‘Look here, Mr Weatherby, I’m telling you this for your own good. You’d better stay in o’ nights; and you’d better stay away from those pines in particular.’
Nonplussed at this unsolicited advice, I was about to ask an explanation, when I detected the after-tang of whisky on his breath. I understood, then. I was being made the butt of a drunken joke by a pair of race-course followers.
‘I’m very much obliged, I’m sure,’ I replied with dignity, ‘but if you don’t mind, I’ll choose my own comings and goings.’
‘Oh, go as far as you like’—he waved his arms wide in token of my complete free-agency—‘go as far as you like. I’m going to New York.’
And he did. The pair of them left the sanitarium that afternoon.
A slight recurrence of my illness held me housebound for several days after my conversation with the two sportively inclined gentlemen, and the next time I ventured out at night the moon had waxed to the full, pouring a flood of light upon the earth that rivaled midday. The minutest objects were as readily distinguished as they would have been before sunset; in fact, I remember comparing the evening to a silver-plated noon.
As I trudged along the road to the pine copse I was busy formulating plans for intruding into the family circle at the farmhouse; devising all manner of pious frauds by which to scrape acquaintance.
‘Shall I feign having lost my way, and inquire direction to the sanitarium; or shall I ask if some mythical acquaintance, a John Squires, for instance, lives there?’ I asked myself as I neared the turn of the road.
Fortunately for my conscience, all these subterfuges were unnecessary, for as I neared the whitewashed fence, a girl left the porch and walked quickly to the gate, where she stood gazing pensively along the moonlit road. It was almost as if she were coming to meet me, I thought, as I slackened my pace and assumed an air of deliberate casualness.
Almost abreast of her, I lowered my cadence still more, and looked directly at her. Then I knew why my conception of the girl who lived in that house had been misty and indistinct. For the same reason the venerable John had faltered in his description of the New Jerusalem until his vision of the Isle of Patmos.
From the smoothly parted hair above her wide, forget-me-not eyes, to the hem of her white cotton frock, she was as slender and lovely as a Rossetti saint; as wonderful to the eye as a mediaeval poet’s vision of his lost love in paradise. Her forehead, evenly framed in the beaten bronze of her hair, was wide and high, and startlingly white, and her brows were delicately penciled as if laid on by an artist with a camel’s-hair brush. The eyes themselves were sweet and clear as forest pools mirroring the September sky, and lifted a little at the corners, like an Oriental’s, giving her face a quaint, exotic look in the midst of these Maine woods.
So slender was her figure that the swell of her bosom was barely perceptible under the light stuff of her dress, and, as she stood immobile in the nimbus of moon rays, the undulation of the line from her shoulders to ankles was what painters call a ‘curve of motion’.
One hand rested lightly on the gate, finely cut as a bit of Italian sculpture, and scarcely less white than the limed wood supporting it. I noticed idly that the forefinger was somewhat longer than its fellows, and that the nails were almond-shaped and very pink—almost red—as if they had been rouged and brightly polished.
No man can take stock of a woman thus, even in a cursory, fleeting glimpse, without her being aware of the inspection, and in the minute my eyes drank up her beauty, our glances crossed and held.
The look she gave back was as calm and unperturbed as though I had been non-existent; one might have thought I was an invisible wraith of the night; yet the faint suspicion of a flush quickening in her throat and cheeks told me she was neither unaware nor unappreciative of my scrutiny.
Mechanically, I raised my cap, and wholly without conscious volition, I heard my own voice asking:
‘May I trouble you for a drink from your well? I’m from the sanitarium—only a few days out of bed, in fact—and I fear I’ve overdone myself in my walk.’
A smile flitted across her rather wide lips, quick and sympathetic as a mother’s response to her child’s request, as she swung the gate open for me.
‘Surely,’ she answered, and her voice had all the sweetness of the south wind soughing through her native pines, ‘surely you may drink at our well, and rest yourself, too—if you wish.’
