Pigeons from Hell | Page 3

without purpose or reason. His numbed brain was
incapable of conscious thought. He merely obeyed the blind primitive
urge to run - run - run until he fell exhausted.
The black walls of the pines flowed endlessly past him; so he was
seized with the illusion that he was getting nowhere. But presently a
sound penetrated the fog of his terror - the steady, inexorable patter of
feet behind him. Turning his head, he saw something loping after him -
wolf or dog, he could not tell which, but its eyes glowed like balls of
green fire. With a gasp he increased his speed, reeled around a bend in
the road, and heard a horse snort; saw it rear and heard its rider curse;
saw the gleam of blue steel in the man's lifted hand.
He staggered and fell, catching at the rider's stirrup.

"For God's sake, help me!" he panted. "The thing! It killed Branner -
it's coming after me! Look!"
Twin balls of fire gleamed in the fringe of bushes at the turn of the road.
The rider swore again, and on the heels of his profanity came the
smashing report of his six-shooter - again and yet again. The fire-sparks
vanished, and the rider, jerking his stirrup free from Griswell's grasp,
spurred his horse at the bend. Griswell staggered up, shaking in every
limb. The rider was out of sight only a moment; then he came galloping
back.
"Took to the brush. Timber wolf, I reckon, though I never heard of one
chasin' a man before. Do you know what it was?"
Griswell could only shake his head weakly.
The rider, etched in the moonlight, looked down at him, smoking pistol
still lifted in his right hand. He was a compactly-built man of medium
height, and his broad-brimmed planter's hat and his boots marked him
as a native of the country as definitely as Griswell's garb stamped him
as a stranger.
"What's all this about, anyway?"
"I don't know," Griswell answered helplessly. "My name's Griswell.
John Branner - my friend who was traveling with me - we stopped at a
deserted house back down the road to spend the night. Something---" at
the memory he was choked by a rush of horror. "My God!" he
screamed. "I must be mad! Something came and looked over the
balustrade of the stair - something with a yellow face! I thought I
dreamed it, but it must have been real. Then somebody began whistling
upstairs, and Branner rose and went up the stairs walking like a man in
his sleep, or hypnotized. I heard him scream - or someone screamed;
then he came down the stair again with a bloody hatchet in his hand -
and my God, sir, he was dead! His head had been split open. I saw
brains and clotted blood oozing down his face, and his face was that of
a dead man. But he came down the stairs! As God is my witness, John
Branner was murdered in that dark upper hallway, and then his dead

body came stalking down the stairs with a hatchet in its hand - to kill
me!"
The rider made no reply; he sat his horse like a statue, outlined against
the stars, and Griswell could not read his expression, his face shadowed
by his hat-brim.
"You think I'm mad," he said hopelessly. "Perhaps I am."
"I don't know what to think," answered the rider. "If it was any house
but the old Blassenville Manor - well, we'll see. My name's Buckner.
I'm sheriff of this county. Took a prisoner over to the county-seat in the
next county and was ridin' back late."
He swung off his horse and stood beside Griswell, shorter than the
lanky New Englander, but much harder knit. There was a natural
manner of decision and certainty about him, and it was easy to believe
that he would be a dangerous man in any sort of a fight.
"Are you afraid to go back to the house?" he asked, and Griswell
shuddered, but shook his head, the dogged tenacity of Puritan ancestors
asserting itself.
"The thought of facing that horror again turns me sick.
But poor Branner---" he choked again. "We must find his body. My
God!" he cried, unmanned by the abysmal horror of the thing; "what
will we find? If a dead man walks, what - "
"We'll see." The sheriff caught the reins in the crook of his left elbow
and began filling the empty chambers of his big blue pistol as they
walked along.
As they made the turn Griswell's blood was ice at the thought of what
they might see lumbering up the road with a bloody, grinning
death-mask, but they saw only the house looming spectrally among the
pines, down the road.