Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/105

descent. A thin, piping sighing filled the air around me, and though so thin and quavery, yet its volume seemed to saturate the vicinity like the whine of a horde of tiny mosquitoes. I can not recall that thereafter it ceased for a moment.

"Daimler when he started to run had not more than fifty yards to cross to gain whatever shelter the narrow trail could offer; yet before we met it happened. As I ran, my eyes never left the appalling thing, and I saw it quite clearly lessen in its area. There was no warning or any preliminary adjusting; it simply shrank, or rather contracted, as a length of slightly stretched elastic on release diminishes; and like it, this thing also thickened. Or perhaps in view of its concavity I might better liken the action to the half shutting of a huge umbrella.

"Then its huge mass had fallen and it lay exactly where Daimler had been running. For an instant I halted and stood staring blankly at the monstrous thing, just as one stares at an apparition—palsied with fear, mute and motionless. Then the enormity of the catastrophe that had overtaken Daimler flooded upon me and I hurled myself forward, frantically calling him by name.

"It seemed like circling a hill, for its summit rose many feet above me, and its height, I should judge, would be less than a third of the diameter. And all the time that queer piping sound was ceaselessly welling from it, only now in volume immensely greater and the note much shriller and more like the escaping of innumerable little jets of high-pressure steam.

"Behind that huge palpitating bulk lay Daimler on his back; head, arms and shoulders alone were visible; below this his form was missing, being covered by his assailant.

"He says that something impelled him at that critical second to hurl himself backward; likely it was an impulse, an emergence from the subconscious, the mysterious self that gains its knowledge from unknown channels. At any rate he hurtled backward, and instead of engulfing him the vast hood caught him a slanting blow and still further expedited his effort. Had it not been for this action, beyond any doubt he would have been instantly and most horribly smothered.

"'I can't get clear—and it's moving up!' he gasped hoarsely as I rushed to him and slipping my hands beneath his armpits sought to snatch him from the loathsome thing. But with all my might, and with Daimler thrusting desperately at the sands, I could not by an inch release him, and beyond the slight natural flexion permitted to the human shoulders I failed to raise him appreciably.

"I stared at the monstrous thing as the cold sweat of terror poured profusely from me; but Daimler, though white and haggard, was, I think, much the cooler and more collected.

"'I can't gain an inch! What shall I do?' I exclaimed hoarsely as I, too, saw that the revolting, glutinous-looking edge was extending farther over him. It seemed to flow with a rippling motion outward—the smooth creeping of a tide of festering slime more solid than liquid.

"Now the light was very dim but, the sky being cloudless, I could distinguish in a blurred, unreal fashion that the substance of the thing was still in a state of ceaseless pulsing fluxion; swelling into ridges and bosses, sinking in grooves and craters everywhere over a surface as coarsely wrinkled as the withered skin on the hands of age.

"'For God's sake, Messinger, do something! It will be all over with me in a minute!' said Daimler tensely but quietly—I can not too highly rate his courage.

"In a frenzy of despair, my eyes swept the vicinity for anything—a piece of driftwood, a boulder even—