The attendant busied himself with the pump. “Sure. What can I help you all with?”
“You got a phone in here?”
“Got a public phone there at the back.”
“A gentleman phoned Knoxville from there this afternoon,” the young man explained. “Asked to speak with John Chance. Very important, he said.”
“Well, it’s a public telephone, but there’s a door on the booth,” the attendant said testily.
“The fellow said he was calling from Martin’s Store,” the other continued. “Said he’d meet us here tonight. Said his name was Cullin Shelton. We had rather a late start, so I wondered whether he’d grown tired of waiting. Perhaps I might phone him, if he’s not here now.”
“That’s two-fifty,” said the attendant, cutting off the pump. “Shelton was around here most of the evening, Mr. Chance. I reckon he’s gone back to his place over at the hotel by now, seeing as he’s not here.”
“And which hotel is that?”
“There’s only one, the Dillon Hotel,” replied the other with ponderous patience. “On down the street there’s the sign.”
“Then I’ll go look him up.”
“Doubt you’ll get much use out of that,” the attendant advised. “Shelton was hitting it pretty hard all day.”
“Well, he said it was important,” said the driver, climbing back into the roadster. He cranked the engine.
“Must be to make you all drive all this way from Knoxville,” hazarded the beefy proprietor.
“Good night.” The Packard slipped smoothly into gear and rolled away from the pumps. The idlers at Martin’s Store watched it drive away with cool appraisal.
“I wonder if we should have phoned,” suggested the girl, speaking in a faintly accented voice.
“Oh, leave it to me, Kirsten,” her companion assured her. “It was worth the wild-goose chase just to get away from the muggy heat of the city.”
“The way they watched us…” she began. “There’s evil here.”
“Rot. Mountaineers are a close-lipped lot. Did you see them hide that moonshine when we drove up? Good job you were along, or they’d have marked me down for a revenuer.”
“I rather think we should have waited — or phoned,” she persisted.
“But you were the one in so great a hurry. Hello — here it is.”
The Packard turned in before a two-storey structure of dark mountain stone. A sign out front of the wide veranda said Dillon Hotel and Vacancy. Only a few lights burned in the shaded windows.
“Honeymoon Hotel, here we are,” laughed the driver.
“Oh, stop it.” Penciled brows drew in a frown of annoyance. She peered anxiously at the darkened hotel to her right.
A lean figure suddenly lurched forth from the shadows of the porch, overturning a rocker with a startling crash. He shambled across the veranda, half-fell down the wide steps to the ground. He wore surveyor’s boots and field dress, and a canvas coat that flapped about his gaunt frame. Supporting himself against the banister, he stared back at them through red-rimmed eyes.
“John Chance.” Raw whiskey wafted along with his hoarse whisper. “John Chance — is that you?”
“Are you Mr. Cullin Shelton?” demanded the other man smoothly.
“Oh, God!” the drunken man moaned. “Let’s get away from here!” He staggered across the walk for the car.
“Now see here, old fellow!” protested the driver, as the girl shrank away from the door. “Can’t we talk right here?”
“No!” A bony hand fumbled for the door latch. “Let’s get away!”
The night mists flickered with a sudden, eerie glare — like heat lightning behind distant clouds.
Shelton screamed and fell back from the running board. “Too late!” he bawled in terror. “Get away!”
The light flickered again — closer, more intense — dazzling their eyes like a magnesium flare. Its sudden brilliance made the fog opaque, blinding them. And with the white glare, a sudden hiss like escaping steam.
Shelton had started to run. Now he recoiled, screaming hideously. “No, Dread! No!” He fell back against the car.
The girl screamed as the man’s flailing arms hooked over her door, his face turned toward them — sagging below the level of the sill as he crumpled.
His hands were shriveled stumps, the flesh of his face seared and shrunken to his skull — charring and peeling even as they watched. Cullin Shelton was being burned to a crisp in the passage of seconds, before their horrified gaze — but his clothing was untouched, nor could they feel a trace of the intolerable heat that was burning flesh to cinder in a matter of seconds.
The scream rasped silent as vocal cords seared and cracked. The nightmare face and blackened arms fell away from the sill, trailing a sooty smear down the cream finish of the door. Then the Packard was tearing away from the curb, and Shelton’s corpse was flung aside like a smouldering scarecrow.
The Packard roared headlong down the steep slope of Laurel Mountain, and the town and its horror vanished into the mist. Tires moaned as the heavy roadster skidded dangerously on the sharp curves. The driver’s tanned face was set in a pallid grimace of unreasoning fear.
“John! For God’s sake, slow down! We’ll be killed!”
The girl’s sharp exclamation broke through his panic, and he braked the car’s suicidal speed. “God! Sorry, Kirsten!” he murmured shakily. “That — that thing back there — God! That’s the worst scare I’ve had in my life! Didn’t stop to think what I was doing!”
He slowed the car to a near crawl, searched the fog-hidden shoulder of the road.
“What are you doing?” she asked uneasily. “Help me find a place to turn around,” he told her, his voice steadier. “We’ve got to go back.”
“Why?” she demanded in a note of panic. “There’s nothing we can do for that man.”
“Of course not, poor devil. But we were witnesses — and we’ve got to warn the rest before someone else dies like that.”
“But what happened?”
His self-assurance was returning. “Electrocuted, of course. Had to be. Maybe a freak lightning discharge — St. Elmo’s fire or something like that. But probably there’s a high-power line come down there or something of the sort. Poor drunken fool blundered into it trying to run from his pink elephants, and we were in too great a funk by it all to realize what was happening.” He pulled the Packard onto a turnout.
“I don’t want to go back there,” the girl said resolutely.
“Well, I’m not relishing it myself,” he muttered, starting to back the car.
“No! There’s danger there you don’t understand!”
“Rot, Kirsten. Stop acting like a frightened child.”
The mist shimmered with a blue-white glow. Kirsten screamed.
“More lightning!” he growled, hitting the accelerator. The roadster slung gravel and lurched back onto the roadway.
Lambent flame in the mist ahead of them — harsh incandescence that burned through the fog. Floating on the white-opaque mist — a pair of eyes, glowing like white-hot steel. Materializing in front of them — an obscene phantom of flame — a fantastic lizard-shape. Its jaws gape wide — a sudden shrill hiss…
The driver howled in death-agony, throwing stumps of hands in front of seared and blackened face.
The Packard hurtled from the road — snapping the guardrail. The cacophony of splintered trees, smashing boulders, and tearing metal drowned out all else and seemed to go on forever.
In a rundown stucco cottage in Vestal, Compton Moore sat with a glass of absinthe in one hand and a Luger in the other. He considered the tall glass with its opalescent liqueur, then the cold black automatic with its walnut grips. It was fitting, he thought, with that somber and poetic introspection that comes upon a man late at night and deep in drink.