Chilling Horror Stories

The Damned Thing 3

  "Gentlemen," the coroner said, "we have no more evidence, I think. Your duty has been already explained to you; if there is nothing you wish to ask you may go outside and consider your verdict."
    The foremen rose  -  a tall, bearded man of sixty, coarsely clad.
      "I should like to ask one question, Mr. Coroner," he said. "What asylum did this year last witness escape from?"
    "Mr. Harker," said the coroner, gravely and tranquilly, "from what asylum did you last escape from?"
  Harker flushed crimson again, but said nothing, and the seven jurors rose and solemnly filed out of the cabin.
"If you have done insulting me, sir," said Harker, as soon as he and the officer were left alone with the dead man, "I suppose I am at the liberty to go?"
       "Yes."
  Harker started to leave, but paused, with his hand on the door latch. The habit of his profession was strong in him  -  stronger than his sense of personal dignity. He turned about and said:
        "The book that you have there - I recognize it as Morgan's diary. You seemed greatly interested in it; you read in it while I was testfying. May I see it? The public would like -"
  "The book will cut no figure in this matter," replied the official, slipping it into his coat pocket; "all the entries in it were made before the writer's death."
       As Harker passed out of the house the jury reentered and stood about the table on which now covered covered corpse showed under the sheet with sharp definition. The foreman seated himself near the candle, produced from his breast pocket a pencil and scrap of paper, and wrote rather laboriously the following verdict, which with various degrees of effort all signed:
       "We, the jury, do find that the remains come to their death at the hands of a mountation lion, but some of us thinks, all the same, they had fits."
     In the diary of the late Hugh Morgan are certain interstresting entries having, possibly, a scientific value as suggestions. At the inquest upon his body the book was not put in evidence; possibly the coroner thought it not worth while to confuse the jury. The date of the first of the entries mentioned can not be ascertained; the upper part of the leaf is torn away; the part of the entry remaining is as follows:

"... would run in a half circle, keeping his head turned always toward the centre and again he would stand still, barking furiously. At last he ran away into the brush as fast as he could go. I thought at first that he had gone mad, but on returning to the house found no other alteration in his manner than waht was obvisouly due to fear of punishment.
"Can a dog see with his nose? Do odors impress some olfactory centre with images of the thing emitting them?...
"Sept 2. - Looking at the starslast night as they rose above the crest of the ridge east of the house, I observed them successively disappear - from left to right. Each was eclisped but an instant, and only a few at the same time, but a long the entire length of the ridge all that were within a degree or two of the crest were blotted out. It was as if something had passed along between me and them; but I could not see it, and the stars were not thick enough to define its outline. Ugh! I don't like this..."
Several weeks' entries are missing, three leaves being torn from the book.
"Sept. 27. - It has been about here again  -  I find evidence of its presence every day. I watched again all of last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep - indeed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.
"Oct. 3. - I shall not go - it shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward...
"Oct. 5. - I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me - he has a level head. I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad.
"Oct. 7. - I have the solution of the problem; It came to me last night - suddenly, as by revelation. How simple - how terribly simple!
"There are sounds that we can not hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire treetop - the tops of several trees - and all in full song. Suddenly - in a moment - at absolutely the same instant - all spring into the air and fly away. How? They could not all see one another - whole treetops intervened. At no point could a leader have been visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I have observed, too, the same stimultaneous flight when all were silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds - quail, for example, widely separated by bushes - even on opposite sides of a hill.
"It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earth between them, will sometimes dive at the same instant - all gone out of sight in a moment. The signal has been sounded - too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck - who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the bass or the organ.
"As with sounds. so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They represent colors - integral colors in the composition of light - which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect insturment; its range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale' I am not mad; there are colors that we can not see.
"And, God help me! the Damned Thing is such of a color!"