The Stone Image | Page 8

enough but no flood of warm,
yellow light followed their pressure. As frequently happens, the current
was off.
In darkness, then, I shuffled along the hall to the front door.
That vague, nameless horror we all feel at times when entering a dark
room alone was on me as I fumbled with the knob. Very cautiously I
put back the curtain from the glass panel in the door and peeped into
the shadowy vestibule. There was nothing to be seen.
"Humph!" I grunted. "Nobody there. Ears must have been playing a
trick on me; bell didn't ring at all." Emboldened by the emptiness of the
vestibule, I swung the door wide.
"Who's there?" I called, feeling quite sure that my challenge would go
unanswered.
A moment later I regretted my rashness. Just within the door, dimly
outlined against the gray darkness of the outer night, crouched an
ungainly, squat figure. Its staring eyes glared with a hellish
phosphorescence; its ivory tusks gleamed from writhing, blood-red lips;
its hideous painted face twisted in a grimace of deadly hatred.
"Why, it--it--it's the image!" I gibbered fatuously.

It was the image. The same image that had slain poor little Chang; the
same stone monster that had forced Betty to worship it; yet it was not
the same. Its loathsome, bloated face changed expression; it moved; it
was alive!
Shaken in a very palsy of fear, I shrank back into the hall.
Swift as my retreat was, it was not quick enough. With a swaying,
ungainly bound, the thing was upon me. Great hands, cruel and
relentless as the coils of a serpent, closed round my neck, choking the
breath from me; huge, fiery eyes glared vengefully into mine; long,
gleaming tusks were gnashing at my throat, seeking the living blood in
my veins.
With arms and legs and stiffened back I strained against the monster,
striving to unclasp the cruel hands throttling me, pushing vainly against
the terrible embrace which drew me nearer, ever nearer, the champing
white teeth which flashed from the misshapen face so near mine.
As I fought against the accursed thing crushing me in its relentless grip,
I thought wildly, "This is how poor Chang died," and I braced my knee
against its swollen belly.
Cold, acid sweat stood out upon my forehead and rolled down into my
eyes; my lungs were bursting with the air imprisoned within them;
great, sonorous gongs seemed booming in my ears; lights flashed
before my eyes, and the walls of the vestibule seemed toppling in upon
me.
The image and I swayed back and forth in a death grapple, went down;
there was a crash, a blinding flash of light, my hands relaxed their grip
on the stone shoulders, I was deathly sick at my stomach--
"Bring me another cold rag; he'll be all right in a minute," Doctor
Towbridge's voice sounded close beside me, and his firm, capable
hands replaced a cold-water pack on my forehead.
I sat up and stared about me. I was lying on the couch in the living

room. Doctor Towbridge was bending over me, and a very frightened
Betty stood behind him, a cloth saturated with cold water in her hand.
"Young man," Doctor Towbridge bent his sternest professional look
upon me, "next time you feel inclined to cheat an honest physician out
of his honest fee don't risk a case of alcoholic poisoning trying to drink
up all the rock and rye in town."
"But I wasn't drunk," I expostulated; "that cursed image--"
"Yes, yes, we know all about that, too. We found it broken to pieces in
the vestibule, and you've done nothing but rave about it for the past
half-hour. The neighbors' boys evidently carried out their design of
putting the thing against your front door, and when you went to the
vestibule it fell through the door and was broken. Too bad, too; it was a
valuable piece of bric-a-brac, wasn't it?"
I looked at them out of the corner of my eye.
"Yes," I answered meekly. If they already thought me drunk, what
would they think if I were to tell them how the image really came to be
broken?
"Yes," I agreed, "it cost us a lot of money; but I think we can worry
along without it."
Doctor Towbridge may have been right. Perhaps I did take too much
rock and rye that night; maybe the neighbors' boys did put the stone
image in the doorway. Possibly my fight with the grisly thing was all
the figment of an alcohol-inspired dream.
But there is one thing I'd like the doctor to explain--if he can. For a
week after that horrible night there were great purple bruises on my
throat, where I had believed the monster's terrible hands had been.

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