Authors: Franklin Gregory
A long silence attended. Finally Hardt said in a voice that for him was restrained: “Some things are permitted because of the sin of man.”
Trent said:
“Difficult to believe. Difficult.”
They were three rational men, of a rationalistic age; faith and belief were not strong in their hearts. They were aware of this, for they were also honest men. Dr. Hardt, still quietly, said:
“There is exorcism, sir—and there is nothing else.”
The word held horror for Pierre; it was a word for a dark barbaric age.
Grasping at straws, he exclaimed, “We could get a priest. Somewhere we could get a priest!”
Hardt said, “Yes?”
The inflection rose sardonically. He continued:
'
“And he would take the matter to his bishop. The bishop would weigh the facts, and he might approve. And then he might not.”
He paused again. Finally:
“Well, there's another point the ritual makes. You have to distinguish genuine possession from disease. So, besides priest and bishop, enter the physicians.”
Pierre protested:
“But you, Doctor, would make the distinction.”
“I?” Dr. Hardt looked aghast. “I would not, sir; I am a selfish man.”
“But,” faltered Pierre, “but you believe— in this?”
Dr. Hardt glared at Pierre. He would not answer.
And he did not answer. He said, instead:
“There are rules to be observed. The priest must be vested in surplice and violet stole. And the victim must pray, and fast, and confess.” Hardt questioned, “I presume, Pierre, you could force Sara to pray and fast?” Pierre said simply:
“No.” He moved uneasily. “I can’t see why I can’t do the exorcism by myself.”
“Without faith?” snapped Hardt.
“With love,” Pierre replied. “With love for Sara. And perhaps faith that the ancient method will work.”
Gloomily, they returned to the silence of their burning vigil.
MR. BOGARD, the sexton, who had a wooden leg, stumped about the First Methodist Church. He replaced the hymn books in their racks, a tiny enough task since the storm had kept many away from the Sunday-evening service.
He clomped down to the basement and shook the ashes in the big hard-coal furnace. He shoveled the ashes from the pit into a metal basket. He bedded the fire for the night.
“Got to be warm tomorrow,” he thought. “Monday Circle meets.”
He peered into the church kitchen in the other end of the basement. He clomped back upstairs, switching off lights as he progressed.
Mr. Bogard was an old man. His sparse hair was white and his face held many wrinkles. He worked slowly. He thought, “Got. to sweep. I'll sweep tomorrow.”
He switched out another light, and moved to a narrow, arched, stained-glass window. The window was slightly open and thin wisps of snow drifted in,-melting on the sill.
The window swung on side hinges like a door. The sexton opened it wider a moment to look out. The cold air refreshed him. He was tired. Only that noon, just after the morning service, he had helped Slade dig- the grave for the little Burke girl. And only an hour later old Mr. Pruett, the minister, had said the service over the grave.
Standing by the window, Mr. Bogard could see through the swirling snow toward that part of the graveyard. It was an old graveyard; older than the present stone church, which itself dated from the Revolution. Cement and stone slabs, weathered by the years, their epitaphs and dates and names blurred and obliterated, stood in drunken, crazy attitudes.
“Too bad about the little Burke girl,” Mr. Bogard mumbled to himself. “Taken so quick like, and so young. Pneumonia, I guess it does that.”
His old eyes squinted toward the graveyard. Something moving out there? Shadows, probably; the shadows of the trees.
Nothing worth noticing.
He closed the window and walked to the vestry door, tried it to see if old Mr. Pruett had locked it. Mr. Pruett was so absent- minded sometimes. He found it locked.
He walked to the rear pews, recovered his overcoat and single overshoe and pulled himself into them. Then he went into the vestibule, switched off the last light and went out through the great double door onto the porch. He locked the doors and; facing the slanting snow, turned up his coat collar.
The church stood at the east end of the village, the^ most easterly building. It faced north. On' its west side was the sprawling parsonage. On its east, the graveyard which extended back to a row of old gnarled pines.’ The sexton lived on Pinchsnuff Lane, back of the church by half a mile and not far— perhaps another half mile—below the confluence of the Neshaminy and the Bowling. That is, it was half a mile if he took the path through the graveyard, the pines, and across unfenced Leland’s pasture. It was a good mile around by Wheeler Road.
Mr. Bogard, standing on the porch steps, considered. Maybe' the snow hadn’t drifted badly. He’d try it. Wheeler Road was a long way for a tired old man with only one good leg. He clomped down the stone steps.
“Have to get in early tomorrow,” he mumbled. “Get these steps swept off for the ladies.”
He limped and clomped along the path. The gravestones, modest and discreet, poked up at him. He peered ahead through the snow.
Again he thought he saw something move. Must be the shadows from that big maple. He could see the stark spreading limbs of the maple ahead. It had been a big tree even when he was a chit, sixty years ago. He remembered that. He clomped along.
He approached the Burke plot, right beside the path. His good foot struck something hard in the path; something that was hard and yet gave. He balanced himself so as not to slip and fall. A man of seventy, with one leg, must not fall.
Wonderingly; he peered toward the grave. That mound of fresh earth should not be there. . Hadn't he and Slade themselves filled in the grave over that tiny box? And the earth was fresh. It was barely sheathed with snow.
Later he was not certain which he had seen first. . . . But when he stooped to examine the thing that his foot touched, and his hand felt it, he recoiled in cold horror.
It was Tom Summers’ voice over the telephone that broke up the vigil of Pierre, Trent and Dr. Hardt. Trent’s face was pale when he turned from the instrument.
Briefly he related the facts. Then he jammed on his coat and hat and announced: “I’m going home. Dave,” and his voice broke, “heeds me.”
Pierre moved toward Trent. He put out a detaining hand.
