Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 3 (1924-11).djvu/54

several times felt tiny nostrils nuzzling my hand. And once something cold and loathsome had dashed across my face.

I lay down on the floor. It was a madness, for the chill was already in my bones. Already the gangrene had infected my armpits. I knew it too well, the dreadful, sickening pain. I knew also that my ears had turned black, that I should lose my ears. But a hunger fever was about me; I thought only of that. I was alone with my hunger.

I did not move; I did not breathe. Only above me I watched the light, the tiny white light that wavered and mocked. Fool! fool! fool! And there was the darkness and the stifling odors; horrible warm currents of air brushed across my face, and then something wet and slimy. My hand shot out and grasped it. It was soft and plump to the touch—a gigantic rat, a rare prize! What a fool a man is to barter an unfaithful wife! Yes, it was soft and I pressed it fiercely. I squeezed it as I would a pomegranate. I could feel it scratching, and struggling. The vermin! I held it very close, sought to squeeze the air out of its detestable body. Then it bit me. The wet blood trickled over my palm. I let the rat go and sat up.

Was it only in imagination that I carried my hand to my lips and sucked greedily upon it? I had no clear evidence that I had so acted. Only, why had I gladly released the rat; what thrill had seized upon me at the thought of the warm blood trickling over my hand? Fool! fool! fool! Above me the ceaseless iteration; it had become a part of my every thought.

During the day I devoured my headdress. It was not pleasant, of course, but I got it down somehow. It had a sweet starchy taste. It weaned me from my pomegranates—for a time. But there were other insatiate longings. I dreamed of camels. I saw long processions of camels; I stood in a desert place, a land of dead seasons that wander, and watched them come solemnly up over the rim of the desert and disappear in the burning sands. I stood with a huge knife in my hand, and as each camel passed by I made a desperate lunge at his side with the knife. Great cuts would appear in the sides of the frightened animals, and I would put my lips to the lacerations and drink up gallon after gallon of fresh warm blood.

During the next night my longing reached its culmination. I might have known! From the very first his design had been that I should do what I was about to do. Have you the heart to blame me? My legs and arms were freezing. I could scarcely wriggle my fingers. Under my arms the pain was excruciating. My entire being cried out that I should do a vile thing to satisfy my craving for relief—for food, for pomegranates!

I approached the body. I drew back the cloth which covered it. I shrieked inwardly, but I was determined. There was no alternative. The damp and agony of the sarcophagus were in my blood; my soul was green and sick with noisome mildew. My soul was like the walls of the sepulcher—niter-encrusted and necrophilic.

But even as I bent there came a burst of merriment from above. The vault echoed with triumphant laughter, and the pin-point of light grew. Shafts of soft sunlight filtered through the darkness. In the center of the vault hung a rope! A rope!

"You did not mind? In my heart of hearts, I pitied you. But it was necessary to affirm, to act. Your offence was great, but under the stars, I pitied you! Is it not written: 'Thou shalt deal alone in women of sound heart?' But let en-