The Terror by Night By Charles Willard Diffin

by Monte Herridge

  told of that vileness which had lately been

  alive, I tell you. I don’t mean the body. That

  there.

  was dead, dead! I mean the thing that was in

  that body.

  IT was a pale and shaken man who left his car

  “Where did it come from? Where is it

  that following day to walk up to a house

  now? Are there,” he demanded, “things like

  whose door bore a card announcing that that in the world of the dead? Is that what we within could be found one Madame Zembla.

  have to meet when we go on from here?” For

  Whitmore’s sleepless eyes in his fear-paled

  the first time in his life, J. P. Whitmore had

  face seemed almost as dark and sunken as

  turned his inner vision away from the things

  those other terrible eyes had been.

  of this world toward a future that seemed

  All this, it seemed, was noted by the

  highly problematical, and the visions he saw

  searching eyes in the medium’s fat, with that inner gaze were disturbing.

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  Something of this may have shown in

  “No; there’ll be no more of that,” was

  his face, so pale and drawn; his hoarse tones

  Whitmore’s brusque response.

  may have hinted at the questions he had been

  Jack Whitmore who had known pretty

  asking himself. At least, there was something

  women beyond number had found, as others

  which made the medium lean forward and

  have done, that true beauty is confined to the

  place one pudgy hand on his knee. “In your

  few. Betty Whitmore’s position in that

  language,” she said, “you have ze— what you

  restricted group could not be questioned. With

  say?—quotation: ‘a little knowledge is a so-

  beauty of form and feature, and that added

  dangerous thing,’ and even ze little knowledge

  beauty which comes from something within,

  you have, it is all bad.

  the wife of J. P. Whitmore had all of

  “No,” she stated, and her voice rang

  loveliness that might be desired.

  clearly with conviction, “there is heaven and

  And Whitemore could not face that

  there is hell—though not such a hell as you

  appealing figure standing at the foot of the

  might think. We will know more about both of

  broad staircase; he could not meet the troubled

  them some day, I think, you and I.” She look in her eyes gone suddenly deep and dark.

  touched herself swiftly in the sign of the cross, He could only repeat his reassuring words and

  then went on:

  hope they might bring greater conviction to

  “But zis thing, it comes from neither

  his listener than they did to himself.

  place; it has, perhaps, escaped. There are those

  “No, no; nothing of that sort, Betty!

  over there who will help us to send it back

  Just business, my dear. Now run along.” He

  where it belong....

  turned without the customary good-night kiss

  “No, not to-night,” she told Whitmore.

  and entered the living room.

  “My help, it is needed by others than you. But

  to-morrow night I come.”

  HE was to remember that last caress he had

  With one sharp look she checked failed to give—remember it while he stared Whitmore’s hand that had half withdrawn a

  with hot, dry eyes unseeingly into a future

  bill-fold. “This,” she told him, “is not a matter where there was only darkness and in which

  of ze money. It is a matter of somesing even

  there was nowhere an answer to the questions

  more important— vraiment! —a great deal that hammered and beat within his brain ... but more important!”

  now Whitmore was thinking only of light.

  He switched on every lamp in the

  THERE was a door—how well he knew it

  room, then dropped into his big chair and

  now—a door to some hideous half-world that

  resolutely forced his eyes away from that far

  held things neither of heaven nor hell, nor yet

  corner toward which they turned fearfully.

  of the world of men. And he had left that door

  There were business papers upon

  open!

  which he tried vainly to focus his attention; he J. P. Whitmore at his beautiful home

  threw them aside for a book. That too failed.

  some hours later faced the oncoming night

  He found a pencil in his hand: reached

  with trepidation ill concealed.

  for a pad of paper and made meaningless

  “No, no,” he said with unwonted marks—meaningless to him, although their irritation, “don’t wait for me, Betty dear. You

  significance to a psychiatrist might have been

  go along. I—I’ve—some matters to attend to,

  startling. From geometrical figures the pencil

  some very important matters.

  point passed on to more rhythmic, swinging

  “Jack,” she began hesitantly, “you’re

  lines. It was some time later that Whitmore

  not going to—”

  realized, with a start, that his hand was

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  11

  moving unguided by himself.

  where he lay he turned that he might look

  The paper where he had been writing

  through that open doorway where a band of

  was black with a crisscross of confused marks

  moonlight lay caressingly across Betty’s bed.

