The Place Called Dagon

for failing to read character as it loomed before one’s nose. As Dreeme watched the gyrations of the farmers his glance traveled beyond them to the line of bushes opposite him, drawn, as it were, by some invisible power and there, hanging bodiless on the wet green leaves, he saw the white face of Martha Westcott peering into the circle. He was not surprised to see her, indeed, he had expected her to put in an appearance sooner or later. Just what her status was among these men, however, he could not say. He did not believe that either Westcott or Burroughs trusted her too far or permitted her to go any great distance beyond their scrutiny. Her appearance seemed to be a signal for Burroughs walked rapidly toward her and disappeared into the bushes with her. Dreeme’s attention now concentrated upon that spot in the bushes for he was sure that behind it was the woman he loved, the woman for whom he would fight until the last drop of blood in his body had been spilled. The farmers, too, were watching this spot in the bushes through which Burroughs had disappeared. But they were watching with a mad laughing expectancy, their tanned hands stretched out, their faces twisted and their eyes glittering.

The bushes parted and Martha Westcott walked through them very slowly. Her eyes were shut and she seemed to be in a trance. Holding her arms straight before her she held in her hands a long thin-bladed knife. Gazing neither to right nor left she proceeded straight to the Devil Stone and stood by it holding the knife outstretched. Jeffrey Westcott took the shining blade from her and placed it upon the rock. An awful silence had fallen upon the hollow. The raindrops had ceased and even the wind, that had soughed so hoarsely through the leaves, had died away. The farmers stood like wax figures, their faces frozen into twisted smiles, their arms stiffly outheld. Dreeme felt the flesh crawling upon his body. He stared fixedly at Martha Westcott, noting how like some strange priestess she stood in her long black garment, her white insensitive face an oval of clear luster in the light of the lanterns, her heavy eyelids partially lowered over the great wide eyes, her archaic mouth a mystic hieroglyph. She was like a being from another world, a spectre from some pagan land. Though her smooth white shoulder was garmented in black he could sense the blue goat’s head burning upon it, shining through the close fabric, the goat’s head that made her one with these maniacs who gathered in the darkness of Nigger Swamp. Conflicting thoughts rushed through the young doctor’s head. This woman had desired him. This evil goddess had come to him in the middle of the night and she had shaken his will. If they were both in another world perhaps.⁠ ⁠… He swiftly put the thought from him. No! No! He must not weaken. He must not think of her in any way except as an ominous reality that would steal his soul from him.

The bushes parted again and Burroughs strode forward swiftly carrying in his arms a limp form. Dreeme recognized the preacher’s burden as soon as he appeared with it and sprang up from the ground. It was Deborah. She hung limply from the long black arm of Burroughs, like some fragile white bird that had been shot down but not killed. Even as Dreeme sprang to his feet Walden Slater’s resistless arm, the muscular arm of a giant, dragged him down again and held him in the shadow of the bush with a clutch like iron. “Wait!” the farmer whispered. “Wait!” Burroughs advanced rapidly to the Devil Stone and laid Deborah’s body upon it. The head of the girl fell sideways and Dreeme could see her thin face and the blue circles of her closed eyes. Her bosom was rising softly and regularly. She appeared to be in a calm sleep. Burroughs, his black eyes fixed on the recumbent figure of the girl, reached for the long knife and took it up. He climbed slowly to the top of the Devil Stone and stood towering above the assemblage. He opened his mouth to speak. He raised the knife. It glittered wanly in the light of the flickering lanterns.

“Asmo⁠ ⁠…” he began.

A thunderous report over Dreeme’s head pitched him forward. In the single instant when he sprang down the bank he saw the preacher’s eyes wide with amazement and the dark gush of blood out of his neck. Then the Reverend George Burroughs fell forward as a log falls, the knife clattering from his hand upon the Devil Stone, and landed with a heavy thud upon the dark soil. His skull crashed against an iron lantern with the sound of a bursting coconut. Dreeme, already in the circle, leaped over the body and rushed toward the rock. Behind him he heard Walden Slater kicking the lanterns over as he stumbled forward, the smoking revolver in his hand. The amazed farmers had scattered in all directions and as Dreeme gathered Deborah up in his arms he caught a moment’s glimpse of Westcott, the black book clutched to his breast, darting through the bushes. The farmer was heading straight into Nigger Swamp. All of this was observed automatically for the young doctor’s sole concern was for the girl who had lain so helplessly upon the Devil Stone. As he staggered along with her he gazed anxiously into her face and listened to her breathing. She stirred a trifle and moaned and a second later one thin arm slid over his shoulder blindly. He understood that she was slowly coming out of an hypnotic sleep. He wanted to shout, to laugh, to burst into tears. He clutched her all the tighter to him in his delirium of joy and hurried forward striving to find the narrow ribbon of road that would lead him back to the Westcott farm and the