The Lurking Fear | Page 2

which had descended upon them, and they were not doubted.
They had not seen it, but had heard such cries from one of their hamlets
that they knew a creeping death had come.
In the morning citizens and state troopers followed the shuddering
mountaineers to the place where they said the death had come. Death
was indeed there. The ground under one of the squatter's villages had
caved in after a lightning stroke, destroying several of the malodorous
shanties; but upon this property damage was superimposed an organic
devastation which paled it to insignificance. Of a possible seventy-five
natives who had inhabited this spot, not one living specimen was
visible. The disordered earth was covered with blood and human debris
bespeaking too vividly the ravages of demon teeth and talons; yet no
visible trail led away from the carnage. That some hideous animal must
be the cause, everyone quickly agreed; nor did any tongue now revive
the charge that such cryptic deaths formed merely the sordid murders
common in decadent communities. That charge was revived only when

about twenty-five of the estimated population were found missing from
the dead; and even then it was hard to explain the murder of fifty by
half that number. But the fact remained that on a summer night a bolt
had come out of the heavens and left a dead village whose corpses were
horribly mangled, chewed, and clawed.
The excited countryside immediately connected the horror with the
haunted Martense mansion, though the localities were over three miles
apart. The troopers were more skeptical; including the mansion only
casually in their investigations, and dropping it altogether when they
found it thoroughly deserted. Country and village people, however I
canvassed the place with infinite care; overturning everything in the
house, sounding ponds and brooks, beating down bushes, and
ransacking the nearby forests. All was in vain; the death that had come
had left no trace save destruction itself.
By the second day of the search the affair was fully treated by the
newspapers, whose reporters overran Tempest Mountain. They
described it in much detail, and with many interviews to elucidate the
horror's history as told by local grandams. I followed the accounts
languidly at first, for I am a connoisseur in horrors; but after a week I
detected an atmosphere which stirred me oddly, so that on August 5th,
1921, I registered among the reporters who crowded the hotel at
Lefferts Corners, nearest village to Tempest Mountain and
acknowledged headquarters of the searchers. Three weeks more, and
the dispersal of the reporters left me free to begin a terrible exploration
based on the minute inquiries and surveying with which I had
meanwhile busied myself.
So on this summer night, while distant thunder rumbled, I left a silent
motor-car and tramped with two armed companions up the last
mound-covered reaches of Tempest Mountain, casting the beams of an
electric torch on the spectral grey walls that began to appear through
giant oaks ahead. In this morbid night solitude and feeble shifting
illumination, the vast boxlike pile displayed obscure hints of terror
which day could not uncover; yet I did not hesitate, since I had come
with fierce resolution to test an idea. I believed that the thunder called

the death-demon out of some fearsome secret place; and be that demon
solid entity or vaporous pestilence, I meant to see it.
I had thoroughly searched the ruin before, hence knew my plan well;
choosing as the seat of my vigil the old room of Jan Martense, whose
murder looms so great in the rural legends. I felt subtly that the
apartment of this ancient victim was best for my purposes. The
chamber, measuring about twenty feet square, contained like the other
rooms some rubbish which had once been furniture. It lay on the
second story, on the southeast corner of the house, and had an immense
east window and narrow south window, both devoid of panes or
shutters. Opposite the large window was an enormous Dutch fireplace
with scriptural tiles representing the prodigal son, and opposite the
narrow window was a spacious bed built into the wall.
As the tree-muffled thunder grew louder, I arranged my plan's details.
First I fastened side by side to the ledge of the large window three rope
ladders which I had brought with me. I knew they reached a suitable
spot on the grass outside, for I had tested them. Then the three of us
dragged from another room a wide four-poster bedstead, crowding it
laterally against the window. Having strewn it with fir boughs, all now
rested on it with drawn automatics, two relaxing while the third
watched. From whatever direction the demon might come, our potential
escape was provided. If it came from within the house, we had the
window ladders;