She preceded me up the path, quickening her pace as she neared the house, and running nimbly up the steps to the porch. From where I stood beside the old-fashioned well, fitted with windlass and bucket, I could hear the sound of whispering voices in earnest conversation. Hers I recognized, lowered though it was, by the flutelike purling of its tones; the other two were deeper, and, it seemed to me, hoarse and throaty. Somehow, odd as it seemed, there was a queer, canine note in them, dimly reminding me of the muttering of not too friendly dogs—such fractious growls as I had heard while doing missionary duty in Alaska, when the savage, half-wolf malamutes were not fed promptly at the relay stations.
Her voice rose a thought higher, as if in argument, and I fancied I heard her whisper, ‘This one is mine, I tell you—mine. I’ll brook no interference. Go to your own hunting.’
An instant more and there was a reluctant assenting growl from the shadow of the vines curtaining the porch, and a light laugh from the girl as she descended the steps, swinging a bright tin cup in her hand. For a second she looked at me, as she sent the bucket plunging into the stone-curbed well; then she announced, in explanation:
‘We’re great hunters here, you know. The season is just in, and Dad and I have the worst quarrels about whose game is whose.’
She laughed in recollection of their argument, and I laughed with her. I had been quite a Nimrod as a boy, myself, and well I remembered the heated controversies as to whose charge of shot was responsible for some luckless bunny’s demise.
The well was very deep, and my breath was coming fast by the time I had helped her wind the bucket-rope upon the windlass; but the water was cold as only spring-fed well water can be. As she poured it from the bucket it shone almost like foam in the moonlight, and seemed to whisper with a half-human voice, instead of gurgling as other water does when poured.
I had drunk water in nearly every quarter of the globe, but never such water as that. Cold as the breath from a glacier, limpid as visualized air, it was yet so light and tasteless in substance that only the chill in my throat and the sight of the liquid in the cup told me I was doing more than going through the motions of drinking.
‘And now, will you rest?’ she invited, as I finished my third draft. ‘We’ve an extra chair on the porch for you.’
Behind the screen of vines I found her father and mother seated in the rays of the big kitchen lamp. They were just as I had expected to find them—plain, homely, sincere country folk, courteous in their reception and anxious to make a sick stranger welcome. Both were stout, with the comfortable stoutness of middle age and good health; but both had surprisingly slender hands. I noticed, too, that the same characteristic of an over-long forefinger was apparent in their hands as in their daughter’s, and that the nails of both were trimmed to points and stained almost a brilliant red.
‘My father, Mr Squires,’ the girl introduced, ‘and my mother, Mrs Squires.’
I could not repress a start. These people bore the very name I had casually thought to use when inquiring for some imaginary person. My lucky stars had surely guided me away from that attempt to scrape an acquaintance. What a figure I should have cut if I had actually asked for Mr Squires!
Though I was not aware of it, my curious glance must have stayed longer on their reddened nails than I had intended, for Mrs Squires look deprecatingly at her hands. ‘We’ve all been turning in, putting up fox-grapes’—she included her husband and daughter with a comprehensive gesture. ‘And the stain just won’t wash out; has to wear off, you know.’
I spent, perhaps, two hours w
ith my new-found friends, talking of everything from the best methods of potato culture to the surest way of landing a nine-pound bass. All three joined in the conversation and took a lively interest in the topics under discussion. After the vapid talk of the guests at the sanitarium, I found the simple, interested discourse of these country people as stimulating as wine, and when I left them it was with a hearty promise to renew my call at an early date.
‘Better wait until after dark,’ Mr Squires warned. ‘We’d be glad to see you any time; but we’re so busy these fall days, we haven’t much time for company.’
I took the broad hint in the same friendly spirit it was given.
It must have grown chillier than I realized while I sat there, for my new friends’ hands were clay-cold when I took them in mine at parting.