  over its upper half, while, below, it bore

  regular lines. Here was the writing of a HOW long he slept Whitmore never knew. He cramped hand where one word was repeated

  knew only that he had gone to sleep with a

  over and over throughout all the lines.

  mind at rest; and farthest from his thoughts

  J. P. Whitmore’s big sprawling was any suspicion that the repeated warning of chirography was as individual as the man; had

  “Don’t go— don’t go” might have ended with

  he consciously tried, he could not possibly

  the words, “to sleep!” But he knew it when he

  have imitated the crowded, vertical letters of

  awoke—knew it with a certainty that sent that

  this writing at which he stared. But neither, for gripping hand of fear once more about his

  that matter, would he have written the one

  heart.

  word, “don’t,” again and again.

  What was it? Where was it?

  Only in the last line did an additional

  Something threatened, some danger more

  word appear. And here this repeated command

  terrible than any that had come to him before.

  became, “Don’t go—don’t go.”

  Almost it was as if a voice had been shouting

  to him, as if it were this voice that had

  WITH an abruptness which indicated the wakened him, and with that he knew that the nervous tension that possessed the man, warning concerned his wife.

  Whitmore suddenly revolted against his own

  Betty! She was alone in her room! He

  inexplicable conduct.

  cursed the muscles that were slow in sending

  “To hell with it!” he exploded, hell

  him out of bed and toward that

  with it all! I�
�m sick of it; sick—sick—sick!

  communicating door.

  Sitting up here like a scared schoolboy, afraid

  And at last Whitmore learned the full

  of the dark, afraid to go to bed.”

  meaning of fear. Like one who has been

  He crossed swiftly and snapped off a

  dashed through treacherous ice into the black

  master switch, and without another look waters waiting beneath, that inner self which toward the threatening darkness behind him,

  was the real Jack Whitmore found itself

  he passed out of the room and up the broad

  plunged down and yet down into depths of

  stairs where Betty Whitmore had stood.

  nerve-gripping terror whose frigid chill

  He saw her through the door that checked his heart in the very middle of a beat.

  connected their two rooms. She was asleep,

  And this fear was all for his wife.

  breathing softly and regularly, and from some

  That band of moonlight had moved. It

  window of her room a broad band of lay now across the pillow where Betty’s face moonlight threw itself irregularly across her

  would have been.

  bed. It showed the regular rise and fall of her

  Would have been! For Whitmore, his

  breast, showed, too, the faintest ghost of a

  rush checked for one frozen instant as he

  smile that tugged at the corners of her lips as, reached the doorway, stared with straining

  even in sleep, some memory moved her to that

  eyes; yet where his wife had been he could see

  ever-ready mirth.

  only an irregular blur.

  And Whitmore’s eyes shone with

  Horrified, stricken with a paralysis that

  tenderness and admiration as he tiptoed left him clinging to the doorway for support, quietly away and reached for the switch that

  he saw that blur take form and become a

  plunged his own room into darkness. But from

  furred animal whose hair, like that of a

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  monkey, was long and stringy.

  folds under which was the lovely figure of

  Betty Whitmore. Her head that had fallen to

  ONE strangled cry escaped from his throat,

  one side upon the pillow was swung face

  and at the sound the crouching thing leaped to

  upward as the creature landed. And now

  the floor with a motion too quick for the eye

  Whitmore could see in that band of moonlight

  to follow. Creatures of the wild can do it; they that which transcended all else there had been

  can move so quickly that it is as if they were

  of horror.

  in two positions at the same instant. And this

  Her eyes were closed in a face that was

  nameless thing that had been huddled over the

  waxen pale; her lips, soft as the innermost

  face and figure of lovely Betty Whitmore was

  petals of a rose, had gone dry and colorless;

  abruptly there no longer, but stood beside the

  and suddenly those lips were covered by a

  bed looking squarely at the man..., And Jack

  beastly mouth in a face where decay had

  Whitmore, who now knew fear learned also to

  already left its mark.

  recognize hate.

