Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

4g : FRANK BELKNAP LONG, Jr. her. My paleness evidently frightened her. “What is the matter?” she asked; “you look ill.” “I am ill,” I replied. “I saw something’ dreadful on the beach this morning.” “Good heavens!” she exclaimed: “have they found one of che children?” It was a great relief to me that she had read about the chil- dren in the New York papers. “No,” I said. “They didn’t find the children, but they found the body of a man and he didn’t have a drop of blood in “ium. “de had been drained dry. And all about his body the investigators found curious little mounds of yellowish slime—of ooze. When the sunlight struck this substance it eittcted: Flas if been cxamined under a micro- scoper” asked Elsie. “They are examining it now, I explained. “We shall know the results by this evening.” “God pity us all,” said Elsie, and she moeered and nearly fell. I was obliged to support her as we entered the - otel. July 25. Two curious developments. The chemist who examined the jellyish substance found near the body on the beach declares that jt is living proto-— plasm, and he has sent it to the Department of Health for classification by one of their expert biologists. And a deep pool some eight yards in diameter has been discovered in a rock fissure about a mile from the New Beach Hotel, which evidently harbors some queer denizens. The water in this pool is as black as ink and strongly saline. The pool is eight or ten feet from the ocean, but it is affected by the tides and descends a foot every night and morning. This morning one of the guests of the hotel, a young lady named Clara Phil- lips, had come upon the pool quite by accident, and being fascinated by its sin- ister appearance had decided to sketch it. She had seated herself on the rim of the rock fissure and was in the act of sketching in several large boulders and a strip of beach when something made a curious noise. beneath her. “Gulp,” it said. “Gulp!” She gave a little cry and jumped up just in time to escape a long golden tentacle which slithered toward her over the rocks. The tentacle protruded from the very center of the pool, out of the black water, and it filled her with unutterable loathing. She stepped quickly for- ward and stamped upon it, and her attack was so sudden that the thing was unable to flip away from her and escape back into the water. And Miss Phil- . lips was an amazingly strong young woman. She ground the end of the . tentacle into a bloody pulp with her heel. Then she turned and ran. She ran as she had not run since her “prep” school days. But as she taced ‘across ok the soft beach she fancied she could hear a monstrous, lumbering something pursuing her. It is to her credit that she did not look back, ~ And this is the story of little Harry Doty. I offered him a beautiful new dime, but he told it to me gratis. | give it in his own words. “Yes sir, I've always knowed about that pool. I used to fish for crabs and sea-cucumbers and big, purple anemones in it, sir. But up until last week I allus knowed what I'd bring up. Onct or twice I used to get sdmethin’ a bit out o the ordinary, such as a bleedin’-tooth shell ora headless worm with. COM book siiGO a - ()