Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

“What was the date, or the approximate date, Mr. Bonesteel, of Mr. Mor- ris’ death? Could you recall that, sir?” Mr. Bonesteel paused and considered. “It was just before Christmas,” said he. “I remember it not so much by Christmas as by the races, which always take place the day after Christmas. Morris had entered his sorrel mare Santurce, and, as he left no heirs, there was no one who ‘owned’ Santurce, and she had to be withdrawn from the races. It affected the betting very materially and a good many persons were annoyed about it, but there wasn't anything that could be done.” I thanked Mr. Bonestcel, and not without reason, tor his answer had fitted into something that had been growing in iny mind. Christmas was only eight days off. This drama of the turniture and Old Morris getting into bed, I had thought (and not unnaturally, it seems to me), might be a kind of re-enact- ment of the tragedy of his death. If I had the courage to watch, night after night, I might be relieved of the necessity of asking any questions. I might witness whatever had occurred, in some weird reproduction, engineered, God knows how! For three nights now, I had seen the phenomenon of Old Morris getting into bed repeated, and each time it was clearer. I had sketched him into my drawing, a short, squat figure, rather stooped and fat, but possessed of a strange gorillalike energy. His movements, as he walked toward the bed, seized the edge of the mosquito-netting and climbed in, were, somchow, full of power, which was the more apparent since these were ordinary motions. One could not help imagining that Old Morris would have been a tough customer to tackle, for all his alleged age! This evening, at the hour when this phenomenon was accustomed to enact itsclf, that is, about eleven o'clock, I watched again. ‘The scene was very much clearer, and I observed something I had not noticed before. Old Morris’ simulacrum paused just before seizing the edge of the netting, raised its eyes, and began, with its right hand, a motion precisely like one who is about to sign himself with the cross. The motion was abruptly arrested, however, only the first of the four touches on the body being made. I saw, too, something of the expression of the face that night, for the first tume. At the moinent of making the arrested sign, it was one of despairing horror. Immediately afterward, as this motion appeared to be abandoned for the abrupt clutching of the lower edge of the mosquito-net, it changed into a look of feroctous stubbornness, of almost savage sclt-confidence. I lost the facial expression as the appearance sank down upon the bed and pulled the ghostly bedclothes over itself. Three nights later, when all this had become as greatly intensified as had the clearing-up process that had affected the furniture, I observed another mouon, or what might be taken for the faint foreshadowing of another mo- tion. This was not on the part of Old Morris. It made itself apparent as lightly and elusively as the swift flight of a moth across the reflection of a lainp, over near the bedroom door (the doors in my house are more than ten feet high, in fourteen-foot-high-walls), a mere flicker of something,—some- thing cntering the room. I looked, and peered at that corner, straining my 120 comicbooks.com +