with unutterable loathing. She stepped quickly forward and stamped upon it, and her attack was so sudden that the thing was unable to flip away from her and escape back into the water. And Miss Phillips was an amazingly strong young woman. She ground the end of the tentacle into a bloody pulp with her heel. Then she turned and ran. She ran as she had not run since her “prep” school days. But as she raced across the soft beach she fancied she could hear a monstrous, lumbering something pursuing her. It is to her credit that she did not look back.
And this is the story of little Harry Doty. I offered him a beautiful new dime, but he told it to me gratis. I give it in his own words.
“Yes sir, I’ve always knowed about that pool. I used to fish for crabs and sea-cucumbers and big, purple anemones in it, sir. But up until last week I allus knowed what I’d bring up. Onct or twice I used to get somethin’ a bit out o’ the ordinary, such as a bleedin'-tooth shell or a headless worm with green suckers in its tail and lookin’ like the devil on a Sunday outin’ or a knowin’-lookin’ skate what ud glare and glare at me, sir. But never nothin’ like this thing, sir. I caught it on the top o’ its head and it had the most human-lookin’ eyes I ever saw. They were blue and soulless, sir. It spat at me, and I throws down my line and beats it. I beats it, sir. Then I hears it come lumbering after me over the beach. It made a funny gulpin’ noise as if it was a-lickin’ its chops.”
July 26. Elsie and I are leaving tomorrow. I’m on the verge of a lethal collapse. Elsie stutters whenever she tries to talk. I don’t blame her for stuttering but I can’t understand why she wants to talk at all after what we’ve seen… There are some things that can only be expressed by silence.
The local chemist got a report — this morning from the Board of Health. The stuff found on the beach consisted of hundreds of cells very much like the cells that compose the human body. And yet they weren’t human cells. The biologists were completely mystified by ' them, and a small culture is now on its way to Washington, and another is being sent to the American Museum of Natural History.
This morning the local authorities investigated the curious black pool in the rocks. Elsie and I and most of the other vacationists were on hand to watch operations. Thomas Wilshire, a member of the New Jersey constabulary, threw a plummet line into the pool and we all watched it eagerly as it paid out. “A hundred feet,” murmured Elsie as the police looked at one another in amazement. “It probably went into the sea,” someone exclaimed. “I don’t think the pool itself is that deep.” Thomas Wilshire shook his head. “There’s queer things in that pool,” he said. “I don’t like the looks of it.” The diver was a bristling, brave little man with some obscure nervous affliction that made him tremble violently. “You’ll have to go down at once,” said Wilshire. The diver shook his head and shuffled his feet.
“Get him into his suit, boys!” ordered Wilshire, and the poor wretch was lifted bodily upon strong shoulders and transformed into a loathsome, goggle- eyed monster.
In a moment he had advanced to the pool and vanished into its sinister black depths. Two men worked valiantly at the pumps, while Wilshire nodded sleepily and scratched his chin. “I wonder what he’ll find,” he mused. “Personally, I don’t think he’s got much chance of ever coming up. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for all the money in the United States mint.”
After several minutes the rubber tubing began to jerk violently. “The poor lad!” muttered Wilshire. “I knew he didn’t have a chance. Pull, boys, pull!” The tubing was rapidly pulled in. There was nothing attached to it, but the lower portion was covered with glittering golden slime. Wilshire picked up the severed end and examined it casually. “Neatly clipped,” he said. “The poor devil!”
The rest of us looked at one another in horror. Elsie grew so pale that I thought she was about to faint. Wilshire was speaking again: “We’ve made one momentous discovery,” he said. We crammed eagerly forward. Wilshire paused for the fraction of a second, and a faint smile of triumph curled his lips. “There’s something in that pool,” he finished. “Our friend’s life has not been given in vain.”
I had an absurd desire to punch his fat, triumphant face, and might have done so, but a scream from the others quelled the impulse.
