Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MARY LEE SETTLE She had a face. It was dead white; a large face stretched over 7% a square frame of bone. The cheekbones were a straight ledge | for her staring black eyes. It was an old face, an almost old face. Although the lips were tight shut, they sank in at places where there weren’t any teeth. She was dressed in a faded blue Mother Hubbard with little white lozenges all over it, like the material people used to make aprons and poke-bonnets out of, or dresses for charity. Most of her hair was behind her, I couldn't see it, but Ieknew it was very long, because one lanky strand of it fell down the side of the white face, fell down in a long strand all the way to her waist. It was dead black. A year before I would have known that what I feared so long in the attic, what I had finally come face to face with was a witch. But now that I was spiritualist, I knew what she was.. Ectoplasm. For once my stout pair of lungs failed me. I backed very slowly, never taking my eyes off her, and she didn’t disappear. She didn’t disappear, and slowly her mouth began to spread into a smile. I had a glimpse of one long tooth, and then I turned and ran like lightning—sure she was after me, feeling her long arm stretching after me—down the stairs, past my great-grandmother, through the hall, out to the back porch, slammed the door, and woke my grandmother, over the back yard, scattering chickens. Francy, the bulldog, saw me running and thought it was a game. She ran beside me until we reached the garden. There, in the middle of the sunny field, on the hot, dry ground, I sat down at last, protected by rows of bean poles. a The panic began to ebb out of me as I realized I was not being : followed. ‘There I sat in the sun, patting Francy’s head, and wondering. Unseen things are always more terrible than those seen. I was almost relieved. I had seen It at last, and It was a woman, a woman with lanky black hair. I wondered if she’d been killed and was really in one of the locked trunks. Maybe one of my aunts—oh no, someone outside my own family must have done it and just sent it there and nobody knew. No one but me. I knew very well, due to my reading in my grandmother’s room, that it was no ordinary thing to see ectoplasm. I was pizic. I framed the word at last that I had only read and had never mentioned to a soul—the magic power! I knew I was not as other girls. At last I knew why. It was a great thrill. Of course, I knew there was no use telling anyone else. After all, I told myself, if they had been able to, they would have seen __ ss ComicidooksTeom|