Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

legend, is a matter of wonder to me. It is marked on no map that I have ever seen, And I was practically on top of the place before I found anybody who’d ever heard of it. 1 had dismissed the existence of Kobold’s Keep as being, in fact, a legend, until one morning, while driving north along a narrow dirt road that wound among the mountains, I came to the village of Merlin. While the attendant ministered to my gas tank at the hamlet’s solitary fill- ing-station T sat back and took stock of my surroundings. The mountain peaks that serrated the skyline ahead seemed to be even loftier, craggier, more forbidding than the ones I had come over already. | wondered whether my brakes and bearings would hold out until I got to the next town. The sour- faced, close-mouthed hill-billy who was pumping gasoline into my tank didn’t impress me much as a possible repair man. And neither did the old fellow, whom I took to be his assistant, who was sitting at the base of the gas pump, knees drawn up under his chin, eyes shut tight, apparently fast asleep. The old man caught my interest. He was, to say the least, an unusual type. His long, lank, dirty gray hair fell to his shoulders in two braids, like an Indian’s. His face, weather-beaten and hairless, was broad and lean, the cheek- bones as prominent as a cat’s, his nose thin and hooked. I was about to ques- tion the station attendant whether the old fellow wasn’t a member of some Indian reservation hereabouts that I hadn't heard of, when I noticed his hair more closely. At first glance it had seemed to be a dirty gray, but I saw now that it was actually red—a faded, nondescript, pinkish red, but red, neverthe- less. I'd never heard of a red-headed Indian. The ancient, red-headed anomaly yawned. I observed a curious, crescent- shaped swelling in the center of his forehead. Its bottom border was fringed with litde hairs, like misplaced eyelashes. As if sensing my fixed stare, the old man’s head lifted. I looked for his eyes to open. They seemed oddly sunken. It was an unusually hot day. Yet, as I looked, I grew cold—cold and rigid, and a little sick; for the old man had opened his one, solitary, sky-blue eye. It was in the center of his forehead. My horror must have been written on my face, for the old man’s mouth slit in a frightful, toothless grin. I turned away hastily. . . . Of course, I'd heard of similar cases of persons born with cyclopean eye formations as recorded in medical history. But being faced with such an individual unexpectedly, even in broad daylight, is enough to give anyone a start. I jerked my eyes away and tried to get a grip on myself—all the while being aware of that great, bulging, sky-blue orb fixed on me in dreadful con- templation. “Have you ever,” I asked the surly-faced attendant (as I had asked at every town, village, and hamlet in the state through which I'd passed), “have you ever heard of a place hereabouts called Kobold’s Keep?” The attendant, who was screwing my radiator cap back on, looked up suddenly. He stared at me a moment; then, averting his gaze, finished what he was doing. 96 comiclsooks.com