Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

An invisible cap seemed to seal the hole in the ground hermetically against the murmurs of life outside—the whisper of summer breezes, the song of birds, the rustle of trees. But as we strode toward the cluster of stone hutches on the farther side of the bow! I began to distinguish the sound of the water- fall—echoing and re-echoing like water splashing inside a bass drum. It ac- centuated the silence by its very solitude. When I had viewed them from a distance I could have sworn I'd seen men moving about among the black stone hutches, but, as we approached, they appeared to be strangely deserted. The houses, thrown crudely together, were shockingly primitive and foul. They squatted in aimless clusters like a colony of filthy black bugs. The rock, I surmised, was their sole source of building material. As far as I could see, not a tree existed anywhere in this monstrous bowl. In fact, the only green things I saw growing were the infrequent gar- den patches that grew in hummocks of what was, quite evidently, imported soil, The cyclops halted before one of the larger hutches. “Funnel!” he screeched. “Open up, ye blabbermouth scound’el! It’s me, Glim!” There was no reply. Perhaps it was my nerves—but I could not escape the feeling that I was being watched; that eyes—many pairs of eyes—were peer- ing at me covertly; eyes glinting from between stone chinks—pecring trom around corners... . I could catch fleeting glimpses of bodies from out of the corner of my eye now and then, but whenever I turned quickly there was —nothing. ; Enraged, the cyclops was kicking the tall slate slab that served as a door. And presently, slowly, inch by inch, the slab began to move outward. The cyclops stepped back, his huge blue eye blazing with wrath. A creature stuck its head out and peered at us. I cannot adequately describe it. I can only say that Horror stared from that misshapen, rat-eared head. It was the head and face of a being scarcely three feet tall, capped with a matted bush of filthy black furze that straggled into the squinting, Mongoloid eyes. The creature had no nose. From where the nose was supposed to be the face shot out horizontally in a ghastly anosto- sis of the bone, both jaws opening forward and outward, the green-yellow fangs protruding beyond the lips like the mouth of a misshapen banshee. “Git outen the door!” the cyclops screeched, and advancing a pace, grabbed the creature by the hair and jerked it out. The tiny gargoyle had virtually no body at all. Its huge, chinless head sloped down to a scrawny infant’s torso, a pair of crooked match-stick legs, and two tiny clubbed feet. Its bent toes and tiny fingers were webbed. “That’s Funnel,” the cyclops said, nodding to the creature. Glancing at the monstrous mouth, I understood the name. He stood there in the muted light, eyeiny me, motionless. I stared a moment as the cyclops entered the foul-smelling hutch. Each slanting eye of the creature contained two beady pupils. Within the rocky hutch a perpetual twilight reigned. The light filtered through the cracks and crannies between the slabs of the rock. In the center 103 comiclsooks.com