That scream had roused me to action, and in a second I had retrieved my automatic and emptied its entire contents into the wolfish monstrosity before me. But I heard the unhindered thud of each bullet as it imbedded itself in the opposite wall.
My nerves gave way. Blind fear hurled me toward the dour, and blind fear prompted the one backward glance in which I saw that the wolf had sank its teeth into the body of its quarry. Then came that culminating sensory impression and the devastating thought to which it gave birth. This was the same body I had thrust my hand through a few moments before . . . and yet as I plunged down that black nightmare staircase I could hear the crunching of bones.
IV
HOW I found the trail to Glendale, or how I managed to traverse it, I suppose I shall never know. I only know that sunrise found me on the hill at the edge of the woods, with the steepled village outspread below me, and the blue thread of the Cataqua sparkling in the distance. Hatless, coatless, ashen-faced, and as soaked with perspiration as if I had spent the night abroad in the storm, I hesitated to enter the village till I had recovered at least some outward semblance of composure. At last I picked my way down hilt and through the narrow streets with their flagstone sidewalks and Colonial doorways till I reached the Lafayette House, whose proprietor eyed me askance.
"Where from so early, son? And why the wild look?"
"I've just come through the woods from Mayfair."
"You—came—through—the Devil’s Woods—last night—and—alone?" The old man stared with a queer look of alternate horror and incredulity.
"Why not?" I countered, "I couldn't have made it in time through Potowisset, and I had to be here not later than this noon."
"And last night was full moon! . . . . My Gawd!" He eyed me curiously. "See anything of Vasili Oukranikov or the Count?"
"Say, do I look that simple? What are you trying to do—jolly me?"
But his tone was as grave as a priest's as he replied. "You must be new to these parts, sonny. If you weren't you'd know all about Devil's Woods and the full moon and Vasili and the rest."
I felt anything but flippant, yet knew I must not seem serious after my earlier remarks, "Go on—I know you're dying to tell me, I'm like a donkey—all ears"
Then he told the legend in his dry way, stripping it of vitality and convincingness through lack of coloring, detail, and atmosphere. But for me it needed no vitality or convincingness that any poet could have given. Remember what I had witnessed, and remember that I had never heard of the tale until after I had had the experience and fled from the terror of those crunched phantom bones.
"There used to be quite a few Russians scattered betwixt here and Mayfair—they came after one of their nihilist troubles back in Russia. Vasili Oukranikov was one of 'em—a tall, thin, handsome chap with shiny yellow hair and a wonderful manner. They said, though, that he was a servant of the devil—a werewolf and eater of men.
"He built him a house in the woods about a third of the way from here to Mayfair and lived all alone. Every once in a while a traveler would come out of the woods with some pretty strange tale about being chased by a big gray wolf with shining human eyes—like Oukranikov's. One night somebody took a pot shot at the wolf, and the next time the Russian came into Glendale he walked with a limp. That settled it. There wasn't any mere suspicion now, but hard facts.
"Then, he sent to Mayfair for the Count—his name was Feodor Tehernevsky and he had bought the old gambrel-roofed Fowler place up State Street—to come out and see him. They all warned the Count, for he was a fine man and a splendid neighbor, but he said he could take care of himself all right. It was the night of the full moon. He was brave as they make 'em, and all he did was to tell some men he had around the place to follow him to Vasili's if he didn’t show up in decent time. They did—and you tell me, sonny, that you've been through those woods at night?"
"Sure I tell you"—I tried to appear nonchalant—"I'm no Count, and here I am to tell the tale! . . . But what did the men find at Oukranikov's house?"
"They found the Count's mangled body, sonny, and a gaunt gray wolf hovering over it with blood-slavering jaws. You can guess who the wolf was. And folks do say that at every full moon—but sonny, didn’t you see or hear anything?"
"Not a thing, pop! And say, what became of the wolf—or Vasili Oukranikov?"
"Why, son, they killed it—filled it full of lead and buried it in the house, and then burned the place down—you know all this was sixty years ago when I was a little shaver, but I remember it as if 'twas yesterday."
I turned away with a shrug of my shoulders. It was all so quaint and silly and artificial in the full light of day. But sometimes when I am alone after dark in waste places, and hear the demon echoes of those screams and snarls, and that detestable crunching of bones, I shudder again at the memory of that eldritch night.
Turkish Enthusiasm
THERE are in Turkey two kinds of monks, very different from each other, but equally remarkable. The difference between them proceeds from the sort of regulation that their founder has imposed respectively upon them; that of the Mewliach Dervise is to turn round like a totum, to the sound of a tolerably soft music, and to acquire a holy intoxication from the vertigos, which are the natural consequences of this strange exercise, if habit did not prevent that effect, which, however, they generally make up for at the tavern. The custom of the other monks, called Tacta-tepen, is more doleful, and more savage. It consists in gravely marching one after another round their chapel, and pronouncing the name of God with a loud voice, which they strain at every stroke of a drum beaten on the occasion; but very soon the strokes gradually following closer, become so loud that these wretches are obliged to make great exertions of their lungs, and the most devout never finish the procession without spitting blood. The appearance of these monks is always gloomy and austere, and they are so persuaded of the sanctity of their practice, and so sure of pleasing heaven by their howlings, that they never look on other men but with the most profound contempt.
