coldly against my face. I reasoned that the tunnel must come out in
the outdoors. I stumbled over something.
It was Rankin, lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes staring in
glazed horror at the ceiling. The back of his head was bashed in.
Ahead of me I heard a pistol shot, a curse, and another scream. I
ran on and almost fell on my face as I stumbled over more stairs. I
climbed and saw stairs framed vaguely in an opening screened
with underbrush above me. I pushed it aside and came upon a
startling tableau: a tall figure silhouetted against the sky that could
only be Weinbaum, a revolver hanging in his hand, looking down
at the shadowed ground. Even the starlight was blotted out as the
hanging clouds that had parted briefly, closed together again.
He heard me and wheeled quickly, his eyes glazing like red
lanterns in the dark.
'Oh, it you Gerad.'
'Rankin's dead.' I told him.
'I know.' he said, 'You could have prevented it if you had come a
little quicker'
'Now just hold on,' I said, becoming angry. 'I hurried '
I was cut off by a sound that has hounded me through nightmares
ever since, a hideous mewing sound, like that of some gigantic rat
in pain. I saw calculation, fear, and finally decision flicker across
Weinbaum's face in a matter of seconds. I fell back in terror.
'What is it?' I choked.
He casually shone the light down into the pit, for all his affected
casualness, I noticed that his eyes were averted by something.
The thing mewed again and I felt another spasm of fear. I craned to
see what horror lay in that pit, the horror that made even
Weinbaum scream in abject terror. And just before I saw, a
horrible wall of terror rose and fell from the vague outline of the
house.
Weinbaum jerked his flashlight from the pit and shone it in my
face.
'Who was that? Whom did you bring up here?'
But I had my own flashlight trained as I ran through the passage
way, Weinbaum close behind. I had recognized the scream. I had
heard it before, when a frightened girl almost ran into my car as
she fled her maniac of a guardian.
Vicki!
CHAPTER SEVEN
I heard Weinbaum gasp as we entered the lab. The place was
swimming in the green, liquid. The other two cases were broken!. I
didn't pause, but ran past the shattered, empty cases and out the
door. Weinbaum did not follow me.
The car was empty, the door on the passengers side open. I shone
my light over the ground. Here and there were footprints of a girl
wearing high heels, a girl who had to be Vicki. The rest of the
tracks were blotted out by a monstrous something I hesitate to
call it a track. It was more as if something huge had dragged itself
into the woods. Its hugeness was testified, too, as I noticed the