Homeward bound, a whimsical thought struck me so suddenly I laughed aloud. There was something suggestive of the dog tribe about the Squires family, though I could not for the life of me say what it was. Even Mildred, the daughter, beautiful as she was, with her light eyes, her rather prominent nose, and her somewhat wide mouth, reminded me in some vague way of a lovely silver collie I had owned as a boy.
I struck a tassel of dried leaves from a cluster of weeds with my walking-stick as I smiled at the fanciful conceit. The legend of the werewolves—those horrible monsters formed as men, but capable of assuming bestial shape at will, and killing and eating their fellows—was as old as mankind’s fear of the dark, but no mythology I had ever read contained a reference to dog-people.
Strange fancies strike us in the moonlight sometimes.
September ripened to October, and the moon, which had been as round and bright as an exchange-worn coin when I first visited the Squires house, waned as thin as a shaving from a silversmith’s lathe.
I became a regular caller at the house in the pines. Indeed, I grew to look forward to my nightly visits with those homely folks as a welcome relief from the tediously gay companionship of the over-sophisticated people at the sanitarium.
My habit of slipping away shortly after dinner was the cause of considerable comment and no little speculation on the part of my fellow convalescents, some of whom set it down to the eccentricity which, to their minds, was the inevitable concomitant of a minister’s vocation, while others were frankly curious. Snatches of conversation I overheard now and then led me to believe that the objective of my strolls was the subject of wagering, and the guarded questions put to me in an effort to solve the mystery became more and more annoying.
I had no intention of taking any of them to the farmhouse with me. The Squires were my friends. Their cheerful talk and unassuming manners were as delightful a contrast to the atmosphere of the sanitarium as a breath of mountain balsam after the fetid air of a hothouse; but to the city-centered crowd at Briarcliff they would have been only the objects of less than half-scornful patronage, the source of pitying amusement.
It was Miss Leahy who pushed the impudent curiosity further than any of the rest, however. One evening, as I was setting out, she met me at the gate and announced her intention of going with me.
‘You must have found something dreadfully attractive to take you off every evening this way, Mr Weatherby,’ she hazarded as she pursed her rather pretty, rouged lips at me and caught step with my walk. ‘We girls really can’t let some little country lass take you away from us, you know. We simply can’t.’
I made no reply. It was scarcely possible to tell a pretty girl, even such a vain little flirt as Sara Leahy, to go home and mind her business. Yet that was just what I wanted to do. But I would not take her with me; to that I made up my mind. I would stop at the turn of the road, just out of sight of the farmhouse, and cut across the fields. If she wanted to accompany me on a cross-country hike in high-heeled slippers, she was welcome to do so.
Besides, she would tell the others that my wanderings were nothing more mysterious than nocturnal explorations of the near-by woods; which bit of misinformation would satisfy the busybodies at Briarcliff and relieve me of the espionage to which I was subjected, as well.
I smiled grimly to myself as I pictured her climbing over fences and ditches in her flimsy party frock and beaded pumps, and lengthened my stride toward the woods at the road’s turn.
We marched to the limits of the field bordering the Squires’ grove in silence, I thinking of the mild revenge I should soon wreak upon the pretty little busybody at my side, Miss Leahy too intent on holding the pace I set to waste breath in conversation.
As we neared the woods she halted, an expression of worry, almost fear, coming over her face.
‘I don’t believe I’ll go any farther,’ she announced.
‘No?’ I replied a trifle sarcastically. ‘And is your curiosity so easily satisfied?’
‘It’s not that’—she turned half round, as if to retrace her steps—‘but I’m afraid of those woods.’
‘Indeed?’ I queried. ‘And what is there to be afraid of? Bears, Indians, or wildcats? I’ve been through them several times without seeing anything terrifying.’ Now she had come this far, I was anxious to take her through the fields and underbrush.
‘No-o,’ Miss Leahy answered, a nervous quaver in her voice, ‘I’m not afraid of anything like that; but—oh, I don’t know what you call it. Pierre told me all about it the other day. Some kind of dreadful thing—loop—loop—something or other. It’s a French word, and I can’t remember it.’
