack waters from which the village had been named. A mile to the south, they lost themselves in the Mississippi Sound. Northward, they wound among somber swamps, to disappear at last into the marshes above.
Giant cypress trees crowded down to the very edge of the settlement, as if jealous of the small space of cleared land it occupied beside the bayou, and to one not accustomed to the place it seemed that an evil boding lurked forever within the depths of those overhanging, gloomy swamps.
But until the unknown Beast first made its mysterious presence felt, no harm for the people of Bayou le Tor ever had come out of those swamps, except the deadly malaria, which clutched its victims in shaking agues and burning fevers that consumed life as a woods fire might consume a strip of dried sedge grass.
Before this strange death that had come to haunt the night swamps, they shrank in helpless terror. Cows were driven in from their pastures while the sun was yet high. Mothers called in their sallow-faced children from play as soon as the shadows began to lengthen.
The first victim had been Swan Davis, an old fisherman who lived by himself on the edge of the bayou above the settlement. He had been found in the swamp, dead. At first it was thought that he had been beaten to death, he was so broken about the body.
Finally, however, it was decided he had been crushed by some mysterious, unknown force. Something had caught him and squeezed him until his bones had cracked like dry reeds.
Then the three Buntly boys, driving in a bunch of steers from the marshes, were overtaken by night on the swamp road. The cattle had been going peacefully enough, when suddenly they had become frightened and lumbered off ahead, bellowing madly. Themselves frightened at the queer behavior of the animals, the boys followed, as fast as they could on foot.
That is, two of them did; for when Jard and Peter Buntly emerged from the shadows of the swamp road, they found that their brother, Sims, was not with them.
Terror-stricken though they were, they had returned into the swamp, calling his name. When they saw nothing of him, and he did not answer their calls, they went quickly home and reported what had happened. All night long, bearing flaming torches, the men of the settlement beat up and down the swamp. Toward morning, they found the young man’s body, bruised and broken, but no trace of what had killed him.
When the people of Bayou le Tor gathered to discuss the circumstances surrounding these two mysterious deaths, the negroes, and some others, declared that an evil spirit haunted the gloomy fastness to the north of the settlement, while the more conservative agreed that some creature strange to those parts, some unknown beast, was ranging the night swamps, a creature that killed for the love of killing.
Armed with shotgun and rifle, they hunted him. They set bear-traps, baited with an entire quarter of beef hung above. But no one ventured into the swamps after dark, until, one night, ten of the best men in the settlement formed a party and rode out on horseback through the swamp road.
Armed with pistol and sheath-knife, they rode, two by two, knee to knee, their horses following each other nose to tail, so that if any one of the party were attacked they all could turn and fight in a body.
Nothing happened until they were on their way back; then Walter Brandon--who, because he was one of their bravest, brought up the rear--grew careless and lagged behind. Suddenly, his horse came charging in among the others, riderless.
They could find no trace of Walter, and the other nine could only ride in and break the news to his young wife, who carried a baby at her breast.
The next day, the girl’s father, old Arner Horn, secured the services of a small, battered automobile and crossed two counties to see Ed Hardin and beg that he come and deliver them from this unknown beast that, one by one, was killing the men-folk of Bayou le Tor.
* * * * *
In his own county Ed Hardin was a deputy sheriff, and the reputation of his prowess had traveled far. Each summer, when the fishing was best on the Sound, he came to Bayou le Tor. Each winter, he came to hunt wild turkeys in the swamps that surrounded the settlement. The people had grown to know him well, and they knew that he feared neither man, beast, nor the devil.
He returned in the automobile with Arner, bringing with him his young friend, Alex Rowe. When they reached Bayou le Tor, the news awaited them that Walter’s body, which bore on it the same marks as those others who had been killed, had been found floating on the waters of the bayou, and that it was being held at the water’s edge so that Ed Hardin might see for himself the nature of death which this creature inflicted upon its victims.