Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/16

very full-skirted and high-necked, with edging of white at throat and cuffs. Her brown hair was disarrayed, under a knitted shawl. Her face was cream-white, set with bright, scared eyes.

“Please,” she said, out of breath, “they shouted that I’d find my father with you.” She swallowed, and her lips quivered. “Badly hurt, they said.”

“Sit down, Susan,” bade Jaeger. "He is here, but no more in pain or terror.”

She saw the body then, seemed to recognize it through the blanket. Sitting down, as Jaeger had told her, she grew one shade whiter, but calm.

“I will not cry,” she promised us. “I would even be glad, if I thought the curse was gone from him—”

“Then be glad, Susan,” rejoined Jaeger, “for he repented and died a believer.”

He turned his gaze to me. “Now will be proven, or not proven, my thought that you have strength against wickedness. For the gates of hell are open, and our enemies close in about us.”

The girl Susan and I both turned toward him. He continued, with an impatient note in his voice.

“How can mankind defend himself when he does not take thought? This is Satan’s one night of the year, the wizard’s Christmas.”

IN THE outer night rose again the whickering cry, that rose into a shrill yearning whine. Jaeger cocked his bearded head sidewise. “The flying horned one summons his faithful. This is their day, and midnight will be their hour. Shakespeare knew that, and passes the word on to us—‘The time of night when Troy was set on fire.’”

I looked at a little old clock of dark wood, set on a bracket. “It is past eleven now. Have you time to tell me what you mean by the witches’ Christmas?”

“Briefly, this: In ancient heathen times a festival of scorn was held, from which grew the Christian Hallowe’en—”

“But this is the middle of November!” I protested.

“Witches are simple folk. They reckon by full moons. We have one tonight, and they’ve crept out of their dens to do what mischief their hearts, and their demon, tells them. Beginning at my house.”

He fixed his eyes on the girl. She had been sitting silent and tense, staring straight before her. “Susan,” he said gently, “they sent you to find your father’s body. Did they send you for any other purpose? If so—”

She rose, and lifted her hands. She spoke, slowly and questioningly, as though reciting an unfamiliar lesson:

“Mirathe saepy Satonich—”

I started and opened my mouth, to tell her where I had heard those words, earlier in the night. But Jaeger signed me to keep silent. Susan was not chanting understandably.

“Stand still, stand still! No more than a tree or a rock can you depart! This by the four elements, the seven unspoken numbers, the innumerable stars in the sky! This by the name of—of—”

Abruptly she sat down, as if utterly weary. “I can’t!” she sobbed. “I can’t say that name!”

Jaeger smiled, beautifully for all his broad shagginess, and stepped across to her side. He laid his hand on her head. “No decent person can, child,” he comforted her softly. “They failed in the plot when they chose you for a tool.”

She looked up, and faint color had come to her cheeks. Her eyes and lips had regained steadiness. She appeared to be wakened and calmed from a nightmare.

“I’ll guess what happened,” he went on. “Those who told you that your father was