Pigeons from Hell | Page 2

fell across the
balustraded stair, some seven steps up from the landing. And there was
something on the stair, a bent, misshapen, shadowy thing that never
moved fully into the beam of light. But a dim yellow blur that might
have been a face was turned toward him, as if something crouched on
the stair, regarding him and his companion. Fright crept chilly through
his veins, and it was then that he awoke - if indeed he had been asleep.
He blinked his eyes. The beam of moonlight fell across the stair just as
he had dreamed it did; but no figure lurked there. Yet his flesh still
crawled from the fear the dream or vision had roused in him; his legs
felt as if they had been plunged in ice-water. He made an involuntary
movement to awaken his companion, when a sudden sound paralyzed
him.
It was the sound of whistling on the floor above. Eery and sweet it rose,
not carrying any tune, but piping shrill and melodious. Such a sound in
a supposedly deserted house was alarming enough; but it was more
than the fear of a physical invader that held Griswell frozen. He could
not himself have defined the horror that gripped him. But Branner's

blankets rustled, and Griswell saw he was sitting upright. His figure
bulked dimly in the soft darkness, the head turned toward the stair as if
the man were listening intently. More sweetly and more subtly evil rose
that weird whistling.
"John!" whispered Griswell from dry lips. He had meant to shout - to
tell Branner that there was somebody upstairs, somebody who could
mean them no good; that they must leave the house at once. But his
voice died dryly in his throat.
Branner had risen. His boots clumped on the floor as he moved toward
the door. He stalked leisurely into the hall and made for the lower
landing, merging with the shadows that clustered black about the stair.
Griswell lay incapable of movement, his mind a whirl of bewilderment.
Who was that whistling upstairs? Why was Branner going up those
stairs? Griswell saw him pass the spot where the moonlight rested, saw
his head tilted back as if he were looking at something Griswell could
not see, above and beyond the stair. But his face was like that of a
sleepwalker. He moved across the bar of moonlight and vanished from
Griswell's view, even as the latter tried to shout to him to come back. A
ghastly whisper was the only result of his effort.
The whistling sank to a lower note, died out. Griswell heard the stairs
creaking under Branner's measured tread. Now he had reached the
hallway above, for Griswell heard the clump of his feet moving along it.
Suddenly the footfalls halted, and the whole night seemed to hold its
breath. Then an awful scream split the stillness, and Griswell started up,
echoing the cry.
The strange paralysis that had held him was broken. He took a step
toward the door, then checked himself. The footfalls were resumed.
Branner was coming back. He was not running. The tread was even
more deliberate and measured than before. Now the stairs began to
creak again. A groping hand, moving along the balustrade, came into
the bar of moonlight; then another, and a ghastly thrill went through
Griswell as he saw that the other hand gripped a hatchet - a hatchet
which dripped blackly. Was that Branner who was coming down that

stair?
Yes! The figure had moved into the bar of moonlight now, and
Griswell recognized it. Then he saw Branner's face, and a shriek burst
from Griswell's lips. Branner's face was bloodless, corpse-like; gouts of
blood dripped darkly down it; his eyes were glassy and set, and blood
oozed from the great gash which cleft the crown of his head!
Griswell never remembered exactly how he got out of that accursed
house. Afterward he retained a mad, confused impression of smashing
his way through a dusty cobwebbed window, of stumbling blindly
across the weed-choked lawn, gibbering his frantic horror. He saw the
black wall of the pines, and the moon floating in a blood-red mist in
which there was neither sanity nor reason.
Some shred of sanity returned to him as he saw the automobile beside
the road. In a world gone suddenly mad, that was an object reflecting
prosaic reality; but even as he reached for the door, a dry chilling whir
sounded in his ears, and he recoiled from the swaying undulating shape
that arched up from its scaly coils on the driver's seat and hissed
sibilantly at him, darting a forked tongue in the moonlight.
With a sob of horror he turned and fled down the road, as a man runs in
a nightmare. He ran