Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

3: Sage : 3 FRANK BELKNAP LONG, JR. it changes without the tay. God, but I had a hard time getting back! Longer and longer between!” Suddenly he seemed to hear the pounding. His queer chattering stops and I hear the key turn in the lock. The door opens ever so slightly and his face looks out at me. He is horrible t6 look at. His cheeks are sunken and there are big horrid rings under his eyes. There is a bandage tied about his head. “I want you to leave at once,” J tells him. “There’s queer things going on here and I can’t stand for queer things. You’ve got to leave.” : He sighed and nodded. “It’s just as well perhaps,” he says. “I was thinking of going anyway. There are rats here.” _ Rats!” I gasped. But I wasn’t really surprised. I knew there were rats in the house. They made life miserable for me. I was never able to get rid of them. Even the cats feared them. “I can’t stand rats,” he continues. “I’m packing up—clearing out now.” He shuts the door in my face and I hears him throwing his things into a. bag. Then the door opens again and he comes out on the landing. He is ter- tibly pale, and he leans against the wall to catch himself, and then. he starts descending the stairs. I watches him as he goes down, ‘and when he reaches the first landing he staggers and leans against the wall. Then he seems to grow shorter and he goes down the last flight three steps at a time.-Then he makes a running leap toward the door. I never saw anyone get through a door so quick, and _ I begins to suspect that he’s done something that he’s ashamed of. So I turns about and goes into the room. When I looks at the floor I nearly faints. It’s all slippery and wet, and seven dead rats are lying on their backs in the center of the room. And they are the palest-looking rats I’ve ever seen. Their noses aid tails are pure white and they looks as if they didn’t — have a drop of blood in them. And then I goes into the alcove and looks at the bathtub. I won’t tell you what I see there. But you remember what I says about the ceiling downstairs? I says it was dripping red, and the alcove wasn’t so very different. 7 7 I gets out of that room as quick as I can, and I shuts and locks the door; and then I goes downstairs and telephonés to Cousin Hiram. “Come right over, Hiram,” I says. “Something terrible has been here!” 9. Statement of Walter Noyes, Lighthouse Keeper I was pretty well done up. I’d.been polishing the lamps all afternoon, and there were calluses on my hands as big as hen’s eggs. I went up into the _tower and shut myself in and got out a book that I’d been reading off and on for a week. It was a translation of the Arabian Nights by a fellow named Lang. Imaginative stuff like that is a great comfort toa chap when he’s shut ~~