“In Kirby?” I hazarded the guess.
“Yes.” She looked at me again, shrewdly this time. “How much did Judge Andrews tell you?”
I could not conceal my embarrassment. “He—he told me of your husband’s death, and—”
“What did he say of my son?”
“Very little. He is not the kind of man to gossip idly, Mrs. Bridgeman, and—”
“And you suspect that there might be much to gossip about?” She was suddenly angry.
“I only know that I’m here, helping a woman look for her son, following her instincts and whims without question, as a favor to an old man. To be absolutely truthful, I suspect that there is a great mystery here; and I admit that I am addicted to mysteries, as curious as a cat. But my curiosity is without malice, you must believe that, and my only desire is to help you.”
She turned away from me for a moment or two, and I thought she was still angry, but when she turned back her face was much more composed.
“And did the Judge not warn you that there would be—danger?”
“Danger? Heavy snow is due, certainly—”
“No, the snow is nothing—I didn’t mean the snow. The Judge has Sam’s books; have you read them?”
“Yes, but what danger can there be in mythology and folklore?” In fact, I guessed what she was getting at, but better to hear it from her own lips, as she “believed” it and as her husband had “believed” it before her.
“What danger in myths and legends, you ask?” She smiled mirthlessly. “I asked the same question of Sam when he wanted to leave me in Navissa. God, that I’d listened to him! What danger in folklore? I can’t tell you directly—not without you thinking me a madwoman, as I’m sure the Judge must more than half believe—but I’ll tell you this: today we return to Navissa. On the way you can teach me how to drive the snow cat. I won’t take you to horrors you can’t conceive.”
I tried to argue the point but she would say no more. We decamped in silence, packed the bivouacs and camp utensils aboard the cat, and then, despite a last effort on my part to dissuade her, she demanded that we head directly for Navissa.
For half an hour, traveling fairly slowly, we followed the course of a frozen stream between brooding fir forests whose dark interiors were made darker still by the shrouding snow that covered the upper branches. It was as I turned the snow cat away from the stream, around a smaller copse of trees to head more nearly south, that I accidentally came upon that which should have gone far toward substantiating Mrs. Bridgeman’s hints of terrible dangers.
It was a large depression in the snow, to which I had to react quickly in order to avoid a spill, when we might easily have tumbled directly into it. I halted our machine, and we stepped down to take a closer look at this strangely sunken place in the snow.
Here the drift was deeper, perhaps three or four feet, but in the center of the depression it had been compacted almost to the earth beneath, as if some great weight had rested there. The size of this concavity must have been almost twenty feet long by seven or eight feet wide, and its shape was something like—
Abruptly the Judge’s words came back to me—what he had mentioned of the various manifestations of Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker—and particularly of giant, webbed footprints in the snow!
But of course that was ridiculous. And yet…
I began to walk round the perimeter of the fantastic depression, only turning when I heard Mrs. Bridgeman cry out behind me. Paler than I had ever seen her before, now she leaned dizzily against the snow cat, her hand to her throat. I went quickly to her.
“Mrs. Bridgeman?”
“He—He was here!” she spoke in a horrified whisper.
“Your son?”
“No, not Kirby—Him!” She pointed, staring wide-eyed at the compacted snow of the depression. “Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker—that is His sign. And that means that I may already be too late!”
“Mrs. Bridgeman,” I made a halfhearted attempt to reason with her, “plainly this depression marks the spot where a number of animals rested during the night. The snow must have drifted about them, leaving this peculiar shape.”
“There was no snow last night, Mr. Lawton,” she answered, more composed now, “but in any case your explanation is quite impossible. Why, if there had been a number of animals here, surely they would have left tracks in the snow when they moved. Look about you. There are no tracks here! No, this is the footprint of the fiend. The horror was here—and somewhere, at this very moment, my son is trying to search Him out, helped on by those poor devils that worship Him!”
I saw my chance then to avoid an early return to Navissa. If we went back now, I might never learn the whole story, and I would never be able to face the Judge, having let him down. “Mrs. Bridgeman, it’s plain that if we go south now we’re only wasting time. I for one am willing to face whatever danger there may be, though I still can see no such danger. However, if some peril does face Kirby, then we won’t be helping him any by returning to Navissa. It would help, though, if I knew the background story. Some of it I know already, but there must be a lot you can tell me. Now listen, we have enough fuel for about 120 miles more. This is my proposition: that we carry on looking for your son to the north. If we have not found him by the time our fuel reserves are halved, then we head back in a direct line for Navissa. Furthermore, I swear here and now that I’ll never divulge anything you may tell me or anything I may see while you live. Now, then—we’re wasting time. What do you say?”
She hesitated, turning my proposition over in her mind, and as she did so, I saw to the north the spreading of a cloud sheet across the sky and sensed that peculiar change of atmosphere that ever precedes bad weather. Again I prompted her: “The sky is growing more sullen all the time. We’re in for plenty of snow—probably tonight. We really can’t afford to waste time if we want to find Kirby before the worst of the weather sets in. Soon the glass will begin to fall, and—”
“The cold won’t bother Kirby, Mr. Lawton—but you’re right, there’s no time to waste. From now on our breaks must be shorter, and we must try to travel faster. Later today I’ll tell you what I can of…of everything. Believe what you will, it makes little difference, but for the last time I warn you—if we find Kirby, then in all probability we shall also find the utmost horror!”
IV
With regard to the weather, I was right. Having turned again to the north, skirting dense fir forests and crossing frozen streams and low hills, by 10:30 A.M. we were driving through fairly heavy snow. The glass was far down, though mercifully there was little wind. All this time—despite a certainty in my heart that there would be none—nevertheless, I found myself watching out for more of those strange and inexplicable hollows in the snow.
A dense copse where the upper branches interlaced, forming a dark umbrella to hold up a roof of snow, served us for a midday camp. There, while we prepared a hot meal and as we ate, Mrs. Bridgeman began to tell me about her son, about his remarkable childhood and his strange leanings as he grew into a man. Her first revelation, however, was the most fantastic, and plainly the Judge had been quite right to suspect that the events of twenty years gone had turned her mind, at least as far as her son was concerned.
“Kirby,” she started without preamble, “is not Sam’s son. I love Kirby, naturally, but he is in no wise a child of love. He was born of the winds. No, don’t interrupt me, I want no rationalizations.
“Can you understand me, Mr. Lawton? I suppose not. Indeed, at first I, too, thought that I was mad, that the whole thing had been a nightmare. I thought so right until the time—until Kirby was born. Then, as he grew up from a baby, I became less sure. Now I know that I was never mad. It was no nightmare that came to me here in the snow but a monstrous fact! And why not? Are not the oldest religions and legends known to man full of stories of gods lusting after the daughters of men? There were giants in the olden times, Mr. Lawton. There still are.