“He won’t be home,” Pierre said. “First he brings Sara home.”
Manning Trent angrily brushed Pierre’s hand away.
“Damn you!” he cried.
He slammed the door after him. And a dazed Pierre, standing half in the hallway and half in the library, stared at the door. When he returned to the room, his arms hung limply; Dr. Hardt detected moisture in his eyes.
Dr. Hardt said, after a moment, “He didn’t mean, that, sir. He is simply upset.”
Pierre said tonelessly, “I know. It’s only— that everything comes at once.”
He sat down, his short legs wide apart and his hands hanging lifelessly between them. He stared without seeing at the carpet. He said, at length, slowly., as if talking to himself: “It’s a time like this when you need—well, something to hold on to. Faith? I suppose that’s it. What’s a rational man to do?”
He said, wearily, “I’m going upstairs.”
He ascended slowly, with heavy tread. He knew it was not necessary to knock. She would not be there. Yet—he tapped lightly on her door. He said:
“Sara?”
“Yes, Father.”
The unexpected reply unnerved him. But he managed:
“May I come in, Sara?”
“Yes, Father.”
He pushed open the door. Sara, a revolting picture of health; sat in a negligee at her dressing table, brushing her lortg black glistening hair.
The blind anger of the farmers and villagers, reaching new intensity with each outrage, assumed panic proportions when Sexton Bogard’s story spread from cottage to house and from house to mansion.
“The valley,” wrote Painter in the
Times
, “is in a state of mass catalepsy. It is obsessed with fear. It is a panic of the mind. These Pennsylvania Dutch farmers, ever suspicious of strangers, now eye them with open hostility.”
Words half lost to the language from want of use returned. Where they had talked in and around forbidden matters, men now whispered of ghouls, of the hellborn, of the bewitched undead. Murder, the death and mutilation of living bodies, they understood. But the diabolical gluttony which impelled the desecration of the grave was a thing to harrow up the soul.
“The sun came out at noon,” wrote Summers. “It lay cold on the fields of snow. You would have thought the valley was at peace.
Yet every door and every window of every house was barred.”
Even the most callous reporters were affected. Lynn wrote in the
News
:
“I saw the corpse of Gertrude Burke, a body rutted from its last resting place. It was an appalling thing. But more appalling was the lack of explanation.”
And Doyle, returned to the scene by the
Mirror
, filed:
“Women were warned to walk abroad only in the company of men. And men were warned to carry arms. As for children, parents were asked to keep them at home. These are not hysterical rumors. They are the advice of the township’s commissioners, and they carry the weight of the State Motor Police.”
Colonel Winston Thorndike, commissioner of the State Police, arrived from his Olympian swivel chair in Harrisburg. He . parried reporters with airy assurance:
“Haven’t we solved every hex case that’s ever come our way?”
But that night, after hearing the reports from his lieutenants, at the sub-barracks in Melton Crossing, his face grew set and grim.
Again—but only by daylight and only in greater numbers—posses scoured the woods. They beat up and down the watercourses. They stalked their unseen prey in silence.
BY NIGHT, the white patrol cars of, the State Police prowled the back roads, the beams of their spotlights brushing each farm- , yard, wood and clearing. There was a concentration of these cars from many counties, each with its own cargo of smartly uniformed troopers in Sam Browne belts and an arsenal of machine guns and automatic pistols.
Men, bundled in overcoats and mackinaws, passed the cold nights standing guard over the graveyards. But at the Well, Klonsterman, narrowing his eyes and speaking from the side of his mouth, mumbled to Mandel:
“That is.a fool thing. They only want the blood, not the ’balming stuff. The little Gertie wasn’t ’balmed. They oughter watch jus’ the graves of kids.”
And, such was the hold of suspicion on the valley, Mandel wondered how Klonsterman knew.
Red Crane, after a week on other assignments, returned to the valley and joined Summers. Almost the first question Summers asked when they met at the Well was:
“What happened to that picture, Red?” Crane lapped at his whiskey and soda. He said vaguely:
“It wasn’t much good.”
“Nuts!” snorted Summers. “You got a perfect shot.”
Crane frowned. He shook his head. “Underexposed. I was afraid the flash didn’t, have penetration for that distance.” Summers fell silent. He was not satisfied. Photographers of Crane’s caliber seldom misjudged in a pinch.
Farson, the foreman at Trent Farms, said to Matlock, the stableman, as Matlock curried a horse:
“Can’t figger young Mr. Trent out. Seems to of lost his holt on things.”
Wallace, the butler, said to the maid, “The master seems in a perfect dither today.”
And mentally and physically Manning Trent was. He spent Monday pottering about, traveling a hesitant circuit between his study, the library, the decanter on the diningroom sideboard and the broad windows of the library’s southern exposure.
He was bewildered. He was afraid. Unlike Pierre, he possessed no reservoir of inner strength from which to draw. He blamed Pierre for his trouble; and in the same breath knew that he was wrong.
He realized the Viciousness of his departure from Fountain Head the previous night: but lie hadn’t the slightest idea of offering an apology. The more lie considered, the more he was convinced that his son was an unwilling tool—for David, unlike Pierre’s description of Sara, still made some pretense of enjoying his meals.
Yet the very realization that David was held in the closing coils of something quite beyond himself made it that much more difficult for Trent to discuss the problem with him. Had it been otherwise, had David been a volunteer to these abominations, there might have been room for open argument.
Trent got up. He walked from his study into the library, through the drawing room and through” the music room into the dining room. As he stood at the sideboard, he saw in the wide strip of mirror that girdled the walls the pantry doors open and Julia appear. He saw her stop and glance toward his back.
“I do wish,” she said primly, “that you wouldn’t be so nervous. Manning.”
And she disappeared through the other door-way.