Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 03 (1935-09).djvu/109

desk with the lifeless, obsidian toad in the daytime.

What this addition to the toad's nocturnal animation may portend, I have sought to fathom, with growing unease. I have lately recalled that there was a pile of just such pebbles, heaped at the foot of the altar in the ancient temple, from which—may God forgive the stupid act!—I took the vile toad. . . .

Something very dreadful has occurred since I wrote the preceding words. I am impelled to write the few remaining lines that will be necessary—or possible—by some power, some gleeful and triumphantly malignant force outside of me:

While I was writing, I felt a blow upon the back of my head. It was more as if I had been hit forcibly, inside, upon my uncovered brain, by an object thrown from behind my back. For a moment, I was unable to move, so great was the pain. Partly recovering, I turned to discover the source of the missile with which I had been struck. Then my blood chilled, seemed truly to freeze in my veins. . . .

The toad has moved out of its usual squatting position. About it there is an unfathomable impression of unholy joyousness; I know without understanding, that the thing no longer is waiting—its hour has struck!

I wrote that the toad has moved, It stands erect, upon its deformed and twisted rear members. Grotesque and unnatural as that is, the circumstance that constricts my heart is that, raised above its head in the act of casting as I turned—the frightful little monster gripped a pebble in its tiny, hand-like forefeet! Even as I saw and gasped, the missile hurtled through the air, struck inside my forehead with stunning impact.

The pile of pebbles—those pebbles, the purpose of which I now know!—probably is diminished by more than half. At intervals, one of them crashes into the back of my brain. I am paralyzed now, all except, oddly, this arm with which I write. I can not move aside, seek to evade the battering pebble hail. But I feel that I should not escape, though the power to move, to cry out, still remained to me.

All about this room, there are intangible rustlings and scurryings. There are things around me, unseen but present, that have come to watch with grim, unhallowed satisfaction as the toad hurls pebbles into my brain.

My death, beyond doubt, will be attributed to cerebral hemorrhage. My head, to all outward appearances, will be whole and unmutilated; for the toad's missiles pass unscathing through my skull, by some unholy means, and batter only upon my brain.

I shall die—very soon, now—beneath the barrage of pebbles cast by the paws of that thing in the corner behind me. I shall die as, in all likelihood, no man ever met death before: stoned to death by a foul, loathsome toad! . . .