“Look,” cried Elsie. She was pointing at the black surface of the pool. It was changing color. Slowly it was assuming a reddish hue; and then a hellish something shot up and bobbed for a moment on its surface. “A human arm!” groaned Elsie and hid her face in her hands. Wilshire whistled softly. Two more objects joined the first and then something round which made Elsie stare,and stare through the spaces between her fingers.
“Come away!” I commanded. “Come away at once.” I seized her by the arm and was in the act of forcefully leading her from the edge of that dreadful charnel, for charnel it had become, when I was arrested by a shout from Wilshire.
“Look at it! Look at it!” he yelled. “That’s the horrid thing. God, it isn’t human!”
We both turned back and stared. There are blasphemies of creation that can not be' described, and the thing which rose up to claim the escaping fragments of its dismantled prey was of that order. I remember vaguely, as in a nightmare of Tartarus, that it had long golden arms which shone and sparkled in the sunlight, and a monstrous curved beak below two piercing black eyes in which I saw nothing but unutterable malice.
The idea of standing there and watching it munch the fragmentary remains of the poor little diver was intolerable to me, and in spite of the loud protests of Wilshire, who wanted us, I suppose, to try and do something about it, I turned and ran, literally dragging Elsie with me. This was, as it turned out, the wisest thing that I could have done, because the thing later emerged from the pool and nearly got several of the vacationists. Wilshire fired at it twice with a pistol, but the thing flopped back into the water apparently unharmed and submerged triumphantly.
I usually shut up shop at 10 o’clock, but at closing time, that evening I was leaning over the counter reading a ghost story, and it was so extremely interesting that I couldn’t walk out on it. My nose was very close to the page and I didn’t notice anything that was going on about me when suddenly I happened to look up and there he was standing and watching me.
I’ve seen some pale people in my time (most people that come with prescriptions are pale) and I've seen some skinny people, but I never have seen anyone as thin and pale as the young man that stood before me.
“Good heavens!” I said, and shut the book.
The young man’s lips were twisted into a sickly smile. “Sorry to bother you,” he says. “But I’m in a bad way. I’m in desperate need of medical attention!”
“What can I do to. help you?” I says.
He looks at me very solemnly, as if he were making up his mind whether he could trust me. “This is really a case for a physician,” he says.
“It’s against the law for us to handle such cases,” I told him.
Suddenly he held out his hand. I gasped. The fingers were smashed into a bloody pulp, and blood was running down his wrist. “Do something to stop the bleeding,” he says. “I’ll see a physician later.”
Well, I got out some gauze and bound the hand up as best I could. “See a doctor at once,” I told him. “Blood-poisoning will set in if you’re not careful. Luckily, none of the-bones are fractured.”
He nodded, and for a moment his eyes flashed. “Damn that woman!” he muttered. “Damn her!”
“What’s that?” I asked, but he had got himself together again and merely smiled. “I’m all upset,” he said. “Didn’t know just what I was saying — you must pardon me. By the way, I’ve got a little gash on my scalp which you might look at.”
He removed his cap and I noticed that his hair was dripping wet. He parted it with his hand and revealed a nasty abrasion about an inch wide. I examined it carefully.
“Your friend wasn’t very careful when he cast that plug,” I says at length. “I never believe in fly-fishing when there’s two in the boat. A friend of mine lost an eye that way.”
“It was made by a fish-hook,” he confessed. “You’re something of a Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?”
I brushed aside his compliment with a careless gesture and turned for the bottle of carbolic acid which rested on the shelf behind me. It was then that I heard something between a growl and a gulp from the young man.
I wheeled abruptly, and.caught him in the act of springing upon me. He was foaming at the mouth and his eyes bulged. I reached forward and seized him by the shoulders and in a moment we were engaged in a desperate struggle upon the floor. He bit and scratched and kicked at me; and I was obliged to silence him by pummeling his face. It was at that moment that I noticed a peculiar fishy odor in the room, as if a breeze from the sea hSTd entered through the open door.
For several moments I struggled and fought and strained and then something seemed to give suddenly
