and of the morbid vegetation that had sprouted in the spring. As it
was, he thought only of the blasphemous monstrosity which confronted
him, and which all too clearly had shared the nameless fate of young
Thaddeus and the livestock. But the terrible thing about the horror was
that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble.

Ammi would give me no added particulars of this scene, but the shape
in the corners does not reappear in his tale as a moving object.
There are things which cannot be mentioned, and what is done in common
humanity is sometimes cruelly judged by the law. I gathered that no
moving thing was left in that attic room, and that to leave anything
capable of motion there would have been a deed so monstrous as to damn
any accountable being to eternal torment. Anyone but a stolid farmer
would have fainted or gone mad, but Ammi walked conscious through that
low doorway and locked the accursed secret behind him. There would be
Nahum to deal with now; he must be fed and tended, and removed to some
place where he could be cared for.

Commencing his descent of the dark stairs, Ammi heard a thud below him.
He even thought a scream had been suddenly choked off, and recalled
nervously the clammy vapor which had brushed by him in that frightful
room above. What presence had his cry and entry started up? Halted by
some vague fear, he heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there
was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestably sticky noise as
of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. With an associative
sense goaded to feverish heights, he thought unaccountably of what he
had seen upstairs. Good God! What eldritch dream-world was this into
which he had blundered? He dared move neither backward nor forward, but
stood there trembling at the black curve of the boxed-in staircase.
Every trifle of the scene burned itself into his brain. The sounds, the
sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow
steps--and merciful Heaven!--the faint but unmistakable luminosity of
all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides, exposed laths, and beams alike.Then there burst forth a frantic whinny from Ammi's horse outside, followed at once by a clatter which told of a frenzied runaway. In another moment horse and buggy had gone beyond earshot, leaving the frightened man on the dark stairs to guess what had sent them. But that was not all. There had been another sound out there. A sort of liquid splash--water--it must have been the well. He had left Hero untied near it, and a buggy-wheel must have brushed the coping and knocked in a 

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