Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

y “® THE MAN WIfH A THOUSAND LEGS “2 oo I takes him upstairs and shows him the room and hé seems quite pleased with it. But when he sees the bathtub he begins jumping up and down like a schoolboy, and clapping his hands and acting so odd that I begins to suspect that he 1s going out of his mind. “It’s.just the right size!” he shouts. “I hope you won't mind my keeping it filled all day. I bathe quite often. But I must have some salt to put into it. I can’t bathe in fresh water!” “He’s certainly a queer one,’ I thought, “but I ain’t complaining. It isn’t often, Hiram and I land a fish as rich as this one.” Finally he calms down and pushes me out of the room. “Everything’s all right,” he says. “But I don’t want to be disturbed. When you get the salt, put it down in the hall and knock on the door. Under no circumstances must anyone enter this room.’ He closed the door in my face and I heard the key grate in the lock. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the sounds that began to come from behind that door. First I heard a great sigh as if somehow he had got something disagreeable off his chest, and then I heard a funny gulping sound that I didn’t like. He didn’t waste any time in turning on the water either. I heard a great splashing and wallowing, and then, after about fifteen minutes, every- thing became as quiet as death. We didn’t hear anything more from him until that evening, when I sent Lizzie up with the salt. At first she tried the door, but it was locked, and she was obliged to put the bag down in the hall. But she didn’t go away. She squeezed up close against thé wall and waited. After about ten minutes the door opened slowly and a long, thin arm shot out and took in the bag. Lizzie said that the arm was yellow and dripping wet, and the thinnest arm she had ever seen. “But he’s a thin young man, Lizzie,” I explains to her. “That may be,” she says, “but I never saw a human being with an arm like that before!” Later, along about 10 o’clock I should say, I was sitting in the parlor sew- ing when I felt something wet land on my hand. I looked up and the ceiling was dripping red. I mean just what I say. The ceiling was all moist and drip- ping red. I jumped up and.ran out into the hall. I wanted to scream, but I bit my lips until the blood begins running down my chin and that makes me sober and determined. “That young man must go,” I says to myself. “I can’t have anything that isn’t proper going on in this house.” JI climbs the stairs looking as grim as death. and pounds on the young man’s door. “I won’t stand for whatever’s going on in there!” I shouted. “Open that door.” I heard something flopping about inside, and then the young man speaking - to himself in a very low voice. “Its demands are insatiable. The vile, hungry beast! Why doesn’t it think of something besides its stomach? I didn’t want it to come then. But it doesn’t need the ray now. When its appetite is aroused comlichooks.conn