  The scream that burst from

  That same red fire was in the Whitmore’s tight throat was that of a raging creature’s eyes; it might have been a reflected

  animal. He launched himself in one spring that

  glow from some smoldering pit of hell. Here

  threw him heavily against the bed while his

  was hatred, yet not a human hatred; nor was it

  two outstretched, straining hands tore

  the ferocity of a wild beast. Here was frenziedly at something of flesh and fur into something that defied all words or thought to

  which his fingers sank.

  compass it, and it shone from narrowed eyes

  Then he found himself standing once

  in the head of a great cat-beast like nothing

  more; he was breathing heavily, mumbling

  Whitmore had ever seen.

  over and over in a broken, hollow voice, while

  Still that dreadful paralysis held him in

  he stared with unbelieving eyes at the thing

  its grip. He knew, though his eyes were upon the soft floor-coverings of Betty’s room.

  fastened on the beast, that his wife was in her

  A dead thing!—yet a thing where the

  bed. He sensed too that that regular breathing

  workings of death had been thwarted. And

  had ceased. He heard her give one feeble,

  now that process of dissolution, which by

  gasping moan.

  some devilish magic has been checked, went

  In the moonlight a curtain fluttered.

  on with terrible speed, and before his eyes,

  The soft breath of the summer night touched

  Whitmore saw that which darkness should

  Whitmore’s face, and his own indrawn breath

  always conceal.

  died strangling in this throat, as again there

  Betty! It was his next conscious

  came to him the horrible stench of putrefying

  thought. Betty was safe. But Betty must not

  flesh.

  see this! He tore his eyes away, then turned

  There was no measure of time, nor

  swiftly with the sudden realization that Betty

  none to measure it. It one instant the needed help.

  throbbing, beastly carcass was standing erect,

  held there by that hideous something within it

  HE must get a doctor at once. His arms were

  that gave it the semblance of life. In the same

  outstretched to reach her, to raise her up—but

  instant, while yet that one feeble moan they were checked. For the figure that had whispered through the room, it was back been that of Betty Whitmore, the silent body where it had been.

  that had lain so quietly was galvanized to life; while yet he reached forward, it snapped

  IT landed, straddling awkwardly the silken

  abruptly to a sitting position. Then, in the

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  merest flash of time it threw itself out from

  whose soul it could displace!

  under the silken robes, the soft, rose-colored

  coverlets that had sheltered Betty Whitmore,

  STILL it was a small thing which broke the

  and sprang from the bed.

  spell in which Whitmore was held. A bit of

  And still the moonlight followed it.

  lace at the V-shaped throat of the dainty robe

  Still that broad band of silver touched softly

  that Betty had worn! It rose and fell softly in

  on those features that Jack Whitmore had the moonlight with the regular breathing of loved. And the eyes that stared back in fierce

  that horrible breath that had been blown into

  triumph were red with the fires of hate, red as

  her body ... and with that Jack Whitmore went

  some glowing reflection from the deepest pits

  quite mad.

  of hell, and the rose-petal lips drew back in an Betty was dead. He knew it without

  animal snarl.

  any emotion. She was dead; and this—this

  Only for a moment did Whitmore see

  thing!—

  this malevolent transformation. Then between

  The throat above that lace-edged robe

  him and the fa
ce of his wife that had become

  was white and soft. Jack Whitmore’s hands

  so unbelievably beastly there came other were still about it when the police broke in; pictures.

  his fingers were sunk into that soft flesh with a So plainly he saw them! They blocked

  grip they loosened only with difficulty....

  out even the face, distorted with fiendish

  “The poor young thing,” said an Irish

  exultation....

  officer compassionately as he stared at the

  There was the open door ... and body on the floor, at its soft half-opened lips, through that door there came a formless, slow-its drooping lids. “Like an angel she looks! ...

  rising cloud.... In its folds were faces, horrible And why did you do it?” he demanded of

  faces, of what had once been animals and

  Whitmore. “Only a fiend from hell—”

  men, and Whitmore, staring at that ever-

  He did not complete the sentence, nor

  moving spectral cloud, knew that within it was

  did Whitmore reply. There had begun for him

  a nameless horror, something beyond the the long silence which was to last throughout comprehension of men. It had found the open

  the trial; which, except for that outburst in

  door and was using these putrescent bodies as

  court, was to continue until his death.

  a vehicle. It was imparting to them its own

  “They’ve had all the facts,” he cried.

  quivering, vibrating life and it was seeking

  “Give them the truth—the whole damnable

  another, more desirable way to manifest itself.

  truth. They won’t believe it, but—”

  It was searching for a living human being