Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/66

ering jelly-like masses that were flowing and flexing and writhing a few feet before him. Then suddenly a great, thick loop of the glistening jelly—a great arm—projected itself out from the gliding masses and darted straight toward him!

It was that that finally broke the spell of Worley's stupefaction, for as the great arm looped toward him he staggered back, giving unconscious utterance to a high scream. At that same moment of utter horror, he says, by some strange trick of the mind there had flashed across his brain remembrance of the feebly moving clear slime that had been found on beach and sea-wall in the last days, but that fleeting thought dissolved for the moment in the stark horror that now filled him. Another great looping arm had shot out beside the first, lengthening smoothly and swiftly toward him, while the gliding, jelly-like masses from which both projected were flowing toward him, across grass and paving—great glistening, amorphous bulks a full yard in height, now, gathering greater bulk each moment by the masses that still were flowing up from the waters over the park's wall to add to them. Worley, though, had seen this in but a single dazed glimpse, for as the second arm had shot toward him he had stumbled backward again, crying out, and then was running weakly toward the park's north end.

From beneath the overhung elevated tracks, as he ran toward them, there leapt to meet him two blue-coated figures, one with a pistol gleaming in his hand, and at sight of the policeman whom his cries had summoned Worley became incoherent in his horror.

"Coming out of the water over the park!" he could only tell them hoarsely, gesturing toward the southern end. "Gray jelly-stuff—protoplasm like it said in the newspapers—masses of it coming out———"

The two surveyed him doubtfully a moment, then, peering into the darkness at the park's lower end, began to walk slowly in that direction, their weapons outstretched. His heart pounding rapidly Worley watched them vanishing into the darkness. There was a moment of silence, a silence in which the rattle of a train far to the north came preternaturally loudly to his ears. Then he heard a sudden sharp exclamation from the darkness southward, and the next moment the darkness was split by a spurt of flame and the deafening rattle of shots. Then, against the gleaming waters beyond, he glimpsed great arms flashing upward like dark, mighty tentacles, and as they flashed down again the shots ceased, there were sharp screams, suddenly cut off, and then silence again. Worley, trembling, gazed still down into the little park, and after a moment saw movement there, a slow movement approaching him. Finally it came within the radiance of the nearer lights, and he saw that it was the great, glistening, gray masses, flowing smoothly across the park toward him, flowing up as smoothly still from the waters around it, and that in the clear, jelly-like bulk gliding toward him were held, like flies in amber, the dark, twisted bodies of two men!

With that sight a daze of horror settled upon Worley's brain. He was dimly aware that he was racing unsteadily northward from the park, through the darkened, silent streets, that from somewhere else behind him were coming other screams, the high screams of a woman, this time, and that from away across the waters to the east had come suddenly other faint, agonized cries. He heard as though from a great distance a sudden babel of shouts and screams that swept along the great city's edges like spreading flame, heard bells jangling suddenly out to add to that uproar. By then he had staggered eastward into the district of his own lodgings,