Avon Fantasy Reader No. 7 — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

THE WERE-SNAKE 107 not be satisfied with a mere body, an empty husk. I was fighting, then, to save both the body and soul of Miss Beardsley. I struggled forward, trying to mur- der the dark with my two hands. I suffered pain. In the darkness, in the night, I knew a great hurt. .And Miss Beardsley was crying and moaning three yards from me. 3 7 : It seemed frightful to me, my inability to reach Miss Beardsley. I had y climbed and climbed over rough, gray stones, and my hands and knees were covered with blood, but I could not reach Miss Beardsley. She retreated from me. Something was carrying her off, dragging her ruthlessly over the stones. Suddenly my hands and knees went wet. My thoughts became confused, but I knew that I knelt in something wet. It seemed as if I had passed from agony _ into dumb, unreasoning delirium. I raised one hand slowly out of the wet. I did not confess my fears to myself; I did not openly acknowledge them. Things remained blurred and indefinite in my mind. But in the back of my brain the fear lurked like a panther about to spring. 3 : I raised the hand slowly. I understood dimly that I could not live if the wet confirmed my fear. But it was not blood. It wasn’t. Blood was less thick, less cold. : 3 I knew that I knelt in dark slime of the earth. A godless slug that had never seen the sun and moon and stars might leave such slime. I shut my eyes, without precisely knowing why, and my brain became quite quiet. I would go on and on, and find Miss Beardsley! | I crawled forward on my hands and knees over the dark earth. It seemed as if I was going on forever, and yet I knew intuitively that I should eventu- ally find light—and Miss Beardsley. Something that left dark, evil-smelling slime in its wake and that had eyes like the eyes of Ishtar was carrying Miss Beardsley away over the dark. And I would discover its retreat and destroy it utterly. My heard beat wildly, and a buzzing commenced in my brain, but I ground my teeth together, and went on and on. : I followed a trail of foul-smelling slime, and my whole body ached. Form- less shapes branched and grew in my mind. I thought aloud: “Will there be ° no end? Is there no dawn? Will dawn never come up over the desert, all white and clean and radiant? Is there nothing but formless dark that conceals a blasphemous slug that is not human, that leaves slime in its pathP” For the first time I had found voice! I decided to try again, and I pierced the dark with the sharp insistence of my voice. I sought an answer; I sought assurance. There was a sort of malicious cruelty in the silence, and I sought ( - _CoOmicooolks.€o im