Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/14

consumption or fever—strong people sickening and dying. Only I, and that wise chaplain, saw that their lives were sapped by a vampire. Other cases have occurred in this country—in Connecticut before the war, and in Rhode Island only two years ago. Men would have scoffed at our claim, and so we acted secretly.”

I accepted the honesty, if not the accuracy, of his tale. “You speak,” I said, “as if I am doing you a similar service.”

“You can if you choose. I saw little of your struggle this night, but enough to know that enchantment cannot touch you.”

My eyes were on the blanket-draped corpse as I said, “You think that one victory begets another.”

“I do.” He leaned forward eagerly, the old book in his hands. “You survived one peril of the unknown. Like one who survives a sickness, you have some immunity.”

I let that hang, too. “You speak as if another combat of the sort is coming.”

“Again you anticipate me. The combat has now begun—here in the Welcome Rock country, from which I thought to stamp all evil worship.”

The story he then told me seems to be fairly well known, at least in that community, which once was called Fearful Rock. Leaving the Union army, he came there as a frontier preacher without pay. Vestiges of an ancient and evil influence clung around a ruined house, and stories about it caused settlers to stay away. After his efforts to exorcise the apparent malevolent spirit, several farmers homesteaded nearby, and the name of the district was changed. Recently, he and the men of his little congregation had built a church.

“That started things again,” he said, and I must have looked my utter stupid amazement, for he smiled sadly.

“If you study the lore of demon-worship, as I have studied it, you would know that the deluded fools must have a church at which to aim their blasphemies. Look at the history of the defilers of the North Berwick Church in Scotland. Look at the story of the Salem witches in a minister’s pasture.”

“Those are only legends,” I suggested, but he shook his head.

“They are true. And the truth is manifest here. I am being crusaded against. Stop and think—I defeated evil beings on their own dunghill. They were overthrown and chased out. But their black hearts, if they have hearts, yearn back to here. This place is their Unholy of Unholies.”

“I see,” I replied, wondering if I did. Then I glanced again at the blanket-covered thing on the carpet. Jaeger saw the direction of my glance.

“I’m coming to poor Peter Dole. It was last Sunday—five days ago. I came early to my little church. The lock was broken, the Bible tipped from the pulpit, various kinds of filth on the benches and in the aisles, and on the walls some charcoal writing. It is not fit to repeat to you, but I recognized the hand.”

“Bad boys?”

“Bad men. I cleaned up the mess, and made a change in my text and sermon. I preached from Twelfth of Revelations, ‘The devil is come unto you, having great wrath; for he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’ I stressed the second clause of the observation.”

“‘He hath but a short time’,” I repeated.

“Yes. I spoke of the outrage, and said that the enemy gained no victory, but only shame. I read a little further into Revelations, the part where certain people are made to hide among rocks to escape the just wrath of heaven. Then I said that I knew who had written on the walls.” He eyed my empty cup. “More coffee? No?”

I shook my head. He continued.

“Peter Dole came to me after the benediction. It was he whose writing I had recognized. Terrified, he confessed some things I had already made sure of—his