Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

fancied his pounding elicited a kind of low, hissing response. Finally he mo- tioned me to replace him at the peephole, and J did so with a causeless and increasing tremor, The barred, ground-glass window, close to the earth out- side, adinitted only a feeble and uncertain pallor; and I had to look into the malodorous den for several seconds before I could see what was crawling and wriggling about on the straw-covered floor, emitting every now and then a weak and vacuous hiss. Then the shadowed outlines began to take shape, and I perceived that the squirming entity bore some remote resemblance to a hu- man form laid flat on its belly. 1 clutched at the door-handle for support as I tried to keep from fainting. The moving object was almost of human size, and entirely devoid of cloth- ing. It was absolutely hairless, and its tawny-looking back seemed subtly squamous in the dim, ghoulish light. Around the shoulders it was rather speckled and brownish, and the head was very curiously flat. As it looked up to hiss at me I saw that the beady little black eyes were damnably anthropoid, but I could not bear to study them long. They fastened themselves on me with a horrible persistence, so that I closed the panel gaspingly and left the creature to wriggle about an- seen tn its matted straw and spectral twilight. | must have reeled a bit, for } saw that the doctor was gently holding my arm as he guided me away. I was stuttering over and over again: “B-but for God's sake, what rs 11?” Doctor McNeill told me the story in his private office as I sprawled opposite him in an easy-chair. The gold and crimson of late afternoon changed to the violet of early dusk, but still T sat awed and motionless. I resented every ring of the telephone and every whtr of the buzzer, and | could have cursed the nurses and internes whose knocks now and then sumnoned the doctor briefly to the outer office. Night came, and I was glad my host switched on all the lights. Scientist though T was, my zeal for research was half forgotten amid such breathless ecstasies of fright as a small boy might feel when whispered witch-tales go the rounds of the chimney-corner. It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoat! or Kukulcan—was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually quute well disposed toward those who gave proper respect to hun and his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally ravenous and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That was why the tom-toms in the Pawnce, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded ceaselessly week in and week out in August, Septem- ber, and October; and why the medicinemen made strange noises with rat- tles and whistles curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas. Yig's chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children—a devotion so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves {rom the venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who outed him or wreaked harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake, In the old days of the Indian Territory, the doctor went on, there was not 68 comlclsooks.conm