Avon Fantasy Reader No. 7 — page 109: what you’re looking at

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

me liHE WERE-SNAKE | | 105 of the glare came a thunderous report, and sound took the place of light, and the darkness came rushing back. I shut my eyes, and cried out. My knees threatened to give way beneath me. But I thought: “One shot is not enough. I must take care to see that Ishtar does not escape.” I discovered that I had no desire to see Ishtar. With my back against the wall and my revolver throttling the darkness I rejoiced that I could not see— I know not what! But 1 discerned in the momentary glare low, crumbiing walls, and leaning altars, and black, satyrlike faces carved in black basalt, and I was filled with horror and awe inexpressible, and I thought that Miss Beardsley had concealed, strange realization beneath her flippancy. She had tried to warn me: “This place is as mournful as Erebus. The ‘perversity of nature has entered into the rocks; they seem alive.” : The whole business looked ugly, and it especially explained the villagers’ fear of the temple of Ishtar. There was dead silence for five minutes or more, and then I threw aside the thing of flame that had failed to justify its boast of strength. I heard a metallic ring as it went clattering over the stones. The eyes of Ishtar had moved nearer; and I felt that I had sounded the depths of anguish, and that I now dangled above an unreverberate abyss. Far above me through a fissure I saw the stars, but they glittered so weakly that they seemed to exude darkness and not light. What if I should go on my knees to Ishtar and entreat her to love me? Perhaps her eyes would grow soft; perhaps I should see her and find her - beautiful. The camel-drivers had found her beautiful. They had come in from the desert and she had comforted them with kisses and killed them with love. | “I could love you!” I said to the eyes, and I loathed the sound of my own voice. I knew what I had done, but I should never have spoken to Ishtar had not some force superior to my will persuaded me that utter destruction is more desirable than suspense. At once the eyes grew immense and soft and tendér in the night. They lost their snakelike glitter. They advanced toward me, and I heard a low swishing sound, as if something smooth and soft were crawling on its hands and knees over a rough, uneven surface. A curiously indescribable odor, acrid and necrophilic, came to me on the tiny breath of air blowing noiselessly in the dark. And then from beyond the narrow, gray borders of the temple I heard a sudden, sharp exclamation of fear and pain. | a It was a voice of pity and terror in the night, shaming the eyes of Ishtar. | It arose from the dark spaces, tender and full of infinite compassion and infinite fear, and it softened the hard edges of the darkness. ow — connie ooolkks.Cconn