Claimed (Sci-Fi Classic). Francis Stevens
dissipate it by a full awakening.
From afar the hissing invader came on nearer — nearer — nearer — Vanaman’s eyes were fixed in fascination on the door, and next moment he saw the dreaded thing happen. What claimed entry here needed not to open the door, nor to break it down. With the door closed, it came in under. Vanaman saw a white, frothing line appear that slid forward, curvingly at floor level, hissing as it came, with behind it — a flat, polished darkness. It entered, spread out, rushed forward almost to his feet and retreated again.
He recognized the thing well enough now. He had seen it flood devouringly up and across smooth beaches where the gray-brown sand gleamed wetly and the clean salt tang of its breath filled one’s lungs with life. But what was it doing here, far from its boundaries on a — yes, on the second floor of a house. He mustn’t forget that.
He was sitting in the bedroom on the second floor of a house in Tremont, over fifty miles from the Atlantic shore. For the seatide to enter here was impossible. Gripped by a nightmarish condition, he was suffering from illusion-hallucination.
Again the frothing white line intruded and rushed forward, spreading this time from wall to wall. It had curled by over his feet, and his feet were wet and cold.
Minute after minute passed, and still the rhythmic and horribly incongruous phenomenon persisted. After its first three infloodings, the invader no longer entirely retreated beneath the door, and very soon it fell no lower on the outgo than the seated man’s ankles; on the influx, green as emerald and laced with frothing foam, it was washing about his knees.
Moreover, the water seemed real; the wetness and coldness of it were chilling him to the bone. Only afterward did he recall that the sea-tide, in its common, physical phase, has certain powers not displayed by this strange similitude of it. Nothing against which it washed was stirred or floated. The brocaded bed curtains hung straight, not even swayed by the surging waves that swept past their lower edges.
A light woven reed tabouret near Vanaman’s chair kept its place, submerging and reemerging sedately, as if the law of specific gravity, like the law which chains the sea within its boundaries, had been suspended for this night.
And now Vanaman grew aware that with the green sea-tide something else had entered the room. He could not see it. The evidence of its presence was as yet purely intuitional. But the mere blind knowledge of its presence gripped Vanaman’s soul with a terror that far surpassed his previous fear. He felt that he was dying. No agony like this could be long endured by mere human life.
And that sleeping hawk face in the bed, which had slumbered on undisturbed till now, seemed at last aware that an awful danger impended. Though the eyes did not open, the brows knotted with a writhing motion, the jaws set, and the sucked-in lips strained slightly apart, exposing the jagged yellow teeth behind.
Presently a rush of half-articulate words passed the straining lips. To Vanaman it seemed that he muttered something of “horses,” “white horses,” and “the bloody throats of white horses;” but perhaps because of the water’s seething and continuous noise he could make no coherent meaning of the words.
Then with frightful abruptness came the climax.
That which was in the room beneath the tide, and which had pushed the tide hither — before it, now gathered, took form, and rose up, sudden and monstrous.
Exactly what shape it had, Vanaman could not later clearly remember. He could recall only his own fear and intuitive sense of it as a thing of awful force and of a potential destructiveness terrific beyond finite comprehension.
As it rose, the green brine surged and swirled up with it in a cone-shaped, swirling mass.
The old man on the bed sat bolt upright, and as that dreadful power loomed over him his mouth opened to an oblong aperture. Out of his stringy old throat there issued forth a long, wild, bubbling shriek.
Like a knife the keen sound of it cut and drove away the intangible bonds which had held Vanaman powerless. In one leap he had sprung from his chair and flung himself recklessly between his patient and the nameless horror that threatened.
Chapter IV.
The Silent Message
When man attempts a really heroic act — when he conquers fear unutterable and flings himself body and soul into the breach, bent only on protecting one he has been set to guard nor counting the cost — then though such a self-proved hero may be overwhelmed in many different ways, he can be thoroughly disconcerted in but one.
Vanaman was prepared to fight and be overwhelmed. He was not prepared to wheel defensive at Robinson’s side and see nothing to combat. There, however, was the room, peaceful, silent, dry as any normal bedroom should be, and save for himself and Robinson, quite empty of anything visibly animate.
“You — dreaming — fool!” he muttered blankly, and he was addressing himself.
Again he whirled, this time toward the bed. Ah! But here was an enemy to fight indeed — an enemy old as earthly life and which Vanaman had spent years in training himself to strive against.
The old man had dropped back, his face darkly livid; there was foam on his lips, and his yellow hands, releasing the box at last, beat the air as he choked for breath. That shriek which had roused the doctor had also awakened Leilah, and an instant later she appeared in the doorway, clad in a hastily flung on negligee.
“Another seizure,” announced Vanaman; and again they were working together, two young lives giving freely of their strength and skill to save that possibly rather worthless old one.
Yet through it all, and despite his conviction that he had recently suffered from a particularly vivid dream, one question repeated itself continually in the back of the doctor’s brain. What had Leilah Robinson seen in the study at the time of her uncle’s first seizure, of which she could not afterward quite bring herself to speak?
The green box lay on a table by the bedside. It glowed like an enormous clouded emerald, oblong, polished — without ornament. The scarlet inscription was, as usual, underneath.
“You will, of course, call in Dr. Bruce — this morning,” said Vanaman, not as one who makes a suggestion, but rather as a man who states a settled fact.
Leilah had breakfasted below stairs, and the doctor had just finished appeasing his own very healthy appetite from a tray brought to him in the patient’s room. As for the patient himself, since the last attack he had slept without interruption, breathing heavily, and too deep in unconsciousness even to know that his grasping claws no longer clutched the green box, their prey.
Miss Robinson, who had been bending solicitously over him, straightened and turned to look at the young doctor, her tired, lovely eyes dilating darkly.
“You mean you can’t stay with him any longer? That you don’t wish to go on treating him?”
Vanaman smiled. Though professional ethics forbade him even to attempt “pirating” another man’s patient on the strength of a substitute call, to say that he did not wish to keep the case would have been decidedly untrue. He was interested in it no longer merely because Robinson was a very wealthy man. There were other reasons, one being a sense rather than a knowledge of some very queer mystery connected with it; the other and more important being Miss Robinson herself.
Nevertheless, since he was no patient-stealing quack, but an honorable gentleman, he explained his position to her and made ready for departure.
“Have Dr. Bruce in as soon as you can get him,” he advised, “and send at once for a professional nurse. I have written some instructions for her in case your uncle has another seizure, but I very much doubt if he will have one, at least for some hours. This box —”
He broke off abruptly, frowning at the translucent green thing on the table.
“Yes