I was puzzled. Pierre Geronte was the ancient French-Canadian gardener at the sanitarium, and, like all doddering old men, would talk for hours to anyone who would listen. Also, like all habitants, he was full of the wild folklore his ancestors brought overseas with them generations ago.
‘What did Pierre tell you?’ I asked.
‘Why, he said that years ago some terrible people lived in these woods. They had the only house for miles around, and travelers stopped there for the night, sometimes. But no stranger was ever seen to leave that place, once he went in. One night the farmers gathered about the house and burned it, with the family that lived there. When the embers had cooled down they made a search, and found nearly a dozen bodies buried in the cellar. That was why no one ever came away from that dreadful place.
‘They took the murdered men to the cemetery and buried them, but they dumped the charred bodies of the murderers into graves in the barnyard, without even saying a prayer over them. And Pierre says—oh, look! Look!’
She broke off her recital of the old fellow’s story and pointed a trembling hand across the field to the edge of the woods. A second more and she shrank against me, clutching at my coat with fear-stiffened fingers and crying with excitement and terror.
I looked in the direction she indicated, myself a little startled by the abject fear that had taken such sudden hold on her.
Something white and ungainly was running diagonally across the field from us, skirting the margin of the woods and making for the meadow that adjoined the sanitarium pasture. A second glance told me it was a sheep, probably one of the flock kept to supply our table with fresh meat.
I was laughing at the strength of the superstition that could make the girl see a figure of horror in an innocent mutton that had strayed away from its fellows and was scared out of its silly wits, when something else attracted my attention.
Loping along in the trail of the fleeing sheep, somewhat to the rear and a little to each side, were two other animals. At first glance they appeared to be a pair of large collies; but as I looked more intently, I saw that these animals were like nothing I had ever seen before. They were much larger than any collie—nearly as high as St Bernards—yet shaped in a general way like Alaskan sledge-dogs—huskies.
The farther one was considerably the larger of the two, and ran with a slight limp, as if one of its hind paws had been injured. As nearly as I could tell in the indifferent light, they were a rusty brown color, very thick-haired and unkempt in appearance. But the strangest thing about them was the fact that both were
tailless, which gave them a terrifyingly grotesque look.
As they ran, a third form, similar to the other two in shape, but smaller, slender as a greyhound, with much lighter-hued fur, broke from the thicket of short bush edging the wood and took up the chase, emitting a series of short, sharp yelps.
‘Sheep-killers,’ I murmured, half to myself. ‘Odd, I’ve never seen dogs like that before.’
‘They’re not dogs,’ wailed Miss Leahy against my coat. ‘They’re not dogs. Oh, Mr Weatherby, let’s go away. Please, please take me home!’
She was rapidly becoming hysterical, and I had a difficult time with her on the trip back. She clung whimpering to me, and I had almost to carry her most of the way. By the time we reached the sanitarium, she was crying bitterly, shivering as if with a chill, and went in without stopping to thank me for my assistance.
I turned and made for the Squires farm with all possible speed, hoping to get there before the family had gone to bed. But when I arrived the house was in darkness, and my knock at the door received no answer.
As I retraced my steps to the sanitarium I heard faintly, from the fields beyond the woods, the shrill, eerie cry of the sheep-killing dogs.
A torrent of rain held us marooned the next day. Miss Leahy was confined to her room, with a nurse in constant attendance and the house doctor making hourly calls. She was on the verge of a nervous collapse, he told me, crying with a persistence that bordered on hysteria, and responded to treatment very slowly.
An impromptu dance was organized in the great hall and half a dozen bridge tables set up in the library; but as I was skilled in neither of these rainy day diversions, I put on a waterproof and patrolled the veranda for exercise.
On my third or fourth trip around the house I ran into old Geronte shuffling across the porch, wagging his head and muttering portentously to himself.
‘See here, Pierre,’ I accosted him, ‘what sort of nonsense have you been telling Miss Leahy about those pine woods down the south road?’
Night Creatures Page 36